In the far future, when archeologists and historian dust off the relics from our time and begin to review the media of TV and Movies, they will believe every single person in our time was either a cop/investigator, a doctor, a lawyer, advertising exec, or a struggling writer. These seem to be the occupations that get the most media attention.

What are some of the characters and occupations you have run across on teh screen that made you think, "Huh, that's kinda interesting?"

The city health inspectors as played by Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It seems that back in the 30s, there were an awful lot of classical musicians and modern dancers who were getting all messed up with mad scientists and satanists. Colin Clive was a classical pianist in Mad Love, as was Peter Lorre in Beast with Five Fingers; Lorre became obsessed with an actress in Mad Love; Bela Lugosi becomes obsessed with a dancer in The Raven. Those are just off the top of my head.

Oil Rigs: dangerous work, often made more so by shape changing monsters, tidal waves, and oncoming asteroids.

Oh, and Chopper pilots.

Well, plain, outright criminals, of course, whether organized or freelance.

As much as I despise most Real Life criminals, I'm so tired of everybody on TV always being some sort of cop that I almost prefer shows about out-and-out, mostly unapologetic crooks. See: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc. (if we include TV).

On the big screen, a vast number of examples, almost too many to pick from. I'd give McQuarrie's The Way of the Gun (2000) and The Usual Suspects (1995?), and most of Tarantino's 1990s movies honorable mention.

I even find crime thrillers where the protagonist is more-or-less honest, but is still just a private citizen acting of his or her own accord, preferable to shows where every protagonist is some sort of law enforcement officer or other public employee.

Winston Wolf's "job" always intrigued me. That breadth of confidence, connection, and sheer will is something to aspire to.

Not to mention a great sense of humor.

One of the many small things I love about The Return of the Living Dead is that I'm pretty sure it's the only movie I've ever seen in which several of the protagonists work in a medical supply warehouse.

Heh, yeah. And don't forget the mortician too. I loved that movie, on several different levels.

Santo's reference to Return of the Living Dead reminds me of another blue-collar horror movie. The protagonists of Session 9 are asbestos-clearing workers who have something like six days to get all the carcinogenic pipe-sheathes and rubble out of an abandoned insane asylum. You almost never see physical laborers in horror movies.

Damn, you're right. And that was an amazing movie too. I only got to see it once. I'd like to see it again.

Hmm... That is a challenge, isn't it? Let me think...

Graveyard Shift (1990): A similar situation to Session 9, with a couple of no-skill working-class shlubs hired to clean the junk out of a mine gearing up for refurbishing stumbling upon a nest of monsters in the course of their already miserable duties.

My Bloody Valentine (certainly the original, and probably the remake as well): Virtually the whole cast are coal miners or the wives/girlfriends/daughters of same.

The Mangler: The staff of an industrial laundry service (cleaning linens for hotels and that sort of thing) are being prepped by their no-good boss for sacrifice to a demon.

The Intruder (1988): It's been a very long time since I saw this one, but aren't most of the characters night-shift shelf-stockers at an independent grocery store?

Yeah, Graveyard Shift and The Mangler are good examples, especially the former. I never saw The Intruder, as far as I can recall.

Something else just occurred to me: in the first Alien movie (1979) the protagonists could be considered blue collar, or at least working class. I mean, they're basically workers, not fighters, or cops, or lawyers, or doctors (though they may have some medical knowledge). But the presence of officers clouds the issue a little.

Parker and Brett certainly would qualify. They're like the space-faring equivalent of a couple of union steam-fitters. And even the officers aboard the Nostromo are clearly officers in the civilian sea-captain sense of the term, rather than the military sense we're more accustomed to seeing in the movies.

Yeah, even the officers kind of seem like working stiffs in a way. I mean, they've got jobs to do too and they're doing them, or trying to. They're not just sitting back and drawing a salary, much less sitting back and collecting the dividends or interest on their investments.