"The same point can be made of Dan in Real Life, which stars Steve Carell as a recently bereaved newspaper'agony uncle'. Secondary representations may be concerned with the life issues which a person who just happens to be a journalist might encounter in or out of the working environment. Journalism may in this context function as an important plot device, as in Dan in Real Life, where the lead character's journalistic status is principally a vehicle for establishing him as a certain kind of personality--intellectual, sensitive- -with a certain kind of romantic potential, here developed in his relationship with Juliette Binoche's character. The nature of his journalism, or the processes which lead to its production are not discussed or explored in any depth in the film--it is simply there in the background. Steve Carell's Dan could have been a poet of novelist, if the aim were simply to construct a character who is a writer. Creating him as a columnist allows the script to play on the ironies of a man who gives public advice on relationships to his readers, but is somewhat dysfunctional in his own private life. Beyond this, his journalism is marginal to the story."
(Journalists in Film by Brian McNair)
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