I just recently rented the movie “The Black Dahlia”, which was based heavily off the murders of the same name - but that used creative license to solve the murder in the movie.
Other movies do things like this, taking heavily from true facts but then spinning and twisting everything around. Case in point, “Domino” which was based on the actual female bounty-hunter; Domino Harvey. However, we are all quite aware that Domino never traveled with 90210 stars and blew up the top level of the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino in Vegas.
What do you guys think about movies that take from fact but then completely go batshit crazy and turn fact into near fiction?
I know better to go to a movie, let alone just one source, to get the “facts”. I also believe most instances we’ll never know all the real facts, too much time has elapsed.
So I regard them purely as entertainment and rarely watch them. Mostly they’re too over-dramatized.
This is a huge stretch based on what you’re asking in the OP, but I’d nominate Titanic. From the history I know, the general story of what happened, the settings, and the people involved were fairly true to life.
What always struck me as interesting is that a Pennsylvania railroad tycoon John Borland Thayer brought his wife and son on the ship. His son was 17, named Jack, and drew pictures (including ones from what he saw as the ship was breaking in half- something that wasn’t believed until the 80s, I think). I’m not sure if there’s any cite for it, but I have always wondered if the main character of the movie was in fact based on Jack Thayer, if nothing else very loosely.
I think they constitute the bulk of such “based on a true story” films.
I realize that some tinkering with the facts, condensing events, combinig characters, and the like is necessary, but most – MOST movies, I’m convinced, go much farther than necessary.
Ask any fan of Scotland’s history about Braveheart.
**Spartacus played VERY freely with the facts, and the campaigns and movements are very far from reality.
Even a film like The Great Escape, which hired real ex-POWs as advisors and got the look right and many of the characters on-target still screwed around considerably, putting Americans in many key positions (they were removed from the compound well before the break) and putting in the Steve Mcqueen razzle-dazzle.
But then you get an escape film like The Birdmen, which is almost pure fantasy, aside from the facts of building the glider.
I believe you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story. However, many stories have plenty of intrinsic drama and interest without needing a bunch of “punching up” from somebody. It depends on what the writer or director or whoever is trying to accomplish. Shakespeare’s history plays took a lot of liberties with the facts, because usually the existing stories became a backdrop for more personal themes he wanted to explore.
As far as I’m aware, Apollo 13 is a reasonably accurate depiction of what happened during that incidient, though I’m sure a lot of made-up dialogue and composite characters are used. Still, that was a very dramatic story on its own, and one that many people in the audience already were familiar with. The major facts didn’t need a lot of help to be interesting and exciting.
The braintrust behind Titanic decided that hubris and poor planning and a ship sinking and killing hundreds wasn’t all that interesting, so we were subjected to two hours of the most generic romance possible. After all that, I was excited to see those irritating, one-dimensional twerps drown. But the sets and costumes and silverware and whatnot were thoroughly researched and recreated, so we had something to look at during all that crap.
I think it’s perfectly valid to make a movie about the “idea” of a person, rather than the dry factuality (Marie Antoinette, Last Days, Fur). I think that people who insist that such movies stick just to the facts should get out more.
I can only tell you this - having read a bit about the Roman empire and not a lot, they took from a lot of different emperors to make the one in the film. Several emperors had one or two of his traits. And a lot of what he did was rumor or hearsay and historians don’t even think it happened.
Not definitive, I know, but the movie ain’t real. There are websites out there IMO that will break it down, or you’re welcome to start a thread in CS as there are plenty of people more knowledgeable than me.
Having said that, historical fiction doesn’t chap my hide if it’s not 100% OMG TRUE. I can sit back and enjoy those films as dramas and as action films…I don’t need anymore than that. So I rather liked Gladiator, for the sweet story, for Maximus, for a poignant ending.
Saving Private Ryan is a good example of this. The real Ryan, Frederick Niland, lost two brothers in the war and a third brother was presumed dead. (He later turned up alive in a POW camp) There was not, however, a rescue mission to save the surviving Niland brother.
