With Oscar season approaching,
and with the recent completion of the meeting planner movie
contest, sponsored by Palace Resorts (www.themeetingplannermovie.com), we’ve been mulling
the most memorable depictions of the meetings industry in film
history. Here are our top picks.
The Big
Kahuna (1999). In this adaptation of the stage play
Hospitality Suite by Roger Rueff, Kevin Spacey and Danny
DeVito play attendees preparing for a Midwest Manufacturing
Association convention and hoping to land a major contract once
there.
The
Conversation (1974). Gene Hackman’s surveillance
expert is a keynote speaker at, and walks the floor of, a security
convention in San Francisco, in this Francis Ford Coppola
classic.
The Fugitive
(1993). Harrison Ford, playing a doctor wrongly accused of murder,
confronts the film’s surprise antagonist during a pharma meeting in
a Chicago hotel.
The Witches
(1990). Roald Dahl’s children’s story about a boy who stumbles upon
a convention for witches, who have gathered to test out their new
potions, is wicked fun.
What’s Up,
Doc? (1972). This screwball comedy, directed by Peter
Bogdanovich, concerns a music professor (Ryan O’Neal) who travels
to a San Francisco convention to win a grant and runs into a
mischief-making Barbra Streisand.
Sons of the
Desert (1933). Comedic duo Stan Laurel and Oliver
Hardy attend a fraternal convention without telling “the wives,”
who happen to watch a newsreel of same convention and spot the
transgressors.
Did your favorite examples miss the
cut? E-mail the titles to us at [email protected]