IMDB "Goofs" - who ARE these people?

Cafe Society
1

I enjoy going to IMDB every once in a while to read about a movie, usually to find an actor/actress. But once on the page, I might read the “goofs” section, or memorable quotes.

I was looking at “No Country For Old Men” tonight, and went to the “goofs” page. Who are these people that find this crap?

examples

Anachronisms: The glass milk bottle that Anton and later Sheriff Bell drink from is from Promised Land Dairy in Floresville, TX. This company did not exist until 1987.

Anachronisms: When Anton goes into Mike Zoss Pharmacy, you can see a bottle of Prednisone on the shelf. This bottle was manufactured by generic drug company Watson, which wasn’t established until 1984.

These are just two of dozens of inane observations by, well, I don’t know who. Who has the kind of time it would take to notice these types of things? Unless something stands out as an obvious mistake, and impacts my enjoyment of a film, knowing that the Promised Land Dairy bottle was a mistake borders on mental instability.

Then, I stumble on a mistake:

Continuity: In the trailer, Lewellen asks Carla Jean, rhetorically, “Baby, at what point would you quit bothering to look for your two million dollars?” For him to know that there was $2 million in the case, he would have had to have gone through the money and counted it, which means he would have found the transponder.

No, genius. Moss could have counted how many stacks of bills were in one column and multiplied by the number of columns to get the amount. (which is exactly what he did in the book). He would have only found the transponder if he pulled that specific money block out and thumbed through it, like he did in the movie.

It’s not the only mistake in the goofs section, either.

So, who are these people that pick through a movie to such detail that they see a bottle of Prednisone on a shelf, find out when the company that made it came into existence, and based on when the movie was supposed to be, send in something to the IMDB site? And on the other end, do these “goofs” get checked by anyone, or are they uploaded automatically?

I’m sure there is a factual answer to this, but I’m not posting it in GQ because it’s not that important. I’m more fascinated by the people who have the time and desire to comb through a movie to find this stuff. They must be in a rubber room drooling in a cup. If someone forced me to watch a movie as many times as necessary to come up with half the crap in NCFOM’s “goofs” page, I’d snap.

2

Sometimes mistakes are just blatant. I don’t know about the milk bottle, nor do I care. But someone noticed it. Like when Flight of the Intruder came out, the bar code on the Flying magazine jumped out at me. (And I happened to have had that issue.) The first commercial use of a bar code didn’t happen until 1974, after the events of the film. I just happened to know that bar codes weren’t used then, and I happened to have that magazine; so it jumped out. Some people see things that jump out at them, and they have to make sure everyone knows they know. Hence, the ‘goofs’.

Personally, I find many of them interesting.

3

It’s a fun way to get more life out of a movie after you’ve exhausted any other things.

And if IMDB is set up the way Nitpickers.com was, you voice the nitpick, it is vetted by the experienced nitpickers, then it appears on the page. After that, someone can pop up and explain why the nitpick is invalid. Those experienced Nitpickers then vote on whether the new information means the nitpick is invalid, and, if it is, mark the nitpick as refuted. They leave it there so other people won’t feel the need to add it.

*The site is broken, as new nitpicks cannot be voted on, so it serves only as an archive of a once bustling community. I wish they’d take it down, and just let people use the Internet archive. It’s sad to see a once great site in such disrepair.

4

I guess that’s one way to look at it. And if something jumps out at you, I can see where it would be interesting to point it out. But for some reason, I can’t for the life of me understand why someone would go through the trouble of explaining why Chigurh would probably not have a 1958 quarter in his pocket change. No proof, mind you. But since it was a 90% silver coin, the odds he’d have one would be low. C’mon now! That’s picking fly shit out of pepper!

5

I suspect that for the most part, people don’t approach it that way. They don’t notice the bottle and go look up details to see if it belongs there–they already happen to know something about it (maybe they worked on the Prednisone bottling line or something) and are thereby very familiar with it. Familiar things often catch the eye, and once they do, you may have a pretty good idea whether or not they fit the scene.

The other thing is that there are people who actually do this for a living. They work in the movie industry, and their job is to make sure things are consistent from one scene to another. If a street scene is shot in two takes, the two takes may be done on different days, and these people are the ones who make sure the same cars are parked in the same places both days. If someone is carrying a grocery sack with a loaf of bread sticking out of it up their apartment stairs, they make sure that the loaf is still there when the actor comes in the apartment door–even if the interior shot is done a week later. Such people may well be submitting some of the goofs; for them, it’s a matter of professional interest.

6

Exactly. The milk bottle was probably noticed by some collector. This is why you’ll often see goofs about cars and weapons - these are subjects a lot of people know. In a current thread on military uniforms, somebody who’s in the military mentioned how they always notice mistakes about uniforms in movies and TV shows.

7

I’ve reported goofs to IMDB. It is (as has been said) just something you notice.

8

Note: I have never submitted a goof to IMDb but I have been seriously tempted on many occasions.

Here’s a recent example of the kinds of things I notice. (And I didn’t even bother to list Troy’s toothpick moving around too fast during the “Troy made God mad.” scene. That’s just too minor to care about.)

I have been recently rewatching a TV series and have noticed a ton of goofs. Fewer than half are listed on IMDb and I only missed a few that are listed. Again, seriously tempted.

As to the type of goof mentioned in the OP, I noticed in one episode of “Mad Men” that a kid had a comic book that I didn’t think had been published by that time frame. A quick check at Wikipedia confirmed this. I merely owned that comic and remembered how old I was when it came out, etc. It’s just a combo of personal experience and a good memory. That’s all.

