Russell Crowe as Healy and Margaret Qualley as Amelia
in The Nice Guys (dir. Shane Black, 2016)
There are many things to like and admire about Shane Black's action-comedy The Nice Guys (2016), set in LA in 1977; the loving recreation of the period with its mixture of cheese and sleaze; the on-screen chemistry between Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling; 15-year-old Angourie Rice's sweet-but-sassy performance as Holly; and, of course, the fact that Margaret Qualley's character Amelia is barefoot throughout the film [1].
However, whilst the recreation of the period may have been loving, that doesn't mean it was strictly accurate and there are, in fact, a number of anachronisms throughout the movie.
For example, the soundtrack includes numerous songs that were not released in 1977; nor, for that matter was Jaws 2 in the cinemas that year (it arrived on screens in the summer of '78). And if you called 911 in 1977, you would not have got through to the emergency services (unless living in Alabama) [2].
Now, I have to admit, that if I hadn't had these things pointed out to me, I wouldn't have been any the wiser. But one thing I did notice was the punk memorabilia on Holly's bedroom wall ...
I very much doubt a 13-year-old living in LA would have had a Never Mind the Bollocks poster, as the album of that name was only released on 11 November 1977 in the US and the Sex Pistols had not at that date ever played in America.
I also doubt Holly would have been a fan of Blondie, as the band was very little known outside of the New York punk scene in 1977 and only became widely popular following the release of 'Heart of Glass' in January 1979.
But what I know to be impossible is for Holly to possess a poster featuring Pennie Smith's photo of Clash bassist Paul Simonon smashing his guitar on stage at the Palladium (NYC), as the picture - which famously features on the sleeve of London Calling - was taken on 20 September, 1979.
Do any of these things matter?
Not really - though they might, I suppose, to film buffs who get excited by spotting anachronisms and continuity errors, or by cultural historians who take facts and dates very seriously. For me, they simply serve as nice reminders that one is watching a work of creative fiction (a fantasy) and that the past is never (and can never) be accurately recreated in memory or on film.
Notes
[1] Quentin Tarantino - a director who knows a fine pair of female feet when he sees them - would later cast Margaret Qualley as Manson Family member Pussycat in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). In one scene, she stretches out her legs in the front seat of a car driven by Brad Pitt's character (Cliff Booth) and presses her bare feet against the windscreen (or windshield, as our American cousins like to say).
Apparently, Qualley was nervous about having to expose her toes on film once more; having trained as a ballet dancer in her youth, her feet had obviously been subject to a fair amount of abuse and she was self-conscious about the way they looked. Fortunately, Tarantino and Pitt persuaded her she had nothing to worry about and the scene was filmed with no regrets: click here.
[2] Readers who are interested in further anachonisms can visit the IMDb page for The Nice Guys - click here - and then go to the section entitled Goofs.
To watch the official final trailer for The Nice Guys (2016), click here.
