# What obscure personal knowledge do you have that makes certain movies laughable? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 27, 2004, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802 "2004-08-27T16:08:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/101 "2004-08-29T14:28:51Z")
Oh, and I saw Kill Bill vol 1 last night…am I the only person impressed with the human body’s apparent arterial pressure? Especially when opened by a samurai sword. (after suspending disbelief, I really enjoyed the flick.) ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/102 "2004-08-29T14:41:11Z")
> [@whistlepig](#): > > And any actor portraying someone with mental retardation generally just talks slow and lets his or her mouth hang open. > Whistlepig Your examples, and **Shoshanna’s** examples about movies with psychotherapists are the ones I was thinking of. For MR/autism, I _did_ think that Ed Norton’s portrayl in **The Score** was pretrty passable—but he was actually portraying a guy faking a disability in that one. Still, he reminded me of several of my clients. Same with Leonardo DeCaprio in **What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.** In terms of movies about psychotherapists or psychologists, it amazes me how many times they mention the dose of a character’s medication and it isn’t even close to what would be considered a therapeutic dose in real life. Gosh, I wish I could think of an example. I know this happened on **Law&Order** once, where Briscoe was saying something like, “That dose of medication could choke a horse” and it wasn’t even close. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/103 "2004-08-29T15:28:50Z")
Like **Pilot141** , airplane movies just kill me. My personal favorite throwaway shot is moments after takeoff, they’ll cut to a scene taken by a camera mounted on the belly of the plane and you’ll see the landing gear retracting. Now you _know_ they’re in the air. Then they’ll cut to an interior shot at cruise or whatever. But the landing gear footage is very distintively from a B-52. The gear arrangement on a B-52 is truly one-of-a-kind and this shot is instantly recognizable. And in about 1/2 of the movies involving airliners, whether the plane is the center of the plot or merely a prop connoting trravel to some exotic destination, there it is; the B-52 landing gear retraction. Kills me every time. On landing they like to use a hokey sound effect that includes 3 distinct tire screeches and the sound of turbines throttling back. It’s the same sound in every movie, regardles of airplane type, engine count, or landing gear arrangement. My best guess is the tape is really from a 1960s 707 or maybe DC8. Modern engines sound nothing like that, and you can hear all 4 engines if you know what you’re listening for. The tire sounds tell me it’s a 4-wheeled gear bogey, and not a very good landing at that. When a modern 2-engine jet (or a military fighter, or a bizjet, or …) lands and they play that tape I always have to smile. On a totally different note, I went to undergrad and grad school at USC in downtown LA. The campus is often used for filming TV shows & movies, and naturally the filmmakers don’t care what the particular buildings really are. My favorite USC misuse was on the old _Paper Chase_ TV series filmed there. The buildings they showed as the law school were really the central admin building and the School of Philosphy. The actual Law School was right behind the camera from the vantage point in the opening credits. They shot the buildings as they did because the real law school was a butt-ugly 1970s modern thing which just didn’t fit the heavy-duty Establishment look they wanted, which central admin had in spades. But every time I saw those scenes my inner critic always screamed: “No stupid, turn the camera around, The Law School is _right behind_ you!” ---
**Author:** ![Selkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@Selkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Selkie)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/104 "2004-08-29T15:49:39Z")
Almost any movie centering around horses is guaranteed to have some howlers, especially, for some reason, those involving Thoroughbred racetracks, which I would think would be relatively easy to research. I can particularly remember a scene from some nameless movie of the week in which there were these extended close-ups of the head of the farm’s great hope … and it was an Arabian horse. Yes, Arabians are sometimes raced, but the movie clearly specified it was supposed to be a Thoroughbred. However, rather than picking on an endless stream of movies no one’s heard of, I’d like to go after one that was generally better than most: **Seabiscuit**. Given that it was based on an exhaustively researched book, and included oodles of participation by real Thoroughbred people, there is _no_ excuse for the scene in which cute lil baby Seabiscuit is ripped from his mother’s side and physically carried away to be sold by people who don’t think he has a chance at the track. