Outdated movie/TV/etc. moments, take 2

[Rilchiam]

I don’t want to bump an old thread, so I’m posting a link. But I’ve come up with some new ones.

In 9 to 5 (1980), Dolly Parton’s character tells Dabney Coleman’s character that she has a gun in her purse, and threatens to change him “from a rooster to a hen with one shot”. This is because she’s fed up with his “pinching and staring and chasing [her] around the desk”, and has just found out that he’s been bragging that he’s sleeping with her. Would not happen today. First of all, she would be able to report inappropriate actions and remarks to Human Resources. Second, the building might have metal detectors, and even if it didn’t, there would be a rule prohibiting bringing firearms into the office. Third, he would be able to report her, for threatening him, and she would be fired for the compound of the threat and the concealed weapon.

Book example: In one of Lawrence Sanders’ Deadly Sins novels, which would be from the '70s (I think I remember checking the publication date against this: 1977) Chief Delaney asks a doctor something about blood types, skin matches, and like that. At the time, it must have been realistic for an MD (or maybe he was a medical researcher) to say, “Oh, yeah, someday they might be able to ID people by their DNA…but I don’t see it happening in my lifetime!” Now DNA identification is about worn out as a device. (Side note: I love how, on last season’s Sopranos, AJ panicked and admitted everything when his school’s principal said, “We have your DNA.” It took Meadow to tell him that it takes six weeks to get DNA results, and that’s if they have a sample for comparison!)

Kind of the reverse: something that was startling at the time, but seems perfectly normal now. In Night on Earth, Gena Rowlands is a casting agent who carries a cell phone, and her immediate boss is constantly calling her. “How awful,” I thought in 1992. “She’s never free; she can’t ever avoid him or claim she was too busy to get back to him.” Now everyone has a cell phone, and there’s less of an expectation that you’re at someone’s beck and call (so to speak) just because they can reach you easily. And people have learned to say, “Sorry, I had to turn it off…did you talk to my voicemail?” From today’s perspective, she merely has a high-strung boss, but at the time, the phone was meant to be a millstone.

[okielady]

Back to the Future was mentioned in the other thread as a movie that has aged well, but still had a few examples of dating. (Tab, Pepsi Free, etc.) I’d say the DeLorean itself is the most obvious example. That, and the gigantic video camera MJF used to film Einstein’s trip one minute into the future, and the events that followed.

Any computer centered movie from the early to mid 90s seems dated already if they start talking about technical stuff.
This Pentium 133 computer has a 14.4 modem, top of the line, fastest thing out there!

[Neidhart]

Any show or movie that has a character going on a job interview and being hired immediately.

The PC from WarGames.

[SC_Wolf]

*Originally posted by Neidhart *
The PC from WarGames.

C’mon. 8 inch floppies aren’t that out of date, are they?

This one’s a bit different, it’s a case when a movie modernized a plot element that given the era the movie was set in, I think would have been better in its original form:

(Since Red Dragon’s still in theaters, I guess this counts as a spoiler)

[spoiler]In Red Dragon, the police trace video tapes from the seperate crimescenes back to a particular photolab that had compiled a VHS tape out of several 8mm video tapes.

However, in the previous film to be made from the novel Red Dragon, Manhunter (and I would wager in the novel as well, but haven’t read it yet to confirm) the photolab actually transfered 8mm film reels to video.

Since the story’s set in the early 80s, I think the film to video transfer is the more apropriate of the two.[/spoiler]

[dougie_monty]

Originally posted by Rilchiam

Second, the building might have metal detectors, and even if it didn’t, there would be a rule prohibiting bringing firearms into the office.

Absoilutely. I used to work as a security guard at an “unarmed post”; one substitute came in to relieve me at the end of a shift, and he had a holster with a gun. My supervisor later told me he bawled this guy out for bringing a gun to the building, even as a security guard going on duty.
As for the ramifications of Dolly’s warning, Rilchiam, what would you have her do–at the time? (I might introduce a “deus ex machina” here–a boyfriend/brother/father who suddenly appears, is built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and warns this letch that he’s courting serious trouble, doing nothing worse to him physically than picking him up off the floor by his lapels.)

