popular thinking

METEOROLOGISTS VS. THE WEATHER MAN: Pity the TV meteorologists.
They appear before us morning, noon and night, trying to brace us for coming storms or heat waves. Then Hollywood goes and mocks them.
In The Weather Man, which opens Friday, hostile viewers throw soft tacos, chicken and soda at a Chicago weatherguy played by Nicholas Cage - prompting him to carry a bow and arrows when he walks the streets.
Other movies, from Groundhog Day to Twister to L.A. Story, portray the local TV meteorologist as a buffoon or a geek.
"It's a favorite pastime to pick on meteorologists,'' said Kevin Lemanowicz, chief meteorologist for WFXT-TV (Ch. 25).
With the exception of The Perfect Storm, Lemanowicz said Hollywood tends to portray him and his colleagues "as something less than scientists.''
Todd Gross, chief meteorologist at WHDH-TV (Ch. 7) knows that better than anyone - actor Christopher McDonald played him in that film about the six Gloucester fishermen who perished at sea in a 1991 nor'easter.
"I had to try to temper the script, which was exaggerated,'' Gross said. "They did portray me at one point as a pompous, egotistical person, which they did in a light way, so I allowed it, but they ended up dropping most of it in the end. Not by my request.''
More recently, Gross got a call from Paramount Pictures, which wanted to buy his personal Web site (www.weatherman.com) to promote The Weather Man.
But he hung on to it - and is now using it to remind people that Cage's weatherman is only fiction.
Harvey Leonard of WCVB-TV (Ch. 5) thinks the problem is that Hollywood studio executives and producers only know what they see from the newscasts in sunny L.A., where weather forecasting is - let's face it - not too tricky.
"They may have earthquake scares, but that's not weather,'' Leonard said. Without much to do there, "the personality is what dominates. You can have a stand-up comic or someone who's trying to be funny. Whereas in a market like this, you have a group of professional meteorologists who take it seriously, and hopefully have some sort of personality.''
Mish Michaels of WBZ-TV (Ch. 4) said Hollywood continues to operate with an outdated vision.
"I think what people in the public forget is that forecasting the atmosphere is really a scientific process,'' Michaels said.
None of the real-life Boston forecasters could pick a movie or TV show that accurately depicted their profession - yet most of them enjoyed Bill Murray's comic turn in Groundhog Day.
Twister, meanwhile, went a little overboard with its portrayal of zealous storm-chasers.
WHDH-TV's Chikage Windler, who studied and worked in Olkahoma, said she "did something slightly similar to what they did in (Twister),'' only without as much melodrama or excitement.
"They make movies to make money and to entertain you, not to accurately portray a profession,'' Windler said. "Look at all the cop dramas. They make it more exciting than the average day in the life of a cop. Outside of working weird hours, we have a really normal life.''

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