Which professions are most overrepresented in films? I realize that an exact count is impossible, but for example, there are hundreds of thousands of plumbers in real life, but virtually none as major characters in films. On the other hand, there are probably more “hit men” in films than in real life.
Rough rank
1 Professional hit man / assassin. There may be only a tiny number of genuine full-time contract killers, yet Hollywood seems to employ several thousand of them annually.
2 Spy / secret agent. Real intelligence agencies employ plenty of people, but very few spend their days seducing countesses, defusing bombs and chasing villains through Prague.
3 Private detective. A genuine occupation, but vastly less common than noir would suggest—and real PIs mostly do surveillance, background checks and insurance work.
So why can’t we have a big-budget film about a dental hygienist?
Of course we would have to make our hero a rare straight, male dental hygienist with muscles like that guy who plays Reacher, because … Hollywood.
Johnny Danger cleans teeth by day. But when the sun goes down, he … er … volunteers at his local food kitchen. That seems innocent and boring enough, but as Dickens would tell it, updated by Hollywood, there he meets a homeless man who happens to be the rightful Czar of all the Russias, or if not all, at least a couple of minor Russias. Maybe he’s the dispossessed heir to Upper Lesser Russia and two-thirds of Smolensk on alternate Thursdays. Johnny, being a decent but painfully ordinary dental hygienist, offers him soup. The old man peers up through his magnificent frost-covered beard and says:
“Your kindness shall not be forgotten, Mr. Danger.”
Johnny thinks nothing of it.
Three reels later, Johnny is abducted by agents of a sinister pretender to the throne, escapes using dental floss and a periodontal probe, and discovers that the soup kitchen is actually a front for a cabal of White Russian monarchists. He is recruited as a spy, pretending to visit Russia to teach modern American dental techniques, but actually there to overthrow Putin and restore the monarchy.
By the finale, his kindness to the homeless man has been rewarded. Johnny has been named Grand Archduke of Minsk and is engaged to a countess (Charlize Theron) who first appeared disguised as a laundress. And because it’s inspired by Dickens, the entire thing turns out to have been foreshadowed by a mysterious gold filling Johnny noticed in Chapter One.
JOHNNY DANGER, D.H. — He came to clean teeth. He stayed to restore an empire.
Here’s the poster:
With a special guest appearance by Johnny’s ne’er-do-well cousin, Carlos Danger, as portrayed by Anthony Weiner.
This leaves plenty of opportunity for a love scene with Charlize Theron as the beautiful countess. Charlize loves the role, but not for the portion as the glamorous Countess Sheremetev. She sees the Oscar-bait potential in appearing earlier in heavy disguise as humble, plain Natasha the laundress. Charlize takes one look at the script and says, “The countess is fine. Natasha is the part.” So for the first hour she appears as Natasha: stooped posture, gray teeth, wart, stringy hair, cracked spectacles, heavy boots, and some elaborate prosthetic nose that requires four hours in the makeup chair. She scrubs Johnny’s bloodstained dental smock at the soup kitchen and speaks perhaps twelve lines.
But later, as Johnny bursts into the Winter Palace annex, AK-47 in hand, he finds Natasha there unexpectedly, cornered by the villains, and shouts, “Get behind me!” After he saves her, off come the spectacles. Off comes the wig. Somehow the prosthetic nose comes off as well. Beneath three layers of laundry is an evening gown worth more than Johnny’s dental practice.
“Natasha?”
“No, Mr. Danger. Countess Sheremetev.”
And that is when the love scene becomes inevitable.
Meanwhile, Theron spends the entire publicity tour talking about Natasha:
“I was fascinated by her invisibility. Here is a woman society simply refuses to see.”
Nobody ever asks her about the subsequent scene in which the Countess and Johnny Danger make love on a bearskin rug while the Kremlin explodes outside the window.
Come Oscar season, the campaign ads don’t even contain a glamour photograph of beautiful Charlize. Just Natasha, wart, bad teeth, and all.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION — CHARLIZE THERON — BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS — JOHNNY DANGER, D.H.
The action star playing Johnny, naturally, receives no nomination, but he has the satisfaction of knowing that he saved the Romanov dynasty, defeated 63 assassins, performed an emergency root planing during a helicopter crash, and gave Natasha the courage to be beautiful again.
