Is it important for factual films to get their facts right

[stuart.uk]

It's well known in the film world for dramatic license to be taken, even if the film was based on fact. However, 1960s footballer Dave Mackay, a Scottish International won legal action against the makers of the acclaimed soccer movie The Damned United. This didn't surprise me as I knew they used dramatic license, suggesting as club Captain of Derby County he broke up a player revolt, by stabbing the recently resigned Manager Brian Clough in the back by taking his place in charge of the team. This showed him in a bad light. Yes he did replace Clough as Manager of Derby, but he had left the club and was Managing Nottinham Forrest when he was asked to take over at Derby .

This got me wondering about the likes of Buffalo Bill. Would he if he'd been alive, been unhappy with Joel Mcrea's potrayal of him, as it wasn't an accurate account of his life. For example the film suggested he and his wife reconciled after a long seperation, when the truth was something else

[ChiO]

Is it important for factual films to get their facts right?

Well, of course. And, if it's a factual film, then by definition it sticks to the facts.

On the other hand, is it important for films to get their facts right?

Only if one relies on going to movies to learn the facts. And I'd never recommend doing that. Who's that guy in THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC wearing the horned rim glasses? I'm doubting that happened. Does it ruin the movie? Nope, it adds an immediacy and a sense of currency that I appreciate. Do I care whether the balance of the film is "factual"? Nope. I can read history books for that. What matters to me is whether what is on the screen is cinematic. Hang the "facts".

[mrsl]

.
Stuart:

Hollywood is much better now than it was back in the 40's and 50's. One case in point is Jim Thorpe, All American. Jim earned all sorts of gold medals at the Olympics and they were rescinded because he had played one little game of baseball for $10.00 for eating money, but by being paid, he was no longer an amateur. Also, the movie ended when Jim was down and out, but before the movie was made, he had recovered and straightened out. But that is just one person. The musical teams like Rogers and Hart/Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe, etc. aren't too bad because those teams wrote so many songs for movies and stage, let alone singles, anyone would be hard put to cover their entire career. The story of Cole Porter however, is purely an out and out lie from his marriage to how he hurt his leg, and the same goes for Eddie Duchin. Sports figures, however, are basically boring folks because they live to practice, practice, practice, unless they're stupid like Tiger Woods, or mentally challenged like Jimmie Piersall. I fully understand they have to beef up a life story to make it more interesting, and entertaining, but why lie? When Cole Porter hurt his leg in a horseback riding accident, he spent 5 years in operations, and years in a wheelchair, which if handled correctly could have been just as much a piece of human interest as running into the imaginary nurse girlfriend he never had in France, since he was gay.

I used to think, "Well, they know what they're doing", but now I'm not so sure. So I guess my answer is YES, they should be factual in bio films.

[stuart.uk]

Lord Burgly refused to have his name used in Charriots Of Fire, so Nigel Havers played him as Lord Andrew Lindsay.

This could be because the of the College Dash as Cambridge. In the film Harold Abrahams bt the clock with Abraham's missing by a whisker. The reality was Abraham's wasn't even there and Burgly did bt the clock. As far as I believe Burgly didn't win silver in Paris, as suggested in the film, but got the gold for the 400 hurdles 4 yrs later. I also believe that Abraham's and Eric Liddle never actually ran against each other as was the case in the film.

Didn't they create a fictional girlfriend for Gerswin in Rhapsody In Blue and for Mickey Rooney's Hart in Words And Music, in his case for the same reason as Cole porter

[klondike]

This got me wondering about the likes of Buffalo Bill. Would he if he'd been alive, been unhappy with Joel Mcrea's potrayal of him, as it wasn't an accurate account of his life. For example the film suggested he and his wife reconciled after a long seperation, when the truth was something else

I'd wager Mr. Cody would have to be more pleased with McCrea's portrayal, and the script he performed from, than with the unflatteringly clownish personification of himself by Paul Newman in 1976's revisionist farce Buffalo Bill & the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson.

At the risk of sounding redundant on this subject, I would have to point out the gaping void at the heart of the otherwise splendid Braveheart, wherein the 13th century Battle of Stirling Bridge was recreated without the geographic presence, even, of a river, much less a bridge!

[MissGoddess]

I'm with ChiO....movies are entertainment...storytelling...even "tall tale" telling and I can't think of anything more boring than if they had to eliminate imagination and stick to dry facts. Blah! I'll watch a documentary if I want to see something that pretends to be grounded in facts. At any rate, only the people who lived through events know what really happened, we can seldom be completely sure any version is 100% accurate. So long as it isn't based on mean spirited defamation of character, I don't mind dramatic license when effectively portrayed.

All the poetry and romance goes out of storytelling if you restrict it to a recitation of "facts".

[movieman1957]

It depends on how far you go. "My Darling Clementine" has the drawback of having Doc killed in the gunfight when that was clearly not the case. It may make for better drama but where is the line?

