Ray (2004)

Factual error: There is a scene with his baby, Ray Jr. has a butterfly shaped pacifier in his mouth. They didn't have butterfly pacifiers then - just plain old pacifiers were available.

Factual error: When Ray and several others are riding in an automobile they pass underneath a railroad bridge. Passing over them on the bridge is a modern day container type train, a train of the era that the film portrays would be made up mainly of boxcars, tank cars, etc. not shipping containers.

Factual error: When Ray arrives at the concert hall in Georgia, his tour bus is escorted by two police officers riding motorcycles. If you look closely, you will see that the motorcycles are actually Harley Davidson bikes produced between the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Factual error: In one scene, Ray is frying chicken. He proceeds to flour a couple of pieces and drop them in the pan containing hot grease. There is a piece already in the pan that is done, so Ray holds out the pan to his friend to take the piece of chicken. His friend reaches into the pan, removes the piece of chicken and immediately bites into it. Fried chicken that has just been removed from hot grease cannot be immediately eaten. It has to be removed and allowed to cool for a few minutes. The friend would have burned his fingers as soon as he reached into the pan and then would have burned his mouth as soon as he bit into the chicken.

Allyson ★

Factual error: In the scene when Ray tells Ray, Jr. that he will buy new uniforms for his son's baseball team, the house across the street at the far left has a mini-satellite dish on the roof. Mini-satellite dishes for personal home use were not available in 1965. (02:13:00)

Factual error: In the scene where Ray and his band play "I Got Me a Woman" for Ahmet, the trumpeters are lifting their fingers off the valves between notes that are the same fingering. Out of efficiency, there's no reason to do that.

Factual error: In the opening scene where Foxx is playing "What I Say" on the piano, there is a close-up of his fingers and the notes he is fingering are wrong.

Factual error: When Ray is being interviewed at KCOH the "on the air" sign is illuminated. When the microphone is turned off, the sign stays illuminated. The "on the air" sign means that the microphone is on, not that the station itself is on the air.

Wayne C.