Based On A True Story

So was The Departed.

Dirty Harry was also based on a true story, and I also wonder if Billy Jack was, also.

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"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

Dirty Harry was not based on a true story. The movie's killer was inspired by the real life Zodiac Killer, but that wasn't his name in the movie and there was no Dirty Harry to stop him in real life. He was never caught and despite a lot of speculation his identity is still not known.

Billy Jack is entirely made up.

Billy Jack was a fictitious character but many of the scenes involving the treatment of Native Americans by the townspeople were based in truth... particularly the scene in the ice cream parlor when the Indian children were denied service...

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a few other flicks worth a watch in this category

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

I watched Bound for Glory not too long ago with David Carradine as Woody Guthrie and highly recommend it...

Yeah. And of course Scorsese's The Departed ain't a true story, either. It's a remake of a Hong Kong flick, fer cripe's sake.

So 0 for 3, West Side Story Lover. But thanks for playing!

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

And in a special category all its own:

You know, all movies are not 100% based on a true story. "Based on A True Story" theme makes me think what percent "true" and "fictional" on each movie you mentioned in this discussion. My question - what percent? 10%? or 25%? or 50%? I wonder. How do we know? I guess we never know.

Other question - how do we know which plots are true or fictional? I would love to believe all plots that are true but I know it's not! When I watch movies (based on a true story), I have to remind myself it's not 100% true story. For example, "Blind Side" movie is not 100% true but 50% or 25%? Which plots are true? Maybe the book is only way to find out. What if no book?

I think "based on a true story" is more marketing than "true story" itself. Hollywood just wants 100% pure entertainment.

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Timetravelfan
www.timetravelmovie.com

The only way to know how true they are is to read about the real story the movie is based on. No movie which has dialogue will be one hundred percent accurate because the writer wasn't there to record or witness what happened. But some movies are more factual than others. Patton and Prince of the City, for example, are pretty accurate. Bugsy not so much and many, many others.

Even if there is a book, don't forget that a book is only one person's version of events, too, and that's before it's edited by someone (and, in some cases, the lawyers.)

If it's well known there is going to be news reports. They rarely make a movie based on a true story that wasn't written down somewhere. And it is certainly true there can be contradictory facts and interpretations, but at least they can point to having some connection to reality as opposed to a movie which completely makes up incidents. One thing very common is disclaimers that admit their version has "composite characters," code for people the filmmakers made up..

Thread Clock : 8 Years!

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Does it bother you?

I don't know about Prince of the City, but Patton would have been "pretty accurate" as to one view of Patton--probably as he saw himself. There were lots of people, including some in his own command, who had a very different Patton. Like one of his own men once said of ol' "Blood-and-Guts," "our blood, his guts."

Gotta differ with you on the who-is-he bit, Will. A little ol' West Texas boy like me wasn't making the nightclub circuit back in the 1950s, but I certainly had heard of Joe E. Lewis back before the biographical film came out. Maybe he was on Ed Sullivan and other variety TV shows at the time, because I remember seeing the guy, and I think it was several times prior to the film. Plus he was big on the Vegas circuit, back in the Rat Pack days, so many people likely saw him there.

As for the movie bending the truth to Lewis never being able to sing again after he was cut, the film definitely has Sinatra singing as Lewis both before and after the attack. But you are right in that he was never a singer of the Perry Como, Tony Bennet, Dean Martin, or Sinatra type. But I think he was a singer/comic before the attack and a comic/singer afterward, maybe because his vocal range had been "shortened" in the cutting or maybe because he became such a drunk that he couldn't remember all the verses to the song. Either way, he'd sing a little bit and then break into some comic schtick.

I don't think that film did justice to Guthrie's radical socialist politics and radically socialist songs. "This Land is Your Land" was still performed like a kiddie travelogue tune, while the original song the way Guthrie sang it was a hard-edge attack on capitalism. Also "We Shall Overcome" (which if I remember right Guthrie didn't write) and some other tunes that he did write were recycled into antisegregation anthems during the Civil Rights movements in the 1960, but "We Shall Overcome" was earlier a more upbeat union anthem in the Great Depression of the 1930s as was "We Shall Not Be Moved" and several others.

Boys Don't Cry (1999) - I thought it seemed like an episode of CSI or something, but apparently it's based on a true story.

As is The Great Escape, which I think is more fiction than fact. No Americans participated in the escape, mainly British and Canadian troops. In the film however, there's only about one British officer in the whole camp.

Oh well.

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"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." - Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park.

I recently really enjoyed The Blind Side.

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It is an interesting topic. I wrote a magazine article about histrocial innacuracies in film, and got a really good response, which led to several radio interviews. Bravehert was a popular film to discuss, as was A Beautiful Mind.

Matt

Just recently read about the true story behind the silence of the lambs film. There was in fact a criminal, a serial killer that wears the skin of their victims to satisfy his desire to be a woman.