The book gave brief summaries of 100 Hollywood movies that are supposedly based on a true story, and then it told how each movie differed from the facts.
After finishing the book, I thought of several movies that could have been included in the book but weren’t. Granted, some of them have come out since the book went to press.
I’ve found the contact information for Mr. Vanking and plan to e-mail him my suggestions for movies to include in Volume II. If you’d like to help me with the project, please post here. What are some movies that purport to be based on a true story?
In addition to the 100 movies mentioned in the book (please use Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature to see the table of contents; I won’t reprint the list here), I’ve thought of:
[ul]
[li]Miracle[/li][li]Cool Runnings[/li][li]Friday Night Lights[/li][li]Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid[/li][li]Midnight Express[/li][li]Mommy Dearest*[/li][li]Fargo*[/li][/ul]
Any others?
*Mommy Dearest has been thoroughly shown to be lies and exaggerations. However, it claims to be a true story and thus included in the book. Fargo is completely fiction, as proved by Snopes, but since this movie also claims to be a true story, it should also be reviewed in the next book.
Well, heck, just about any movie supposedly based on history will have lots of changes in it. As peter Stone (or rather, an unnamed friend that he quotes) put it in his intro to the published version of 1776, “God writes lousy theater.” So things get changed, switched around, and characters combined to keep tyhings more dramatic (and sometimes, less confusing). Movies based on plays are at a special disadvantage – their putting The Sound of Music (which was based on a musical play based on another movie based loosely on a true story) is equivalent to shooting fish in a thimble. You could say something similar for Amadeus. or The Crucible, which was changed in order to draw similarities with McCarthyism.
One I’d like to see is a Man for All Seasons. I was imperessed that Robert Bolt took so much from More’s own writings and reported sayings. The plot of the film follows the historical facts I’m aware of, but I’m sure as heck no expert on this. The History Channel did one of their contrasts between film and reality using AMFAS, but I missed it. Spartacus differed considerably from reality (and from the Howard Fast book it was based on, for that matter)
We have a friend who laughs whenever you bring up Braveheart.
A real challenge would be to find a film that differed only minimally from reality.
I don’t think anything about the OP or the book it references is intended to be critical. It can simply be an interesting exercise to compare a fictionalized treatment of a historical event/person to the thing itself. Besides, I get the impression that, while people will tell you (if you ask) that they know “true story” movies contain a lot of invention, many people still sort of lazily assume that what they’re seeing on screen is “basically” accurate, even if it’s almost completely made up. I think some moviegoers could stand some education on just how much invention goes into a “historical” work.
What’s Love Got to Do With It takes major liberties with the truth (including the paternity of Tina’s first child, and even Tina says that Ike was portrayed unfairly)
Passion of the Christ takes serious liberties both from the Gospels and from what is known historically of the people portrayed
This is definitely a crusade where I’m marching right behind Eve. Two generations of Americans, when they hear the name “Joan Crawford”, can only bring up the mental image of the screeching, psychotic gargoyle portrayed by Faye Dunaway.
Admittedly, Joan was no angel, but she deserves a better memorial than Mommie Dearest, book OR movie…
The Amityville Horror remake’s ads kept saying it was based on a true story. Since the original story was exposed as a hoax years ago, we are now in a situation in which the words “true story” no longer necessarily need to have any connection to reality when they are used.
Night and Day, the Cole Porter story, makes him straight and look like Cary Grant. (Kevin Kline’s not a lot closer and Linda Porter would have paid her last million to look like Ashley Judd, but at least his orientation is corrected and Jonathan Pryce got some screentime.)
Any history of the Old Republic will verify that midichlorians are a complete fabrication; the ancient Jedi were chosen 100% on merit and natural ability rather than objective measurements. It was this historical inaccuracy that ruined The Phantom Menace for me.
I was majorly irked by Gods & Generals, which most certainly claimed to be the true story of Stonewall Jackson. Literally, the first frame in the movie contains a historical inaccuracy (Col. Robert E. Lee is enroute to D.C. to be offered the command of the Army of the Potomac- he is wearing a Federal uniform, which he would have, but he is the grey and bearded Lee of public consciousness- in reality he had a clean-shaven chin, a moustache and more pepper than salt in his hair at the time [he grayed early in the war and grew a full beard for warmth]). There are others, such as Jackson sitting at a dining table with his wife (Jackson, one of the most eccentric generals of the war, ate standing up) that would have been so easily corrected by paying the few thousand dollars a qualified consultant would have cost them.
Fairy Tale is also still being marketed as being based on a true story, too. Even though the surviving sister has explained how they accomplished the hoax.
I wonder why they didn’t include some other famous WWII movies, like Midway, or Battle of the Bulge?
Basically, Christine Crawford disowns the movie (she said “the makeup was pretty good, otherwise it was horrible”) and her siblings disown Christine. Nobody claims Joan was a warm and fuzzy person, but the other children deny the abuse was anything that extreme or one-sided.
What about Picnic at Hanging Rock? It’s a film supposedly based on a “true story” about some Australian schoolgirls and a teacher who mysteriously disappear… except there was no real-life event, mysterious or otherwise.