This was really fun: Rogerebert.com critics Christy Lemire, Susan Wloszczyna and I chat about Mike Nichols’ Working Girl:
Let the River Run: On the 30th Anniversary of “Working Girl”
As I was re-watching in preparation, one moment stopped me dead in my tracks. LOOK at this.
Mike Nichols, you sly dog.
This has been our fourth group chat for Ebert. We really enjoy doing them. Others in the series:
Through the Eyes of Love: On the Timelessness of “Ice Castles”
Fade to White: “Thelma and Louise” Turns 25
On “Ms. 45” and Revenge Movie Feminism
That image is truly amazing! So many refractions–
I got to read this first thing this morning, and wanted to say thank you, for brightening my day, Sheila. Working Girl is one of my favorite 80’s movies.
Barb – it really is timeless, isn’t it? Even with the spritzed bangs and tri-colored eyeshadow.
It was so fun re-watching – it’s been a long time for me, but so much came back.
Harrison Ford – now, I love him – but here he got to be sexy and funny and charming. Being “charming” … wow … you can’t TRY to be charming. You just have to know how to be it. It has to be in you already. He’s just devastating here. I love how cool he is with playing second banana to Griffith. He knows he’s support staff. One of the biggest movie stars in the world … playing support staff in a “woman’s picture.” That’s a real man, right there.
This was so fun to read! This is one of those movie that I feel like I know like the back of my hand. I was VERY aware that’s Kevin Spacey in the Limo scene. It remains ridiculously watchable in spite of it’s flaws, which I will get to.
It’s funny, because even though the name of the movie is Working Girl, as a New Yorker, I’ve always viewed it as more of a “New York slice of life” movie, like the old saying, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”
It’s largely due to that glorious opening shot you all described, which is simply one of my favorite opening shots of all time. Not exaggerating. Showing the whole city and then zeroing in on one person. That swoop into Manhattan is something all New Yorkers get, that feeling that Manhattan is where it’s all going down, and where Frankie meant when he said “If you could make it there”. (Of course now things are a little different, but THEN – Manny Hanny baby.)
And the lyrics of the song never felt to me like a “Woman’s anthem”. Unlike, say, “I Will Survive”, the lyrics to “Let the River Run” are actually non-gender specific:
We’re coming to the edge
Running on the water
Coming through the fog
Your sons and daughters
Let the river run
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nation
Come, the New Jerusalem
When I hear the song, it pumps me up, and makes me feel like I can conquer New York. When I hear “I Will Survive”, I respectfully change the station.
Also, given that Tess’ boss is a woman, and Tess essentially destroys her career, it’s hard to see this as much in the way of female advancement. But I am certainly not qualified to tell you to feel different!
The movie gets so much right in the small details. The Ferry commute, the little secretary Birthday party with the one cupcake, the neighborhood bar with Mick and Doreen ( I think Mick will be much happier with Doreen – she loves him for who he is.) I’m not sure Doreen had a line, but I remember her. Oliver Platt in full douche-bag mode. Nora Dunn thinking she’s a genius because she knows the name of a catering company. Olympia FUCKING Dukakis.
And you mentioned that nice little scene at the end with her new female assistant. We’ve discussed actors making an impression in small roles (John Cusack’s wife in The Frozen Ground for example), and this movie is full of them. Nichols really got great mileage from small performances here.
The movie remains ridiculously watchable for these reasons despite suffering at times from what Ebert called “The Idiot Plot” * , whereby the whole movie falls apart if one person says one obvious thing. That thing would be when Harrison Ford calls Katharine after the ski accident, and mentions that he’s working a deal with someone from her firm called Tess. I mean, they are ENGAGED in the movie, are they not? I know there were no cell phones, but there were PHONES.
The plot of the movie would lead you to believe that Ford and Weaver never speak between the accident and when Weaver crashes the big meeting. There really was no reason to make Jack and Katherine engaged, or even know each other. It’s a simple script edit that would have helped the movie immensely, because by shoe-horning in a ludicrous love-triangle, it dilutes the corporate plotting where the movie lives and breathes.
It could be I am the only one bothered by this plot hole, but I hate when smart characters behave stupidly for the sake of the plot, and there is a fair amount of that in Working Girl. But as a true-blue underrated “New York” movie, it’s a winner.
