I’ve been watching the new CBS series “Vegas” (not to be confused with NBC’s dreadful “Las Vegas” from the 2000s, or the late-1970s ABC private-eye show Vega$). The premise is very loosely based on the life of Ralph Lamb, a rancher who became sheriff in 1960 and remained in the position for nearly two decades. It has some merit, but unfortunately, the choice of cars is also too loosely based on reality.
I was drawn in initially by the show’s pedigree, with Nicholas Pileggi, the author of the books on which GoodFellas and Casino are based (and co-writer with Martin Scorsese of those films’ screenplays) as its co-creator. Pileggi’s involvement probably helped to lure Dennis Quaid to accept his first regular TV series role as Lamb, and Michael Chiklis of The Shield to come on board as mobster Vincent Savino.Jason O’Mara (star of the American version of Life On Mars) and Carrie-Anne Moss (probably best known as Trinity from the Matrix trilogy, here an amusing contrast in 1960s clothes and hair) are other appealing reasons to watch.
The idea of Quaid and Chiklis’s characters as adversaries made me interested enough to sample Vegas, along with the setting at the beginning of the Mad Men era. To its credit the show looks terrific, but unfortunately it’s turning out to have the familiar feel of many other cop shows: a fairly ordinary case of the week intertwined with longer story arcs involving Savino’s ambitions to become a legitimate businessman, and the conflicts this causes with his bosses back in Chicago.
But my biggest gripe with the show isn’t with the storytelling, but with the props, specifically the cars and trucks being used. It’s been made clear to viewers that these initial episodes are taking place in 1960, but most of the vehicles that have appeared so far are newer. 1961 models like Savino’s Lincoln Continental could kind of be excused, depending on the specific point in the calendar year the show is in.
But there have been plenty of 1962 and 1963 models (the Ford police cars, the assistant DA’s ’63 Thunderbird) and even a few ’64s and ’65s running around in the background. Even the sheriff’s Dodge pickup truck is at least two or three years too new.
Speaking of Mad Men, both Don’s 1962 Cadillac and Betty’s 1962 Mercury station wagon have made appearances, indicating the producers are using the same vintage car supplier. Now, most people wouldn’t notice this, and fewer would care. The reason it jumps out to me as a glaring error is because, for the American car companies, 1960 was a crucial turning point in the evolution of automobile design. The designs of the 1950s grew increasingly gaudy and outlandish with each passing year, but by 1959 the stylists finally realized that they had pushed the excess too far.
The designs of 1960 models generally represented a fresh application of restraint that would lead to a decade of style high points before once again swinging back to excess during the 1970s. With that in mind, the show’s use of newer cars results in the atmosphere looking confused. There should still be plenty of older 1950s cars on view and in regular use, and there are some, but not enough; the choice of using so many post-1960 cars makes it look like the show is set in the middle of the 1960s instead of the beginning. If you’re trying to establish the mood of a certain place and time, such details make a difference. Matthew Weiner (the creator of Mad Men) certainly knows this, but it seems like the producers of Vegas aren’t as interested in being as true as possible to their show’s setting, and this ends up detracting and distracting from the rest of what’s on screen.
Even if the storylines are stellar, I can’t – and never could – get past such glaring inaccuracies…they just tell me over and over again “it’s only a TV show, only a TV show, etc.”
Well at least the Volkswagen in the next-to-last shot is period correct. Hard to tell from the image, but it’s certainly an oval window (pre-1958), and possibly a split (pre-1953).
I have watched this show too, and kept Mrs. JPC somewhere between amused and annoyed as I kept shouting about these blatant errors to an uncaring television set.
My guess is that to those doing the show, 1960 = Kennedy, and Kennedy = everything through November of 1963. Then, if everything up through 1963 is ok, who is going to notice a couple of fudges a year or two newer.
I can see no other explanation, unless it would be laziness and the ability to ride Mad Men’s coattails on the cars already sourced for that show.
Sorvino should be in a 1960 Cadillac. If the Sheriff is going to have a pickup, he needs a 56-ish Dodge or Ford. The squad cars should be 59 or 60 Plymouths, Dodges or Fords. The DA should be in a squarebird. Not a single car of any character is right. This is maddening. Maybe we can rent CC’s expertise out for these clueless TV people.
Oh, and another peeve – the huge whitewalls (last seen in 1956) on the “pre-production” 61 Lincoln. Gaaaaa!
I don’t know if the whitewalls were THAT wide on the 1961 Lincoln, but Ford did not use the more “modern” whitewalls with the thinner stripe on the 1961 Lincoln and Thunderbird. That switch happened for the 1962 model year.
And another thing-the ’61 Lincoln has ’64 wheel covers.
