I don't know if anyone who saw the movie noticed this... I'm sure a few have... but the case of money they showed constantly has Nicholas Brady's signature on it(I noticed the signature because it is so distinctive; the M always looks like a Z to me); the 100's had to be series 1990 or maybe 1988, didn't notice who the treasurer was... Thing is, the movie was supposed to be set in 1980 (never directly stated in the movie, but the book was, and most of the sets and props are period correct, and in dialogue the main characters says his 1958 quarter is 22 years old). Hundred dollar bills more recent than Series 1977 couldn't have existed then, right? Cetraintly not 1988/1990. Does the fact I noticed this mean I'm too obsessive lol? I can't help noticing things like this in movies. Peter Jackson did get the nickel right in King Kong at least...
Some people don't like watching a movie with me. I LOVE finding discontinuities, inconsistencies and mistakes in movies and TV shows. You know, "Those kind of trees don't grow in Georgia!" "Wasn't the cast on his LEFT leg earlier?" "She was wearing a RED dress when she walked in and now it's BLUE." The other night I was watching Steve McQueen's old TV show Wanted: Dead Or Alive. (I bought it on DVD. Not a bad show.) This episode was set in the 1870s. In a bar scene the camera panned across the bar. There were two silver dollars on the bar. I paused the action and zoomed in. The image was grainy but I distinctly saw the reverse of two Peace Dollars (first minted in 1921). A while back I was watching an old Western movie with my father. The movie was set in the 1870s or '80s. Someone had robbed the stage. It was reported that $20,000 in gold (could have been more - doesn't matter) was stolen - much of it in $50 gold pieces. I stopped the movie and told my father that there were no $50 gold pieces ever minted for circulation and the only $50 gold pieces ever minted were made in 1915 (Panama-Pacific Commemorative). He was not impressed with my vast numismatic knowledge and said, "It doesn't matter. Let's just watch the movie." Sigh!
ROFL. You should go to IMDB.com...they have a huge database and there is a section for reporting goofs.
Well they were that, at least. I noticed mainly because Michael Brady's signature always looked to me as if it said "Zichael Bush"... Brady had a very odd way of signing his name lol... Anyway presumably if the movie was supposed to be set in 1980 the most recently printed 100's that could have existed would be series 1977, signed by Morton and Blumenthal. Normally I wouldn't have noticed, but they showed the bills pretty clearly... the Coen Brothers were pretty obsessive about making the movie faithful to the book, even to the point of setting it in 1980... the bills really stand out in that regard. For some reason the one error that I notice more often than anything else in TV and movies is when the movie or a given scene is supposed to be set in a specific time period, and prop details inappropriate to the period show up. It actually happens pretty often... they assume people won't notice usually, and even if they're careful, they can't catch anything. For some reason I notice more than the average though... it's especially noticeable in period pieces where they're trying to portray a speicfic event and try to get all the details accurate to the time period; when they go to such extreme levels of detail, the details they get wrong stand out more. Noticed it a lot watching Titanic. Just on the first viewing, I noticed the filter cigarettes that shouldn't exist yet, the mention of Lake Wissota, an artifical lake that didn't exist yet, and the ferris wheel at the Santa Monica pier, which didn't exist yet, as of 1912. The Statue of Liberty at the end of the movie was also quite a bit greener than it should have been by 1912... it took longer than that for the pure copper to oxidize to its current patina. They did get the coins right though lol... as far as I can tell the British and American coins they showed were period appropriate. Though the dime Rose pays Jack with seems iffy... it's hard to tell if it's a Barber or Mercury dime (should be a Barber dime, if period correct.) Could make a rather long list of incorrect historical details I caught at one point or another lol... only other one I'll mention here is when I watched Thirteen Days and noticed one of the generals, in what was supposed to be 1962, had Vietnam service ribbons on his uniform. Oops!
One of my favorites is from Gone With The Wind. In the scene where Atlanta is about to be evacuated and thousands of Confederate soldiers are lying outside, the camera pans down to take in the vast, sad scene. As a street light passes in front of the camera if you look closely you will see this is not a gas light. No, this street light has an incandescent bulb - 16 years before Edison's invention!
This one is better: http://www.moviemistakes.com And since this is the paper money forum: If you look at Lord of War, when they are in Beirut, look careful at the money Nicolas Cage throws up during the gunfire scene. Didn't know they used the new style $100's in the 1980's.
In Dodgeball, when Ben Stiller's character presents Vince Vauhn's character with $100,000 in cash, he opens a briefcase with what appears to be 2 full straps. Now 1 full strap of $100 bills is $10,000. 2 straps would be $20,000 and 10 full straps would be $100,000. 2 full straps of $500 bills would be $100,000. or Maybe there was a check in there too??
This gives me yet another reason to watch the movie. Wrong series of bills or not, it was still an awesome flick.
I think some movies are happy just be able to use prop money that doesn't look like it came off a monopoly board. How about the scene in "Back to the Future" Pt 2? where Kindly Doc Brown opens a halliburton case to show US currency from many different periods. Maybe the only time in a movie where that kind of detail was specifically pointed out.
The biggest mistake I've seen with money is from my favorite show Prison Break. There is one part where they dig up DB Coopers money (from the 70's) and I noticed that most were the old-style bills, but sadly, there were some Large-Face bills in there (from the 90's onward). so that was disappointing. Also, in "3:10 to Yuma" they show silver dollars and old large-size notes. Unfortunately its hard to see the silver dollars, and the large size notes I dont really know much about, but I think they're correct.
This one's iffy. The U.S. government never struck $50's for circulation, but several private mints in California did so in the 1850s, before the San Francisco Branch Mint went into business. Most of them were octagonal rather than round; apparently they were the inspiration for some of the Pan-Pac $50's being made in that shape too....
This one is a little off. On the TV show Monk in one episode they were dealing with paper stolen from the BEP, but two times the cops talk about "Contacting the Mint" to get info on the paper. I said it was a little off... Cheers, David
