MAJOR goof
-
jbartelone — 13 years ago(October 07, 2012 10:31 PM)
This remains one of my favorite movies of all time! But there are several goofs at the beginning of the film. The 1959 car that Richard Goodwin is admiring is at least close to two years past the chronological time in the movie. Van Doren and Stemple played their scripted Twenty One games in early December 1956.
Sputnik is also referenced, which launched on October 4, 1957. The same day that Leave it to Beaver premiered on TV.
Mac The Knife was released in 1959, the same year as the futuristic car, but Mr. Goodwin's conversation with the auto dealer does not match up to the years mentioned in that scene!
Joe -
yurenchu — 12 years ago(July 17, 2013 08:26 AM)
In the end courtroom scene, Charles VanDoren reads the following from his prepared speech: "I had all the breaks. Everything came too easy."
Say what? That is blatantly incorrect use of the English language. The proper wording would be, "Everything came too easily."
"Everything came too easy" can be correct; in this case, the adjective "easy" is modifying the subject ("everything") instead of the verb "came" (verbs are modified by adverbs, not by adjectives).
To put it in a more specific way: "easy" doesn't refer to the manner in which the action of the verb was carried out, but to the state of the subject when the subject came/arrived/occurred/appeared. It's the same as "good clothes don't come cheap", "the cake came out too wet/dry", "my paper arrived wet in the mail", and similar to "to come running" and "to come equipped (with)".
Compare:- "Everything came too easy" = everything was too easy when it came (to me). In other words: whatever things came to me, these things were presented to me in such a condition that they were easy for/on me.
- "Everything came too easily" = everything came in a manner that was too easy. In other words: everything, including difficult/annoying/obnoxious tasks, had no trouble finding its way to me.
Now which of the two above phrases better reflects what Van Doren (space between "Van" and "Doren") had in mind when he delivered his speech?
Last heard: Sandi Thom - I Wish I Was A Punkrocker
http://y2u.be/vc2jDz6w-r4 -
jones7418 — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 02:31 PM)
The major goof is that Redford took so many liberties with the truth. Who does he think he is, Oliver Stone? Sweet performance by Fiennes and loved the eye candy that is Mira Sorvino. I wonder, was Stempel really the huge a$$hole the movie made him out to be?
-
Eric-62-2 — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 04:14 PM)
Frankly, Redford would have been advised to create a fictional character for the part he gave to Goodwin. To compress things by turning a real life figure, Goodwin into something he wasn't is the thing I find most dishonest about the movie. A fictional character could have represented the needed composite type character for dramatic purposes but Redford I suspect did this to Goodwin based solely on the fact that because Goodwin became an anti-war activist who turned on LBJ (after being a speechwriter for him) there was this undercurrent of tapping into what Redford sees as the saintliness of 1960s leftists.
Redford's defense I'm sure would be the "fake but true" line of thinking he tried to further push when he recently played Dan Rather and tried to turn that liar who committed the greatest act of journalistic malpractice in recent memory (a real case of FAKE NEWS) into a hero. -
Eric-62-2 — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 08:38 PM)
Goodwin's book does not go into the major details about the scandal, only his own role which was mostly after the fact. The book "Prime Time And Misdemeanors" by Joseph Stone (the man who did the actual investigation) is where you'll find more of the inside story of what happened in this investigation.
What Redford did was the equivalent of saying the bench player who hit .230 in limited play was the MVP of the team for the season! -
Eric-62-2 — 9 years ago(January 07, 2017 07:36 PM)
Joseph Stone says otherwise.
http://articles.mcall.com/1994-10-09/features/3012206_1_herbert-stempel-charles-van-doren-quiz-show