I am surprised at how some people don’t notice obvious things. E.g., a few years ago there was some back and forth with Roger Ebert in his “Answer Man” column about a weird reflection during the funeral scene in The Godfather. I noticed it years ago on first viewing. It’s as plain as day. And yet Ebert, who has seen the film many times still didn’t see it after it was pointed out to him! He denied it was there and had to be specifically directed to the exact moment where it occurs before he saw it. And this is a guy who watches movies for a living!

Note that I pay attention while watching TV and movies. E.g., I realized right away what was going on in the The Sixth Sense. Still an enjoyable movie. I have no idea how on Earth people thought this movie had a twist ending. At the very latest, what were these people thinking during the “I see dead people.” speech? Don’t they realize that the kid is saying this for a reason? Sheesh. Pay attention.

You don’t really have to watch something multiple times to catch these.

BTW: Goof in OP. It’s “IMDb” not “IMDB”. See, easy-peasy.

9

Haven’t you ever seen a movie and said to yourself that what you just saw was a load of horseshit? Well, that’s all the goofs are, a way of putting your finger on why it was wrong.

10

Ironically, that’s EXACTLY what I thought when I saw No Country for Old Men.

Goofs: Anton’s hairstyle looks like he scalped Ringo Starr and wore it as a hat, and it makes him impossible to take seriously.

Goofs: Unlike the book, the movie gives you no indication who the damn protagonist is. I thought it was Llewellyn until he got offscreen murdered with no fanfare whatsoever, and spent the rest of the movie in a “what the hell just happened” rage. Then I read the book and kinda liked it, because it was actually clear about being about the damn wuss of a sheriff the whole time.

11

There must be some kind of process, because I’ve submitted stuff that never went up.

And obviously yes, it’s people who already know about that stuff. The boyfriend works in film and video and he ALWAYS catches a reflection or a boom mike or whatever. I’m a librarian and I pointed and laughed at the library scene in Ghostbusters when my perennial nightmare happens - the catalog cards all come out of the drawers - but they weren’t real catalog cards. Real catalog cards have holes in them for the rod at the bottom so if you drop a drawer they DON’T all fall out.

12

Back when there were card catalogues, they did indeed have holes in the cards, and rods in the drawers to keep the cards in – when the catalogue was in a public area. That as to make it a little more difficult for members of the public to re-arrange the cards. However, when those card drawers were in backrooms, away from the public, we often left the rods out, to make it easier to add new cards. In addition, when you were filing in the public catalogues, you had to take the rods out to add or withdraw cards. In either case, there was a real danger of dropping the drawer, and having cards fall out.

(Yes, I’ve done it myself. Fortunately, the cards fall on the ground in bunches, so it’s not that hard to put them back in the drawer in the right order.)

The catalogue in Ghostbusters was in the stacks, so it’s not really clear if it was in a public area, or it was a closed stack where the library staff might have left the rods out for convenience. In addition, the cards were flying into the air individually, so to get them back into the right sequence, some poor person would have to sort them one by one: they would not be in bunches on the floor.

13

Yeah, but the cards always had holes in them regardless. :slight_smile: The Ghostbusters cards don’t have holes - doesn’t matter whether the rods were out or not.

My first library job was in 2005 in an art museum - I was the sole staff member, I was paid jack minus shit, and I had the enviable task of maintaining and doing original cataloging on cards. I was NOT prepared for that in library school and every time I had to take a rod out to add a new card there was fear in my throat. Shaking, sweating fear.

14

Moved MPSIMS → Cafe Society.

Damn, there’s something so satisfying about catch a goof … :wink:

15

There’s a lot of “it depends” in that.

They don’t let just anyone change vital dates, for example. Too many agents/personalities want to *shave years off their age.

They also don’t let just anyone delete credits. Too many agents/personalities want to say, “I’m embarrassed of being associated with that movie early in my career, and I want my name deleted.”

They can be very wary of people adding Big Stars in early uncredited roles. I had to submit film snippets of Renee Zellweger in “Dazed and Confused” before they would acccept it.

Also, if you have a track record of submissions, most updates happen pretty routinely. If you register to change someone’s DOB, and that’s the only thing you’ve ever contributed, the updated DOB is DOA.

16

It is? <checks> Well, another one bites the dust-first JumpTheShark, and now this. Sic transit gloria mundi.

17

It’s fun. I’ve caught a few myself (in Remember the Titans, when the team goes into the shotgun, someone says, “Who do they think they are, the New York Jets?” But no pro team, including the Jets, used the shotgun in the time frame of the movie, so it would not be recognized as a pro formation, nor as one the Jets used).

Most of it is just how your personal knowledge of a subject comes into play. If the movie deals with things you have experience with, then you can notice the nit (part, too, is random – being alert to things when they happen). Then you get the egoboo of putting it up on the IMDB.

It sometimes gets silly when people proclaim these minor goofs “ruin the movie.” That’s just showing off their esoteric knowledge to a ridiculous extent. The Film Flubs books – which started the obsession with finding goofs in films – specifically said that that minor flubs are just part of the process and that you’ll find them in any film.

18

I’ve never done it myself, but I believe it would be possible to submit your reasoning to turn this into an ‘incorrectly reguarded as goof’ entry - they add your reasoning to explain why this is not, in fact, a continuity error.

If you actually care enough to go through that, of course. :wink:

19

And sometimes they’re so obvious you don’t know what took them so long. For example, in Iron Man 2, Stan Lee is listed in the credits as “Himself” even though he shows up on screen as Larry King (with the suspenders and all). I went to the Goofs page to add it expecting it to already be there (the movie had already been out a few days and already had a large number of Goofs). But nope, it wasn’t there. So I added it.

So part of it is the same “I wanna fix it!” mentality that makes Wikipedia popular.

20

I sometimes notice blatant stuff. One example was in Goodfellas they said it was 1963 but they showed a 747 landing which did not come out until around 1969.