[Laughing_Lagomorph]

I don’t know if this made it to the old thread, but in the Woody Allen movie Play it Again, Sam the Tony Roberts character is some big shot businessman who is constantly calling back to his office telling them the phone number where he is, and where he can be reached in half an hour, two hours, etc. Fifteen years ago he would have had a beeper, and now of course a cell phone.

As a sort of reverse example, I remember how in the mid 1970s the phone answering machine at the beginning of The Rockford Files seemed like an incredibly exotic and futuristic piece of machinery to have in your house. Now everyone has one (except my brother in law, but that is another story).

[OpalCat]

*Originally posted by Neidhart *
**Any show or movie that has a character going on a job interview and being hired immediately.
**

Eh… I’ve been hired at the interview for every job I’ve ever had.

[Mr.Blue_Sky]

*Originally posted by Laughing Lagomorph *
**I don’t know if this made it to the old thread, but in the Woody Allen movie Play it Again, Sam the Tony Roberts character is some big shot businessman who is constantly calling back to his office telling them the phone number where he is, and where he can be reached in half an hour, two hours, etc. Fifteen years ago he would have had a beeper, and now of course a cell phone.

As a sort of reverse example, I remember how in the mid 1970s the phone answering machine at the beginning of The Rockford Files seemed like an incredibly exotic and futuristic piece of machinery to have in your house. Now everyone has one (except my brother in law, but that is another story). **

There was an episode of The Bob Newhart Show where Bob got a beeper. It was HUGE. Of course, it would go off at inappropiate moments.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

I guess I don’t understand this thread.
In GONE WITH THE WIND, if the South had a nuclear device, the war would have gone the other way. In MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, the Queen no longer has the power to behead politicians, alas. In SINGING IN THE RAIN, the cop would have arrested Gene Kelley for suspicious behavior. In CITIZEN KANE, young Kane would have been playing with a gameboy, not with a sled. In KING KONG, the SPCA would have forbidden the chains. In STAGECOACH, the folks in the stagecoach would have used their cellphones to call for help.

Seems pretty useless to me.

[Laughing_Lagomorph]

*Originally posted by Mr. Blue Sky *
**There was an episode of The Bob Newhart Show where Bob got a beeper. It was HUGE. Of course, it would go off at inappropiate moments. **

That’s funny! I must have missed that one. I rember the early electonic calculators being freakin’ enormous, though. The size of a desk telephone, roughly.

BTW, congratulations on your new Volkswagen commercial, dude!

[E-Sabbath]

Actually, a few of those are very good examples, Mistah Haven.

Buffy has recently shown what happens when you bring a cell phone into a slasher movie, eliminating quite a few moments of dumbness.

You’re also right about King Kong. If you were to update the movie, how would you rewrite the intro? An ecological catastrophy forcing the creation of an artificial park?

Alas, MQS and Stagecoach don’t really qualify, from my understanding, because they were historicals when they were made.

How about… Hm. Movie taking place in, at the time, modern times, which now has strange and bizarre attributes… Alas, my “current” movie memory doesn’t go much further back than the 80s.

[KGS]

In the 2000 season of the Sopranos, Big Pussy makes a comment something like this: “You FBI guys, you always get your man. Like those Egyptians. Those World Trade Center bombing motherfuckers!” Probably leaves a lot of people scratching their heads, these days.

(To the OP’s side note: Can you even get DNA from a urine sample? One that’s been sprayed all over a concrete wall, of course…)

[PhiloVance]

Just watched ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ with John Candy and Steve Martin. It was made in 1987, yet there is no Amtrak, or at least in that part of Missouri. Amtrak started in the '70s, but I don’t think all railroads came on board immediately. Mention is made of Eastern Airlines, which no longer is in business having ceased in 1991.

