Comment by Animats
6 hours ago
That's fascinating.
The article points out that nobody made a movie about this guy. That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring. Nobody ever made a biopic about Charles Wilson, head of defense production at General Motors during WWII, and later US Secretary of Defense. Hyman Rickover, who headed the 1950s effort to build nuclear submarines and warships, only has a low budget 2021 documentary. Malcom McLean, who converted the world to containerized shipping and made low-cost imports possible, never got a movie.
Those three people each changed the world more than any celebrity. They're well known in business history. MBAs study them. There are biographies. But no movie.
> That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring.
Still issue (seriously).
He might be an expert at building organizations in real life, but there is no rule that a movie about him has to focus on that part. Movies are not documentaries.
Examples: Oppenheimer, A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game, Jobs, Social Media, and literally every movie that sells tbh.
There are biopic films about people who founded or transformed businesses like Steve Jobs, Roy Kroc, Mark Zuckerberg, the founders of Blackberry, etc. Might not be everyone's cup of tea but I wouldn't describe that genre as boring. Probably the bigger issue is getting people to see a biopic about someone who isn't already a household name.
And if Qian is truly comparable to Oppenheimer, well...
Putting Steve Jobs next to Charles Wilson is an insult to Wilson.
But they did make a biopic about a Charles Wilson and a war:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson%27s_War_(film)
That one, about a member of Congress, has a sex scene in a hot tub. It had movie potential.
The Roy Krock movie worked because audiences understand McDonalds. Trying to explain the relationship between R&D policy and defense spending is much tougher. Although see Heinlein's "Destination Moon".
I don't deny that a lot of the examples given are either of people behind relatable everyday products and brands, or world-shaping historical events that every laymen has some inkling of. Or that in Congressman Wilson's case, a colorful and flamboyant personality beyond the potential 9/11 connection.
Certainly when it comes to WWII era technocratic bureaucrat-administrator types I'd be more interested in, say, a film about the National Recovery Administration's first Director Hugh S. Johnson, who was a bit of a crank and flame-out and perhaps had extremist views of modern day political salience. (I don't think he had anything to do with the alleged Business Plot, but a movie can easily evoke it and hey, Smedley Butler appearance as a character.)
But yeah, a movie about an administrator who was simply competent and important in an abstract systems-based way without personal drama or controversy does seem somewhat difficult to turn into a full-fledged biopic. Maybe a PBS mini-series?
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Isn't the recent Oppenheimer about building organizations, politics, and courts? There are bombs scenes but majority of the movie is the supposed boring stuff
> That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring.
Well, part of the Oppenheimer biopic is about J. Robert being thrust into that kind of role.
> Oppenheimer ... rapidly learned the art of large-scale administration after he took up permanent residence at Los Alamos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Los_Alam...