Bizarre Portrayals

There's this pattern in holywood movies - which despite copy-everything-from-holywood tendency of Indian movie industry - I do not see much popular in our movies. There are many movies in Holywood where a character takes on a role with a tyrannical yet influential person, usually an assistant or a secretary, is shown to suffer from the boss's whims and fancies, in the hope that one day that boss's recommendation will help further this junior person's career. 

Many examples - take Andrea (Anne Hathaway) in Devil Wears Prada. Andrea works as second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) . Miranda is the editor or Runway but essentially a person with a great acumen for everything in the fashion industry. Andrea is an aspiring writer and has never written anything about fashion. She does not even understand fashion. I was baffled as to why does she continue with the role!! 

Meryl Streep herself has played one such junior person's role. In the 1990 movie "Postcards from the Edge" Streep plays Suzanne Vale -  an actress attempting a comeback, but her sub-plot involves navigating script submissions through Hollywood's assistant network.

Jane (Julia Garner) works as a junior assistant at a predatory film production company. Her ultimate dream is to become a film producer/writer, but she spends her days absorbing abuse and covering up her boss's misconduct just to keep her foot on the ladder. 

2019 movie - "Late Night" - Molly Wright (Mindy Kaling) takes a low-level entry job in the writers' room for Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson), a legendary but icy late-night talk show host. Her objective: Molly endures being the "diversity hire" outcast in an all-male writers' room, fetching coffee and getting belittled, all in the hope of getting her comedy material read, recommended, and produced by her famous boss.

"Swim with Sharks", "The Proposal", "Swimming" - few other movies with similar examples. Bollywood, for some reason does not find such portrayals. 

Movies usually reflect the prevailing social, political situations, so by that logic, these portrayals must be reflection of reality with a touch of exaggeration (but that can be attributed to creative licence!). And I wonder on two counts - why would someone hire a person who is clearly not suitable to be an assistant and by the same token why would someone take-up such a role, notwithstanding the greatness of the person! 

Assistants are for carrying out the routine, administrative tasks for the 'boss'. That efficiency is important. A film director would look for the people claiming to be scriptwriters to explore their work! Why would he ever turn to his/her assistant for the script? Andrea was hoping to get recommendation from Miranda Priestly. What would she write in her letter? At best her efficiency, completeness of work maybe? I mean anything but Andrea's writing prowess! 

So this portrayal, however real or realistic, is still bizarre for me and still appears to be someone's imagination running overdrive! Or so I thought, until a conversation with a friend brought in a good insight! I was bouncing off this crazy thought of mine and she defended this action quite strongly! 

According to her, there could be a couple of reasons - writing is competitive. Working with some 'power-puff' girl helps to meet other biggies and one can squeeze in a word about yourself edgewise. Pass a piece you have written across as a 'can you please find time for this?', which an outsider would find it difficult!  If a big 'boss' or writer likes your work ethic on Tuesday, they might actually read 10 pages of your script on Friday—a shortcut that millions of outside writers never get.

Then again you get to see how the writing world actually functions, what works, what doesn't, what are the trends. You also develop contacts with other strugglers - a great investment for the future. So all in all it is a risk worth taking! 

All of these holywood movies end up where the struggling girl gets her dream break! Now, that's something to hope for, right? 

Abhijit Tongaonkar/ July 2026