I was reading this entry earlier, about mistakes that can pull you out of the story when the author hasn't researched properly. It made me think about how frustrating I often find research
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I think what also makes it hard for an outsider setting fics in the U.S. is there are regional differences to consider, depending on where you're setting your story. And Americans can have just as much trouble with too.
This is probably a minor quibble, but someone just posted a question to drop_the_u asking for the proper terminology for a vacation home, "cottage, cabin, beach house," etc, and the very first response was that Americans don't have vacation homes, which she then qualified saying she didn't know anyone who owned one. Now where I grew up in Michigan, even in a staunchly middle class suburb, lake cottages were very common for families to own or rent, and certainly not only for the very rich.
But my favorite example of this is in the movie The Fugitive. As a Chicagoan, I thought the producers did a pretty good job with the locale, but there is one scene that irks me every time. They shot a scene at the Roosevelt El station, which is actually correct in it's proximity to the Hilton Hotel (where the final scenes of film are shot), but they renamed it "Bilbao," even hanging fake signs over the real ones. Granted, one of the streets the Hilton borders is Bilbao, but who really knows that? But Chicagoans would know there is no such thing as a Bilbao station, (and the real station is only 3-4 blocks away). It's like they outsmarted themselves.
asking for the proper terminology for a vacation home, "cottage, cabin, beach house," etc
And that, of course, varies all over the place too! That's something I ran into when my family moved to Vermont, where they're called "camps." Even if it's one family's little cottage, and nothing like a summer camp.
Gosh--that's exactly what I mean. Of course there are Americans who own vacation homes--and ones that don't. It doesn't even always go by how much money you have. A friend of mine would definitely describe her family as blue collar, but they had a house down the shore.
There's no real right answer to that one, though. Some people have beach houses, some cottages, some lake cottages. My friend's house was obviously in New Jersey, where you would say you "had a house down the shore."
New York movies have a lot of little weird things they'll change. I know in "Night at the Museum" they move the Natural History Museum down the block from the Met rather than across the park. I just saw "Enchanted" and my friend and I were scratching our heads over how the Patrick Dempsey character lives on 116th and Riverside and works at Columbus Circle...so why is he dragging his daughter down to the Bowery or thereabouts for karate class? He must pass a hundred other Karate studios on his way down there!
LOL. Yes, I noticed that as well. Although, I thought perhaps Patrick Dempsey lived in the Cristodoro near Thompkin's Square Park, which was looked a little to me like his condo building.
But it made no sense for him to be heading down to the Bowery with his little girl at night.
I remember being kicked out the story during War Games when Aly Sheedy shows up at the Portland Airport to pick up Matthew Broderick, since she had been in Seattle when he called her. She makes some remark about "driving down for the heck of it" to meet him.
It's a good three hour drive if, by some miracle, you don't hit bad traffic. Plus, they then mosey down to Salem (which is another drive at least), and then take a ferry out to an island in the middle of a lake. There are no large lakes around Salem.
I saw the movie in Portland, and I wasn't the only one weirded out by the geography. The middle-aged couple three rows ahead of me looked at each other and burst out laughing.
It's always stuff like this that gets me, because I know that for the screenwriter, Portland is just a name they pull off an atlas. So, they don't really try to think about what the city is. In Dante's Peak, I started laughing after the first ten minutes, because Pierce Brosnan lived in Portland, and he's just about the polar opposite of any man who lives here, although it's hard to say exactly why. I think it has something to do with his general sleekness (Portland men tend to be very shaggy).
I imagine it must be the same for anyone living in, say, Wisconsin (which seems to be the state of choice for all sitcoms when they want to signal a character's lack of cool). All I know about Wisconsin comes from listening to What Do You Know?, so I don't know if the cheesehead jokes are all true. But, really, there has to be more to Wisconsin than cheese, right?
That's one of the things I always liked about MST3K was they did Wisconsin and Minnesota jokes. I didn't get a lot of them because they were really local, but after a while I felt like I knew more about Wisconsin. Tommy Bartlett's Water Show!
My freshman roommate was from Minnesota and I remember her saying how she could never watch Little House on the Prairie because of all the hills and mountains. When I went to visit her I saw when she meant--it is flat flat flat, and the Ingalls family are always walking on hills or mountains. Plus it's never cold...
My mom is like that. She always notices the visual details that my mind usually glosses over. Southern California, for her, is no substitute for New Mexico--or Japan, or any place but Southern California.
Period luggage bugs her, because it always looks too old. She remembers when those suitcases were new.
She also finds it absurd how large the living rooms are in sitcoms.
And hair. Period hair is almost always wrong. I often notice this myself, but accept that as inevitable, because true period hair is frightening. But, for some reason, period hair is always less "period" on men than on women.
