COVER FEATURE: The Power of One Million

Real Estate in Pop Culture

BY JIM HATFIELD

If you missed that hit flick, “A Real Estate Deal,” it’s probably because it was produced in 1912 and is thought to be the first ever depiction of a real estate practitioner on the silver screen—which, in this case, was also the silent screen.

Since then, dozens of movies, books, and radio and TV shows have featured fictional real estate characters and plots involving real estate, with mixed results.

The fast-talking (“Always be closing!”) crew of real estate salesmen in “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992) suggested a profession filled with hustlers, con men, and desperate losers.

Only slightly more favorable was Annette Bening’s hardworking but unhappy Carolyn Burnham (“American Beauty,” 1999), whose success in real estate masked cracks in her family life. In the more recent “Hollywood Homicide” (2003), Harrison Ford plays police detective Joe Gavilan, whose efforts to crack a case and sell real estate keep intruding on one another. Neither character would be likely to win REALTOR® of the Year, but at least they’re presented as honest, albeit flawed, human beings.

What’s in a name?
Screenwriters aren’t the only ones using real estate as a backdrop. The profession has figured in plenty of novels, too, including the classic Babbitt (Harcourt Brace, 1922) by Sinclair Lewis. Lewis’s one-dimensional main character, George F. Babbitt, popularized a cynical view of the real estate business. Lewis describes Babbitt as “nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.” After the book was published, the name Babbitt became a synonym for shallow materialism. NAR takes a direct shot at lingering stereotypes today with its public awareness campaign (see “Communicating your value ,” page 58).

A more nuanced characterization is Frank Bascombe, the ex-sportswriter in Richard Ford’s 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day (Knopf, 1995). Bascombe suffers through life’s challenges—one hard-won deal goes south when the buyers discover a penal institution will be built nearby—but retains his sense of humor and decency.

Perhaps the most popular genres for real estate characters and settings are romance novels and murder mysteries. That’s because the authors of both kinds of fiction are drawn to characters with jobs that involve varied locations and chance meetings.

“I believe in writing about what I know,” says author Helen Spears, who sold real estate for 13 years before selling her first book. Her heroine in Heart of a Bachelor (Avalon, 2001) finds love when a freshman Congressman drops in at her open house in Washington, D.C. In an earlier book by Spears, Aloha Kisses (Avalon, 1988), sparks fly at a real estate convention in Hawaii. “You can use any beautiful, romantic setting, and it will be realistic to find an attractive, intelligent real estate practitioner there,” says Spears.

All authors strive for plausibility. That’s one of the reasons mystery writers plumb the business’s dark side—vulnerable practitioners meeting mysterious strangers. The latest in Phillip R. Craig’s Vineyard Mysteries series, A Vineyard Killing (Avon, 2004), pits a real estate developer against longtime residents. The Schuyler Ridgway Mystery series by Tierney McClellan (Signet) features a real estate salesperson as its main character.

Houses take center stage
Novelists and screenwriters are also drawn to plots involving real estate because it has so often been the setting for real human drama. Westerns like “The Big Country” (1958) and “Shane” (1953), for example, revolve around a struggle over land.

Often the house itself becomes the main character, notes Brad Ward, a movie fan who is also director of legal affairs for the Michigan Association of REALTORS®. Think of “The Money Pit” (1986), which depicts the trials of homeowners Tom Hanks and Shelley Long in their efforts to restore a fixer-upper—or that film’s 1948 inspiration “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. In the chilling “House of Sand and Fog” (2003), a home becomes the stage for a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

Then, there are all those haunted house movies “where everything that happens is driven by something spooky in the attic or the basement,” Ward says.

Ward has published his own list of the greatest real estate movies of all time. His list includes “Chinatown” (1974), in which Jack Nicholson uncovers a plot to buy cheap land and sell it for millions, and “The Super” (1991), with Joe Pesci as an intimidating landlord.

Not real life
If the sum total of all these works presents a skewed picture of the business, that’s not surprising. One of the oldest rules in fiction works against the likelihood that any character—doctor, lawyer, police officer, or real estate practitioner—will survive the creative process unscathed. That rule, as stated by the reigning guru of screenwriting, Robert McKee, proclaims that “Nothing moves forward in a story except conflict.” Without conflict, readers fall asleep and viewers change the channel.

Where there are collisions, there often are bruises. But the net effect on people’s image of the profession isn’t likely to be all that great.

“Most people are able to separate real life from fiction,” says Stephen Malpezzi, who teaches real estate in the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has written about movies with real estate themes.

“Far more important than what people see of the real estate profession on the screen or in a book is what they see of real estate practitioners in their own lives,” says Malpezzi. He regards efforts by the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® to promote a positive image of real estate professionals through its public awareness campaign as valuable to helping consumers understand that most salespeople aren’t as they’re often portrayed by Hollywood. Still, he says, “a positive experience in real life quickly corrects any wrong impressions the client may have received from books or movies.”

Brad Ward agrees and puts it this way: “REALTORS® can imagine each transaction as a kind of movie of their own in which they star as the hero or heroine. Oscar-winning listing presentations and closings will do more to change a homeowner’s view of our industry than any Hollywood pipe dream.”

PICTURED: Gregory Peck in “The Big Country,” Shelley Long and Tom Hanks in “The Money Pit,” and Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, and Jean Arthur in “Shane.” Second row, from left: Jack Lemmon in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Jane Smiley’s Good Faith, and Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt. Bottom, from left: Richard Ford’s Independence Day and Annette Bening in “American Beauty.”

The mirror’s gaze

Scotland’s famous poet, Robert Burns, said it best: “Oh wad some power the giftie gie us to see oursel’s as others see us!” Here’s a sampling from film and print of how writers have seen the real estate profession. Houses indicate not the quality of the work but whether the overall impression is favorable, unfavorable, or somewhere in between.

• Under the Tuscan Sun (Chronicle Books, 1996) Frances Mayes’ delicious account of one woman’s efforts to buy and renovate a home in Italy underscores how much easier it is to transact real estate business in the United States.
• “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1947) When the bell rings and an angel gets his wings, someone also gets a home loan!
• Good Faith (Knopf, 2003) This Jane Smiley novel traces the downward spiral of a decent real estate salesperson who’s lured into a get-rich-quick scheme. Memo to rookies: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
• A Man in Full (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1998) The protagonist in Tom Wolfe’s novel, a former football star turned developer, has trouble coming to grips with the crumbling of his real estate empire. At least there’s redemption in the end.
• “Psycho” (1960) Everyone remembers the shower scene and, fortunately, forgets that Janet Leigh’s character was a real estate brokerage secretary who absconded with $40,000 in earnest money.
• “Ten Things Your Real Estate Broker Won’t Tell You” (2002) This one-in-a-series article from Smart Money magazine delights in unnerving consumers with warnings of impending rip-offs. Reminder to savvy practitioners: Don’t wait for customers to ask before you tell them everything they need to know!