The following contains minor spoilers for Uncut Gems.
Uncut Gems is a move that's getting a lot of buzz now that it has finally received a wide release. Adam Sandler's performance is one of the most talked about things during this awards season, as the traditionally comic actor takes on a much more serious role. However, social media's focus at the moment seems to be less on the remarkable performance and more about a pretty obvious, if generally unimportant, continuity error.
The moment comes early in the film. Adam Sandler's character, has allowed Boston Celtics' player Kevin Garnett to borrow his recently acquired black opal, and has put money down on the game. He's going back and forth between dealing with his family and trying to watch the game on television, and one point, he asks his wife, played by Idina Menzel, to change the channel from what she's watching to ESPN so he can check on the game. There's one problem, the game is very clearly on TNT.
When the television is shown, the logo on the screen makes it very clear what channel is being watched. While there are countless continuity errors in films that most of us would never even notice, this one is actually pretty hard to overlook. I remember noticing it myself when I saw the film. A lot of other people have as well.
Apparently the error was pointed out to director Bennie Safdie by former ESPN sportscaster Adnan Virk. On his Cinephile podcast, Virk says he asked Safdie about the error directly, and apparently Safdie had not previously noticed it.
I said ‘There’s no way that game was on ESPN. It was on Turner, TNT.’ And you just see the blood drain out of Benny Safdie’s face.
While the director may not have realized the error at the time, a lot of people have. It seems that some people are actually more than a little upset by the whole thing.
While we don't know exactly how the error happened, it seems likely that the dialogue was shot without an actual game being broadcast on the television, and it was added to the scene later. ESPN was used in the line, because of course it was, if you're talking about watching sports on television, the go to name is ESPN.
Then when the actual game was put in, a TNT game was used instead, maybe due to a rights issue with ESPN, and the line in the script was simply overlooked.
I had honestly forgotten that I had noticed this error at the time I saw the film. I thought it was a humorous gaffe in the moment, but then I wrote it off and completely forgot it even happened. Apparently, some people were not able to do that.
The basketball game error will make future lists of interesting continuity errors, to be sure, but beyond that it doesn't change much. It doesn't prevent Uncut Gems from still being a great movie with a remarkable lead performance by Adam Sandler.
