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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
A timid magazine photo manager who lives life vicariously through daydreams embarks on a true-life adventure when a negative goes missing.
2013 · Directed by Ben Stiller · 114 min · Adventure · Comedy · Drama · Fantasy · Screenplay in the scene database · 16 frames
Tagline
Stop dreaming. Start living.
Plot
Walter Mitty is a negative assets manager at Life magazine living alone in New York City. He chronically daydreams and has a secret crush on Cheryl Melhoff, a coworker. Walter attempts to contact Cheryl via eHarmony, but eHarmony customer service agent Todd Mahar explains that Walter's account profile is not filled out completely: the "been there" and "done that" sections are blank.
Walter works with legendary photojournalist Sean O'Connell, although they have never met in person. Sean is "old-school", working with analog film and later sending a telegram. At work, Walter receives a negative roll from Sean, as well as a wallet in appreciation of Walter's work. Sean relays to Walter and Life management that he believes negative #25 captures the "quintessence of life" and should be used for the cover of the magazine's final print issue before it becomes digital. However, the negative #25 is missing. When Ted Hendricks, the obnoxious manager of the magazine's transition, asks to see #25, Walter stalls, worried about being fired. He then asks Cheryl for help in contacting O'Connell. Walter looks to the other negatives for clues to Sean's location – water, a thumb, and a mysterious curved object.
Walter and Hernando, his assistant, see a reflection in the water, which is the name of a ship registered in Greenland. Walter reluctantly takes a plane to Greenland. A bartender in Nuuk explains that Sean left on a ship. To reach him, Walter would need to go on the postal helicopter, whose pilot is drunk. Walter recognizes the pilot's thumb from one of the negatives and joins the pilot on a trip to bring supplies to the ship. Walter accidentally jumps into ice-cold, shark-infested waters, losing the ship's supplies and preventing radio communication when he comes aboard. There, Walter learns that Sean departed the ship a few days earlier and discovers from notes on wrapping paper for a clementine cake Sean left behind that he is heading to Iceland to photograph the volcano Eyjafjallajökull.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Steven Conrad
- Cinematography: Stuart Dryburgh
- Edited by: Greg Hayden
- Music: Theodore Shapiro
- Production design: Jeff Mann
- Produced by: Ben Stiller, John Goldwyn, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., Stuart Cornfeld
Cast
- Ben Stiller as Walter Mitty
- Kristen Wiig as Cheryl Melhoff
- Sean Penn as Sean O'Connell
- Shirley MacLaine as Edna Mitty
- Adam Scott as Ted Hendricks
- Kathryn Hahn as Odessa Mitty
- Patton Oswalt as Todd Maher
- Adrian Martinez as Hernando
- Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as Helicopter Pilot
- Gunnar Helgason as Hotel Keeper
Production
- Country: United Kingdom, United States of America
- Language: English, Icelandic, Spanish
- Studios: Samuel Goldwyn Films, Red Hour, New Line Cinema, Big Screen Productions
- Budget: $90,000,000
- Box office: $188,133,322
- Themes: himalaya mountain range, photographer, iceland, daydream, magazine, photograph, shark, fired from the job, dreamer, online dating
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