These facts notwithstanding, Saving Private Ryan is, IMO, a fantastic movie. The true horrors of war were revealed to whole new generation and a dramatic story was told while honoring all of those brave men who were called to serve.
No, I don’t think that a lot of “composite characters” were made, or were even necessary. Most of the major players were still alive at the time the film was made (Jack Swigert was dead, but I spoke to his sister once and her only criticism was the scene where Jim Lovell lost his temper and was overheard by Mission Control- she swore that Lovell would never have acted that unprofessionally). Hell, when I met Gene Kranz, I was amazed anew by Ed Harris’ portrayal of him! As many people around Gene have said, “Ed was more like Gene than Gene!”
I remember reading at the time that there is a Jack Dawson (the character’s name) listed on a Titanic memorial (in Canada, I think?), and that a lot of teenaged girls were making pilgrimages to leave flowers at the memorial.
Aha - I see here that it was a J. (for James) Dawson.
Braveheart is on my (shit) list, and I’m a lover of all things Scottish.
The French princess didn’t come to England to marry Longshanks’ son until about 2 years after Wallace’s death, so no, the heir to the English throne isn’t really the bastard child of a Scottish rebel.
And the battle of Stirling Bridge - without a bridge.
I don’t want to go off on a rant, so I’ll leave it alone, but those were just the most obvious (to me, anyway) of many inaccuricies.
Its portrayal of Jim Garrison is simply appalling. Garrison was every bit as evil as someone like Joe McCarthy, perhaps more so. He was a pathological liar. He was also quite possibly insane. His Clay Shaw trial was called the most disgraceful legal event of the twentieth century. Yet Stone portrays Garrison as some kind of underdog Prince Valiant who stands as a shining beacon of truth and justice amidst a world of corrupt and sinister powers. Nothing could be further from the truth. I really wish a filmmaker of Stone’s caliber would make a film showing just what a monstrous fuck Garrison really was.
And what of its portrayal of Clay Shaw? Nobody but the most rabid tinfoil hat nutjob honestly believes he had anything to do with the assassination. Alas, Clay Shaw is dead and since one can’t slander the dead Stone takes relish in demonizing the man. So much so that even Roger Ebert (who should know better) often uses Shaw as an example of evil hiding behind a mask of respectability. Sadly, this is how Clay Shaw will be remembered by most people if he’s remembered at all.
Thanks for the replies to Gladiator. In the end, I guess I am more into “period” movies than true to life ones. I don’t need perfect accuracy to enjoy a movie.
*Alive * would be a classical “true story” movie. I understand they did their homework pretty well.
Catch Me If You Can was based on the life of the real con artist and impostor Frank Abagnale, Jr. However, I just finished his book that the movie was adapted from, and the two are fairly different (assuming the book itself isn’t a con).
The book goes into detail about the numbers aspects of his bad check schemes (If he were in Boston, for example, he’d create a check that had the Boston address of a major bank printed on it, but used computer routing numbers for the San Francisco branch. The human teller would sort it with the local checks, where it would sit until the computer spit it out because it was supposed to go to the SF branch. When it finally arrived in SF, it would frequently get sent back to Boston by another human teller who assumed the computer made a mistake. All this created a larger time buffer between the time his check officially ‘cleared’ (three days for local checks by law) so he could receive his cash, and the time the account was discovered to be phony). The movie, understandably, focuses more on the charisma aspects of his cons.
The movie spends a lot of time on the chase, with FBI agent Riley frequently in direct confrontation with Abagnale. In the book, Abagnale says it was more like general paranoia that he was always being followed. With a couple of exceptions, the ‘chases’ were more like somebody simply clapping him on the shoulder while he was standing in line and saying “Frank Abagnale, you’re under arrest.”
