Now that Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon has been written off as a monumental flop as well as the second of Margot Robbie‘s box-office disasters this year (the first being Amsterdam), everyone is taking shots at it. Which is easy to do once a film has failed.

In an 11.18.22 piece called “1920s Bel Air Wasn’t Palm Springs Foothills,” I mentioned that Babylon‘s depiction of how Bel Air looked back in the mid ’20s seemed “untrustworthy.”

Excerpt: “For 80 or 90 years Bel Air has been a flush and fragrant oasis for the super-wealthy, but in the mid ’20s, according to Babylon, it was fairly dry and barren and desert-like — no trees, no bushes, no grass and definitely no golf course. Almost Lawrence of Bel Air. In fact Bel Air of the mid ’20s was starting to come into itself. Photos from that era show the beginnings of paved roads, smallish trees and shrubbery, yucca plants, a few mansions, a reservoir, the east and west gates and a little shade here and there.”

A 12.24 Paul Schrader Facebook post mentioned other historical inaccuracies, and commenters Matt Dorff and Farrran Smith Nehme (among others) chimed in with their own complaints and challenges.