Jonathan Falk asks me:
Depending on how you
categorize John Nash’s profession, Richard Jenkins is either the first or second
actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for playing an economist. How
many “economists in the movies” have there been?
categorize John Nash’s profession, Richard Jenkins is either the first or second
actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for playing an economist. How
many “economists in the movies” have there been?
My basically
unresearched list:
unresearched list:
Richard Jenkins as
Walter Vale in The Visitor
Walter Vale in The Visitor
Ray Baker as Carl
Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted (very minor role)
Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted (very minor role)
Russell Crowe as
John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (maybe)
John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (maybe)
Austin Pendleton as
Thomas King in A Beautiful Mind (I actually discussed this with him
once… He told me he had no idea what any of his lines
meant.)
Thomas King in A Beautiful Mind (I actually discussed this with him
once… He told me he had no idea what any of his lines
meant.)
Nick Nolte as
Augusto Odone in Lorenzo’s Oil
Augusto Odone in Lorenzo’s Oil
Am I missing
anything prominent?
anything prominent?
There is of course Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller. What else?
Female love interest in one of the Bourne movies.
I’d argue against calling Nash as an economist. He did work in mathematical game theory that was applicable to economics, but as far as I know he has always worked in the context of pure math. As a mathematician I am obviously biased, but it’s kind of a shame he won the most distinction for what wasn’t nearly his best work. Some of the math he’s done has been absolutely outstanding, if inapplicable to economic theory.
Vladimir Mashkov as Platon Makovskii in Oligarkh
John Quentin as Maynard Keynes in Wittgenstein
Barbara Sukowa as Rosa Luxemburg in Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg
Mammootty as Dr. S.R. Nathan in Ore Kadal
Jean-Gabriel Nordmann as John von Neumann in Race for the Bomb
I watched Cocktail (with Tom Cruise) recently, and he takes an economics course. I checked IMDB, and the economics professor is played by an actor named Jack Newman.
If Ben Stein counts, I suppose this one does too.
It’s not a movie, but don’t forget the West Wing’s president, Josiah Bartlett, won a Nobel Prize in economics.
Addenda: it looks like the pic with Friedman in it is a documentary, so I presume it doesn’t count. I see that the character in Cocktail is listed as an economics professor, but I could have sworn the assignment he gave out was more business in nature.
Regarding mike’s comment on Nash as a mathematician – I think I recall from the book that Nash actually was involved in some early experiments on how people actually reacted in games, which (if I recall that correctly) means he wasn’t exclusively involved in theory.
If game theorists are economists then maybe we should include Dr. Strangelove played by Peter Sellers – apparently modelled after Von Neumann. That movie is also unique in having a game theoretically motivated device as the central plot point.
Bill Nighy is sort of an economist in “The Girl in the Cafe.”
Since we’re stretching to Ben Stein, who’s a high school economics teacher in Ferris Bueller and not an economist, and to econ majors, we would need to include the cute blonde in the British sitcom, Coupling. I think her name in the show is Susan. She was an econ major.
If we’re counting sitcoms and students, let’s not forget Michael J. Fox in “Family Ties.”
Contn.
In the same language, a few old films had characters like lecturers in economics.I remember a film that I saw during 1979 or 1980 in which the main female character was a lady lecturer in economics in a local college.There was a scene in this film showing this lecturer teaching the relation between TU and MU by drawing the diagram.The character ultimately falls in love with one of her students, deserting her childhood lover.However this film was directed by the gifted director Bharathan.
In Oliver Stone’s Wall Street there is a wild old character in Charlie Sheen’s office who sounds awfuly Austrian in one rant he gives about ‘cheep money.’
A professional economist he is not, however the dialogue in that scene was definitely about good economics.
If your happy with Ben Stein in your ranks, I’m happier than ever that I chose political science.
And Krugman’s column refers to this larger list at WSJ: Big Screen Themes: Love, Adventure †¦ and Economics:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/02/22/big-screen-themes-love-adventure-and-economics/
Gordon Gekko. His economic theories may have fallen out of favor, but hey, so did Marx’s.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re not here to indulge in fantasy, but in political and economic reality. America… America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire made sure of it, because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company. [...] I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind, and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
The father of one of the main characters in Y Tu Mama Tambien.
Was Matt Damon’s character in Syriana an economist? Wikipedia says he was an energy analyst, but I remember the prince calling him an economist.
Rodney’s Dangerfield’s foil in “Back to School” was an econ. professor who’s lack of realism provided numerous jokes.
In ‘Half Moon Street’, Sigourney Weaver plays an economist (Dr Lauren Slaughter) who moonlights as a prostitute (where there’s real money) in London.
Dr. Cartright in Yes, Minister episode “The Challenge” is both C of E and an economist. He proposes failure standards for govt.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSY3YGckew&feature=PlayList&p=B8130890C9BB23DD&index=61
There’s Stringer Bell in an Economics class in “The Wire”. It is a TV show though.
About Ben Stein in “Ferris Beuller”:
Ben Stein didn’t pretend to be an economist in the movie—Ben Stein pretends to be an economist *in real life*. In the movie, he was just a high-school teacher.
Stringer Bell on the Wire takes a micro course and has a copy of “the Wealth of Nations” on his bookshelf.
Jim Doyle (David Wenham) in “The Bank” (2001), “a maverick mathematician who has devised a formula to predict the fluctuations of the stock market”.
Shades of LTCM ?
Are you all kidding me?
There is an honest to god economist in the Rodney Dangerfield epic “Back to School.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090685/
There is no picture on the site, but I am assuming the economist was “Dr. Barbay” a totally pretentious English economist who is dating the dashing Sally Kellerman (the seductive poetry professor). Dr. Barbay resents Dangerfield’s practical, real world knowledge (he is a millionaire retailer of “oversized” men’s clothes), and really hates him after Dangerfield makes Kellerman fall in love with him (Dangerfield can do that). The key “economics” moments in the film are an early lecture on the production of “widgets” and the final, gruelling and triumphant oral examination in which the prickish english economist gives Dangerfield only one question . . . in 27 parts. As at least a full professor at a major university (it has a diving team), this guy has GOT to count as an “economist.”
How this one slipped through the cracks is beyond me! Not only did this film have both Rodney Dangerfield AND Sam Kinison, but it also had Robert Downey Jr., for cryin’ out loud!
It also had a line which was famous in my family: “Waitress, bring us one pitcher every half hour until someone passes out, then bring us one every 15 minutes.”
It also is the source for the “tripple lindy”, the hardest dive in the world.
Leave it to Dangerfield to show us exactly how economists are viewed by the popolo.
I read somewhere that the protagonist in the Good Shepherd was a composite of James Jesus Angleton and Richard Bissell, an economist.
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