* (I checked Ebert’s review of Working Girl to make sure I wasn’t just subconsciously quoting him, which happens, and it has this this quote – “The plot of “Working Girl” is put together like clockwork”. I disagree Roger! )
Todd – thanks! It was so much fun to re-watch and discuss. It really is timeless.
“slice of life” for sure. and Mike Nichols really gets the feel of New York – those commuters! Walking along the sidewalk eating gyros messily surrounded by lunch-hour throngs. So good. I also love the shots of Melanie on the ferry later at night – after the commuter rush. That whole Staten Island ferry thing is just so outside my world – but I love how much Nichols dug into it and made us understand the world of that boat.
I love that you related to this story – but – and I say it respectfully!! – This IS a story about women in the workplace. Women “relate” to stories about males all the time and there is no reason that the opposite can’t be true (although unfortunately that’s the case.) Working Girl ISN’T “universal.” And the fact that you groove to it anyway speaks well of the film and speaks well of you. :)
The assumption that men don’t care about stories with female leads or about women is pretty insidious (you’re not saying that!! just spouting off now) – and then along comes something like Hidden Figures … or Bridesmaids … or The Heat … or (pick your poison) – and they make mounds of money, they make huge profits and yet still distributors are focused on teenage nerdboys in China. The recent “burying” of the fantastic Annihilation (with 5 = count em – 5 female leads, and not a man in sight – or, barely a man in sight) is a perfect example. I went and saw it this past weekend – I got the last seat available in the sold-out show. It was a mixed crowd. You could have heard a pin drop. The movie is so so good. And yes, it’s very very “universal.” The human condition. The Male experience is not the default. There is ZERO reason that men can’t “get into” a story led by women. And yet the attitude persists.
// Also, given that Tess’ boss is a woman, and Tess essentially destroys her career, it’s hard to see this as much in the way of female advancement. //
I’ve heard this critique before, and it really bugs me. :) Female advancement and equality means just that. Nobody gets a pass. Katharine was manipulative and sketchy and was not interested in “female advancement” at all unless it meant her own. She had to go down. I am not interested in an infantilized view of women – that “exceptions must be made” for us. We are not a monolith. There are good and generous women, and stingy and mean-spirited women. Let’s not fall into the trap of wanting all women to be redeemed in the end. (This is most often a critique I hear from fellow women, who always want women to be badasses or good or positive. Sigh.)
Back to your wonderful comment:
// I think Mick will be much happier with Doreen – she loves him for who he is. //
Ha! This is so true! I love that the movie didn’t villainize him completely. He and Tess were just not a good match. Let’s move on. Nobody’s the bad guy.
and hahahaha you’re right, I don’t think Doreen ever spoke!
// Nora Dunn thinking she’s a genius because she knows the name of a catering company. //
HAHAHAHA!!!!
// There really was no reason to make Jack and Katherine engaged, or even know each other. /
This is a really good point! I hadn’t considered it – but you’re right. It’s superfluous.
“I love that you related to this story – but – and I say it respectfully!! – This IS a story about women in the workplace. Women “relate” to stories about males all the time and there is no reason that the opposite can’t be true (although unfortunately that’s the case.) Working Girl ISN’T “universal.” And the fact that you groove to it anyway speaks well of the film and speaks well of you. :)”
Thanks! Well, it’s probably BECAUSE I view this as more of a New York movie than a “woman’s” movie that I groove to it!
I don’t view this story as Men vs. Women at all. It’s more like Sharks vs. Guppies. By learning to behave like the king shark, Tess is able to become the King Shark. There were plenty of apparently successful woman in Working Girl – Katherine, Olympia Dukakis, Nora Dunn! ( I could have seen a whole movie about Nora Dunn’s character. Talk about taking one or two lines and creating a whole person)!
I worked on Wall Street for many years, literally ON Wall Street (44 Wall). Happy to have made it out alive. Thing is, Wall Street doesn’t care if your a woman. Or black. Or 3 feet tall. It only cares about money. I think the movie gets that a little, and that’s why to me, while Tess happens to be a woman, she didn’t NEED to be a woman.
