Background
Bill Givens was born in Mississippi, United States.
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1985
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1990
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1990
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1998
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2000
Bill Givens was born in Mississippi, United States.
Bill Givens worked in advertising and public relations in Memphis, Tennessee, before striking out for California. There he published the first of more than a half-dozen books, Flying with Loran-C, which he wrote after obtaining his private pilot's license.
Givens's big break came when Premiere made "The Gaffe Squad" a regular feature in 1988. Appealing to readers who themselves enjoy spotting mistakes in motion pictures, Givens's Film Flubs books have benefited immeasurably from readers' contributions of their own favorite gaffes.
His readers responded enthusiastically to the "Gaffe Squad" column, sending in details of their own sightings, most of which focused on common movie gaffe material. Because scenes are often shot and reshot, and films are not made in the sequence in which they are presented, personnel assigned to maintain continuity from frame to frame or scene to scene may not notice a ponytail or a burning cigarette that gets longer a buttoned button that was unbuttoned a second before, or a drink that miraculously has more liquid in it than it did earlier.
At the time of McShane's 1991 profile, Givens was receiving a thousand letters a year from fans offering their own sightings, though some tended to go overboard: for instance, Premiere editor Terri Minsky told Wloszczyna that one viewer claimed a stamp that appears on an envelope in the film The Two Jakes was issued a few months after the action takes place in 1948. But the mistakes noted by Givens in his books tend to be much more rewarding than that one. For instance, in Die Hard 2 (1990), Bruce Willis makes a call at a bank of pay phones marked "Pacific Bell" - even though he is supposed to be at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.
Over the next few years, he worked in film and television - for instance, he wrote Hollywood Stuntmakers, featuring James Coburn, for the Discovery Channel. With the success of his writings on film, including not only the Film Flubs books but Reel Gags: Jokes, Sight Gags, and Directors' Tricks from Your Favorite Films, he has become a popular lecturer and TV and radio talk-show guest, appearing on programs such as Today, Inside Edition, and ABC World News with Peter Jennings.
Givens retired from the Gould School of Law in 2012. While at the University of Southern California, Bill worked in Continuing Education and supervised all classes for the Law School's adjunct professors. Additionally, he worked with Lefcoe's Real Estate Classes editing three textbook editions for him.
Bill is an active volunteer in his church and in the larger Los Angeles community. He has for many years been a stalwart in hosting weekly homeless outreach breakfasts at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills.
Bill was an early member of the "Trojans Helping Trojans" volunteer group and is always present and cheerful, willing to help wherever needed, and provides wise advice and pithy commentary.
He is a strong supporter of the Los Angeles LGBTQ Center, the largest in the world. And with a group from his church Bill helps provide support for homeless LGBTQ youth.
