Working Girl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Working Girl
Working Girl movie poster
Directed by	Mike Nichols
Produced by	Douglas Wick
Written by	Kevin Wade
Starring	Harrison Ford Sigourney Weaver Melanie Griffith Alec Baldwin Joan Cusack
Music by	Carly Simon (Main song) Rob Mounsey
Cinematography	Michael Ballhaus
Editing by	Sam O'Steen
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	December 21, 1988
Running time	115 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$28.6 million
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Working Girl is an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture and an Academy Award winner for Best Song ("Let the River Run" by Carly Simon), which tells the story of a Staten Island-raised secretary, Tess McGill, working in the mergers and acquisitions department of a Wall Street investment bank. When her boss, Katharine Parker, breaks her leg skiing, Tess poses as Katharine in order to put forward her own bank deal ideas.

The movie was written by Kevin Wade and directed by Mike Nichols. It features a dramatic opening sequence following Manhattan-bound commuters on the Staten Island Ferry accompanied by Carly Simon's song "Let the River Run", for which she received the Academy Award for Best Song. The movie was marketed with the tagline "For anyone who's ever won. For anyone who's ever lost. And for everyone who's still in there trying."

1 Main cast
2 Plot summary
3 Awards
4 Trivia
5 TV series
6 External links

[edit] Main cast

Actor	Role
Harrison Ford	Jack Trainer
Sigourney Weaver	Katherine Parker
Melanie Griffith	Tess McGill
Alec Baldwin	Mick Dugan
Joan Cusack	Cynthia
Philip Bosco	Oren Trask
Nora Dunn	Ginny
Oliver Platt	David Lutz
James Lally	Turkel
Kevin Spacey	Bob Speck
Elizabeth Whitcraft	Doreen DiMucci
Jeffrey Nordling	Tim Rourke
Robert Easton	Armbrister
Olympia Dukakis	Personnel Director
Amy Aquino	Alice Baxter

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Tess McGill is an intelligent, hard working young woman who wants to succeed in Wall Street by hard work, but as she turns 30 years old, she is unable to get work above a secretarial position. After being mislead by her boss into thinking she would be hired for something else for another company, she calls her boss a pimp and quickly quits.

Tess then gets a new job working for Katherine Parker who encourages her to come to her if she has any ideas. She does in fact go to Katherine with an idea of Trask Industries buying into radio instead of television. When Katherine tells her she will help, Tess begins to feel that her luck is finally changing.

However, when Parker goes on a skiing trip she breaks her leg and is unable to be moved. After telling Tess to take care of her house, Tess discovers Katherine is planning to steal her idea when after listening to a tape addressed to Jack Trainer telling him not to go through Tess, she then finds a memo outlining her idea but made to seem like it was Katherine’s. Extremely disappointed and hurt, Tess then returns home to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman, after running off the moving fades out to her in Katherine’s office staring out the window. Soon after, Tess calls Trainer posing as her own boss and not as a secretary stating that she has a proposal to run by him and asks if they can meet, he agrees and they plan on meeting the next day.

But Tess decides to meet him that night at a party to get a head start on things. While there, she does in fact meet him but does not know it because when he goes up to her he does not tell her his name. After a few drinks, she sees one of her old bosses and quickly leaves but not before telling him to get her coat and to meet her outside. When outside, he sees her nearly passed out in a taxicab due to the fact she took a Valium before the party and is unable to give the driver her address therefore Jack takes her to his place.

Tess wakes up the next morning in her underwear and leaves before Jack wakes up. When entering the meeting, she instantly recognizes him and he introduces himself as Jack Trainer. She submits her proposal to him and three other colleagues Jack seems intrigued but the rest of his colleagues aren’t interested. Back at the office, Tess is with her best friend Cyn (who knows what Tess is up to) and is crying saying that she at least gave it a shot and is mortified about the night before, she then turns to see Jack approaching and quickly runs into Katherine’s office with Cyn pretending to be her secretary, Jack is shown in and tells her that they liked her idea and are going to go ahead with it. He later asks her out when he is leaving but she says no because they are now in a business deal together and her life is too complicated as it is.

The movie then switches to Cyn’s engagement party where she starts talking to her boyfriend Mick but is still mad at him, however, to everyone else it looks like they are still happy together only Cyn knows what happened. In front of everyone Mick is pressured into proposing. Tess responds maybe, when outside they argue and officially break up. A couple of days later, Tess and Jack crash Oren Trask daughter’s wedding in order to meet him and schedule a meeting to pitch their idea. They succeed and have a meeting with two of his employees.

