Robert Downey, Jr. as Stagger Lee

1990 film "Air America" starring Mel Gibson

The story takes place in 1969.
The book that this movie was based on was written in 1979.

Downey appears earlier in the film wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. If the call sign "Stagger Lee" is in the book, which I have not read, then Downey's character chose the name based on a previous version of the song . . . OR the writer of the book fictionalized that call sign using a recently released Grateful Dead song name as inspiration. You might say, Inspiration moved him brightly.

But if "Stagger Lee" is indeed *not* in the book at all, then the movie's writers gave him that knowing it's a Grateful Dead song which would therefore potentially be an anachronism because Stagger Lee wasn't played live by the Dead until August 1978 (Red Rocks) and wasn't released on an album until 1979's Shakedown Street.

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