Ask yourself this – what if Alec Baldwin were in the Tess role, and Tess in the Alec Baldwin role? I might have liked that movie better, because as I alluded to before, the entire “Love Triangle Romance” is needlessly shoehorned into this movie. I guess because you’re making a movie with Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith, so it’s easier to market if they screw. I get it. But it dilutes the whole thing.
It’s true that to get that kind of cushy, salaried, corner-office M&A job like Katherine has, Tess was at a big disadvantage. But NOT because she was a woman. Olympia Dukakis spells is out for her. She’s up against Harvard MBA types, which she is not.
Tess would have been smart enough to get into sales, where literally ANYONE without a history of securities violations can get a job. She would have sweet talked her way into the Trask wedding, gotten Mr. Trask to invest a boatload in some annuity and made her mark. But that’s another movie. Or maybe her only dream was to be in M&A, I don’t know.
I know there was the asshole played by Oliver Platt, and the bigger one played by Kevin Spacey, and those guys are indeed all around Wall Street. I think Tess would have know better than to trust Lutz, but so be it. Her revenge was sweet. That’s all reality, and while it’s sickening, it’s an aspect of Wall Street the movie was fair to acknowledge. But there are also many guys as nice as Harrison Ford (if not as nice looking), and by focusing the movie so heavily on his character and the guy’s overall greatness, it’s just hard for me to ultimately find this movie as some sort of #MeToo statement. Feel free to consider me a dick, but this is how I feel!
I’ll tell you a movie for me that functions amazingly well as a take on a woman’s place in the workplace and society. Watch Silence of the Lambs. The way all the men’s eyes look over Jodie Foster – on elevators, in airports – and also the fact that Crawford openly uses her AS a woman to appeal to Lector. That movie makes me think a lot more about woman in the workplace than Working Girl, believe it or not.
// Well, it’s probably BECAUSE I view this as more of a New York movie than a “woman’s” movie that I groove to it! //
I don’t get it. It’s both. It’s not either/or.
And of course Silence of the Lambs is a great movie about women in the workplace. There was just a conversation about this recently between two transgender film critics, and they really get INTO it, although their main focus is the portrayal of Gumb. But “women in the workplace” movies are a thing – a genre in and of itself, dating back to the beginning of cinema.
// I guess because you’re making a movie with Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith, so it’s easier to market if they screw. I get it. But it dilutes the whole thing. //
HARD disagree.
The film does not ask her to not be sexy or sexual. This is huge. Men compartmentalize us. Tess refuses to compartmentalize that side of herself. She and this rando guy have crazy chemistry, from the jump, but he really gets into her once he sees how smart she is. He just follows her around (which I love). They’re a TEAM. So no, I don’t think it’s shoehorned in, and I love that she gets to have a romance TOO. That it’s not just about her kicking Alec Baldwin to the curb and striding off by herself. Too many films now about “female empowerment” are women by themselves (even Wonder Woman has that line about “I don’t need a man” – cue audience cheer. Okay, fine, okay, if that works for you, but maybe you can have some love and sex AS you advance your career. And maybe the fact that you are required to somehow submerge your sexiness – so as not to make men feel uncomfortable – IS one of the problems, and IS the reason women are left out of all-male spaces.)
Working Girl is radical – and that’s partly due to the genius stroke of casting a sexy woman with a girlish voice and a bod for sin in this role. It’s not “stunt” casting. It’s the right woman for the right part. Jodie Foster is not a “sexual persona” in the way Melanie Griffith is. Her presence doesn’t cause waves of sexuality to erupt in a business setting. Working Girl allows for that, because of who Melanie Griffith is, and it’s an important part of the conversation. This is nothing against Silence of the Lambs. I don’t want to pit the movies against each other. But Working Girl – even with the pun title – allows sex and sexuality into the mix. And I appreciate that.
// Tess was at a big disadvantage. But NOT because she was a woman. Olympia Dukakis spells is out for her. She’s up against Harvard MBA types, which she is not. //
Yes. And I said that in the conversation at Ebert.
Not everything is boiled down to “Because she’s a woman she’s left out.” That’s a point of view that infantilizes women, and I never said that. This movie is also about class.
At some point, you gotta trust it when women say that something speaks to their lives and their experiences.
// it’s just hard for me to ultimately find this movie as some sort of #MeToo statement. //
Gross. I never said that.
