Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: If they hate their jobs then why not quit and sue their boss?

Rob245

Answer: It's not easy to just quit and find a new job and they would not have good references. Lawsuits are difficult, being long, involved, and expensive processes with no guarantees of winning. (If one loses, they can be responsible for the other party's legal costs.) The three women were at a distinct disadvantage as they'd be up against an entire company that most likely would protect the boss, as they'd also be liable for allowing his abuse and be forced to implement new policies. The ladies also wanted to take a stand and fight back, not just for themselves, but for the other women who worked there, making positive company-wide changes while keeping the boss locked up.

raywest

Question: Even before Abel saw the interracial couple making out in the pool, why would he be so suspicious that they are a bad influence? How exactly does his wife's death and unfaithfulness play a role in this mistrust?

Movielover1996

Answer: Abel was mentally unstable and that drove his overall behavior. His initial antagonism about Chris and Lisa started with a variety of factors including them being an inter-racial couple, Chris' smoking, and the couple listening to hip hop music. This was all exaggerated in Abel's mind, and continued festering. Abel's late wife had an affair with a white man, which seems to be a factor in his objection to any inter-racial relationship and distrust of white men. It's implied that Abel's extreme, controlling behavior is what led to his wife's infidelity.

raywest

Question: What's the back story of Mort and his wife mentioning the previous stalker and how he paid him off? They also mentioned the people who only knew.

Answer: As I recall, the person who was paid off was another writer whose story Mort had plagiarized. Any previous stalker would be a figment of Mort's imagination, even early on, and symptomatic of his increasing schizophrenia and paranoia that ended his marriage.

raywest

Question: Whenever we see Sauron aka the Necromancer, he appears to be shadowy. Did he have a physical form during the events of the Hobbit or not?

Josh West

Answer: Sauron did not have a full physical form at this time. He cannot completely reform his physical body until the One Ring is returned to him. The Necromancer is portrayed as "shadowy" in the films to represent the fact that he is not an entirely corporeal being. Sauron at this point was only able to use a fraction of his power, so he was easily cast out of Dol Guldur.

BaconIsMyBFF

Rick Potion #9 - S1-E6

Question: Throughout all the seasons they are said to be from dimension C-137. Is that their dimension before or after this episode, when they permanently change for the rest of the seasons?

Answer: C-137 is the dimension they came from since the pilot. After C-137 is Chronenberg'd, Rick and Morty travel to a replacement dimension that we haven't found out the designation of (although they may have moved dimensions again). The "original" Jerry, Beth, and Summer are still on C-137 though.

Bishop73

Question: Can anyone tell me the name of the music the band is playing when chief Brody and his wife are dancing?

Answer: Teach me tonight is the name of song when Chief Brody and his wife Ellen are dancing to.

Answer: The songs are: Downtown, The Girl From Ipanema, and Teach Me Tonight.

The very first piece the Amity High School band plays, is a piece called "FANFARE." It was composed specifically for the film -> by Universal's music department head (at the time) HAL MOONEY, utilizing a small Universal staff ensemble of musicians. The composers of the other pieces: Downtown (Tony Hatch), The Girl From Ipanema (Antonio Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes), and Teach Me Tonight (Gene DePaul/Sammy Cahn). I had hoped so much when they came out with the definitive JAWS 2 score, that John Williams would have permitted these pieces to be included on the score. I think the case was that those particular pieces were not in the 'vaults' along with the John Williams score. We'd all agree, those songs are essential to the JAWS 2 narrative.

Any idea if the Teach Me Tonight arrangement from Jaws 2 is commercially available? Great instrumental in the big band style.

Question: Why did Angela / Peter refuse to eat much food at first, and also refuse to play volleyball? She / he could probably do those things without the secret being revealed.

Answer: Watch his first scene at his aunt's. He doesn't speak at all. Clearly Angela/Peter has had a withdrawn personality since the death of his father and older sister. So doing activities with other kids is one thing he wouldn't do, as for eating, a lot of kids don't at first if they miss home.

Rob245

Question: So Tatum is running from Ghostface, she's running to do what exactly here? I'm confused why she didn't just try to open the garage then run to the beer and throw it at him and run out instead of going through the doggy door and dying like that. (01:06:57)

Answer: She panicked. And when someone is panicked they make stupid decisions.

lionhead

Answer: It is also known that Stu locked the door, so she couldn't escape.

Question: Does Schofield throw away his canteen after he pours water over his eyes? In any event he has it again to fill with milk at the abandoned farm house.