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The whole scene was a cheap, lazy effort to garner sympathy. I don’t recall exactly how young the foal being shown was, but he was small enough to be carried by a man. You don’t wean foals at that age, and certainly not in the manner portrayed. By the time they’re old enough to wean, at around six-ish months of age and 500 pounds, no one’s casually picking them up off the ground. Most breeding farms sell their young horses as standard practice (the movie implies Seasbiscuit was singled out, which is unlikely), but they do so as _yearlings_, by which point the horses are near their adult heights. Don’t even let me get started on the cavalry charge in **The Two Towers** , or we’ll be here for hours 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/105 "2004-08-29T16:06:36Z")
Anytime Hollywood deals with my home city of London, there are plenty of mistakes to enjoy / laugh at / be annoyed by. One of the funniest (to us) in recent years was the Connery / Zeta jones flick ‘Entrapment’, where one character just effortlessly parks a car opposite a big building supposedly in the heart of the city. Ho ho ho. Try it sometime. You can **not** park anywhere in central London during business hours. There are no spaces. If you try it, you’ll be clamped or towed away in minutes. I play the guitar, and every time an actor tries to ‘act’ as if s/he can play guitar, it is manifestly apparent that they haven’t got a clue what to do. Here’s a tip: strumming your right hand up and down is a nice start, but unless your left hand is moving and adjusting from time to time, you’re just going to be playing one note/chord all the day long day. Not that most of them have their left hand in anything like a real chord shape anyway. One noteworthy exception was the movie Tom Hanks directed, ‘That Thing You Do’, in which all the actors in the band either actually played their instruments or, if they didn’t, made it look darned convincing. I’m also a magician, and it seems that no TV show or movie can ever come even close to depicting a magician with any degree of accuracy. They usually go for some guy in a cape (with red lining) doing an act which consists entirely of self-working magic props and apparatus, of the kind which anyone (even an actor) could learn to operate in 30 seconds. I was a big fan of CSI until the episode which featured a stage illusionist. Just about everything in that episode was plain dumb wrong. Grissom earnestly pontificated about the typical illusionist’s life, and was dead wrong on just about every count. I remember him droning on about how illusionists are secretive, loner types, who keep themselves to themselves and are worried about others learning the secrets to their illusions. Pure drivel. First of all, with very rare exceptions, we all know how each others’ stuff is done, especially the big stage illusions (because they all use the same set of basic principles), and it’s not even a major point of interest for us. Secondly, we’re a very sociable, gregarious bunch. If you want to, you can spend your entire year just going from one magic meeting and convention to another, all around the world, and one of the joys of magic is the friendships you strike up with other magicians all over the place. When I watched that episode of CSI, it made me realise how much junk and disinformation Grissom might be spouting in other episodes, and it kinda took the edge off the series for me. Still enjoy it, though. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/106 "2004-08-29T16:26:36Z")
> [@OtakuLoki](#): > > And the public reaction for the loss of the Sullivan brothers was during 1943. Remember the ship was christened in April of 1943. Also, 1942-1944 is still the same Congressional Class. So, if the Rep for the Sullivan’s family’s district is the same rep for the Ryan family’s district - it’s going to be a shit storm squared, no matter when the news comes out. It’s just a movie and if you like it and think it’s a wonderful portrayal and true to life, why have at it. I think you, and Hanks and Spielberg are guesstimating the 1942-43 reaction according to today’s mores. The hubbub at the time wasn’t to get all sole surviving sons out of combat but rather the question was asked as to why all were allowed on the same ship which increases the probability of such a disaster. And, in spite of your speculation as to the possible effects on morale, the military kept units from the same town together with the same chance of a PR “disaster.” The experience of [Bedford, VA](http://www.cleveland.oh.us/wmv_news/jherr71.htm) a town of 3200 is illustrative. Quote: "In Bedford, Virginia, a few days ago, thousands crowded the plaza of the National D-Day Memorial. Because of Black Tuesday, they gathered at the Bedford site on Sunday, September 16, in what was almost a new dedication of that monument complex on 88 acres of former pastureland on a Blue Ridge hilltop of Virginia. Bedford had a population of 3,200 on June 6, 1944. On D-Day, 19 of its 35 soldiers died during the first 15 minutes of the Allied invasion and four more died in following days. It was the most casualties per capita from any U.S. community." There was no furor to break of local national guard combat units as a result of such incidents. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/107 "2004-08-29T18:16:08Z")
