loosie: words: Hollywood Half-Truths

Hollywood Half-Truths

The filmmaking industry practices uninhibited revisionism.

by B.D. | 2002.10.18

A federal judge's recent decision to dismiss a lawsuit in which a family sought damages for the portrayal of the main character in A Perfect Storm was hailed by Hollywood executives as a substantial victory in the name of artistic creativity. But lost in the celebration of First Amendment freedoms is the movie industry's unsettling habit of sculpting reality into more cinematic storytelling. Whether or not George Clooney's character in A Perfect Storm was unfairly presented as "emotionally aloof", "reckless" and "obsessed", it is troubling that Hollywood is so reliant on treating history as nothing more than stock footage to be spliced, edited and spruced-up with a little post-production magic.

Since there seems to be such industry-wide smugness in advertising movies as "based on a true story", it seems only fair that the word "based" such be highlighted, bold-fonted, underscored and italicized. Would a film such as Erin Brockovich have garnered such laurels had the story been purely a figment of some pen-wielding screenplay writer's imagination? Doubtful. It's obviously that Hollywood loves to self-righteously bandy around the phrase "true story" as if it gives films an air of legitimacy that "fictional" cinema lacks. But when the boundaries of truthfulness are expanded as to include speculation, the exclusion of events and outright fabrication, the term "true story" loses all of it authenticity. Trumpeting a distorted mishmash of half-truths as the genuine article is infinitely more reprehensible that simply presenting a movie as a standard work of fiction. There is no acceptable reason to affix the "true story" tag on a movie like The Patriot in which the horrors of slavery were glazed over like a Krispy Kreme.

As another example, take the insidious beady-eyed police chief who tormented Ruben Carter throughout the duration of The Hurricane. Unfortunately, he didn't exist. While it's not necessarily an egregious breach of morality to make an individual represent the racism of the American criminal justice system, it is certainly misleading to conjure up an imaginary character to play such an integral part within The Hurricane's narrative. When one discovers that the police chief was simply a whimsical plot device, the authenticity of the entire motion picture is rightfully called into question. How can the audience know what is factual and what is simply creative revisionism?

It's understood that filmmakers must be granted certain liberties in the order to preserve brevity and natural cinematic pacing. But what does it say about the filmmaking establishment's creative prowess when historical events must be perverted in order to make palatable plotlines? Can there by such a dearth of imaginative writers that ideas need to be carved from the annals of history and buck-fiftied into feature presentations? Like Nachos Bel Grande and Pringles on the breath, something reeks of laziness.

First Amendment rights are vastly more important than whether or not Hollywood decides to throw in a heaving-mammaried love interest or skip over a few war atrocities. Without the ability to improvise, the production of speculative films such as Oliver Stone's J.F.K. would be endlessly mired in legal trench warfare as the "truth" is debated. But moviemakers need to cease with haughtily masturbating because they've been able to sleazily slap a "based on a true story" sticker on the ass of their latest drivel. Considering the hordes of dolts who base their ideas of yesteryear on what they've been spoon-fed at Loews Theaters, rampant revisionism is a deadly effective form of propaganda.