Fiction in Non-Fiction Movies

“Never let facts get in the way of a good story.”

I’m certain this quote was spoken by someone in the Hollywood industry.  I just can’t remember who.

I recently watched three films that are based on true stories – all to varying degrees of excellence (or lack thereof).

Argo - see, it says so right on the poster

 

The first film was “Argo” – the movie that won Best Picture for 2012.  Directed by Ben Affleck it told the true story of six Americans that hid out in the Canadian embassy until someone from the U.S. came up with a specialized plan to get them out.

Having watched some of the interviews with the real live persons, and seeing that they’re all over the blu-ray disc, I assume that the film is pretty historically accurate.  But, I’m sure, a lot of the “Hollywoodization” of the film – some close calls, conflicts, and the chase at the end to stop the plane are all fabricated so we, the audience, can get our adrenaline going and wonder what eventually will happen.  Affleck does a very good job of ramping up the conflict and it IS a good exciting piece of filmmaking, but what truth was sacrificed to create a good story.  What facts were kicked to the curb.

The second film I watched was the film “The Last King of Scotland” – another good Hollywood vehicle and award winner – this film tells the story of a young idealistic doctor who goes to Uganda to help the poor.  Next thing you know he’s hanging with the President (Idi Amin) and doing all the things that a close confidant is allowed to do:  drink, party, drink, party.  Ooopsy, though, he sleeps with one of Amin’s many wives, gets caught up in political whatnot, tries to escape, tries to escape again and finally succeeds.  This film, too, has a tense filled scene at the end as the Dr. escapes on a plane.  This precedes a scene that is so blatantly stupid that it almost ruins the film.  The scene?

Beat-up Hero in the Duty Free Shop

 

Dr. Feelgood is trying to poison the president – when he gets found out he gets the crap kicked out of him and is dragged to a duty free gift shop in a crowded airport (crowded because there are hostages and Israelis and camera crews).  Ami comes in and tells the good Dr. that he knows about his wife, monologues for a bit, and then has his henchmen pull him on meat-hooks, I guess, to anticipate his coming execution.  How no one in the entire airport doesn’t see this happen is beyond me.

With the wife...what you didn't think you were

 gonna be found out?

 

Then, after the Dr. has been hanging around for a while, the henchmen take him down and then, uh, leave to have a drink somewhere.  I think one even says: “Oh, he ain’t goin’ nowhere.”  Which, of course, is enough time for another rival, good, Dr. to come in and make the save and get him to escape.

Actor (left) - very good.  Real Dictator (right) - very bad.

 

Forest Whitaker’s amazing performance as Idi Amin and a ripping good story keep it from not falling completely apart but I fled to my Wikipedia to find out about the doctor and find the book that he had written about his experience.  What did I find out?  Oh, there was no doctor.  Yes, the book is “kinda” based on the same story – but not a doctor – a soldier.  And the author lived in Uganda for 10 years or something and was a reporter – so I don’t doubt that the atrocities and story beats are based in fact – but I was a bit saddened to find out that there was no doctor and that whole story was made up.  Or, in essence, a combination of other stories pooled together to make one solid story.

Lastly, I watched the film “The Worlds Fastest Indian.”

One of the year's best?  I dunno...

This film is based on the true story of Herbert Monro – a New Zealander motorcycle rider who got it in his mind that he wanted to come to America and test his modified motorcycle at the salt flats in Utah.  His hope was to travel beyond the speed of 200 mph and set a new land-speed record for that type of motorcycle.  Good for him.

I was ready to rip this film to shreds until I read the Wikipedia page and then it become abundantly clear what writer/director Roger Donaldson was doing.  Still…I’m going to rip it to shreds.

Real Burt aka Bert ...I think.

 

The biggest problem I have with this film, and again, it’s based on fact…I guess…  Is that Mr. Monro’s journey is all so very simple and non complicated.  He’s also the greatest, sweetest most wonderful guy you’d ever want to meet.  SERIOUSLY.  Is only real personality “flaw” is that he pees on his lemon tree.  That’s it!  This film has so little conflict in it of any sort of weight or merit, that I swear it’s more of a Hallmark card to an old grease-monkey than an actual film.

The genuine article - Bob's Your Uncle!

Let me go through the conflicts one-by-one:

Conflict one:  Bert tests his loud motorcycle at a God-awful time in the morning.  The neighbor complains he’s going to call the cops.  That’s it.

Conflict two:  Bert has a party to raise funds for his trip, a group of “bad bikers” shows up (why, I don’t know) and challenge him to a race.  He says…Okay.

Conflict three:  They race.  Though Bert loses (he crashes).  He’s not injured in the slightest.

Conflict four:  He beds the local Social Security clerk (really with no problem – he has to wash his hands before she’ll sleep with him).

This happens A LOT in this movie.

 

Conflict five:  He has a near heart-attack.  Now, I’ll call this the BIG CONFLICT because this reoccurs throughout the film and hangs like a low cloud over everything because you want to know…is he going to have a heart attack and die?  Spoiler alert:  He doesn’t.

