I always joke around about how Realtors are portrayed in the public eye—we dress like investment bankers, drive either a BMW or a Lexus, always smiling, and wear sunglasses even in the winter.

We have our faces on park benches, buses, garbage bins, and wherever else we can shamelessly plug ourselves.

The kids on my Leaside Bantam baseball team always ask “Hey coach, why don’t I ever see your face on a park bench?”

So if that’s the public portrayal, how about in the media….or better yet….MOVIES!

These movies aren’t all about real estate, but may contain references, characters, or sub-plots involving our thriving industry.

Here are my top five: 

#5: Hollywood Homicide

This movie makes real estate look so easy.

I often get people telling me, “I’m thinking of going into real estate…..part time.”  I don’t know why people assume that real estate—the industry with a 90% failure rate, the industry that takes 3-5 years to get a “foothold” in, is something you can do part time.  But people keep trying, and they either fail, quite, or take up the business full time….you know….like ALL JOBS!  Can you be a part-time anything in this world we live in?

In Hollywood Homicide, Harrison Ford plays an L.A. Detective who teams up with Josh Hartnett (another great movie character was Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides.  Remember how depressing it was when we saw Trip twenty years later?).  But Harrison Ford’s character also moonlights as a real estate agent, while he’s not at his FULL-TIME job as a detective.

So for about 90-minutes, we see Harrison Ford driving around, shooting people, chasing proverbial bad guys, trying to solve a shooting at an L.A. nightclub, and then amongst all the mayhem, he tries to make the odd real estate deal or two.

In a completely unrelated story, I’m thinking about becoming a part-time Toronto police officer…

#4: Are We Done Yet?

You gotta love John C. McGinley.

This man brings as much meaning to the middle-initial as Michael J. Fox.  Not to be confused with the first-initial-first-name actors such as F. Murray Abraham from Amadeus.

In Are We Done Yet, the much-hyped, much-anticipated sequel to the critically-acclaimed Are We There Yet, John C. McGinley plays a realtor who simply put, does it ALL.  He sells a house, and then lets you know that he’ll be the contractor for all your renovation-needs, if you so desire.  Good thing too, because he also happens to be the city building inspector!  What a trifecta!  If only this were possible in the real world, you’d have the city by the….you know whats…

Oh and to add more insult to injury, for those of us that know how hard real estate is, he also is a midwife, an electrician, a fire-dancer, and he used to be an L.A Laker and an Olympic athlete…

The movie absolutely sucks, as you would be able to conclude from any or all of the title, cast, previews, movie poster, or quantam-physics, but McGinley’s character in the movie is fun to watch as he’s obsessive-compulsive, neurotic, and extremely hard to deal with.

#3: Indecent Proposal

Well this is kind of a stretch for a real estate related movie, but the entire plot of the movie, conflict, and adversity stems from the financial issues that Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore encounter after a botched real estate transaction.

Demi Moore plays Diana Murphy, a real estate broker, and Woody Harrelson plays David Murphy, an architect.  They are happily married, and have their whole lives ahead of them with goals, dreams, and passions to pursue, and it all begins with the dream house that they plan to build.  Diana finds the perfect piece of vacant land, and David designs a gorgeous house.  Then the recession hits, and they get into trouble…

We know how the movie goes, and how Robert Redford comes along with his million-bucks.  But I enjoy the underlying theme and how people get into serious financial troubles when they get in over their head in real estate.  I can’t see this happening at all right now with interest rates as low as they are…

My favorite line/scene in this movie comes when Oliver Platt’s character is trying to sell two would-be entrepreneurs on becoming their lawyer, and using his services.  The phone rings, he puts it on speaker-phone, and it’s Woody Harrelson, who proceeds to explain that he agreed to let Robert Redford sleep with his wife for $1,000,000.  Oliver Platt looks stunned, and disappointed, and then surprises us all by saying, “Geez, David….for Diana?  I could have got you TWICE that!  I told you: never negotiate without me!”  Suffice it to say, the two would-be clients are quite enamored with him, and handshakes ensue…

#2: Glengarry Glen Ross

This is a true real estate movie, about real estate.

The cast alone has got to reel you in: Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin, Jack Lemmon, and a young Kevin Spacey as the office manager.  And believe it or not, this movie was adapted from the 1984 play that won both a Tony Award as well as a little something called the Pulitzer Prize.

The basic plot: four real estate agents, who are really more like general salesmen, work at a firm trying to sell really crummy real estate over the phone and in person via house-calls that they call “sits.”  Three of the agents are very unsuccessful, and the fourth is Al Pacino, who is “on a roll.”  Ah yes, “on a roll.”  I can’t tell you how many times I hear this in my office.  You look up at the board and “So-and-so is really on a roll.”  Is that a simple observation, or one disguised in jealousy?

The conflict begins with the best scene in the movie when Alec Baldin, who plays a slick young salesman, comes down from the corporate office.   “We’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest,” Baldwin says.  “As you all know, the first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado.  Anybody wanna see the second prize?  (holds up prize).  The second prize is a set of steak knives.  The third prize is: you’re fired.”  I’m paraphrasing, which does this scene no justice, but it’s a must see!  Baldwin is so powerful and shrewd in this very small role.

He verbally abuses Ed Harris’s character after he asks Alec Baldwin, “Who the heck are you?”  Baldwin’s greatest tirade of the movie: “You see this watch?  You see it?  This watch costs more than your car.  I made $970,00 last year, how much did you make?  I drive a $130,000 Aston Martin, what the hell do you drive?  A Hyundai Elantra!  You might as well kill yourself you’re so pathetic.  I’m successful, you are not.  You see pal, that’s who I am, and you’re nothing.  Nice guy?  I don’t give a shit.  Go home and play with your kids!  You wanna work here?  Close!”

