Robert De Niro wears a Tiffany & Co.

Mistress is Barry Primus's 1992 Hollywood satire, and it runs on one grubby premise - a screenwriter finally gets his passion project funded, except every backer wants the same thing in return, that his mistress be cast in the picture. Robert De Niro produced it through his Tribeca company, whose first independent feature was, fittingly, a satire about the compromises of getting a film financed. He also plays one of the backers, a businessman named Evan M. Wright.

I went looking for the watch on Wright's wrist, and the trail is short. Heritage Auctions sold it in their 2009 Signature Music and Entertainment sale, Lot 50180, and the catalog says exactly one thing about it - Robert De Niro's Tiffany wristwatch from Mistress, a Tiffany and Co. piece. That is the entire identification.

Which bothered me, until I looked at what a Tiffany watch usually is. Tiffany has sold watches since the 1850s. How many has it built itself? Hardly any. For most of its history it printed its name on the dial and let Patek Philippe, Rolex, and a rotating cast of Swiss houses supply the movement underneath. So when the specialists who handled the real prop could name the brand and nothing else, they weren't cutting corners. With a Tiffany, the brand is usually all there is to name.