> [@](#): > > Do you know of any where they, or any market, has made a good effort and produced something realistic? Well, there was _2001_, which is probably as close as we’re ever going to get to accurate science in a movie (no sound in space! woohoo!). ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/108 "2004-08-29T19:17:07Z")
> [@Unintentionally Blank](#): > > Oh, and I saw Kill Bill vol 1 last night…am I the only person impressed with the human body’s apparent arterial pressure? Especially when opened by a samurai sword. > > (after suspending disbelief, I really enjoyed the flick.) I was impressed too, not only by the awesome pressure, but also by the sheer volume of blood. I never knew humans were potentially so explosive 😃 ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2004, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/109 "2004-08-29T20:11:40Z")
> [@CanvasShoes](#): > > Do you know of any where they, or any market, has made a good effort and produced something realistic? > > I mean, I think we’re all so used to hollywood’s silliness that most of us just tend to ignore it and try to get into the intentions of the movie, rather than allow ourselves to get too caught up in bs flag mania. > > But I’d be very curious to see one that did stay away from cliches, just to compare it. **CanvasShoes** , I tried to reply to this earlier this morning - but the MB was down, so let me try again. 🙂 First off - some titles that strike me as having been accurate to known physical laws: As **yBeayf** pointed out - there’s **2001: A Space Odessy**. Another good movie, as far as I could tell, was **The Abyss**. There are only two things that I spotted as being potential bloopers based on science. I’m not going to even suggest I thought that the military was accurately represented. 😃 The first is at the end when the crew of Deep Core has been brought to the surface without any health problems - but by making it clear that it was an action from the ‘aliens’ they avoid having me accuse them of not knowing the physics. The other potential blooper comes at the end of the film when the screws on one of the catamaran hulled vessels involved are shown: On one hull the screw is a standard four bladed screw; on the other hull, the screw is a standard three bladed screw. Now, I don’t **know** that that isn’t possible, but I suspect it would have the effect of adding some unnecessary stresses to the ship. But, I’ll freely admit that’s a very, very minor nitpick. Back in the Early 90’s there was a TV pilot movie called **Plymouth** about a community on the moon, which seemed to have also been very well researched - at the time I remember thinking it managed to avoid the normal cliched errors about radiation hazards. Finally, there is one anime I can think of - **Mighty Space Miners**. They did a good job avoiding all the standard SF movie cliches (Constant thrust in vacuum=constant velocity; sound in space; the explosive nature of decompression…). Of course, it’s important to recognize that none of these represent the standard SF adventure that seems to be the popular fare for an SF movie. And, not all of them were _good_ stories. Or at least not good stories for film. (I was greatly disappointed by 2001 when I saw it - on that level, at least. There was a great deal of stunning f/x, a wonderful plot in the conflict between the crew and HAL, and then another hour of movie that wasn’t really comprehensible unless you’d read the book. 😃 ) If one is looking for accurate science in an SF movie - that pretty much leaves the disaster plot, or a character plot. There is no easy way I can see to make the ‘staples’ of the SF genre without shattering (or at least bending all out of shape) physical laws. Anyone remember **V for Visitor**? They’re coming to earth to steal WATER? :smack: :smack: :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/110 "2004-08-30T00:48:20Z")
Because I’ve been a cook for 21 years: Scenes wherein the protaganist is dining in a cozy little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and the antagonist bursts in to attack, forcing the protaganist to flee out “the back way”. The chase commences, and we get to see the good guy racing through what appears to be a full, spacious, hotel/convention center kitchen, equipped with shiny, modern equipment, and staffed with about a dozen chefs in white (and two of them, of course, carrying a large wedding cake for the main characters to crash into). In reality, that cozy little restaurant was probably not originally built to be a restaurant, and the current decor and equipment were retrofitted some time later. Meaning that, in reality, the kitchen is probably a tiny, cramped space in the back, with second-hand equipment that the owner bought cheap. (Restaurant owners