Continuity mistake: After Meredith Johnson is "turned down", she goes storming out of her office after Tom Sanders. She leans very far over the stair rail to yell at him. In the following shots, it alternates between Meredith standing nearly straight up and leaning way over so the camera could get a cleavage shot.
Disclosure (1994)
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas, Demi Moore, Caroline Goodall
Visible crew/equipment: After Tom gets the email that warns him that "It's not over", a woman is reflected in the glass wall in the next shot.
Factual error: "A Friend's" emails sent from the Univ. Of Washington look ridiculous with just some text and an abbreviated name on a colored background. UW emails have a white background, the addresses have a "uw.edu" domain name and show staff name, credentials, title, and department. The UW name, logo, and other info are always included. Prof. Friend's student assistant (son of Tom's co-worker) sent the emails from Friend's office, but he could have sent anonymous ones from any computer using Yahoo, Google, etc.
Susan Hendler: Of course everyone knows! I'm so old fashioned, I greet my employees with a handshake.
Meredith Johnson: Let's get down to business.
Bob Garvin: The Chinese say, "May you live in interesting times." Well this has been the most interesting merger since my second marriage.
Question: What was the underlying reason for Sutherland for wanting to dump Michael Douglas? Was he aware that Demi Moore had fouled up the production line in Malaysia? If so, why was he backing her? The buyout/merger would be tainted with the bad CD/ROM drives so was he hoping to merge before the bad units came to light? He wanted Douglas to stay on until the merger at least. Why make bad drives to start with if he truly hoped to spin off the CD/ROM production. Was Demi acting on her own when she attempted to frame Douglas for sexual assault? What would have been the outcome if Douglas had gone all the way with her? Was she hoping to pin a rape charge on him but since that didn't work opted for the assault? Was she just hoping to dominate/humiliate him and when that didn't work opted for the assault charge? Douglas was the driving force behind development of the CD/ROM drives so why attempt to get rid of him in the first place? There are so many unanswered questions.
Question: Why was Meredith so enthusiastic to make Tom "lose everything"? All she wanted was for him to be transferred or quit so he didn't find out about the changes on the production line, but she is asking him to see pictures of his family and trying to send him to Austin which would be sold, instead of another place. The book even mentions that Meredith was the one who was aiming to sell Austin. Why not just transfer Tom to another place and job in Digicom?
Answer: She needs to heavily discredit him in order to cover up her own mistakes. She wants to transfer him to Austin and then sell it so she can do it quietly and without ado.
Question: The book explains Meredith changed Tom's specifications on the production line to try and impress CEO Ed Nichols by cutting costs. But why did she choose to do it on Tom's responsibility in the first place? Why not just change someone else's specifications? Did she despise Tom in some way or did she choose to change Tom's specifications because she knew she was incompetent, and thus chose him to blame in case she messed up?
Answer: Tom was the head of the project. Even with someone else's specifications, it all comes down to him.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Answer: Sutherland was aware there were problems with the production line, but he did not know it was Moore's doing. He had perfect reason to put the blame on Douglas as he was responsible for the production line, and Douglas had almost taken $100 million from him and Meredith, who he believed to be the key to the merger and deeply cared about, unaware of how much he was of her manipulation of him. Moore impulsively changed Douglas' specifications on the production line as it was his responsibility and to attempt to improve costs, but her incompetence led to the problems. She did not frame Douglas because she was spurned, but premeditated to do so after discovering the problems to try to get him fired before he discovered the problems with the line. She also blackmailed Arthur Khan into lying to Douglas and send the drives late (in the novel she was having an affair with Conley-White CEO Ed Nichols). On the other hand, Moore does appear to have an ulterior motive as she appears jealous that Douglas has a family and typically demonstrates herself throughout the novel and film as a woman scorned and has a manipulative personality.