Spotting Errors

While reading a book or watching a movie, have you ever noticed an errors? I have found a few errors in my books and they are books from major authors. This leaves me believing that no one proof reads their final work. I know for a fact that I make errors in my writing even after I have had it proofed a number of times. But there used to be copy readers who read manuscripts and magazine articles and newspaper articles. That doesn’t seem to be the case now.

I also find bloopers or mistakes in movies, which seems to be kind of interesting and funny. I was watching the latest episode of Mad Men and saw two discrepancies that made me check them out. Since the time period for Mad Men is in the 60s…I found one of the characters using a television remote control. Wow…when did the remote control appear on the scene? Surely not in the 60s…all considering that it looked like a newer model of remote controls. I found that in the 70s the remote control was hooked up by a wire. This main character in Mad Men did not have a wire attached to his remote controller.

Then later on, the man handed his daughter 50 cents to make a phone call. Now I know that local calls cost at least 25 cents in those days, maybe even less…so why the 50 cents? I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now. I guess one should be thankful for today’s cell phones because public phones no longer even exist.

Anyway…I guess it doesn’t matter but if the writer is going to be so meticulous in the story line, costumes and music, why not in the little things? I don’t make it a habit to look for errors but those two just popped out at me.

But I do have to say that I like all those silly bloopers or flubs that come at the end of those crazy comedies. Sometimes, they are even better than the movie, itself.