Answer: He puts his canteen back after he poured water over his eyes. You can tell because after he gets up it's hanging on his side again.

lionhead

Question: Why didn't Sandy immediately telephone Danny when she found out she and her family were not going back to Australia, and that she would be attending his high school?

Answer: Perhaps Sandy didn't know the high school she would be going was the same as Danny's, so she didn't think to call him already, but wanted to do it later. It's all very vague about where it all come from. The point is she never thought she would see Danny again, just like Danny thought he would never see her again. With that in mind they might indeed not have exchanged phone numbers anyway so no way to contact each other.

lionhead

Answer: Maybe they didn't exchange phone numbers.

I don't think exchanging phone numbers would have been common practice in the 1950s. If anything, Danny would have her number.

KeyZOid

I grew up in the period this movie was set in and, considering Sandy and Danny were dating, they would definitely have exchanged phone numbers.

That's a lousy answer, considering how much Sandy and Danny supposedly meant to each other. Having grown up in the years the movie was set in, I know those teenagers would have been calling back and forth to each other when they weren't together at the beach.

Answer: Being a Ladies' Man, Danny probably told her the same thing. He was only vacationing for the summer and would be returning home to another city and state.

Not a good answer. It requires you to ignore too much of the rest of the plot of the movie regarding Danny's strong feelings for Sandy.

Answer: Again, he had his reputation as a Ladies Man, he didn't want the gang to know, he was wimping out and had fall in love. Remember the song, "Summer Lovin" He told of scoring with a hot babe, while Sandy sang of true love.

Answer: Considering all the answers given so far to this question aren't believable, let me provide one that is: Perhaps Sandy had already tired of Danny by the end of the summer, and wanted to move on with her life and find a guy who wasn't a wimpy greaseball.

Answer: More than likely, based on Sandy's demeanor and adherence to etiquette, she would not have exchanged her number with a boy. She even said to Rizzo at the lunch table that she went to the beach to see a boy she met so most likely she and Danny would have made plans in person to meet up like they did.

Answer: I had an exchange student LIVE in my parents house for a month when I was in high school in 1990. I liked her a lot. We were the same age. We got along. I did not have her phone number when she left. Why? Because there was no way my father was letting me call France "long distance" in 1990. In 1959, I'm going to say that calling long distance was probably not on their radar as a viable option. Not to mention - realistically, when you're 17, and you never think you're going to see each other again because you're separated by continent, what would be the point of exchanging numbers?

This was a nice story, but has nothing to with answering the question. Sandy didn't live with Danny, so they would have exchanged local numbers, or at least Danny would have given Sandy his number if she didn't know the number where she was staying so they could call each other during the summer. For your story to be slightly comparable, the exchange student would have had live somewhere else. In that scenario you certainly would have given her your number and she wouldn't give you her number in France but where she was staying.

Bishop73

Question: When Avram is departing on his horse after meeting Tommy, Tommy asks him if he speaks any Mexican. Abram, who doesn't, is puzzled by the question and asks why...to which Tommy responds "Just curious." I've always assumed that Tommy was mocking him cause he was unknowingly riding south and headed for Mexico instead of West towards San Francisco. Am I right?

Gavin Jackson

Answer: Right on the nose.

Question: In the morning after Bond and Paris slept together in the hotel, Paris leaves despite protests from Bond. When Bond gets back to the hotel she is lying dead on his bed having been murdered. How did she get back there?

Answer: Elliot Carver arranged it, he called Dr. Kaufman, who said, he is a specialist in arranging the perfect murder. His specialty is the celebrity suicide.

Question: If Diana was able to recognize Kit even after years of not seeing him then how come she didn't notice he has the same voice as the Phantom, whom she had just been with the day before? He doesn't try to disguise his voice in any way.

Answer: She was preoccupied trying to escape from the bad guys and annoyed that a guy in a purple suit, was trying to save her, when she said, "I can do it myself." It was most likely later, in New York, when the met face to face. Kit and Diana, when she put two and two together. Again was too preoccupied trying to save the world to pause and confront him.

Answer: In real life, she would likely have recognized it. Movies employ a "suspension of disbelief." Audiences are expected to accepted something they know is not realistic in order for the plot to play out.

raywest

Question: In order not to spoil the plot twist it seems as though Malcolm and Anna's marriage is strained, i.e. him standing Anna up on their anniversary saying he went to a different restaurant, etc. Was their marriage potentially/actually strained anyway because of him trying to help Vincent and seemingly repeating history with Cole? Malcolm notes the comparison out loud, thinking Anna can hear him and is ignoring him.