Riley never catches Abagnale in France, nor does he come get him out of jail in France. He was caught by French authorities while attempting to ‘retire’, locked for 6 months in a solitary box with no light, bed or toilet, then extradited to Sweden for another six months. About 20 other nations in Europe and Asia were waiting to extradite him as well until a Swedish judge took pity on him and pulled strings to hand him over to the FBI.
The storyline about working for the DA and getting engaged with his daughter who then tries to turn him in is a conflation of separate story lines. The actual Louisiana DA he worked with hated him because Frank was a rich Catholic Yankee.
The ‘stewardess recruiting’ scheme wasn’t a one-off to sneak him past the FBI agents at the airport, it was a year-long plan that allowed him to travel around Europe with a personal crew, cashing ten times as many bad checks as he could alone.
Frank’s dad was never a con artist, and never taught Frank how to bluff and cheat people. In the book’s appendix, this is the one part of the film Frank said he was unhappy about.
Compared to a lot of other ‘true-to-life’ films, this wasn’t doesn’t go all that far from the main story (probably since the subject was still alive and right there to consult on the project), but it was definitely punched-up with a lot of Hollywood touches to make Abagnale into more of a James Bond-ish gentleman thief.
It wasn’t until I read a book about the French and Indian War that I found out that The Last of The Mohicans was set on real events. Except for the British and French commanders, the cast is fictional, but the attack on the fort was real, as was the indian attack on the refugee column leaving the fort. Turns out that the Indians just felt cheated out of expected loot and attacked the redcoats and colonials to get something for their trouble.
What’s Love Got To Do With It changed many things, most notably when Ike & Tina’s relationship began. In the book she becomes romantically involved with Ike very soon after meeting him, has a baby out of wedlock with him, eventually marries him, has a second child, and moves to California. In reality she was performing as Tina Turner long before she was even romantically involved with Ike- she was just his lead singer. Her romantic interest was one of the musicians who fathered her first son, while Ike was involved with several women in this period, some of whom he marreid (Ike’s been married a ridiculous number of times- though I don’t think they were all legal, and Tina was around 5 or 7 or something similarly absurd). Ike actually took a romantic interest in Tina after they’d had their first few hits and by which time she’d been performing as Tina Turner (rather than Annie Mae Bullock) for years, which makes her request to keep her stage name more understandable: it was literally Ike’s property as he owned the name and she wasn’t even the first person to go by it (that was one of his previous lead singers). She married Ike when her oldest son was 4 years old and he raised her other son as his own.
Tina has actually expressed regret over the movie’s depiction of Ike. She said he was every bit the abusive bastard of the movie at times, but only after his addictions and mental issues had taken control of him, and that in fact she once performed with a broken jaw covered under makeup and later had to have surgery. She also said their relationship and Ike himself were far more complicated than the movie script and that Ike had also been incredibly good when he wasn’t a total bastard. The $.36 and a gas card when she left him and the quick plummet to playing Holiday Inn Lounges was true- she was even on public assistance for a while- and she says she wishes the movie had concentrated more on her comeback and then further-than-she’d-ever-gone solo stardom than on the Punch & Judy aspects of the relationship.
Ike of course has really expressed regret about the movie. At the time it was being filmed he was broke, owed a fortune in legal bills, was receiving no royalties as they had been seized for X years by the IRS and was having to crash on friend’s sofas and borrow money for groceries. The producers offered him $40,000 to sign a release and he had no choice but to take it, but says he’d otherwise have sued. (Ike’s since recovered the rights to his songs and had a pretty major comeback of his own through sampling by rappers and other artists and his tours- in his 70s he’s still one helluva showman [and he’s been married several times since Tina]).
Then there’s the strange case of Nicole Kidman in To Die For, which was a “work of fiction” with the standard “any resemblance to real people living or dead” yadda yadda disclaimer was imposed, and yet with the exception of the ending and a few fanciful dark comic elements it was exactly the Pam Smart story. They even kept her request of her teen boyfriend to put the dog in the closet so as not to traumatize him when murdering her husband.