A long time ago, I read an article complaining about how nobody says “goodbye” at the end of phone calls in movies and TV shows. Characters just hang up. “Now that I’ve pointed this out, I guarantee that it will drive you crazy,” the author wrote. It does drive me crazy: in stage and movie director terms, it “takes me out of the story.” Because it’s so obviously a device to save time, the omission of “goodbye” reminds me that I’m watching a performance. (Lately, I have noticed, “goodbyes” are appearing here and there, but still in a minority of productions.)
My late wife was a fanatic about such things, and she ruined many a show and film by pointing then out. One of her favorites, a pretty famous continuity botch, was Judy Garland’s constantly changing pig-tails in “The Wizard of Oz”: they are shorter and longer not only from scene to scene, but sometimes from shot to shot in the same scene. Grace was also the one who first pointed out to me the absence of rear-view mirrors in most shots of a character driving a car; now that drives me crazy.
Recently what’s been bugging me are single-shot kills. Those used to drive my father crazy: he would point out that unless a marksman shot the target right between the eyes or in the middle of his heart, downing anyone instantly with a single shot was rare: it is why police are trained to keep shooting until a dangerous perp is down. But in “Columbo,” for example—and I am a huge fan of the show—the murderer almost always shot once and the victim was dead. Being the early 70s, there was no blood either, so the head shot and heart shot were not likely.
These annoying features are even starting to ruin movies for me that I have seen repeatedly. I watched “The Guns of Navarone” again last night, one of the favorites of Grace (who loved Gregory Peck), my mother (who loved Anthony Quinn) and my father, who loved World War II movies if they weren’t too stupid. Every shooting death in the movie is a single shot kill. Then came the scene where David Niven is rigging the gun machinery to explode, and he smears grease all over a section to hide the wires to his explosives. We see him applying the thick grease with both hands, and I thought, “Oh no. Are we going to see him in the next shot with clean hands? He has to lower himself down the cliff with a rope!” Sure enough, Niven’s hands were Ivory Soap clean thirty seconds after they were covered in grease. Grace had missed that one.
Ethics Alarms 
I hate those. I hate historical inaccuracies even worse, especially if they are lazy historical inaccuracies or deliberate historical inaccuracies to promote a narrative.
Most of the time though, I just have to keep the theme song to “Mystery Science Theater 3000” in my head:
If you’re wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself “It’s just a show,
I should really just relax
Another fan of Mystery Science Theater. That makes me so happy.
I have only one thing to say to this: Big McLargehuge.
Ah yes, the many names of David Ryder. Classic MST3k interplay in one of the best later-series episodes.
Rip Steakface!
Are there people who are NOT fans of MST 3000? It broke my heart that the latest version of the show was so bad, almost unwatchable, but all the cast changes were bound to catch up to the franchise eventually, and did. It was a shame they picked such a poor choice for the movie version. 1) I miss Joel and 2) “The Day the Earth Froze” and “Gamera” episodes are in my small collection of films to watch when I’m feeling suicidal.
For me, it’s “Pod People” (“It stinks!”), “Manos: The Hands of Fate” and “Mitchell”. We’ve met almost the entire cast at conventions. Pretty good people.
“Mitchell” is a classic. The bedroom scene when Hoyt Axton sings is comedy gold. “Manos” is so awful it’s awesome. Ryan referenced “Space Mutiny”…another terrific episode. The Coleman Francis movies in Season 6 were especially fun to watch. “The Final Sacrifice” in Season 9 gets an honorable mention, just because of the great riffing on Canada (and the hilarious song about Canada in the host segment). Anyways, MST3k never goes out of style and ALL the TV episodes have value.
A bonus…for those of you interested, there is a project underway that (I believe) uses AI to improve the video quality of the episodes. The results are being output on the “Project Mstie” YouTube channel…and they are VERY good quality.
https://www.youtube.com/@ZappRowsdower
“Baby oil! Aaaaaaah!”
I’ve noticed that too about movie shootings. I’ve never seen The Shootist, John Wayne’s last movie. However, I have read the book it is based on, and it is quite graphic about what happens when a bullet hits a body. One thing that it makes very plain is that even a mortal wound does not mean instant death, but minutes of slowly and painfully dying.
The one that I find myself looking for came when, many years ago, I watched a lot of MASH reruns. The winter episodes frequently seemed off to me. It wasn’t so much that it almost never snowed (well, individual episodes of cold without snow were fine, but the cumulative lack of snowfall did seem a little odd.) It finally hit me. If it really was that cold outside, their breath should condense. Ever since then, that is what I look for in winter scenes. I under stand that, as a practical matter, it can be hard to do, and it is less obvious when people are talking. I try to think of it more as giving the film full credit if it does include condensed breath, but a winter scene without it does remind me that these are just actors.
“If it really was that cold outside, their breath should condense.”
Many decades ago when I posed that very question to my Dear late Mother, she said that the actors sometimes had ice in their mouths to counteract the condensation.
Other techniques
Other techniques Condensed breath can add a (IMO) great dramatic effect, especially when it’s still, backlit, & eerie.
PWS
Some documentary or another about Silverado, one had commented about single-shot kills as necessary to limit the depiction of suffering, so the audience wouldn’t empathize with the antagonists.
The “good guys” indeed had suffered non-killing injuries–the leg shot to Emmitt and the similar injury to Ray during the jailbreak. Both had overcome the symptoms of the injury and prevailed despite in their own dramatic scenes (and perhaps the only time Jeff Goldblum’s character gets killed).
Sometimes picking out all the errors is the only thing keeping me watching something, plus having spent all my adult life as a problem-finder probably wires me to do that anyway.
Don’t visit this website:
https://www.moviemistakes.com/
Also don’t watch any of the episodes on the YouTube channel “Cinema Sins”
Jack – since you are a Columbo fan, I suggest a few minutes at least to check out the YouTube channel, “WatchitforDays”. Shonna is hilarious and she gives amazing insight into the bit players and extras as well as the stars for each Columbo episode she reviews.
Continuity errors are rife in Columbo and Shonna doesn’t miss a thing.