Other mistake: The radio station had no power or telephone lines anywhere in the vicinity, and the lines would not have been buried in 1937. A telephone is seen on the wall inside the building, yet it couldn't have been connected to anything. There wasn't a generator to power the radio transmitter, because it would have had an exhaust pipe through the roof, nor was there any adjacent building to house a generator.
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O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
1 other mistake
Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Starring: John Goodman, George Clooney, John Turturro, Holly Hunter, Tim Blake Nelson
Factual error: When the "Little Wharvey Gals" are singing they show a shot of the crowd in which there is a man smoking a filtered cigarette. Cigarettes were not filtered until the late '40's.
Pappy O'Daniel: I'll press your flesh, you dimwitted sumbitch! You don't tell your pappy how to court the electorate. We ain't one-at-a-timin' here. We're mass communicating.
Question: The only way that the valley could be flooded by rampaging water is that a dam was broken up river. Otherwise the water rises very slowly. Does the movie explain this? If so I missed it. In which way was that river flooded?
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Answer: Probably they have dismantled the coffer dam that was used while constructing the main dam. Hence, the flooding.
Good and reasonable last resort explanation - have the Coens ever addressed it?