What are your favorite movie gaffs?

norman barry wrote:

Any more cock-ups?

I beg your pardon?

The best are the "historical inaccuracies" eg there is a scene in Forrest Gump when he is getting his discharge papers in a gym. The gym floor has a three-point line on the basketball court but there was no three pointers in basketball at that time.

I remember seeing the film Unfaithful with Richard Gere at the cinema and it was so badly cut you could see the microphone at the top of the screen. Everyone in the cinema starting laughing.

My branch chief in the military had a western film he loved to watch because there are contrails in view on some of the shots.

My favorite is the helicopter shadow in the opening scene of "The Shining".

I saw boom mikes in two scenes in "The Illusionist" which is even worse than "Unfaithful," because there were no boom mikes at all in the era depicted in "The Illusionist"

In Gone With the Wind, there is a lightbulb in one of the street lamps in Atlanta.

oaters wrote:

My branch chief in the military had a western film he loved to watch because there are contrails in view on some of the shots.

That reminds me of the classic Japanese monster movie Rodan, about a giant flying reptile (like a Pteranodon). For all of the shots where people were watching it flying at supersonic speeds from a distance, they used footage of jet airplanes. Apparently, Rodan had very bad gas.

I think Die Hard 2 is supposed to take place in Washington/Dulles, and one of the pay phones says Pacific Bell.

Commando is notorious just for this, when Matrix is dangling Sully over the edge of the cliff, you can see the wire that he's hanging from. In the last scene of the movie when Matrix wipes out the entire army by himself, the buildings blow up and the "soldiers" don't move because they're cardboard cutouts. Matrix also enters the Sherman Oaks Galleria following Sully and it's the middle of the day. He's in the mall one hour tops, comes outside, and it's freakin' nighttime. These are just some of many, which makes this one of the most unintentionally enjoyable movies of all time.

One that I recently noticed in a movie playing on Showtime is from "Survival Island" which originally was released under the title "Three" in the U.K. There is a scene where Jennifer, played by Kelly Brook, removes her biking top and bottoms before entering the water. When she emerges, she is wearing the bottoms.

For "Commando", and many other films for that matter, the resolution of the film on the big screen makes the wire invisible, whereas the TV or DVD version, it's usually easy to see.

In "Sideways", there is a scene in the vinyards where one of the character grabs a bunch of grapes. When he does, you can see all the fingerprints on the grapes from the previous takes.

I liked the village scene in Troy where a bunch of Llama's or Alpaca's were part of the assortment of animals. I guess maybe Odysseus went to South America on one of his travels and brought them back.

Two come to mind. First there is a scene in Billy Madison where he was passed out by the pool. At first the deflated lobster raft does not have the claw around his neck and on the next shot the claw is around his neck. Second, in Indiana Jones and the Arc of the Covenant in the scene where Harrison Ford falls into the snakes you can see the light shining on the transparent glass that separates him and the snakes. There are tons more of course. I think it's fun to point them out. I don't really think they take away from the movies too much though. Oh, one more. In Pearl Harbor in the scene where the Japanese first begin invading the planes go by a ball diamond and there are kids playing baseball. At that time of day the kids should have been in school and wouldn't have been playing baseball.

Indiana J wrote:

In Pearl Harbor in the scene where the Japanese first begin invading the planes go by a ball diamond and there are kids playing baseball. At that time of day the kids should have been in school and wouldn't have been playing baseball.

Um, not on a SUNDAY morning you idiot!

They wouldn't have been playing ball on a Sunday morning either. Not at that time certainly.

it probably is a stretch that kids would be playing ball around 7:30 in the morning; however, my dad - who grew up in the 30s and 40s - always told me that he'd be kicked out of the house at 7am or so to go play outside on weekends/days off from school. of course, on sunday he'd be going to church. probably some cinematic license but i wouldn't call it a gaffe.

also in commando, arnold wrecks the porsche right around the time he kills sully. he drops him from the cliff, flips the car over and then 30 seconds later the car is brand new.

I really screwed up the fight scenes in Braveheart. During the approach of the Scottish vs. the English, sometimes I'm charging with a sword in my hand, then others I have it still holstered on my back. This goes back and forth many times because of the crazy editting we did. Blood also splattered on the camera lens once during a fight sequence - another Hollywood no-no.

And the horse that I road through the bed chamber out the door and plummeted into the lake???? Could you tell how fake that thing was??

These things were my fault and I will not blame any ethnicity for these mistakes...