Friday, 8 December 2023

Uncanny Tales – (092) Rewriting History One Fact at A Time # 2

 

If there is one thing that irritates me more than any other, it has to be historical inaccuracies in film and TV scripts.

Now I’m not talking about things like Braveheart or The Battle of the Bulge or countless other attempts by the Americans to rewrite history.

No, the things that irritate me are the little things, the small easy to verify things, the things that they just can’t be bothered to do right.

 

For example, in the American hit TV series NCIS there is a character, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo played by Michael Weatherly, who, apart from being a special agent also considers himself to be a bit of film buff.

DiNozzo is constantly either quoting from movies or is making endless film references to accompany any given situation he is in or indeed crime scene he is at.

In one episode he is drawing a parallel between his own situation and that of the characters in the 1938 classic “Angels with Dirty Faces” with James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart.

And the afore mentioned parallel would have been quite apt, had he not made a serious faux pas, well I think it was serious.

He referenced to the fact that Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly grew up as tough kids in Hell's Kitchen, the toughest part of New York, and their destinies were set when Rocky got sent to reform school and Jerry escaped the law and went on to becomes a priest.

So far so good, but where DiNozzo went wrong was to say that the Father Connolly character was played by Bogey (Humphrey Bogart), who was in the film, when he was in fact played by Pat O'Brien.

Quite unforgivable when DiNozzo is supposed to be an aficionado of film.

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