Have you ever heard the term “ABC”?  It stands for “Always Be Closing.”  That’s right, in the sales world, you must always be closing deals.  You work on commission, you have no paycheck, and you only get paid when you close a deal.  If you don’t close, you don’t eat.

I learned this very fast when I started in real estate four years ago, and this movie emulates that point.  It also does an excellent job of showing how pathetic a salesperson can be, or perhaps how pathetic the industry itself can be.  Jack Lemmon’s character struggles throughout the movie, and his fear of losing his job drives him to break into the office at night and steal “the Glengarry leads,” which are under lock and key, that he believes are the only good sales leads that the office has. 

We also witness Al Pacino’s character closing a huge deal for four pieces of property….while he sits in a bar and gets the buyer drunk.  Days later, that buyer shows up in the office looking to rescind his purchase agreement, knowing full well of his rights with respect to the three-day “cooling off period” whereby he can change his mind.  Pacino spins his wheels as best as he can, but the big deal he was just celebrating goes down the toilet.  Something I learned early on in real estate: you can’t count on a deal until you have successfully deposited your cheque in the bank.

The sadness of the life of a salesman culminates when Jack Lemmon believes he has just closed on a half-dozen deals, acting quite brashly and strugging around the office with a new-found arrogance, only to find out that the buyer is actually a crazy old man with no money who just likes to talk to people on the phone, and has put many other salesmen through the same ringer.

Make sure you don’t watch this movie alone.  When it’s over, you’re going to want human interaction.  It’s that depressing, trust me.

#1: American Beauty

Everytime I used to walk out the front door to my open house on a Saturday afternoon, my brother and his fiancee would say “Dave!  Just remember Annette Bening: ‘I will SELL…THIS…HOUSE!'”

I absolutely LOVE Annette Bening’s character in American Beauty; not the character herself but how the character is written and portrayed.  Annette Bening plays Carolyn Burnham, a lowly realtor, and of course, wife to Lester Burnham—another of my all time favorite movie characters.  We get the idea that she is struggling to gain ground in this extremely difficult industry, and she is completely obsessed with image. 

This movie and character really spoke to me, for many different reasons, but I saw a role-reversal as I wanted to be the complete opposite of what she and her eventual lover, “Buddy Kane” (the dad from the O.C.) portray in the movie.  They are both obsessed with image, the never-ending chase of more success, and feeding their own growing egos.  I love working in real estate because it’s exciting!  It’s booming, thriving, and I get to meet 5-6 new people every day.  Certain aspects of real estate I just despise, and this movie perfectly describes the self-worshiping fragment of our business that when it comes to their personal lives: they only care what other people think about them.

My favorite scene comes when Carolyn is working an open house.  This gives us her famous line: “I will sell this house” that she repeats over and over as her mantra.  Then we witness, first hand, what it’s like to stand there and make yourself vulnerable when twenty different groups of people (men, women, couples, singles, gay, straight, young, old) parade through the house as if they own it themselves.  Carolyn, like a true salesperson, can turn any negative into a positive, or point our the benefits of the ordinarily mundane. 

The kitchen is “a dream come true to any cook,” and my favorite part, “just feel the positive energy!”  Then there is the conversation out by the pool with the two very drab ladies, during which they argue over the description “lagoon-like” and whether the back pool isn’t more like a “cement hole.”  At the end of the scene at the open house, Carolyn closes the blinds, and begins to break down and cry.  She beats herself up, and blames herself for her own perceived failure.  She slaps herself and yells “Shut up, you’re weak” because she is afraid to be in touch with her own emotions; she’s afraid to cry.

Carolyn Burnham is the ultimate power-hungry, type-A female real estate agent.  I know several agents just like her.  They have problems in their personal lives, and they feel fulfillment with how others perceive them, how much money they make, or how much success they achieve (or are perceived to achieve). 

Later on in the movie, when Carolyn is having dinner with Buddy Kane “The Real Estate King,” he reveals that he and his girlfriend have unfortunately split.  Carolyn says, “I had no idea,” and buddy replies with a quote that sums up exactly what Carolyn so desperately desires in her own life: “It is my philosophy that in order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times.”

What I like about the portrayal of both Carolyn Burnham and Buddy Kane, is that they are bang on.  I see some huge parallels between these two fictional characters, and real-life agents that I know of in Toronto.  The two characters are both extremely egotistical, selfish, and pompous.  Carolyn cares only about herself, and how people view her.  At one point, she remarks to her own daughter, “Jane, honey, are you trying to look unattractive?  Congratulations, you’ve succeeded admirably.”

At a realtors banquet, Carolyn explains to Lester: “My business is selling an image, and part of my job is to live that image.”

The movie as a whole shows the contrast between what it’s like to be unhappy or happy, but also what it’s like to have others perceive you in a certain way.  This is my problem with real estate: there is far too much image, and far too much self-interest.  I know a lot of great agents, who are genuine, caring people, but I know a lot of people that are just obsessed with their own self-image and their relentless pursuit of success.  And we ONLY measure success in monetary terms…

I guess I’ve kinda gone off on a few tangents here, but I just have so much love for American Beauty.  I honestly believe it’s one of the greatest films ever made, but I think that too much of the world doesn’t understand it because they are the exact same people that the movie is trying to portray!  Success cannot only be measured in monetary terms, and with respect to image, prestige and status.  Tell me: do you feel successful after doing an exceptional job cleaning your kitchen floor?  Do you feel successful when you see the smiling face of a kid you taught how to hit a curve ball?

I’ll get down off my soapbox now.

But I’ll leave you with another great movie quote:

Ferris Bueller once said: “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you might miss it”….