Movie Flaws the Director is perfectly aware of

[JThunder]

@RealityChuck

Known in the Turkey City Lexicon as “You can’t fire me, I quit” and generally considered a writing flaw.

It certainly is. However, it is at least better than ignoring the absurdity and hoping that nobody will notice. The tactic is actually a darned clever way to make the best of a weak plot point.

[Gangster_Octopus]

There is the stormtrooper bumping his head in Star Wars

[mobo85]

In Forrest Gump, there is a scene of Nathan Bedford Forrest (Gump’s namesake) taken from Birth of a Nation. Despite the fact that Birth of a Nation takes place during the Civil War, there are tire tracks in the scene. The producers of Forrest Gump knew this, and although they could have edited them out with computers, they decided to leave them in, since they weren’t sure if D.W. Griffith meant it or not.

[Sublight]

@RealityChuck

The movie Cobb is a generally accurate retelling of the relationship between Ty Cobb and his biographer Al Stump. In addition to writing the official biography, Stump also secretly took notes showing the darker side of Cobb. In the movie, Cobb discovers the notes and blows up over it. In real life, Cobb never did. Writer/Director Ron Shelton has said that he knew that Cobb never saw the notes, but dramatic necessity said you couldn’t show Stump taking the notes without Cobb finding out.

This also allowed the addition of all the other horrible things Cobb did in his life but would have taken too much time to properly set up. Instead, have Cobb rant at Stump, “They want to hear about how I [example of his behavior]? Then PUT IT IN!!”

[ZebraShaSha]

@ArchiveGuy

There’s a shot in Reservoir Dogs that is fairly long and consists of Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi conversing in profile with each other. Lots of dialogue.

During the interaction, Buscemi “lights” Keitel’s cigarette, except the cigarette never actually makes contact with the lighter, but Keitel proceeds as if it did anyway, and the shot continues.

Now there is absolutely no way that this escaped everyone’s attention in post-production. None whatsoever. But it’s a long take, and perhaps it’s the only one that had all the dialogue go flawlessly. Plus, given the budget limitations, there may not have been a lot of coverage on the scene, so cutting around the error may not have been possible (and even then, cutting into the scene changes the dyanmic of it implicitly).

So it’s in the film. Bothersome as hell, but one has to assume that their options (especially in a filmmaking world where casually “fixing” issues via CG was hardly the norm) were somewhat limited, and getting the performances right and the dialogue right was more important than lighting the cigarette.

Better than this is the scene right before the end of the movie, the mysterious extra shot. He just thought it would make people wonder or something like that.

[interface2x]

@JSexton

I seem to recall him mentioning in an interview that it was actually intentional. It was a device to show that the two scenes wre from different peoples’ perspectives, and hence, are remembered slightly differently.

This kind of reminds me of “Fight Club” where at the beginning the narrator has a gun in his mouth and, when asked if he had any last words, says “I can’t think of anything.” Then it flashes back, shows the entire back story and when they come back to that scene his answer is “I still can’t think of anything.”

If I’m not mistaken, Tyler even says “Flashback humor - I like that.”

[susan]

All the whooshy spaceship noises are known to be inaccurate, and are there for dramatic effect.

[Johnny_L.A]

I don’t know if Spielberg was aware of it, but the altimeter in the biginning of Always bugs me. In the scene Richard Dreyfuss runs out of fuel in his A-26. (That bugs me, because these guys are supposed to be professional pilots.) As Dreyfuss tries to nurse his aircraft back to the runway we see the altimeter winding down to zero. In the mountains of Idaho. Altimeters measure MSL. That runway was not at sea level.

[Labdad]

I always figured Peter Yates HAD to be perfectly aware of that VW Bug the Mustang and the Charger pass four or five times during the chase scene in Bullitt.

[Subway_Prophet]

@Push You Down

Pulp Fiction- Amanda Plummers screeching commands to the restaurant patrons (If any of you fucking pricks move!!! I’ll execute every last one of you mother fuckers!) is different in the two scenes we see it. You have to assume that Tarantino was aware of it and didn’t care that the dialogue didn’t match.

He could be under the same influence that that woman holds me to. That woman could spew obscenities in an all-out, fully-verbal Tourette’s attack, and I’d think she was reciting Shakespeare. I can’t explain it.