I've got an attack of the grrrrs and I want to vent my spleen and heap scorn on those screenwriters or producers or whoever okays the final product for lack of simple facts.
What annoys the heck out of me are movies or TV series where the facts have not been checked or anything goes. Let me explain.
Gripe The First: Recently I watched a rerun of the movie, Australia - you know, the one with Nic Kidman. Well, in the film, there is a close up of a certificate signed by a US Army captain. It was signed as "CPT".
CPT? Nah! in WW2 and for about twenty years later, the rank abbreviation was Capt.
The second glaring error was when Darwin was being evacuated. An Australian Army Military Policeman was directing people traffic. He wore a beard. A beard was the privilege of an infantry battalion's pioneer sergeant. MPs and other soldiers did not wear beards. The only service allowing beards was the Australian Navy (RAN).
Gripe The Second: I have been an avid reader and lover of the Anne Of Green Gables stories both in print and on film. I have a copy of the 1934 version starring Anne Shirley.
The opening scene was close to the book, but the character Mrs Rachel Barry was not. LM Montgomery wrote her in as Mrs Rachel Lynde. Anne's best friend, Diana Barry came from another family.
In the Canadian TV series with Megan Follows and Colleen Dewhurst - it was pretty close to the book - but the timing was well out. Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908. In the succeeding episodes all goes along well until the very last - The sequel.
Everyone is ostracizing Gilbert who had not enlisted. As far as I could tell, he did not join up. Like Anne, he would have been too old - had the script followed the book.
Anne marries Gilbert - this is at the onset of WW1 - no way. In the books, Anne and Rilla of Ingleside it is their sons who go off to war - one boy dying in action.
When Anne and Gilbert marry, they are introduced as Officer and Mrs Blythe - Officer? No, Gilbert was in the Medical Corps with the rank of Captain. Another of the characters, a Canadian Army private was also addressed as 'officer." Where that was dragged up from is anybody's guess.
Mrs Montgomery must have been ready to hurl thunderbolts down on the TV crowd for the way her books were stuffed up.
The above has soured me from extolling Australia and for giving a good review for Anne Of Green Gables - The Sequel -which was run just prior to Christmas.
I've just become involved with screen writing - and have written a TV series for kids - Dream On Kelly - about a boy who is a real-life Walter Mitty.
Even in those dream sequences I had to be careful on the historical facts to give credence to the story.
Aaaah! I feel better now.
