Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: In virtually all the outdoor attack scenes (but most noticeably in the phone booth sequence), the rotoscope seagulls and crows are proportioned about 150% to 200% of their natural size, about the size of turkeys.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: When hundreds of sparrows pour out of the fireplace, filling the house, they do not cast shadows on the furniture, walls or people.

Charles Austin Miller

Other mistake: In the hospital scene wherein Lucy disarms the gunmen and retrieves the briefcase of drugs, she plunges her hands inside a fallen man's abdomen to retrieve the last bag of drugs. Her hands are thus drenched in fresh, bright red blood. Lucy immediately steps to the corridor doors, places her bloody right hand against the door (plainly touching the glass) and pushes it open. But when she pauses and turns away, there are no bloody handprints, fingerprints or blood smears anywhere on the door.

Charles Austin Miller

Revealing mistake: Just after the first shark attack, Chief Brody and his deputy discover the beached remains of the nude swimmer. As Chief Brody hesitantly approaches the grisly scene, the camera cuts to a close-up of a mutilated female arm and other viscera, covered with a creeping cluster of small saltwater crabs. Inexplicably, a single crab falls out of thin air on the right side of the screen to join the others. A moment later, Chief Brody arrives at the scene, in the background. Obviously, a film crew member dumped a bucket of live crabs onto the body parts for this shot, but poor editing allowed one of the animals to be seen falling onto the pile.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Yul Brynner, The Man in Black, has only 9 lines of dialogue throughout the movie, only 32 words. In the first saloon scene, Brynner intentionally bumps Richard Benjamin and says, "Sloppy with your drink"; after some silence, Brynner says to the bartender, "Get this boy a bib"; a few moments later, Brynner taunts again, "He needs his momma"; Benjamin finally summons the courage to speak, and Brynner replies, "You say something, boy?" Benjamin says Brynner talks too much, and Brynner challenges, "Why don't you make me shut up?" Whereupon, the two men square off for a duel, and Brynner finally says, "Your move." Later, about half-way through the film, when the Man in Black invades their hotel room, Richard Benjamin overhears Yul Brynner say the line "Not a word" to James Brolin. Even later, Brynner challenges Benjamin and Brolin in the street: Brynner first says, "Hold it," and shoots Brolin dead; Brynner then smiles at Benjamin and says, "Draw."

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: Both director Stanley Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke originally chose Jupiter as the Discovery's destination, and production of the Jupiter sequences and elaborate special effects were already finished ("in the can") when Kubrick abruptly decided to change the destination to Saturn. Kubrick thought Saturn with its rings would be more visually exciting than the Jupiter footage that he had already finished, so he ordered his special effects team to begin work on the Saturn effects. At the same time, Arthur C. Clarke changed the destination to Saturn in his "2001" novel that he was writing concurrent with the movie's production. Stanley Kubrick was well known for making such sudden and costly changes in the middle of production, but money wasn't really an issue; in fact, when Kubrick showed MGM studio heads and investors his early special effects footage, they were so awestruck that they all agreed to pay any price for the finished film. The real reason that Kubrick didn't go to Saturn was the protest of his exasperated special effects team, who had spent an enormous amount of time and effort on the already-completed Jupiter footage and had stretched their ingenuity to the point of exhaustion. The FX artists and technicians were extremely proud of their work and argued against simply discarding it to the cutting room floor. Kubrick, in typical fashion, abruptly dropped the Saturn idea without a second thought and stayed with Jupiter. (Strangely enough, Arthur C. Clarke still thought Saturn was a better destination, so he kept it in his novel, which published shortly after the movie premiered).

Charles Austin Miller

Factual error: In the scene where the ship encounters the tidal wave, the ship is located in the Mediterranean Sea and is struck by a tsunami generated by a sub-sea earthquake 130 miles off the coast of Crete. The Mediterranean is a relatively calm body of water compared to the Atlantic. Beyond that, a tsunami wave from even a major earthquake will pass almost unnoticed to ships at sea; tsunamis only rise up and become dangerous in shallow water on coastlines.

Charles Austin Miller

Trivia: According to actor Malcolm McDowell, director Stanley Kubrick was concerned that the Droog attack on F. Alexander and his wife would become just another dark, cruel and violent scene in a movie that was already full of dark, cruel and violent scenes. Kubrick wanted the Alexander home invasion to stand out as genuinely horrifying, but he was at a creative impasse. After Kubrick shut down production for several days to ponder the problem, he thought of Alex dancing during the attack. Malcolm McDowell suggested dancing (and singing) along to "Singin' in the Rain," as it was the only song to which he knew all the words.

Charles Austin Miller