Watching the Slow Motion Train Wreck that is The Ten Commandments on ABC TV

[stopbush]

when it occurred to me that a large % of Americans who are watching this movie tonight believe it to be historically accurate.

BTW - why is the ahistoric depiction of the Egyptians as enslavers of the Jews not considered to be racist drivel?

[dflprincess]

1. Hollywood once loved Biblical epics because they could get more

salacious material past the censors.

[Rhiannon12866]

2. I actually saw that at the drive-in with my parents and little brother when I was about 7

I'm guessing that my parents didn't know what to expect since it went on till well past midnight. That was the first and last time they tried that.

[hay rick]

8. Saw the Ten Commandments at the drive-in with my parents...

That's not why God invented drive-ins. Those were the days...

[Rhiannon12866]

11. Obviously, my parents had no idea that it went on for almost four hours

They encouraged us to nod off, but those weren't ideal circumstances. That's what I remember more than anything about the movie. After that, it was always my Dad's job to take us to the movies - in a theater and on a weekend afternoon. I did go to a drive-in one other time as a kid, but that was with my uncle and his family. There's actually a drive-in not far from here that's open in the summer, but I've never been. Those were my only drive-in experiences.

[jberryhill]

13. My record for the Ten Commandments at the drive in is Six!

It would have been seven if it was a Sunday!

[PJMcK]

14. Damn! I was going to post the same thing

Except my goal was to hit all ten.

As a teenager in the 1970s, the local drive-in was our substitution for a motel room.

I doubt my experiences were unique!

[llmart]

16. Can't remember ever watching a movie at a drive-in...

and not because I never went to a drive-in. Drive-ins were made for other things

[madamesilverspurs]

3. Saw it when it first came out,

it was a present for my eighth birthday. That green stuff from the sky scared the crap out of me, had nightmares for months.

Having seen it a few times over the years, the thought has occurred more than once that the part of Moses went to Heston's head.

.

[Brainstormy]

4. but actually

there were a large number of people who were were watching it tonight, for nostalgia's sake, while inwardly laughing their asses off.

[irisblue]

5. Yul Brenner is an absolute stone hard fox in that.

Wierd ass braid or not.

[nolabear]

6. Yeah but...Yul Brenner!

He can be in a snit like nobody else.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. Keep in mind that a lot of people thought

The DaVinci Code was a documentary.

An amazing number of people cannot tell the difference between actual fiction and something that is historically accurate. It doesn't help that books are written and movies are made that play fast and loose with the truth, and most people don't know enough to tell were the facts end and the fiction begins.

[John1956PA]

12. I cringed when Hanks' character exclaimed, "Some of these books are 2,000 years old."

I am going by memory and paraphrasing the line, but the Langdon did utter words to the effect that some of the archives he was gazing at appeared to him to be 2,000 years old. The archives were those which had been preserved by the secret cult from the inception of Christianity. Of course, the scrolls and other writing media from the early centuries of the Christian era disintegrated well over a thousand years ago. Only fragments of them now remain. For the most part, the oldest extant Christian manuscripts, which are copies of copies of the original writings, date to the twelfth century, which marked the beginning of the age of paper medium.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. I did not read the book because when it came out

I could tell from the reviews that it was the sort of thing that pops up in science fiction quite regularly, a "secret history" novel. Some (although please don' ask me to remember specifics) can be quite good. And I didn't expect it to be very good, at least not for me, and so I didn't read it. I have also learned over the years that a book that becomes a huge best seller becomes one because that's the book that all those people who read one book a year, read. Someone who only reads one book a year has very different standards of what's good than I do, and I read six to ten books each month.

When the movie came out the reviews told me I wouldn't like it.

I have no objections to other people liking, even loving the book or the movie. People here would probably be horrified to learn what I read and watch. It's the uncritical reading/watching, not taking it as the entertainment that's intended, rather than as true history.

And your point about the oldest books of any kind that we have are copies of copies. I take it you've read The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt.

[lunasun]

9. So bizarre -there is no archaeological evidence to support Jews were ever in Egypt and never left

where they weren't , to begin with

[Yavin4]

10. Billy Crystal has a great bit on this

[Glorfindel]

15. Even when I was a kid, I wondered

why the pharoah, his son, and Princess Nefretiri (who was, presumably, the pharoah's daughter, given that Egyptian royalty married sister to brother) had three entirely different accents.

[Ghost of Tom Joad]

18. Useless fact

when adjusted for inflation the 6th highest grossing film of all time (domestic)