Answer: It appears their marriage was happy, though any married couple experiences ups and downs, and doctors particularly have demanding professions that can affect their family life. However, Anna's reaction, as we see it in the movie, is the direct result of her extreme grief over Malcolm's death. It is only from Malcolm's altered perception that it appears there is a marital rift.

raywest

Answer: There certainly couldn't be any strain due to Malcolm's repeating history by helping Cole, because he's doing that post-mortem, so to speak. Anna knows Malcolm is dead, so no, no strain due to his helping Cole.

Uncle Moose

I'm starting to think this is actually an element that Mr. Shyamalan (sp?) added as a way of explaining Malcolm's reaction to Anna's behavior toward him at the restaurant. Malcolm has to believe that something he's done wrong is bothering Anna, because the alternative is that she doesn't hear him and doesn't see him. And if Malcolm thought that, then we'd have a whole different movie, with Malcolm waving his arms and shouting, doing whatever, to get her attention, etc etc. So it works as a way to keep Malcolm in ignorance or denial, and it also shows the two of them together to the audience, hopefully keeping us from catching on to the twist. Brilliant.

Uncle Moose

Question: Why doesn't Lt. Schaffer shoot the radio operator with the silenced pistol instead of trying to sneak up behind him to kill him with a knife? Why didn't Mr. Eastwood or Mr. Burton point out the idiocy of that part of the plot to the director?

Answer: Because "silenced" pistols aren't silent. Hollywood has created this myth. Weapon sounds can be suppressed but never silenced.

stiiggy

Answer: This question has already been answered. There's no "idiocy" in choosing one method over another on how to kill someone in that type of situation. Obviously, it was decided that the knife was a better option. This is a movie, not reality. Choices about scenes are made for what works best dramatically for the plot, not about what someone would necessarily do in a real-life situation.

raywest

Question: When the tank was coming towards the cliff, why didn't Indy simply jump off the tank? If he jumped to the right or left his father and others wouldn't think that he died.

Answer: There's no way to really answer this because this is an intentionally crafted plot, designed to have characters act and react in a specific way. The movie is going for dramatic effect, making it appear the others think Indy is dead. When he reappears safe and sound, his father has an emotional reaction, showing how much he cares for his son.

raywest

Question: Why did the boat's engine explode exactly? Hooper says he had burnt out the bearings, but how is this possible? It's not like a car engine where if you hold it at max revs for ages it'll seize up, this was a marine engine, they are designed to run at max revs all day. Hooper also didn't have any issues going at full throttle the previous day when they first got a barrel on the shark, so what changed?

Answer: It was most likely going full throttle that caused the engine to burn out. Besides, the boat isn't brand new, from the look of it, it should have been put in the scrap yard years ago.

Answer: There were many contributing factors in the demise of the engine. When Quint and Hooper are working on the engine the day previously, Hooper says "The injectors have been scorched by the saltwater in the fuel" and then Quint mentions something about the housing being bent. Working it too hard was just simply too much for her and she blew.

Answer: This is a Hollywood movie, and Hollywood loves explosions in their movies. The Mythbusters tested a number of explosions in movies (mostly involving cars), showing it was highly improbable they would blow up as depicted in a film. I suspect this is the case in "Jaws." Spielberg was going for dramatic visual effect rather than reality. The same could be said about the scuba tank blowing up in the shark's mouth when Brody shot it with a rifle. The tank would never explode like that just from a gun shot and was yet another fallacy the Mythbusters debunked.

raywest

Question: Why did they change the movie version when it went to VHS/DVD? There was a scene where Sandy was in the office and Kenicky came in and spoke to her... It's lost now?

Answer: It's not uncommon for films to be changed from the theatrical release to the version you can buy for your home collection. Normally the changes are slight and for some older releases were done to secure a more favourable rating - these edits tend to get restored in later releases though. Having said that another version often turns up on the telly one day with scenes that have never been seen before, then there's sometimes a "Director's Cut" on a DVD somewhere which is different still and often significantly longer. TL;DR - there can be multiple versions of a movie.

Neil Jones

Question: Tyler triggers the explosives in the tunnel and dies - how does that happen? Is it literally just coincidence/hubris that he made a mistake/the card didn't work?

Jon Sandys

Chosen answer: The card didn't work.

Answer: Season 8.

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.