// while Tess happens to be a woman, she didn’t NEED to be a woman. //
But she IS a woman. And that matters. It’s part of the texture of the story. You need to try to imagine what it feels like to be the only woman in a room full of men. You need to understand what that means. Because Working Girl sure as hell does. Through that filter, “I’ve got a brain for business and a bod for sin” is the most feminist moment in the movie.
If you want to talk with me about this movie, that’s fine. You know I like you, and you know I enjoy our conversations. But don’t bring #MeToo into the conversation – especially in the way you did.
Men need to listen a little better. We listen to you guys all the time.
Hey, trust me I am listening! Sorry if I pushed any buttons. I guess I’m just trying to explain what appeals to me about Working Girl as a man.
And of course you’re right, Tess being a woman is sort of the point of the story. Maybe I’m just saying that I like the little NY moments in the movie that ring true to me more than the core story, which maybe feels like a bit of a fairy tale to me? And I can love the right fairy tales (True Romance and Baby Driver come to mind). But Working Girl seems to be wanted to be taken seriously, yet the plot, where Tess pulls off a ruse that is just pure slapstick straight out of Three’s Company, just seems a little silly to me. In the “real world” it just wouldn’t happen. From the moment Tess hears Katherine on the tape machine, the “Plot” of the movie kicks in, and the characters start doing what the plot requires, which is quite a lot. In the “real world” Tess would not have gotten away with her plot for more than a day or two maybe. I mentioned I think the movie succombs a bit to the “Idiot Plot”, which is my main complaint. I just wanted it to be as smart as it’s characters.
I certainly hope I haven’t offended you Sheila, I can be a little snide and sarcastic at timers but I know it may not always come off well in print! Nor do I want any woman who views this movie as empowering to feel different. It’s just my opinion (and you can disagree!) that the movie is more about class structure than gender structure.
I will probably stop commenting on this one now before I get in real trouble!
No, please don’t stop commenting!! #MeToo is a sore spot for many women especially since it’s being so attacked, since the attack on us is so relentless. It’s like: Just leave us ALONE, why is that so HARD.
But I would never want you to stop commenting.
Thanks for this clarifying comment – I do understand what you are saying!
I am totally with you that the New York moments really help make the movie – and it’s a kind of location shooting that doesn’t really exist anymore, sadly. (Also, New York has changed so much too. It’s become much more generic.) All of those people streaming into office buildings – the lunch hours where you eat standing up surrounded by literally thousands of people – the quiet Utopia of the upper East side – not to mention the total wild card of Staten Island – which might as well be on Jupiter in terms of how New Yorkers think about it. Tess is literally from another planet.
// n the “real world” Tess would not have gotten away with her plot for more than a day or two maybe. I mentioned I think the movie succombs a bit to the “Idiot Plot”, which is my main complaint. I just wanted it to be as smart as it’s characters. //
Okay, I understand what you’re saying. And the “romantic triangle” – as we discussed – is part of this – although I do love poor Sigourney Weaver’s incompetent attempts at seduction. I also like – as I mentioned in the piece – that her character represents the one woman in any room. And it’s thought that there’s only room for a couple of women in the Halls o’ Power. But what would it look like if half of that conference room were women? Or hell, more than half? Why is this so threatening? This is the thing the culture holds onto so strongly – and so women are “tokenized” – and Katharine herself has internalized that. She LIKES being the only woman in a sea of men. This is a “type” too that exists – and ya gotta watch out for them!
Film criticism is male-dominated – although that’s changing. When I was starting out as a film critic (and it all happened kind of by accident) – the people who held out their hands to me, who gave me jobs, who opened doors for me – were all men. Matt Zoller Seitz and Roger Ebert – they were the main ones. Of course I had to take it from there – and I did! But it takes a powerful man sometimes to go, “Okay. I recognize talent and I am not threatened by it.” That’s Harrison Ford in the movie. That’s Trask too, in a way. Sometimes I think women are so busy protecting their own turf (for understandable reasons) – that if they reach out their hand to another woman, they themselves will be shuffled aside. Women are so “divided and conquered” that we’re automatically put into competition with each other. There are exceptions. The reason I started for writing for Criterion (a mainly female-run outfit) – was because Farran Nehme recommended me. Katharine, though, likes to be Top Dog and doesn’t want any competition. Those types exist too. And it’s weird, but those “types” never seem happy or satisfied in their careers, even if their careers are wonderful. They’re STINGY with others. It has been so wonderful to be in a position at times now where I get to recommend people who are right for something. It happened just this week when I had to turn an offer down because I don’t have time but I thought of someone else (who happens to be a woman) who would be perfect for it.