I’ve watched this twice, and liked it (thanks largely to Quaid and Chiklis), but the cars left me confused.
In last week’s episode, the characters keep referring to the 1960 presidential election, which clearly hasn’t happened yet (one character says, “I believe that Kennedy WILL be our next president.”).
Meanwhile, one exterior shot showed a 1962 Plymouth Belevdere on the street.
The 1961 Lincoln Continental didn’t debut until November 1960 (youtube features a introductory commercial for the car that ran during the November 1, 1960 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.)
I doubt that Chiklis’ character was able to buy the car that quickly. Most likely, his character would have been driving a 1959 or 1960 Cadillac.
I don’t see why the producers didn’t simply set the show in 1965… would it have made any difference to the plot?
Not only are the cars anachronistic, they are almost all cars that became classics. Where are the plain cars? Not everyone has perfect taste. I need to see an Edsel or two, some mid 50s Chryslers, but the producers apparently do not care. Rarely do they care. This phenomenon is even worse in films featuring firearms, where entire eras are not respected. Other than Sam Peckinpah’s films, that is.
Truly, the producers are not wrong – car porn will attract more attention than better chronological accuracy will detract from the show. I love watching these classic cars used as they were back in the day, even if they are a bit out of their actual era. There is a bit of a “Life on Mars” vibe going on, so maybe we need to give them a break on the time travel thing. But the fact is that this is not primarily a show for car guys, it is another derivative police procedural, and the audience for that genre is substantial. Besides, all publicity is good publicity, and this post will publicize the show. They will garner more viewers from our attention to their anachronistic car choices than they will lose from our complaints.
A documentary, this show is not, in other words.
I said the same thing when this show came out: “Why are there all these ’63 models? It’s supposed to be 1960!”
I just pretend it’s 1963 when I watch it and calm down…
What I dislike is if you point out car errors to ‘regular Joe’ types, they get all “Well you’re a geek for knowing that!” Or, ‘who cares?’
But I am sure that if some historical Pro Sports stats were misquoted, these ‘Joes’ would get all ‘That’s wrong!’.
I love your comment!
I have an aunt who is a crazy sports fan, I mean crazy. My dad and I were talking cars and she made a comment how we could use our brains for something more useful that knowing a bunch of info about old cars.
I replied “Yeah, because knowing how many yards some college player ran in 1972 is useful. That’s where the big money is.”
Shut her up, haha.
My retinas hurt from looking at some of this. Case in point: Look at the ’63 Ford police car seen in profile. The hubcaps are wrong! And I suspect the chrome on the side was yanked off before painting it. At least they did that much.
Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me. Who remembers “Crime Story” on NBC in the mid-80’s? It was set in 1963 Chicago and later Las Vegas. I remember one particular scene where a character got out of his period correct car, went around a street corner, and there sat a clapped out ’71 Olds 88. Otherwise, they did pretty well.
However, this show had one great line I remember. The main character told a perp: “If you hurt her, I am going to track down what you love most in this world and I’m gonna kill it.”
More on the table, here’s a movie with anachronistic cars, “Awakenings” (1990) with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams, was set in 1969 but we see cameos of a 1972 and 1973 Chevrolet Impalas. http://www.imcdb.org/movie.php?id=99077&l=fr
Crime Story was a great show, it was Michael Mann, how can you go wrong?pretty good use of cars, since the first season was filmed in Chicago on the streets, you would see some modern cars sometimes, but they were pretty good considering that it was 1986, pre-internet era, the show was set from 1963 to 1965 from what I recall.
I was thinking about Crime Story as I read this article. I vaguely remembered watching it with my dad when I was a kid, so I downloaded it but haven’t had time to (re)watch it yet.
I remember reading that occasionally you’d see a more modern car off in the background, but they did make a serious effort with the cars and the sets.
Main guy had a Chrysler 300 convertible too, like a 58.
This is exactly like watching Star Trek or Star Wars and saying, “There’s no reason for that spaceship to bank into a turn,” or “How the heck is it making a noise in a vacuum?”
Now the physics nerds don’t feel alone. Welcome to the club.
Stanley Kubric’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” had it right – utter silence.
On “The Wonder Years” was an episode of their “old” station wagon getting worn out and they needed a new car. But, it was a ’67 Dodge wagon that was “so old” in 1969! Towed away since it broke down and the Arnold’s bought a 1969 Ford Galaxie sedan. “It was a new car and the whole neighborhood was impressed!” said narrator.
They also got a song wrong, when they are washing the wagon, background is “I Can See Clearly Now”, not released until 1972.
That Episode is called the family car and it’s a 1969 Ford Custom 500 not a Galaxie.