[MissGoddess]

Is it really a "drawback", though? For me, once I'm inside a story, it's that the logical telling of the story within its own context and boundaries, that counts for me. Doc is set up as a tragic, death obsessed figure, so it would have felt somewhat odd if he survived because he was on that trajectory...it had to be. Who's to say that Doc wasn't really "dead" by the time he shot it out in Tombstone, only his body kept living a while longer. That's what I mean by my finding it effective enough if the events in a story, or movie, follow the logic set up by the film or plot itself, and not necessarily anything in real life. I even think if the spirit behind the story is true to itself and expressed in a way that impacts its audience emotionally, that can be a more powerful "truth" than accurately recorded facts.

But I do like fairy tales and all that, so that partly explains my skewed vision.

[movieman1957]

In an allegorical sense (if that is the right word) I guess it is okay but from an historical standpoint these things can bother me. It works within the story. I understand why it works. Maybe the greater tragedy for Doc would have been his survival in that story but that takes it to another place.

It can depend on the degree of the change of the truth but it can be a closer point for me than for others that it becomes bothersome.

I still really like "Clementine."

[ChiO]

It may make for better drama but where is the line?

There is no line.

If one wants Fact, then there's EMPIRE (Warhol, 1964), but most people don't want that, and it is even Fact limited by how and where the camera was positioned on a specific day. Fact and reality are, for the most part, mundane even in the lives of fascinating people in exotic places participating in exciting events.

The seemingly most factual movie ever made is not fact: there's probably actors (not the actual participants), speaking lines that probably weren't said in ways that may or may not be the ways original spoken, by characters that didn't exist or are composites (and other participants not represented at all), wearing clothes and make-up that the actual participants didn't, lit in a fashion that didn't exist, at a different (or altered) location, recreating the illusion of Fact. Then throw in editing, art design, background music and color (actually, the lack of color -- for many people, including me, the use of B&W lends a sense of gritty reality; however, I've never experienced B&W in my day-to-day reality except in my dream reality).

Once one decides that changing one Fact is permissible, then the concept of a "factual film" is destroyed. If there is a line, that's it and I'm guessing we all want that one crossed. And that's just fine. What matters, to me at least, is whether the Director is communicating in a cinematic way his or her sense of a Truth that is greater than "fact".

And I'm with MissG.

[stuart.uk]

For many yrs, mainly due to the lobbing of Olivia Bacon Custer, her husband George Armstrong Custer was potrayed as a hero of the west, most noteably by Errol Flynn in They Died With Their Boots On. It was a great film and Errol's final scene with ODH is a highlight when she knows he's riding of to his death. Chances are Libby was pretty confident her husband would return and the battle of The Little Big Horn in the film was nothing like the reality. It's pretty hard to draw a line here, sure it's a great film, but kids growing up in the 40s and 50s might have taken the film as Gospel, regarding Custer, whereas maybe they were intitled to know the historical facts.

Tombstone is way more realistic than 'Clementine, but even then there is plenty of dramatic license. In the film Wyatt doesn't really get involved with Josie Marcus until Mattie has died of a drug overdose, even though admittedly he's in love with her. However, there is a suggestion Mattie committed sucicide becuase of the affair. Wyatt to has been potrayed as a western hero, but in reality he appears to at best a flawed hero, or even a villain.

In the case of Dave Mackay in The Damned United, I felt he had every reason to be upset about his potrayal in the film. This makes me think that when dealing with biopics, particulary about recent events, there is an obligation to get the facts right. Another example is The Buster Keaton Story. When I first saw the film I knew nothing about Buster and thought it brillaint, as I did Donald O'Conner's performance. However, after finding out about Buster I then thought of the film as a joke and an insult, not only to Buster, but also Donald O'Conner, who with an accurate script could have given a career best performance

Seabuscuit is a great horse racing movie, but why did they leave out the fact that Red Pollard met his future wife, a nurse, when he was in hospital with his serious leg injury. IMO that would have enhanced an already great film

[ChiO]

Take your pick:

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. -- Jean-Luc Godard

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world. -- Jean-Luc Godard

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. -- Jean-Luc Godard

A film is a ribbon of dreams. The camera is much more than a recording apparatus; it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world that is not ours and that brings us to the heart of a great secret. Here magic begins. -- Orson Welles

I love these kinds of discussions. Right and wrong are a function of approach, and there are multiple approaches.

[MichiganJ]

Please, you are making me doubt the veracity of The Babe Ruth Story. And right before the season starts, too.

[ChiO]

One of my favorite candy bars. And dat's a fact, Jack.

[klondike]

One of my favorite candy bars. And dat's a fact, Jack.

I reckon that's probably the best you can make-do with, if you can't get a Clark Bar . . . and west of the Taconic State Parkway - ya can't!