are notorious for splurging on the dining room decor and neglecting the kitchen.) And staffed by a grand total of **one** harried cook. Clearly, the dining room scene was shot in one place, and the kitchen scene shot in yet another - a kitchen big enough to accomodate a film crew. It is scenes like this the convince the general public that it’s perfectly all right to bring twenty of their closest friends to that neat little restaurant they found… Because I’m a lifelong musician: Somebody touched on this early in this thread, but I’ll say it again, and expand on it: hiring **actors** to pretend to play musical instruments. Usually in the background - movies in which the main characters are supposed to be musicians usually do an acceptable job of coaching the actor. But those “house bands” you see in bar scenes… gee whiz, couldn’t they just go down the street and find a real band in a bar and hire them as extras?? The worst offender in this category, though, is TV commercials, not movies. I have a policy of refusing to buy any product featured in a commercial where the actors/models are not even **holding** their instruments properly. I don’t expect them to appear to play convincingly. Just hold it right? Please? ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/111 "2004-08-30T01:06:36Z")
Oh, here’s one: in _The Jackal_, a Montreal postal code is given as GXY 453 (or some other letter-letter-letter-number-number-number combination starting with G.) Not only are Canadian postal codes not formatted like that (it’s A1A 1A1), “G” isn’t a Montreal postal code. Montreal postal codes start with H. Yes, it’s tiny, but it would have taken one second to research. ---
**Author:** ![liirogue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@liirogue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liirogue)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/112 "2004-08-30T02:09:51Z")
> [@Phase42](#): > > In reality, that cozy little restaurant was probably not originally built to be a restaurant, and the current decor and equipment were retrofitted some time later. Meaning that, in reality, the kitchen is probably a tiny, cramped space in the back, with second-hand equipment that the owner bought cheap. (Restaurant owners are notorious for splurging on the dining room decor and neglecting the kitchen.) And staffed by a grand total of **one** harried cook. Not to mention that kitchens are generally far from spotless, especially if there is any sort of a rush. And if it’s a hole-in-the-wall restaurant owners (at least around here) are notorious for having filthy kitchens. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/113 "2004-08-30T03:30:21Z")
I was working for a pager airtime supplier when I saw the movie _Eraser_. And the part where the bad guys traced the location of the damsel-in-distress from the pager number used to reach her just cracked me up. Which is kind of funny in itself, since that was probably only the 143rd-stupidest thing in that movie. But when it’s stuff you’re intimately familiar with, it’s more jarring, i guess. The only movie I’ve ever seen that was set in my town of birth was _Wayne’s World_. And that does give me a sense of the amusement people who live in New York and L.A. must get when they see every other movie. I think the mere existence of the trendy night club was the highlight. (If you want to find culture in Aurora, Illinois, USA, I recommend you head to Oberweis’ Dairy and ask to see where they make the cheese …) ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/114 "2004-08-30T03:57:24Z")
> [@ianzin](#): > > When I watched that episode of CSI, it made me realise how much junk and disinformation Grissom might be spouting in other episodes, and it kinda took the edge off the series for me. Still enjoy it, though. It’s their use of digital photo enhancing that made me suspect that everything on **CSI** might be bogus. I’m no expert in the field, but I know there’s no way in hell you can take a small, grainy screencap from a security cam video and “enhance” it to read the letters on the parking sticker in the back window of a passing car. Nor can you take a photo of a robber in full drag (with wig and sunglasses!) and go “clicky-click” to see what he’d look like without the costume. You can do a lot with photo editing software, but it takes time, and the computer _cannot_ reveal information that was present in real life but never captured in the image in the first place! > [@SCSimmons](#): > > The only movie I’ve ever seen that was set in my town of birth was _Wayne’s World_. And that does give me a sense of the amusement people who live in New York and L.A. must get when they see every other movie. I think the mere existence of the trendy night club was the highlight. (If you want to find culture in Aurora, Illinois, USA, I recommend you head to Oberweis’ Dairy and ask to see where they make the cheese …) I had a college classmate from Aurora, and overheard this exchange between her and others many times: “Where are you from?” “Aurora, Illinois.” “Oh, like in **Wayne’s World**?” “Yes…but we don’t have palm trees in the real one.” ---