What did bug me was watching Mad Men, a show which prides itself on being period. The scene that threw me out of the story was when the main character came home late (to his home in Connecticut or upstate NY) to find his wife asleep in bed. She had these perfectly coifed blonde waves that were completely period, except for one thing. She was asleep in bed. Nobody in that period who had that hair in the daytime could possibly have that hair at night. In order to get it, she would have needed to be wearing rollers while she was asleep.
LOL! That is so true. My mom said she always watched that show to marvel at how ridiculous it was. My dad worked in TV in that time so that was very much like his world and the show just didn't read as that period to her. Even for me watching it it seems more like somebody's fantasy of what that time was like, more like a caricature, but cutting out certain unromantic details like women sleeping in curlers.
This is probably a minor quibble, but someone just posted a question to drop_the_u asking for the proper terminology for a vacation home, "cottage, cabin, beach house," etc, and the very first response was that Americans don't have vacation homes, which she then qualified saying she didn't know anyone who owned one. Now where I grew up in Michigan, even in a staunchly middle class suburb, lake cottages were very common for families to own or rent, and certainly not only for the very rich.
But my favorite example of this is in the movie The Fugitive. As a Chicagoan, I thought the producers did a pretty good job with the locale, but there is one scene that irks me every time. They shot a scene at the Roosevelt El station, which is actually correct in it's proximity to the Hilton Hotel (where the final scenes of film are shot), but they renamed it "Bilbao," even hanging fake signs over the real ones. Granted, one of the streets the Hilton borders is Bilbao, but who really knows that? But Chicagoans would know there is no such thing as a Bilbao station, (and the real station is only 3-4 blocks away). It's like they outsmarted themselves.
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And that, of course, varies all over the place too! That's something I ran into when my family moved to Vermont, where they're called "camps." Even if it's one family's little cottage, and nothing like a summer camp.
Augh to that first response, though.
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There's no real right answer to that one, though. Some people have beach houses, some cottages, some lake cottages. My friend's house was obviously in New Jersey, where you would say you "had a house down the shore."
New York movies have a lot of little weird things they'll change. I know in "Night at the Museum" they move the Natural History Museum down the block from the Met rather than across the park. I just saw "Enchanted" and my friend and I were scratching our heads over how the Patrick Dempsey character lives on 116th and Riverside and works at Columbus Circle...so why is he dragging his daughter down to the Bowery or thereabouts for karate class? He must pass a hundred other Karate studios on his way down there!
Reply
But it made no sense for him to be heading down to the Bowery with his little girl at night.
I remember being kicked out the story during War Games when Aly Sheedy shows up at the Portland Airport to pick up Matthew Broderick, since she had been in Seattle when he called her. She makes some remark about "driving down for the heck of it" to meet him.
It's a good three hour drive if, by some miracle, you don't hit bad traffic. Plus, they then mosey down to Salem (which is another drive at least), and then take a ferry out to an island in the middle of a lake. There are no large lakes around Salem.
I saw the movie in Portland, and I wasn't the only one weirded out by the geography. The middle-aged couple three rows ahead of me looked at each other and burst out laughing.
It's always stuff like this that gets me, because I know that for the screenwriter, Portland is just a name they pull off an atlas. So, they don't really try to think about what the city is. In Dante's Peak, I started laughing after the first ten minutes, because Pierce Brosnan lived in Portland, and he's just about the polar opposite of any man who lives here, although it's hard to say exactly why. I think it has something to do with his general sleekness (Portland men tend to be very shaggy).
I imagine it must be the same for anyone living in, say, Wisconsin (which seems to be the state of choice for all sitcoms when they want to signal a character's lack of cool). All I know about Wisconsin comes from listening to What Do You Know?, so I don't know if the cheesehead jokes are all true. But, really, there has to be more to Wisconsin than cheese, right?
Reply
My freshman roommate was from Minnesota and I remember her saying how she could never watch Little House on the Prairie because of all the hills and mountains. When I went to visit her I saw when she meant--it is flat flat flat, and the Ingalls family are always walking on hills or mountains. Plus it's never cold...
Reply
Period luggage bugs her, because it always looks too old. She remembers when those suitcases were new.
She also finds it absurd how large the living rooms are in sitcoms.
And hair. Period hair is almost always wrong. I often notice this myself, but accept that as inevitable, because true period hair is frightening. But, for some reason, period hair is always less "period" on men than on women.
What did bug me was watching Mad Men, a show which prides itself on being period. The scene that threw me out of the story was when the main character came home late (to his home in Connecticut or upstate NY) to find his wife asleep in bed. She had these perfectly coifed blonde waves that were completely period, except for one thing. She was asleep in bed. Nobody in that period who had that hair in the daytime could possibly have that hair at night. In order to get it, she would have needed to be wearing rollers while she was asleep.
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