So Working Girl has a lot to say about women in that regard – every woman who competes in a career has met a Katharine too. We may not have met a Harrison Ford, though (but who has?) A Trask figure, too – a guy from another generation, older – this type is also familiar to women. Older guys are so confident in their position in the culture that they aren’t hung up on the same stuff younger guys are. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Matt Seitz and Roger were of a certain age… middle-aged and older – and so generous and confident enough to use their power to give someone else they thought deserved it a leg up.
I agree with you about the Idiot Plot, although I don’t think it bothered me as much as it bothered you. It’s definitely a fairy tale – but a fairy tale that takes place in the stock market – not a fairy tale along the lines of Pretty Woman – where she is literally saved/rescued by Prince Charming. In Working Girl, the romance is secondary. She saves herSELF, and that makes a huge difference.
Okay final thought. Deep down I am BOTHERED by what Tess does in this movie. Sure, Katherine steals her idea. Happens every day. But then Tess steals her job, her Man, her clothes, her whole freakin’ Identity! I feel she’s a little insane. Or, as I said, forced to ACT insane because of the plot. I wasn’t really rooting for her plan to work, because it’s so mean. Okay I’m done.
hahaha Okay, I hear that. I enjoy her plot, but I appreciate what you’re saying.
Great stuff! The dynamics between all the females in this movie was interesting and realistic. I haven’t mentioned Joan Cusack yet, but I mean, and I hate to use the phrase, but she was vintage bridge and tunnel. But such a good and loyal friend. I love all the characters in this movie so much that I feel like the plot gets foisted on them 30 minutes in, and they’re like, okay, time to go be in the movie now.
Yeah, Katherine was very protective of her turf. I actually have much sympathy for Sigourney Weaver in this movie and what happens to her. I know she’s a bitch. But I feel her punishment is too harsh for her crime. At the end of the movie, when we’re supposed to be cheering her demise, I just felt bad for her.
Glad we made up! :)
Oh, you won’t get rid of me that easily! :) You’re one of the die-hard regulars.
Joan Cusack was SO bridge and tunnel. I also love that the guy she was marrying looked totally white-bread. Not like an Alec Baldwin greaser type. I thuoght it was a funny and non-cliche choice.
Oh, and David Duchovny was an extra at her engagement party. ?? Did you know this? I only know this because I watched it on Amazon and they have those little annoying Trivia pop-ups. You can clearly see him at the party. I had no idea!
You’ve both touched on class. For my money, this is a movie rhat really is, at its core, not so much about business or romance, but that class divide, and the trappings that mark people as from a certain social set. Tess’ hyperventilating at the thought of Katherine’s exhorbitantly expensive little cocktail dress (with the tag still on it) is the perfect demonstration of this. Katherine, for her part, takes one look at Tess’ teased hair and hard makeup and pegs her role in life. Add in the mean girl element of Katherine’s personality, and Tess becomes the underdog that you root for–or I root for, anyway.
Sheila–we were so fabulous in the 80’s, weren’t we? The big hair, the new wave androgeny, the punk-light, the classy micro minis! It was like the culture took a look back at the 70’s and said, “enough with the natural! Give me a blender and let me toss in Old Hollywood, and zoot suits and Ziggy Stardust! Give me artificial! Give me glamour!”
Barb – yeah my friend Brooke counts this as one of her favorite moments and she said on FB “It’s the ultimate underdog story.” That’s part of the satisfaction. Everyone writes her off! And Harrison Ford might have too – if they had met in the office.
// The big hair, the new wave androgeny, the punk-light, the classy micro minis! //
Ha, I know! I really didn’t do the big hair – my hair is just way too thin – and I’m too low-maintenance. But I was definitely into the new wave androgyny – and also we would do asymmetrical Ziggy Stardust makeup – and all this glitter, and then there was BOY GEORGE, how could I forget??