What's the most frequently-seen Film Flub? It has to be the appearance of the boom mike.  The interesting thing is that while one person may see a boom mike in a shot, another may not, depending on where you see the film.  The "masking" of the film (the frame around the screen) can be different from one theater to another, exposing the boom mike sometimes, covering it in others.  Often, even though you don't see the mike in the theaters, you might see it on video, since the conversion of a movie to video picks up a little extra space at the bottom and top of the frame.  At any rate, if you see it, it's a Flub.  For a more in-depth explanation, see Film Flubs 1999, Pages 3-14. 
 
What's your favorite Film Flub? It's sorta like asking a parent, "Which is your favorite child?"  Actually, I love ‘em all.  If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the one in North by Northwest (see Roman Soldiers Don’t Wear Watches, p. 171), where a little kid in the background puts his fingers in his ears before Eva Marie Saint fires the shot at Cary Grant.  Wanna hear something funny?  The publishers put that picture in the book backwards.  The kid is actually on the right side of the screen. 
 
What Flubs are you bored to death hearing about?  The alleged "Munchkin suicide" in The Wizard of Oz (no, it didn’t happen.  See Pages vii, ix in Film Flubs 1999) and the "ghost of a kid" in Three Men and a Baby (c’mon.  Get real.  A kid didn’t die in the apartment in New York where it was filmed.  It was filmed on a set on a sound stage in Toronto.  See Roman Soldiers Don’t Wear Watches, Pages 177-80). 
 
Isn’t there a person on the set who’s supposed to catch all the errors? There are crew members called Script Supervisors, whose job it is to catch the little glitches before they are committed to film.  If they weren’t there, an amazing number of goofs could be seen in the final film.  They catch the collars buttoned/unbuttoned, props moved from one day to the next, even the difference between a cloudy and a sunny sky from one part of the day to the next.  But they, too, are human and they slip up occasionally.  The filming of a movie is an enormously complex process, involving hundreds and hundreds of people.  There are many, many places where an error can creep into the process, long after shooting on the set is completed.  Each "craft" (costumers, set decorators, etc.) is responsible for its own continuity, and it’s up to the director to watch over the entire process.  He or she is the final filter, and if a mistake shows up on screen, it’s ultimately the director’s fault.  However, some mistakes emerge even after the director has gone over the film with a fine-toothed comb, especially when the director doesn’t have the right of "final cut" and some studio "suit" re-edits the film and creates a mistake in the process. 
 
Why are there mistakes in the Film Flubs books?  Because, just like movies, books are made by human beings, who make mistakes.  Just because I write books about movie mistakes, it doesn’t mean that they’re perfect.  Also, just as in movies, mistakes happen in the writing, editing, and publishing process.  Then there’s just plain carelessness, which I’m guilty of from time to time.  There are things that book editors accidentally overlook.  And, for whatever reason, there are corrections that just don’t get made.  Having learned of a few of my own goofs plus some made by the publisher in Film Flubs, Son of Film Flubs, and Film Flubs: The Sequel I marked them for correction in Roman Soldiers Don’t Wear Watches.  Due to a production glitch, they didn’t get corrected.  C’est la vie.  Life goes on.  But it’s embarrassing, and it shouldn’t happen. 
 
Have any directors, writers, producers or actors given you grief for pointing out their mistakes?  Oddly enough, never.  They seem to enjoy the spirit of the books.  The point of view is not "tabloid journalism," e.g, "Look at the awful things these stupid people have done."  Nope, it’s more "You’ll have a lot of fun finding these little glitches, most of which are insignificant, in your favorite films."  Many, many of the Flubs covered in the books have been given to me by famous directors, writers, and actors.  I’ll meet them at some industry function, and they’ll tell me to look for a certain flub in their own film.  They aren’t necessarily proud of the mistakes; it’s just that they know the Film Flubs and Reel Gags books will treat them with humor, and that the books reflect an overriding love of movies and respect for all the people who move them along the way from idea to finished film.
 
What’s the difference between your newest book Reel Gags, and the Film Flubs books?  The Film Flubs series point out slip-ups, goofs, gaffes, and other mistakes that shouldn’t have happened.  They slipped into the films at some point due to carelessness on someone’s part at some point in the production process.  On the other hand, Reel Gags looks at things that are slipped into the films deliberately.  They’re inside jokes like naming characters for a writer and/or director’s friends (or enemies!), using family members in a scene, directors appearing in their own films, directors’ trademarks, and  special little jokes in signs, props, or other things in the background.  It also includes a "Where’s Alfred" section which lists Alfred Hitchcock’s appearances in his own films, and a tribute to the World’s Worst Director (you think we’re gonna tell you about him here? Think again.   Buy the book!).
 
Why is there material from your earlier books in Roman Soldiers Don’t Wear Watches and Film Flubs 1999?  A couple of reasons.  For one thing, books have a certain shelf life in bookstores.  Nowadays, more than ever before, as soon as sales start declining, the bookstores replace the books with faster-selling titles.  The first three books, Film Flubs, Son of Film Flubs, and Film Flubs: The Sequel are hard to find in most bookstores these days.  If we put out an edition that had only material from newer films, much of the fun that’s contained in the earlier books would be lost to newer audiences.  So we get around that problem by including material from older editions in the newer ones, along with newly-discovered flubs in recent films and a few oldies we hadn’t heard about before.  Roman Soldiers Don’t Wear Watches contains about half of the material from the earlier books; Film Flubs 1999 contains the rest.  Buy these two and you’ll have the entire collection. 
 
Why isn’t there an index in Roman Soldiers Don’t Wear Watches?  It was a decision by the publisher, with which we vehemently disagreed.  So that tells you just how much influence a writer has.  But we made one ourselves, because most people want to look up flubs in a specific movie if they’ve just seen or rented it.  Soon we'll have a downloadable index on the Web site. Check back for it.

When will there be a new Film Flubs and/or Reel Gags book?  It’s up to you!  As long as they keep selling, we’ll keep writing them.  But this isn’t a charity.  As much fun as we have with the books, we have to keep a roof over our head, pay the bills, and buy the groceries (and none of the above is cheap in California!).  Show your support by purchasing the books at your favorite bookstore (or order them online from Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com using the book links on this website), keep sending us the flubs or inside jokes that you spot (click here for an e-mail form), and we’ll keep the assembly line rolling! 
 

© Copyright 1999 Bill Givens