When at the meeting, the two employees say no but Trask calls and says he’ll take the meeting with them. When leaving, Tess and Jack start to kiss and get back to his place where they sleep together. While in bed, Tess says she has something to tell him but Katherine calls. When they hang up, Tess is mad and Jack tells her that it’s over between him and Katherine he just hasn’t told her yet, he was going to tell her on the ski trip they were supposed to go on together but he had to work and didn’t have the heart to dump her when she was already hurt. Tess says it’s okay but changes her mind of telling him the truth.

The next day Katherine comes home, which is also the same day as the meeting. While getting her pills, Jack comes to Katherine’s house to see her but doesn’t stay long and almost dumps her. At the same time, Tess is hiding in the closet, as soon as Jack leaves Tess gives Katherine her pills and rushes out of the apartment saying she has a doctor's appointment but leaves her notebook behind. Katherine opens it and discovers what Tess has been up to and gets dressed to go and stop her.

At the meeting, Jack tells Tess that he loves her and she says she loves him too. The meeting starts with owners of the radio station, Trask, Tess and Jack, but before long Katherine barges in and makes it seem like Tess was the one who stole the idea and everyone discovers that she is in fact a secretary. Tess tries to make them see Katherine is the one who is lying, but is unable to do so and leaves saying she is so sorry.

Back at the office, Tess is packing her things and says good-bye to her friends who now know what happened. When leaving, Tess sees Jack and the others in the entrance to the main lobby, she tries to turn around and go another way but a man bumps into her and she spills all her papers. Jack comes forward to help and tells her he has been trying to find her and asks her if them sleeping together was part of the scheme too. Tess tells him no and that if she told him she was just some secretary he would never have taken the meeting, but would have tried to fill her with some drinks and try to get her into bed. At this point, Katherine approaches and Tess then tells Jack that if he really thought she said that she loved him as some sort of scheme then that was really pathetic.

When all are getting on the elevator Jack refuses to come stating that Tess is this team's leader and he believes her. He and Tess manage to get Trask to step off too and they ride up in the next elevator. Tess tells Trask how she came up with the idea for Trask to buy into radio convincing him that she was telling the truth and that Katherine has been lying. They get off and Katherine soon follows, Trask asks her how she got the idea for Trask to buy Metro Radio Network, she is unable to answer and asks for Jack to help he shakes his head no. Trask proceeds to tell her that he is going to make sure she gets fired, Katherine leaves and slams into her office. Trask asks Tess why she didn’t tell them all this in the boardroom, to which she responds no one would have believed her, he then asks if she would be willing to work for him at entry level and she happily accepts.

We then see Tess now living with Jack getting ready for work. She arrives at Trask Industries and is told where to go but sees a woman on the phone in an office she thought was hers. Tess now thinks she is once again a secretary. But as it turns out, it is Tess’s office and the woman is her assistant. The movie ends with Tess calling Cyn telling her the big news, and Cyn is excited to tell the other secretaries that Tess has made it out.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Awards

The cover of the DVD release of the movie.

Winner:

1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Melanie Griffith)
1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture (Sigourney Weaver)
1989: Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song - "Let the River Run"
1989: Academy Award for Best Song - "Let the River Run"
1990: Grammy Awards of 1990 for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television- "Let the River Run" (Composing and arranging)

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Actress in a Leading Role (Melanie Griffith)
Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Joan Cusack)
Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Sigourney Weaver)
Best Director and Best Picture

[edit] Trivia

The movie is David Duchovny's screen debut. He appears in two scenes; once at Tess's birthday party at her apartment and later at Cyn's pre-wedding party.
The lobby of Tess's office building was that of the now-destroyed 7 World Trade Center. The scenes of Tess's secretarial pool and Katharine Parker's office were filmed at 1 State Street Plaza at the corner of Whitehall and State Street. [1] [2]
Many scenes were shot in the New Brighton section of Staten Island in New York City.
When Tess goes to meet Katherine Parker on the helipad, she is carrying a stuffed gorilla, a direct reference to the film Gorillas in the Mist, a film that Weaver had finished a few months earlier.
The film had grossed over $64,000,000 in the Unites States.