This stuff drives me nuts! It’s rampant on TV crime recreations. A cold case from 1986 showing 2000 Crown Vics? I get that they are low budget, so don’t show the damned cars! LOL
There are people who are hired for continuity and historical accuracy in films and, I would hope, TV. actual truth in history is always secondary to the story it seems. But with period correct automobiles they are just lazy. There are plenty of old cars for lease to studios in So Cal
http://www.movievehicles.com/trivia.htm
I imagine as time goes by the garden variety vintage 4 door sedan gets more scarce. Convertibles, luxury cars and sports cars have a higher survival rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_%28TV_series%29
“Synopsis
Set in 1960s Las Vegas, the series centers on Sheriff Ralph Lamb (Quaid) and his dealings with Chicago mobster Vincent Savino (Chiklis), who moved west to set up his own operation. The Lamb character is based on a real-life former rancher who served as Sheriff of Clark County from 1961 to 1979.”
Not having seen the show, is it possible they moved the date up a few years already? 18 years is a lot to cover. If the show has a short run we may be seeing Grand Torinos real soon! .
This reminds me of the homecoming parade scene in the 1978 comedy, Animal House. They did such a fine job in that movie in making everything period-correct, except for that part. If you looked carefully, several of the extras standing on the sidewalk were guys with long hair – something you did not see in 1961-63, the period of time that movie was set on.
Glad I wasn’t the only one to notice. My dad and I were watching a recent episode and up until then, I thought the show took place as late as 1966 with the Dodge Coronet taxi I saw. But the political debate that was sabotaged (loaded with Kennedy-Nixon parallels) and the remark on Kennedy sealed it.
If the producers are clueless, the prop people should know better. I agree a ’59 or ’60 Caddy is a more appropriate ride for Chiklis’ character because the contemporary Lincolns were off the mark (pardon the pun) even then and slow sellers as a result. Caddies were much more stylish, as were Imperials.
How the hell, though, could a bunch of people gear-headed enough to curate a vintage-car collection not get hold of historically accurate rolling stock?
Some inaccuracies are far more glaring than others. A four- or five-year “window” for period-correct cars seems reasonable to me, especially for a mostly-fictional TV show.
Anymore, I’m just relieved when I don’t see Dodge Neons or Toyota Camrys in the background on shows that take place 40-50 years earlier…
Why does this inaccuracy happen? I don’t know. But a blatant example, not about cars, but about a golf movie. One of my favorite movies is the “Legend of Bagger Vance.” The narrator is speaking about the 36 hole tournament taking place over a Saturday and Sunday in 1932. On the second day of the tournament, Sunday, the main character makes a hole in one, and people in town hear of it, rushing out of stores and barber shops to get to the course to watch the action.
With Sunday blue laws in effect, golf tournaments would not be allowed and stores would not be open. An error like that is far greater than placing an incorrect car on the street.
Artisitic license??
Yawn. I’ve come to expect discontinuity errors in film television. Especially with cars, because most people just don’t know/care about perfect accuracy about those kind of details. I’m fussy and always notice, but I’ve learned to live with it.
I’m impressed when somebody sweats the details in a production. Mad Men is a great example. Otherwise, whatever.
Nicholas Pillegi is involved in this? Well then no wonder. Goodfellas was full of model year goofs.
Pillegi was only responsible for the book. Blame Scorcese for the model year incontinuities – for example, the scene stating 1963 with Ray Liotta (Henry Hill) standing in front of a 1965 Chevrolet.
Yep. Lost me in the first minutes of the show when the ’63 Ford showed up. It’s not that hard…you get to decide what to use. I’m sure the suppliers list the years on the inventory sheet.
I’m more inclined to cut TV producers some slack in this respect, particularly minor glitches. TV shows are generally produced on a fast and inflexible schedule, and it’s hard to see production people holding up shooting because they can’t get a ’62 T-Bird rather than a ’63 — even if the production manager knows the difference, it’s hard to argue with the logic of “except for Thunderbird nuts, who’s going to spot the difference in the less than 20 seconds it’ll be on screen.”
Movies, however, are notorious for spending huge amounts of time and money to sweat the minor details while making hash of the big ones — a period piece where a major battle is set in the wrong year, for instance, or casting blonde white actors to play characters or even historical figures who were black, Latino, or even Chinese.
Why give TV a pass? Movies are no better. I’m as much a gun guy as a car guy, so dozens of Civil War movies with soldiers carrying repeating rifles (that hadn’t been invented yet) has always bothered me, yet I still watch. Judge them, but if the story is engaging, I figure we gotta give ’em all the same pass.
