Architecture of a Movie Cliche
Was it Joe Queenan who wrote an essay why so many movie heroes are architects?
In the Guardian this week, Paul Arendt takes another look at the cinematic obsession with architects: this time, the movie hero is a photogenic Jude Law in BREAKING AND ENTERING, whose job shows that he's brainy enough to have attended graduate school, rugged enough to show him getting his hands dirty on a building site, but artistic and sensitive enough to stay late at the office doing sketches, collages and model-making.
Personally, I always thought movie makers love architects because they get to commission cool miniatures of the the hero's dream project -- which they can then destroy, preferably with the main character's fists ("Why, God, why?") scene when the heroes hopes and dreams are temporarily destroyed.