Goofs for
L.A. Confidential (1997) More at IMDbPro »

• Anachronisms: The premiere of When Worlds Collide (1951) is depicted as occurring in December 1952.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In early 1953 (before March 15), characters watch Roman Holiday (1953), which actually premiered in late summer.
  
  
• Continuity: The glass of scotch that Lynn gives to White at her house disappears, and then reappears again.
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: In the final scene, when the car door opens, the crew is visible in the reflection of the door.
  
  
• Continuity: Susan Lefferts is supposedly dead, yet her body has goosebumps.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the street scene after the kidnapped girl is rescued, a blue US Postal Service box is visible. In the 1950s, all of these boxes were drab olive, and the US postal service wasn't the US Postal Service.
  
  
• Continuity: Mrs. Lefferts' glasses (side bit) move from being under her kerchief on top of it (without her taking the glasses off) when Bud White interviews her at her home.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: White's car leaves dust clouds when he leaves the Victory Motel on the way to Lynn's house during the rain storm.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: White leaves Lynn's house when it is raining; it is still raining when he fights with Exley in the records room, yet when they confront the District Attorney, it is clear outside with scant evidence of rain having fallen. However, these locations are far enough apart that this is possible; in addition, there are rain streaks and tire tracks that imply the rain had fallen there earlier.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final scene, Ed and Lynn are facing each other yet the sun is shown as being behind both of them.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final scene, two woman walk past each other, behind and to Ed's left, as he is standing on the sidewalk. However, when he is seen through the rear window of the car - from Bud's perspective - the original women have disappeared and two new women (walking together, toward Ed) have taken their place.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the last scene, when Lynn is opening the car, you can see a reflection of the crew in the car door.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Ed Exley asks Lynn Bracken what she can tell him about Dudley Smith, she says she has never heard of him. While unlikely to be true, she was quite possibly lying.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Bud White rushes into the morgue to find Dick Stensland's body, one of the sheets he turns up uncovers an older man with grey hair who appears to have almost had the skin scraped off of him (or maybe burned off). In a later scene where Exley is speaking to the coroner about the identification of another corpse, an event depicted as occurring days later, the coroner is doing an autopsy on what is clearly the same body. It's obvious that the production crew simply recycled the body, but in reality, it would have been a grievous error for a coroner to wait so long to do an autopsy.
  
  
• Continuity: During the fight between Bud White and Ed Exley, the table lamp's light bulb clearly burns out. After the fight, the lamp is on again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Exley talks to Vincennes about Rolo Tomassi, Guy Pearce's English accent accidentally slips when he tells Jack, "I just wanna solve this thing".
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When White meets Dudley for a drink, he asks, "What do you want, Captain?", although he is mouthing something else.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Dudley breaks up a fight between White and Exley, he tells Exley not to bother White when his blood is up, although he is mouthing something else.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Exley constantly wears and removes his glasses throughout the movie, even when he is reading; presumably, whatever his vision defect, it's not too severe, so that use of glasses is partly dependent on his mood.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During several outside shots, especially during the raid on the kidnappers' den, downtown Los Angeles can be seen in the background featuring buildings that were not completed until several years later.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The phone number of Fleur-de-Lis is CRestview 2239. At the time, Los Angeles was using a mixture of phone numbers with 4 and 5 digits after the exchange (what today we would call 6 and 7 digit phone numbers).
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Sid Hudgeons is talking to Jack Vincennes about the male hooker, his words don't match his lips.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Exley blasts one of the rapists out of the window, there is clearly an enormous belt around the man's waist, to yank him backwards.
  
  
• Continuity: When Exley and Jack are interviewing the boxer, the cigarette that Jack is smoking changes hands between shots.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In one shot, when Bud White is dangling the D.A. out the window, the actor's safety cable is visible.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scenes showing the pot bust the marijuana is shown in a plastic baggie which did not exist in 1953.
  
  
• Continuity: At the start just after Ed Exley is interviewed Edmund Exley and Dudley Smith walk down the stairs of the police station where Dudly picks up two drinks, he hands one to Ed and the other for himself. When Dudly walks away his has disappeared.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When we see the kidnapper of Inez Soto watching TV just before White sneaks up on him and shoots him, the carton of milk on the coffee table is of today's "fold-open top" design, which was not invented until well after the early 1950s.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the fight between the cops and the Mexicans, the newspaper photographer raises his camera to take a photo. When he does so, the flashbulb fires; however, the resulting photo was obviously not taken with a flash. If it was, the officers in the foreground would have been overexposed and the rest of the scene would have looked more as though it were lit from the front, rather than from the sides and above.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the Nite Owl café murder scene, as the camera pans over the café, the mustard and cat-sup are seen to be in plastic containers. In the 1950s, mustard and cat-sup always came in glass bottles.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Det. Sgt. Jack Vincennes (Spacey) is sitting in the Frolic Club he unfolds a 50 dollar bill which has a green 'FIFTY' on the right side and a "B" signifying the Federal Reserve office on the left. None of these symbols were used on bills from the early 1950's.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the shootout scene, White draws a wheel handgun after shooting the first henchman. He fires at least 7 shots without reloading, too many for a wheel handgun, which usually carries 6.
  
  
• Continuity: During the shot of when Bud White's vehicle arrives at Pierce Patchett's house, there is a JUMP-CUT where several frames have been removed. This is noticeable just before Bud opens his car door, the trees in the background appear to suddenly skip in motion.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: In the scene outside the liquor store where Bud White confronts Buzz Meeks, the scene ends with White (who previously had disarmed Meeks) unloading Meeks' revolver and handing it back to him. When White unloads the revolver he spins the cylinder which makes a distinctive series of clicks, an audio effect often heard in films. However, only old style single action revolvers (the type seen in westerns) make this sound when their cylinders are spun. Spinning the cylinder on a modern double action revolver makes no sound whatsoever.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the DA is talking to Bud White in his bathroom in front of the mirror, at one point, his lips don't match what is heard.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bud White drives up to the Victory Motel for the interrogation of Sid Hudgens, it is raining heavily and the sky is gray and overcast. But in the brief shot of Bud running through the doorway, the parking lot in the background is bathed in bright sunshine.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The story takes place in 1953. Johnny Stompanato and Lana Turner did not start dating, nor had they met until 1957.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: At the Victory Motel shoot out, Dudley Smith is clearly seen shooting Bud White in the right cheek after he stabs Dudley in the leg. At the end of the movie when Bud White is sitting in a vehicle saying goodbye to Ed Exley, the bandage is on his left cheek. However, Bud also has clearly visible barely closed wound on the right cheek. Exit wounds are usually more severe than entry wounds so the bandage on the left side on the face is justified, assuming that the bullet penetrated both cheeks.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: When Jack Vincennes finds Matt Reynolds's body, there is a close-up shot on Matt's face. In that shot you can clearly see that the vein in his neck is still moving.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: After Stensland's death at the Nite Owl, you can see him again at a later scene when all the officers are at a conference discussing about the Nite Owl case.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: At the end of the Victory Motel shootout, when Exley stands next to Captain Smith's dead body while holding his badge up, James Cromwell's body is clearly seen moving up and down as the actor is breathing.
  
  

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