’62 versus ’63 T-Bird is one thing…I might not even spot that in a TV show…but when you’re three or four years off from the year your show is set in, you’re dealing with different generations of cars….Bullet Birds where there should be Squarebirds, etc. Vegas plays too loose.
The Corvair is also wrong for 1960; no convertibles until the 1962 model year.
Movie and TV cop cars are often higher-trim models than the cops actually used, because so few of the plain jane models (and real cop cars) have survived. I’ve seen a pillarless hardtop Plymouth Fury III dressed up as an NYPD car for a movie.
One episode of Cold Case got the vehicle age spectacularly wrong. It was supposed to show a street scene from decades ago, and was even shown in black & white to emphasise the point. Even the black & white couldn’t hide the 90s/00s cars driving through the cross street in the background… It really bugged me!
That stuff gets me, too. Warren Beatty’s “Shampoo” (shot in 1975) was set in 1968. They did a pretty good job of keeping up the image until there was a Beverly Hills street scene…they blocked off the street the scene was shot on, but the cross street half a block behind the actors wasn’t…and you could see the newer cars (including at least one Pinto) driving by.
You know, I was just watching Nothing In Common with Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason. I noticed one scene where “Tom” was driving a Jeep Wrangler with a Manual but in the next scene he clearly pulls down on a Column shifter then in another scene he had a Manual again!
Ruined the movie.
These “period” TV shows – and movies, for that matter all look as if they take place at a car show!
When growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, most daily driver cars were of the more mundane B pillar sedan styles, with the glorious hardtop versions being a few years older – either bought used or bought new and held on to far beyond the 36-month payment period.
Many cars were at least 7 years old and some were kind of battered, but not yet bombs. We kids got the bombs and loved them!
Only a relative few in my area bought new cars, our neighbor being one of them.
I don’t know how many TV producers are L.A. natives, but growing up in L.A. in the late 50s and 60s, it was hard to go a block without seeing this year’s model…and usually a higher trim level. It was a shock moving elsewhere and not seeing a car show driving down the street.
In a slightly different vein: The 2005 movie “An Unfinished Life”, starring Robert Redford, and set in Wyoming, prominently features a mid ’60s Mercury pickup truck. Mercury pickups were a Canada-only model, and most Americans (who were presumably the largest target market of the movie) are unaware that such a thing ever existed. When she was watching the movie on television one afternoon, my wife noticed that the badging on the pickup said Mercury rather than Ford, and pointed it out to me. An internet search revealed that she was not the first person to wonder about this.
The explanation of how a Mercury pickup found its way into this movie is simple: the movie was filmed in Canada. It’s isn’t clear to me if the filmmakers just ordered up “an old pickup” and didn’t realize that the one they got was a brand never sold in the U.S.; if they did realize this but didn’t care or didn’t think anyone would notice (Mercury pickups were just badge-engineered Fords, so their general appearance is certainly familiar to any American who has been exposed to ’60s American pickups); or if they used it deliberately as kind of an in-joke or as a nod to their Canadian hosts.
I suppose it’s possible that a Canadian Mercury pickup could have somehow ended up in Wyoming. With the exception of the third scenario above, however, I’d be surprised if this was ever discussed by the filmmakers as a plot backstory. If they were concerned about vehicular accuracy, it would have simpler to just use a brand that was actually sold/commonly seen in the country where the movie was set, and was recognizable to audiences on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.
I noticed this too when I watched the movie in a theater when it first came out. But I dismissed it as a could be possible. I grew up in the Nebraska Territory and I’ve seen a few Merc Trucks here as well. Later on in life I was able to do a bit of traveling with in a 200 mile radius and saw a few more, mostly in ND and WY/MT so I just assumed they migrated south as used trucks are known too.
You know, and this is like comparing apples to oranges, if we gear heads are going to be nitpicky about movies and TV shows being accurate than we might as well include the movies that have a continuity problem. And you know what movie would be at the top of that list? Come on now think a little harder. That movie would be Bullitt. How many times can a chase around the block be louped together so that it lasts 2 minutes? It must hell to be a second unit director and a car nut.
Not only that, how can a 4 wheeled car lose 6 hubcaps…..
Can always tell what era a Western is filmed by hairstyles.
50’s early 60’s all greasers, 70’s/80’s blowdried and longer. Later eras, some movie characters from “1800’s” even had Mullets or slacker-Goatees.
Example, Michael Landon had 50’s look early “Bonanza”, but hippie long hair in “Little House..”
It’s not just the cars that are wrong for the year: in Ep. 1 Chiklis’ character nails a dealer for his watch (hiding a poker chip). The watch was quartz, which didn’t appear until the mid-1970s.
The Tbird from the 70’s Vegas show was better than any of the cars in the later series.Dan Tanna’s 1957 Ford Thunderbird!