Buttmunker

I'm a realist, and I know that Hollywood will often dramatize a film based on real life people and/or events for entertainment purposes - although, speaking purely for myself, I would appreciate just the plain facts of a specific event, without the sprinkles added for effect. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.

On the other hand, I absolutely dislike it when they portray events that never happened!! An excellent example of this would be The Doors (1991), directed by Oliver Stone. Jim Morrison is watching television in the studio with his mates, when a car commercial comes on with the music of Light My Fire. Jim is incredulous, and he turns to Ray Manzarek (the percussionist) and says "You sold our song to a commercial?" Then flings the television in Ray's direction. As Jim walks out, Ray calls after him, "You're never around, man!"
THIS NEVER HAPPENED
None of the four Doors thought it was right to "sell out," especially Ray Manzarek, but I believe the filmmakers put it in to emphasize the flakiness of Jim Morrison. But they could have done it in a better way.

In a movie like People Vs Larry Flynt, they had a lot of material to cover, and I think they did a efficient, if not excellent, job of telling the tale of Hustler Magazine's Flynt. But in order to get the whole story across, they had to omit certain elements. For example, Larry Flynt had many wives, not just Ophea (sp?), played by Courtney Love, but for time constraints, I can understand why they threw all the wives into one person.

Any other inaccuracies in films? This is not to nit-pic, but to inform those otherwise ignorant if they do not know the real life events of a film biopic.

RyoHazuki

You want us to list every inaccuracy from every biopic? That might take a while.

Face/Off

You want inaccuracies in films based on real events? ALL OF THEM!

For crying out loud, movies aren't A&E or History Channel biopics. Even documentaries that win Oscars like to blur the line between fact and fiction. If you want a movie that depicts a real life story 100%, you're going to have a lot of dead end dialogue and scenes that don't go anywhere.

Is there a rollseyes face icon on this site?

DonnachaOne

Yes, Face/Off, there is.

Still, this could be a good thread, if we kept to large, obvious/incredibly gaping holes in truth.

For instance, while Braveheart is full of innacuracies, there's one that stands out for me.

The Battle Of Stirling Bridge... apparently takes place on a field now?

I looked that particular goof up on IMDb, and there was a nice little story about that.

ryuryu2949

How about "The Hurricane" (with Denzel Washington)... they pretty much made the whole thing up...

Shonn

In Ghost and the Darkness the Remington character was made up.

Deftones

we talked about this in the TV forum, but the TV movie 44 minutes has alot of little inacccuracies in it.

JoeyOhhhh

Hey, Oliver Stone has been known to make unbiased, fair and accurate fact based films such as JFK and Nixon.

The Nature Boy

Private Parts Hooey aside, Howard Stern is not:

1. Truly revealing about his private life
2. Able to have a funny program without Jackie
3. Truly rebellious
4. Did not work overnights in Detroit
5. Is not a faithful, regular guy husband. At least not now.

chrisih8u

I thought this was going to be another Michael Moore thread.

D-Ball

I think it would more challenging to find "fact based" movies that are completely accurate.

Skank

Bruce Lee's back being broken in "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story." This never happened. Great movie though!

eedoon

I guess it would be easier to find "Fact-Based" Movies that is entirely accurate and true to the actual event.

Buttmunker

My hope for this thread is to enlighten those who think the films they watch are entirely true, if there is anyone truly that gullible. I mean, we all know about dramatization - television warns us before they air the program, sometimes - and while we know that most (some) of it is true, we also know that it all can't be true.

I figured it would be a good idea to correct people's notions of things they've been watching for years. You learn something new every day is a great and true motto, and I want people to learn something on this thread (myself included).

Face/Off

Facts aren't always the best for storytelling.

In Remember the Titans, the Gerry character has a car accident before the big game. The accident in real life happened a different way and took place long after the big game. But the movie's story is over after the big game and there would be no point to dragging it on to show the car accident and how if affected everyone.

In Black Hawk Down, there are a lot of characters that are compliations of real people.

There's a reason this stuff has to be done.

Tarantino

A Beautiful Mind left out some pretty disturbing things about John Nash, most glaring are the fact that he was a closet gay and had an illegitimate child.

And don't forget the events in Fargo...it NEVER happened.

FiveO

I was going to mention A Beautiful Mind also...but for the speech at the end. I read that he didn't make a speech during his acceptance of the Nobel prize. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

Ginwen

I believe the only Nobel Prize winner that gives a speech is the Peace Prize winner, which isn't what he won.

shaun3000

Oh yeah, those are pretty disturbing!

I think the stuff IN the movie was weirder than what you said was left out.

Playitagainsam

Actually, the fact that Nash's wife divorced him, and only allowed him to live in the same house afterwards as a tennant should tell you a lot. So much for the hokey speech at the Nobel ceremony.

Personally, I disliked that movie. It was pretty bad. Manipulative and uninteresting - and you have no sympathy for the hero.

ArchibaldTuttle

personally I am all for whatever will make a movie better, even if that includes making up stuff, as long as I am ignorant of what is and what isn't the truth which is usually the case in movies involving famous people/most historical events, (I admit certain inaccuracies if you know about them while watching can be distracting depending on the nature of it)

I don't think being gullible has anything to do with it, common sense and gullibility are not mutually exclusive necessarily, especially when it comes to movies

Buttmunker

Really?! At the start of the movie, it said that everything was true, but that the names were changed to protect the innocent.

Inverse

Yeah, and the Coen Brothers also say they never read the Odyssey either.

Oh, and the car interiors in Blood Simple were shot upside down.

All Nobel winners give talks, BTW. (That bit is true...)

Groucho

Is there ANY fact-based movie that is 100% accurate and truthful?

Face/Off

That's an impossibility. In real life a lot of dialogue is meandering, pointless and doesn't move a plot forward. Plus other aspects just don't work in a feature film format.

In Murder in the First, Christian Slater's character is a compilation of numerous lawyers. It wouldn't work as a movie if Kevin Bacon had a new lawyer every ten minutes and most of the relationships were indentical to each other.

Changing the order of events, such as in Remember the Titans or Black Hawk Down, can tell the story in a much better cinematic sense than being faithfully chronological.

A movie isn't supposed to capture 100% truth. Anyone who expects it to should do himself a favor and stop watching. The "truth" of movies comes from capturing the emotion of what happened.