Movie bloopers

Remember the "Knightrider" pilot, where Michaels GSW kept switcing from right to left shoulder each time the camera angle chaged?
In the Bond vein, in "From Russia with Love," Bond kills an assassin in the Hagia sophia that he has already killed earlier in the film, who then shows up in the powerboat chase at the end. Oops!

You can't have too many villians, hobitbob, they cost money!

In "Batman," Jack Nicholson defaces a painting in the museum. The next shot looking over his shoulder and the painting is miraculously restored!

Oops.

In "The Sure Thing," a Rob Rhiner move, a mid winter scene is shot with the actors in winter clothing standing under a tree in full leaf.

That movie has my favourite line:
"You're flunking English...How can you flunk English...its your mother tongue??!!??"

I've seen these and of course now I can't think of any! Argh, it's age, I'll blame age. Yeah. :-D

These are things like an actor smoking a cigarette which is near the end and then miraculously the cig is nearly unsmoked in the next scene but the actor hasn't lit a second one. That's the continuity person's fault.

Thats precisely what I'm talking about jespah, I just watched a re-run of a british tv prog, two guys go into a bar, one orders a vodka and tonic, the other a PINT,in the next scene seconds later the PINT of beer guy is now drinking from a ½ pint BOTTLE of beer.

It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it makes the whole thing look silly. Do these people think that we all have the attention span of goldfish?

I think you see this more in smaller budget movies (at least, I hope studios aren't spending big bucks for lousy work, but we all know that happens, that's how Gigli was made in the first place), in that the continuity person's job is either cut or taken on by someone doing something else. And you end up with people reviewing their own work. I've worked in Quality Assurance and I can tell you that it's very hard for people to see their own errors in any field of endeavor.

And, they probably often do see us as having the attention spans/intelligence of goldfish. After all, a few years ago, Demi Moore made The Scarlet Letter. The ending was TOTALLY changed in that Arthur Dimmesdale lives! The stupid moviemakers forgot that The Scarlet Letter is required reading in nearly every American Junior High and/or High School, because it's a classic tale by an American author (Nathaniel Hawthorne). And the book is short and pretty easy to read, plus it deals with a somewhat contemporary situation (a single mother accused of adultery) and has resonance today (the scarlet letter, or singling someone out for blame or special treatment is a theme that 8th graders can relate to in a big way). So, most of the audience would have noticed the difference! And, argh, the audacity (hell, the chutzpah!) of changing a classic work to suit a star's whims and/or a studio's belief in how focus groups will react!

Heck, maybe it's just the studios are often (not always) composed of folks with the intelligence of goldfish, and they figure we out here in public-land are just like them. Oy!

It seems that most people in positions of authority these days have the intelligence of goldfish. (and in some cases we may be slandering goldfish)

In "North by Northwest", on TCM just a few days ago, in the restaurant scene in North Dakota where Eva Marie Saint shoots Cary Grant with the blank bullets, in clear view is a little boy sitting at one of the tables with his fingers in his ears, anticipating the noise of the gunshots.

There's the scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts is eating a pancake in one shot and a croissant in the next.

There's the scene in Ghost where Patrick Swayze, already dead, is crossing the street and casts a huge shadow.

There are more movies and more scenes than I can count that are supposed to be set in NYC. Toronto doesn't look like NYC. And some TV shows, also set in NYC, have strange ways of getting around. I think it was Cagney and Lacey where the characters consistently drove downtown on Madison Avenue. (Madison goes one way--north.)

There's a scene in Risky Business where the boom mike is visible.

It's true that movie makers think that movie goers have the intelligence of goldfish--stupid goldfish. But more than these kinds of mistakes, what bothers me is the plot manipulations that can't stand up to logical thought or that are inconsistent with the characters. Examples: In As Good as It Gets, why take a road trip to Baltimore. Why not just get on a plane and be there in an hour? In Gladiator, am I supposed to believe that the emperor of Rome would get into the gladiator pit? In When Harry Met Sally, I'm supposed to believe that a woman who is uncomfortable about making a scene in one scene does that orgasm scene in the next. It was a good scene, but it was nothing more than script manipulation for a laugh. In the Big Chill, I'm supposed to believe that a woman would lend her husband to her friend for the purpose of procreation. Hah!

I've spotted many, particularly related to the military, but I can never remember them. There are several web sites on the subject. Here is one good one http://www.movie-mistakes.com.

I definitely think we're slandering goldfish.

I'm with ya, Roberta, when it comes to plot devices. What always annoys me is when the deck is completely stacked in favor of the hero or heroine, so that everyone and everything is oh so awful and the hero or heroine is oh so wonderful. Real people don't work this way. Real people have complexities and do wrong things sometimes, even heroes fail, swear, cheat and slip up.

I also can't stand when basic research isn't done, such as claiming that Harvard is in Boston (no, it's in Cambridge, Mass.).

One case in point which shows both types of errors(argh, this film aggravates me to no end) is Erin Brockovitch. There's a scene where our heroine (who is a barely-trained paralegal/investigator) gets in an argument with a lawyer - a lawyer who's on her side. And of course, EB tells the lawyer off and is superior in her knowledge not only of the contents of the files but of the law. This is nonsense. No lawyer worth his/her salt would ever take that kind of guff from a somewhat newly-minted paraprofessional. It's exceedingly rare that a para would know the law better than a lawyer, particularly when you consider that the vast majority of paras in the US have zero formal training and are basically clerical staff who paid better attention to the documents flying out the law firm's door (paras who are formally trained [I used to teach paralegals - I know from whence I speak] have a rather rudimentary knowledge of the law. Their classes take a year or less and are part-time, whereas attorneys take 3 or 4 years of full-time instruction to complete their studies). And, no lawyer (unless unbelievably shrill and not interested in winning the case - which is malpractice and an ethical violation) would ignore someone who understood the files. The proper relationship is - the lawyer understands the law and applies it. The para assists the lawyer and may or may not help with the investigation and/or combing through the files (this is why there are people who are called - surprise! - investigators). The lawyer is always the boss of the para, never the other way around. But EB takes charge, which is utterly ridiculous and is probably skirting malpractice.

Roberta, you bring to mind one of my favorite movie gaffes. In the beginning of "When Harry Met Sally," the two set out to drive from Chicago to somewhere in the East (I think it was New York). A helicopter shot then shows their car driving north on Lake Shore Drive -- in other words, they were heading for Wisconsin (unless they intended to drive all the way around Lake Michigan, they were going the wrong way). The best thing was that I saw "WHMS" at a movie theater in Chicago: when it showed them going the wrong way, people in the theater laughed at the obvious mistake.

Er, that may have been the one bit of accuracy in the movie. Commodus (insert toilet joke here) fancied himself a gladiator,and died in the ring.

Wow, HB, Live and loin.

Hobitbob, he was assassinated. His enemies arranged for a wrestler to strangle him during a wrestling match.

Yup, but it took place in the ring, If I recall. In addition, he was known for fighting in the games. Ah, well.

"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", the famous Picasso painting, was aboard the Titanic, or so we learn from the equally famous James Cameron film.
I wonder how they salvaged the masterpiece.

Good art is eternal