It is not often that those of us in the accounting industry get to bust outside our bland stereotype. Not that the stereotypes are bland, but people believe accountants are bland. It is OK, you can silently admit it, I can take it.

I mean just picture an accountant in your mind. Really, do it.

Seriously? When is the last time you actually saw either a pocket protector or calculator before crafting that image.

That is not all we are as accountants, though, and even Hollywood is catching on. After all, this weekend brings “The Accountant” to movie theaters, complete with criminal intrigue, large weapons and a hashtag.

And that hashtag? #WhoIsTheAccountant

Who is the Accountant? Ben Affleck.  That’s right Batman is an accountant. And you thought we were lame. I can now only hope that Affleck can do for accountants what Clark Kent has done for mild-mannered newspaper reporters.

Even as one who works in the accounting industry, I am not sure exactly how this movie is going to play out. Will an anomaly on a balance sheet lead to the location of a terrorist cell? Will a secret code on a profit-and-loss statement contain nuclear secrets? Will the lead character discover some secret machinations that would allow one to take proclaim business losses of over $900 million in one year?

No way, not even Affleck could make those things plausible.

But it also makes one wonder what other occupations could be slated for a Hollywood reboot of their staid professions –

#WhoIsTheActuary – After years of studying tables that attempted to make mathematical sense of risk and uncertainty, Dale Hawkins (played by Casey Affleck, because nepotism reigns in profession-based movie storytelling) discovers a secret plot to control the weather of Fair Play, New Jersey (a real place). He questions why all the sudden it costs a lot of money there to protect one’s home from mountain rockslides, tropical cyclones and locust infestation. Something must be up and Hawkins is determined to find the answers.

#WhoIsTheTravelAgent – No, really, go out and tell all the young people in your life who these people were. They are about to be forgotten.

#WhoIsTheITProfessional – 97.43 percent of the problems Rusty McGuire (played by Matt Damon, because, well, you know …) runs into at work are solved by restarting someone’s computer. 78.76 percent of the time, though, people can’t even figure out how to do that.  He knows, because he runs the numbers. That is how much time he has to sit around at work with nothing to do. One day, however, while continuing to pluck away at his tasks at McCorp Corporation in Good Intent, New Jersey (another real place, the state apparently has a deep-seated need to be seen as ‘middling to good’) things take a dark and sordid turn. This time, when a computer was turned off in an attempt to solve an issue – IT THEN DIDN’T TURN BACK ON!

I hope you all can forgive me this week’s humorous digression (especially you IT professionals, I am sure you do good work at whatever it is you do). I promise to return next week with more on taxes, elections and whatever odd news comes from that world in the next seven days. In the meantime, if you need to talk to an accountant, remember we are not that bad – Batman says so.