Movie Trivia # 025: Picking on the Biggies - Cape Fear

I would have posted this earlier, but when I noticed I turned to a "Picking on the Biggies" section, I thought it was best to wait until I had more time.

Cinema master Martin Scorsese is not immune from flubbing--even in a film as precisely and suspensefullly assembled as Cape Fear (1991). Perhaps the most noticed flub in it happens when Ileanna Douglas and Robert De Niro chat in a bar. As she talks, the top button on her blouse is undone. Seconds later she buttons it, then it goes back to unbuttoned and buttoned without her ever touching it.

Later De Niro watches as Nick Nolte checks in at the airline ticket counter before boarding a plane. De Niro then asks the agent if Nolte is on the flight and when he is returning. Try that yourself and see what kind of response you get. According to a flub spotter in the know, airlines do not allow ticket agents to release this information. It takes a high-ranking official with proper security clearance to pull up a passenger list.

Young Juliette Lewis has a bit of a problem with the family vehicle. She says that she's grounded from driving the Jeep Cherokee as punishment for smoking. Unless someone traded cars in the meanwhile, when the family flees they're in a Jeep Wagoneer. Small difference, but a goof nonetheless.

Another flub relates to Nick Nolte's statement that he had to go to hearings before the American Bar Association as a result of his criminal actions towards De Niro. We have this on high authority--no less than the Hon. Stanley M. Billingsley, of the 15th Judicial District of Kentucky. Judge Billingsley points out that the ABA doesn't license lawyers and has no authority to disbar them; it is a national lobbying association. Nolte would more properly have to go before the North Carolina Bar Association, given that Cape Fear is in that state.

This and other Movie Trivia posts brought to you by Roman Soldiers Don't Wear Watches by Bill Givens.