Still love the movie and we watch it almost every Thanksgiving. I think you’ll have dated things in every movie, but sometimes that is the charm.

Loved and still love, Leave it to Beaver, Andy Griffith Show, Carol Burnett Show & The Beverly Hillbillies and probably others I’ve temporarily forgotten.

[RealityChuck]

In 9 to 5 (1980), Dolly Parton’s character tells Dabney Coleman’s character that she has a gun in her purse, and threatens to change him “from a rooster to a hen with one shot”.

I should point out that the line is an error. The shot would turn him into a capon, not a hen.

I’m surprised no one mentioned 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the PanAm logo on the spaceship.

[Rilchiam]

*Originally posted by dougie_monty *
**Originally posted by Rilchiam

As for the ramifications of Dolly’s warning, Rilchiam, what would you have her do–at the time? (I might introduce a “deus ex machina” here–a boyfriend/brother/father who suddenly appears, is built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and warns this letch that he’s courting serious trouble, doing nothing worse to him physically than picking him up off the floor by his lapels.) **

I’m just saying that life isn’t fair and they always catch the second person. Bringing charges could be a lot more harmful in the long run.

Lagomorph: I remember that Tony Roberts bit!

KGS: Yeah, I bet you can’t!

[Podkayne]

There was a bit on All Things Considered about how the cell phone changed movies, and mentioned several films where needing to find a phone was integral to the plot.

Ah, here:

http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=863809

[Neidhart]

Just watched ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ with John Candy and Steve Martin. It was made in 1987, yet there is no Amtrak, or at least in that part of Missouri.

I thought they didn’t use Amtrak because Amtrak wouldn’t give permission for their logo to appear - viz. “Amroad” in Silver Streak (1978).

[Sampiro]

Semi-related: I was irritated at the movie CONTACT by their use of a digitally animated Bill Clinton rather than a generic “presidential looking” actor (Robert Culp, Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones, Don Knotts, whatever) because it dates the movie and made it anachronistic the day Bush or Gore won.

Another dating problem: in ATTACK OF THE CLONES, Obi Wan visits a diner that’s clearly a nostalgic 1950s Soda Fountain image in a place where there have never been soda fountains & 1950s and thousands of species of aliens can’t even use booths or stools.

[Laughing_Lagomorph]

*Originally posted by C K Dexter Haven *
**I guess I don’t understand this thread.
In GONE WITH THE WIND, if the South had a nuclear device, the war would have gone the other way. In MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, the Queen no longer has the power to behead politicians, alas. In SINGING IN THE RAIN, the cop would have arrested Gene Kelley for suspicious behavior. In CITIZEN KANE, young Kane would have been playing with a gameboy, not with a sled. In KING KONG, the SPCA would have forbidden the chains. In STAGECOACH, the folks in the stagecoach would have used their cellphones to call for help.

Seems pretty useless to me. **

I disagree with a couple of your examples. Cops don’t routinely arrest people for dancing in the streets these days, at least not in the US. I can confidently report that many children were sledding (alright, plastic tobagganning and inflatable tubing) in a particular town outside of Boston today, although some of them undoubtedly also have Gameboys at home.

The thread isn’t asking about any outdated technology or behavior in any film, its about stuff that seems to you to be especially archaic in an otherwise familiar millieu. It’s inherently subjective, and no more useless than threads along the lines of “who’s your favorite actor”. YMMV.

[BiblioCat]

*Originally posted by Sampiro *
**Semi-related: I was irritated at the movie CONTACT by their use of a digitally animated Bill Clinton rather than a generic “presidential looking” actor (Robert Culp, Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones, Don Knotts, whatever) … **

I read right through that, agreeing with your point, and then nearly did a spit-take… DON KNOTTS?
Thanks for the laugh.