**Author:** ![AtomicDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@AtomicDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AtomicDog)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/115 "2004-08-30T04:04:13Z")
Manned launches where the launch vehicle will transform from a Gemini-Titan to a Mercury Atlas to a Saturn V to a Saturn I-B an then **back** to a Mercury Atlas… **all in the same launch!** They just cram together some stock NASA footage and hope we don’t notice. _I Dream of Jeannie_ was notorious for doing this. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/116 "2004-08-30T04:14:31Z")
In _The Dark Crystal_, the elf-thingees would occasionally throw in a word or two of Croatian (Serbian, Serbo-Croatianm, whatever). Trying to add a bit of a ‘foreign/exotic’ feel to their dialogue, I guess. Not much, granted, but enough to give me a good chuckle. Hey, it’s not every day that you hear Serbo-Croatian in a American muppet flick. ---
**Author:** ![mike1dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@mike1dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mike1dog)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/117 "2004-08-30T04:30:24Z")
In _Fargo,_ I don’t have the foggiest notion of how he was supposed to be stealing money at that car dealership. His scheme wouldn’t work at all. ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/118 "2004-08-30T04:35:33Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > In the movie **Tomb Raider** , there’s a part where Angelina Jolie is in some part of Siberia with a bunch of Yakut-looking natives (not sure where, exactly; I wasn’t watching the movie very closely). Anyways, a little native girl asks Angelina (or vice-versa, I forget) in Russian where she’s going, and the other responds “Krateru”, which is translated “to the crater”. This means the script writers obviously didn’t bother asking a Russian speaker, but just looked in a dictionary and got the first translation for “to the crater” that they saw; as “krateru” is in the dative case (“I’m giving something to the crater”) rather than the accusative case which it should be in (“I’m going to the crater”). It should have been “v krater”. Grr. A lot of people would like to give something to HER crater. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/119 "2004-08-30T04:46:27Z")
> [@Shade](#): > > I thought it was a mac? Anyway, I’m getting fed up of this one. Yes, the film had many flaws, though, I think, it was better than most. But I didn’t think they just plugged in a computer and went. **The scientists had been studying the crashed ship for ages, or at least days**. Jeff had a few hours to play with that. He worked out their protocols and wrote something to interface with them, and plant a virus. I am pretty sure it was a Mac as well, but since the ET’s were sending a signal over the satellite network to syncronize their attack, I just assumed that the aliens at least had to have a unix emulator. Since that movie came out in 96 ,I am gonna just believe that Jeff was running yellowdog instead of system 7 or whatever mac was running at the time 🙂 > [@](#): > > It might be a bit implausibly fast, but I think it’s reasonable compared to, say, the premise of the film. After all, **the aliens are pretty advanced.** Perhaps they have intuitive user-friendly protocols. I think they were using advanced tech , but I dont think the ET’s themselves were advanced , the scene in Area 51 , where the president does a mind meld with the ET , says they are locusts like , raping various worlds and moving on. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802/120 "2004-08-30T06:17:19Z")
> [@Sinshine](#): > > _Shakespeare in Love_ was clearly not meant to get on the nerves of anyone with a historical bent, and I tried very hard not to let the inaccuracies bug me, but they did. A lot. The so-called nobleman that Gwyneth Paltrow was forced to marry reportedly had a tobacco plantation in or around West Virignia. Granted, plenty of Brits made good money from just such ventures in their time. Therein lies the rub: in **their** time, under the rule of, say, King George the Umpteenth. Not anyone who attended Queen Elizabeth I’s court. People who took off to the New World in the latter days of her reign were explorers or idiots (depending on your opinion of Francis Drake), not investors. First you claim the land, then you farm it. Did they claim WEST Virginia?! There was just one Virginia until 1863, when WV split with VA over slavery and leaving the Union. Also WV is rather hilly and a different farming economy than the eastern part of Virginia … don’t know that there’s any tobacco grown there (which is why WV didn’t have many slaves, nor slaveowners, and wished to remain in the Union). Not that there were many/any white people in what’s now WV in Elizabethan times in any event. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-obscure-personal-knowledge-do-you-have-that-makes-certain-movies-laughable/261802.md?page=7)