Usha, I'm not sure the lowly corporate associate doing due diligence is any more forlorn than her counterpart doing litigation document review.

As to movies, Warren Beatty (in his Leo Farnsworth body) chairs a board meeting in Heaven Can Wait. Richard Gere plays a corporate takeover artist in, of all things, Pretty Woman. The portrayal of the closing in Michael Clayton is visually pretty accurate, but you only have a sketchy idea of the deal itself, and in general, you have to suspend your disbelief pretty intensely through most of the movie. In fact, as I recall, it may have been a settlement of a case, which isn't so accurate. I have blogged before, however, that the angst of the lawyer played by Tilda Swinton is not far from the truth.

I'm straining to think of novels (in part because I don't read much fiction any more) that involve transactions. I turned to my wife, who reads a lot of fiction, and asked her. She said "there are none, because it's boring." Unfortunately, I think she's either right or not far off. As exciting as I think closing a big deal can be, there's very little about it that has the natural drama of a trial. Plus, it's hard narratively to capture the thrill you feel when you know the multi-billion dollar wire transfer has just been authorized.

The more common portrayal is the populist view of business and business people as villains and vultures. I haven't read Larry Ribstein's work on this, but he's written about Hollywood portrayals of business. Indeed, Robert Altman's The Player is all about the business of Hollywood.

Wait, wait. I think the plot in Scott Turow's second novel, Burden of Proof, turns on some kind of public offering or SEC investigation. As I recall, it completely lost me and I was flipping pages quickly to get to the end, just to finish the book.

For a movie that's a bit more comic - and also involves an i.p. angle - you can't beat "The Hudsucker Proxy." The Wikipedia page about it is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hudsucker_Proxy

Surely Louis Auchincloss must have a transactional lawyer somewhere ...

Not being an avid reader of Auchincloss, I can't think of one off hand, but perhaps in The Partners?

The first chapter of A Man in Full is a very entertaining description of a "workout" between a former high-flying client and a fully-secured bank.

Also, there's a lawyer with a Boston firm -- Willett? -- who has written a very good novel with some significant securities law / accounting issues. Present Value, I think. He also wrote a mystery a while back that incorporated the old "loaned $100 million but the security agreement only secured $1 million" story.

Welcome back, Usha! I would definitely take a look at Larry Ribstein's article on business in film. Other films you might want to look at are Barbarians at the Gate, Boiler Room, Other People's Money, Tucker -- a Man and His Dream, and the Aviator.

Thanks, these are great comments! How cool is that I'm now planning on reading a Scott Turow novel and chalking it up to "research"? I hadn't even thought of Auchincloss or Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full.

As for films, I love the Coen brothers' work, so I can't believe I overlooked the Hudsucker Proxy--thanks, Joe! And when it comes to boardroom antics figuring in plots, I can think of 3 recent films where the bad-guy corporate-type is laid low because he (always he) forgot that public companies can be bought out from under him: Batman Returns, Iron Man, and Dodgeball.

Jeff, I must take issue with your wife's sentiment, though--deals aren't boring. My proof is Barbarians at the Gate, which I'm probably going to assign for the seminar, even though it's non-fiction. The colorful characters, the drama, the betrayals--it's all there.

Hmm, maybe instead of reading novels (I mean, researching) this summer, I should try novelizing Rupert Murdoch's takeover of WSJ or the collapse of Bear Stearns.

I hate to admit I even know this (I have never read the book), but I believe Harold Robbins' classic bodice-buster trash novel The Carpetbaggers also deals with empire building in Hollywood.

I really like that workout scene in A Man in Full. And it is a standalone. Heck you could also do bits of Bonfire of the Vanities, if you want a dated Wall Street Master of the Universe look.