Lately, among the best boys, foley mixers and dolly grips, there’s another phrase which has been cropping up on movie credits with alarming frequency: “Inspired by True Events”.
On circuit this week alone, you can choose from Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts as a feisty single mom battling corrupt corporations), the much-acclaimed Boys Don’t Cry (Hilary Swank as unfortunate transsexual Brandon Teena), The Insider (Russell Crowe as tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand) and The Hurricane (Denzel Washington as wrongfully convicted boxer Rubin Carter).
But, while the real Erin Brockovich was so pleased with her transformation into a movie character she took a cameo in the film, other recipients of the same honour haven’t been quite so enamoured of the results. In fact, some of the actual people depicted in Boys Don’t Cry – as well as The Insider and The Hurricane – are very, very unhappy indeed. So, since when is Hollywood so interested in making movies about nobodies and (while we’re at it) why are these upstarts getting vexed about the way they’ve been portrayed?
Well, the problem with nobodies is there is usually good reason why they’re exactly that – hardly the stuff silver-screen dreams are made of. We’re not talking biopics of the great and the good here, but normal people with one significant event in their lives (the infamous “arc” so beloved of Hollywood scriptwriters). The facts of the matter, while interesting enough to warrant the movie treatment, might not have quite enough dramatic edge to sustain audience interest – so characters are amalgamated or omitted, events are reordered, and certain things are simply invented for artistic purposes. And this really pisses people off.
Now you probably wouldn’t be too concerned if you were played by Julia Roberts or, as in the case of Jeffrey Wigand and Lowell Bergman – the chief protagonists of The Insider – by Russell Crowe or Al Pacino. That goes double if you’re not only made out to be good-looking, but brave and crusading as well. However, if, like 60 Minutes über-anchor Mike Wallace, you think you’ve been made to look, well, a bit sneaky, you might well ask (as he did), “Where does the truth leave off and docudrama begin?”
Or, if you are Wigand’s ex-wife, you might just threaten to sue backers Disney, because you claim you didn’t leave your husband as a result of the mysterious death-threats depicted in the movie, but because he abused you. A big difference to those involved, perhaps, but a trifle to the film-makers.
And what if something about The Hurricane got your goat? Well, if you are Selwyn Raab you write an article in the New York Times accusing the movie of being “history contorted for dramatic effect” (and not just because you were annoyed that your involvement in the actual campaign to free Carter was ignored or anything). Or, like former middleweight champion Joey Giardello, you sue the producers for defamation, as you’re terribly upset at the implication you only won a bout against Carter because of the racial prejudice of the judge (and also because it shows you getting a right royal ass-whupping).
Meanwhile, the only reason Brandon Teena, the transgender hero of Boys Don’t Cry, can’t threaten to sue anyone is because he’s dead. So it was left to ex-girlfriend Lana Tisdel to try to stop distribution of the film, claiming it misrepresented the facts of the matter, and unselfconsciously announcing that it destroyed, “the spirit and the memory of Brandon as badly as the two killers destroyed his body”. But, of course, there have been far worse cases of art thieving wholesale from life.
But we shouldn’t find it too surprising that people don’t necessarily own the rights to their own life stories. We live in a world where a modicum of media exposure can turn anyone into a pseudo-celebrity (even a two-bit cruise ship singer and a fat airline employee).
Audiences have always had a problem separating fiction from reality, and the popularity of docusoaps and mockumentaries only serves to blur the boundaries even further. While some films acknowledge this – the oh-so postmodern The Blair Witch Project for one – we’re all too willing to accept a fictionalisation of real events as the very last word on a subject.
And now Hollywood, sick of rehashing the minutiae of its own sordid business for subject matter, is turning to the outside world for inspiration. Nothing gives actors more satisfaction than pretending to be “real” – it lets them kid themselves they’re doing something worthwhile. Julia Roberts, last seen playing Julia Roberts (badly) in Notting Hill, gets her thespian props for playing a crusading law clerk, albeit one with a penchant for mini-skirts and abundant cleavage, and I’m sure Hilary Swank would much rather be remembered for her Oscar-winning turn in Boys Don’t Cry than for The Next Karate Kid.
It’s OK for the actors: they get to stop playing at reality the moment the camera stops rolling, and go back to doing whatever it is actors do all day. The genuine articles are stuck living the same old life. When their story is appropriated, they become public property but, unlike the stars who play them (and get so much credit for it), there’s no reward and no chance to set the record straight.
So it’s little wonder that people seek vindication and/or bucketloads of cash in court – and bear in mind that getting all worked up about your thinly veiled portrayal in a film is hardly a new development (press magnate William Randolph Hearst and muck-spreading columnist Walter Winchell, for example, were none too impressed with Citizen Kane and The Sweet Smell Of Success).
But the ensuing litigation is becoming more frequent, one reason being that, in the past, Hollywood usually waited for all concerned to be cold in the ground before giving their lives a spit and polish. On the other hand, the events in some of the current crop of true stories happened just a few years ago. And, while the more salacious real-life stories used to be the preserve of TV movies (with titles like Not Without My Daughter and Wife, Mother, Murderer), they’re now the subject of big-budget, mainstream fare.
Denzel Washington defended the practice, saying, “Any time you base things on a true story, it offends someone.” Well, he ain’t wrong, but an increasingly litigious audience might make film-makers more concerned with the truth, rather than the “emotional” or “artistic” truth they need to make their films that bit more compelling.
Whatever the result, it’s all symptomatic of Hollywood’s lack of creativity. Where most major studio films used to have original scripts, or were adapted from novels or plays, the bulk of the recent films “Inspired by True Events” are based on magazine articles or one-column newspaper stories. With greater demand for movies, and a quicker turnover of stars, anybody’s dull little life is potentially worthy of two hours of celluloid.
So, whatever you do, just make sure you don’t do anything too dramatic today.