At the beginning of the movie Everett makes it clear that it is the 17th and the valley is to be flooded on the 21st. Problem is a few nights later when the boys are out in the woods enjoying stolen pie, the newspaper that declares that the Soggy Bottom Boys are a hit is dated July 13, 1937. See more...
Tommy Johnson was a real bluesman of the time, who was rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil. He was supposed to have met the Devil by "the crossroads", where in fact Everett & co first meet him. While this is also true about Robert Johnson, the character in the movie was always supposed to be Tommy (who also contributed actively to spreading the rumor for the PR value, unlike Robert). See more...
Directed by Joel Coen, starring George Clooney, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson (add more)
Genres: Comedy, Adventure, Crime, Music
Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.
At the end of the film, when they are floating on the coffin in the flooded valley, there is a current moving from the right to the left. While other objects float away in the current, they stay dead still, obviously they are tied down. [No, as noted in a previous correction the characters are swimming against the current, simply by moving their legs underwater.]
Corrected by Twotall
In the movie, George Nelson goes to the electric chair. But George Nelson was never arrested in Mississippi, but was killed by police near Chicago. [Submitted and corrected in a similar manner elsewhere - this is a different, fictional George 'Baby Face' Nelson, nothing to do with the real life gangster.]
When the confederate flag is thrown at the Klansmen, Homer Stokes yells out not to let the flag touch the ground. John Goodman catches the pole holding the flag, then he turns the pole upside down, letting the flag touch the ground. [This is not a mistake, it's a joke in the movie.]
If the current in the flood scene is moving from right to left, then why are Everett, Pete, and Delmar floating on the coffin from left to right? [They could be kicking against the current.]
When the three guys get in George Nelson's car he hangs out the window and asks the guy in the back seat to hand him his gun, as it is handed to him there is no ammo clip in it, but within no time he is firing the fully loaded weapon even though he had no time to load it. [There is an ammo clip, it's between the two handgrips and apparently full.]
When George Clooney and his two pals are about to be hanged and the flooding water saves them, their hands are tied. Yet in the very next scene, when they are floating in the water, their hands are not tied. [In the rush of water that immediately follows the wave, we see several objects floating by. Dimly lit is one of the heros untying and slipping out of his bonds. If one could do it, the others could, too.]
After falling off the train, a pump car approaches the three fellows travelling the same direction from which the train came. If this were so, the pump car would had to have been miraculously placed onto the tracks just after the train passed by. [The pump car could have been on a side track when the train passed by it, then switched back to the main track. ]
The Soggy Bottom Boys was a real band. [No it was not, but the musicians who performed the songs for the movie have performed under that name since then. See: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDCASS80311232040360380&sql=Brhuh6jp17190]
When Baby Face Nelson is firing his Tommy Gun at the pursuing police officers, there is a shot where he fires off a burst, re-cocks the gun, and then fires again. Why would he do that? He hasn't changed the magazine, the gun hasn't jammed, and he isn't out of ammunition. So all he's ended up doing is ejecting a perfectly good .45 bullet from his sub-machine gun. [The Tommy Gun had a flaw throughout its service life that would cause it to fire a shell, eject the empty case, and close the bolt without chambering a new round. Thus he had to cock it again.]
Corrected by Grumpy Scot
When George and the boys steal a car from the store/gas bar, the plates read 1937.Baby face Nelson was killed by the feds in 1934. [George Nelson in the film is not supposed to be the real "Baby Face Nelson", just as the guitar player picked up at the crossroads is not Robert Johnson. "Baby Face Nelson's real name was Lester Gillis.]
Clooney and one of his pals go into a theatre to watch a movie, with John Turturro and a group of jailed convicts sitting a few rows behind. A neon "EXIT" sign is hanging in plain view in the back of the theatre. Obviously, there were no neon signs in movie theatres of the 1930s. [Neon gas was first discovered in 1897 and in 1910, Georges Claude passed an electrical current through a tube of the gas and discovered what we now see as neon signs. The sign industry almost immediately picked up on the discovery and began making signs out of it in the 1910's.]
You may also like: Back to the Future | The Wizard of Oz | Chicago | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Casino Royale
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