Fiction's intrigues, reality's calm

My recently acquired DVD player has taught me that for some reason, Hollywood has generally not given real estate professionals an easy ride. In the film Glengarry Glen Ross for instance, the agents depicted are duplicitous to a fault. Redeeming features are hard to find among either the successful, as personified by Al Pacino's character or the failures, here represented by Jack Lemmon. They also work from a chaotic office which drips with sleaze, a telling sign for real estate brokers' abilities or their lack of them.Then there's American Beauty with Annette Benning as the retentive hysteric who also tries to sell property for a living. She slaps herself hard on the face to punish herself for not closing a deal. She is obviously not a happy bunny and wouldn't move many to want to pursue that particular career. Think of other professions that cinema has pointed the camera at: numerous 'cop' films or Backdraft about the heroics of firemen, for example. It's not that difficult to imagin