Conflict six:  He goes to the bank to mortgage his house to pay for the trip.  No problems there.

Conflict seven:  He sets a match to his yard to “cut the grass” nothing else catches on fire.

Conflict eight:  On his way to the ship to take him to the U.S. the bike gang shows up and…gives him money for beer (he doesn’t drink).

Conflict nine:  On the ship he has to be the cook, no one complains and, I guess, he’s a good cook.

Conflict ten:  He gets to America and his visa or there’s a problem in customs but it just so happens that a guy read an article about Monro in Popular Mechanic’s magazine and so that’s good enough for him.

Conflict eleven:  He takes a cab to his hotel and the guy tells him it’s $27 or something and that makes Bert a little angry.

Conflict twelve:  A flower seller steals $10 from his wallet when he goes to buy a flower.

Conflict thirteen:  The clerk at the hotel is a transvestite black man dressed as a woman.  Bert has no problems with this whatsoever.  He’s not bothered by the race difference, he’s not bothered by the homosexual or drag queen angle of, he’s fine being seen with her out at a restaurant, etc.

Conflict fourteen:  He goes to buy a car, negotiates a better price on the car and then tweaks the car so it runs better.  And then he’s offered a job at the car dealership to fix cars and is loved by the owner.

Conflict fifteen:  He goes to customs to get his bike and the box is crushed!  NO!  Oh, the bike is fine.

Conflict sixteen:  He heads on his way to Utah and, on his way there, the trailer carrying his precious bike loses a tire and the trailer crashes!  NO!  Oh, the bike is fine.  He finds a log and uses that to replace the wheel.

Conflict seventeen:  A man comes along and not only helps him, he also feeds him, gives him native American medicine and puts a necklace around his neck for good luck.  Alas, though, he’s not able to replace the wheel.

Conflict eighteen:  In hopes of replacing the wheel he ends up on a run-down farm.  The woman owner of the farm shows him her husband’s gravesite (been dead for ten years) and then a rattlesnake ALMOST bites Bert.

Conflict nineteen:  As soon as you can say “bob’s your uncle” he’s slept with the farm woman.

Conflict twenty:  On the way to Utah he sleeps in his car by the side of the road, a cop pulls over and tells him to move along and that he “can’t do that.”  No ticket.  No confiscating the weird contraption.

Conflict twenty-one:  He gets to the salt flats and didn’t register weeks ago.  They let that pass even after saying “rules are rules” about a dozen times.

Rules are rules?  Who cares, as long as you've got 

over-acting friends like these!

Conflict twenty-two:  The inspectors say his bike is unable to run as it’s too dangerous.  They let that pass.

Conflict twenty-three:  Running out of money a nice guy pays for a hotel room for him.

Conflict twenty-four:  Veteran racer comes in and sees him taking medication for his heart and says that he’s “tried everything” to allow him to race his bike.  Says he’ll try again, even though he now knows that the guy could die at any moment.

Conflict twenty-five:   He does a “minor” test run against the officials’ wishes and they don’t punish him.

Conflict twenty-six:  The officials decide to do a run where they travel with him and even though the bike is wobbly and dangerous and he went way too fast for them – they decide for him to race for real.

Conflict twenty-seven:  He does another test run on a Nevada highway and gets pulled over by the cops.  Gets off with a warning.  No ticket.

Conflict twenty-eight:  Low on funds, people pool their money together for him (note:  This is based on fact as there’s a photo in some magazine that they recreated for the film).

Conflict twenty-nine:  It’s the final race:  Is he going to surpass 200 mph?  Is the bike going to crash?  Is he going to burn his leg up on the exhaust?  Is he going to die?  (wait, I spoiled that last one already didn’t I)  I’ll tell you this:  He crashes.  He’s fine...other than his leg being burned quite a bit.

Final crash...have a little salt in that wound?

 

There you go.  29 conflict moments, or beats, in this film that all, pretty much, get a pass.  There’s no “all is lost moment.”  There’s no point at all where I thought that the story was going to turn out differently than what was presented.  And to be honest, maybe the above is EXACTLY how it happened in real life.  I don’t know.  Maybe those are the facts and everyone was super sweet to him and he slept around and didn’t get bit by a rattlesnake and no cop gave him a ticket but by GOD, I wanted something like that to happen to him.  For goshsakes do SOMETHING to him.  Don’t make the journey so easy.

Above I wrote that it was obvious what Roger Donaldson was doing when I read the Wikipedia page.  It said that Donaldson had worked on this story for 12 years – even after making a documentary about Mr. Monro.  Well, that’s peachy, but that’s also God creating.  The character, played fine by Anthony Hopkins, is a complete endearing puppy dog of a man.  You couldn’t make him more loveable if he was carrying puppies and babies from a burning building.  He absolutely has NO FLAWS (other than peeing on a lemon tree which, according to Wikipedia, was a homage to Donaldson’s father and not something that Monro did).

A lot of these were actually Monro's - which is kind of nice that

 they put this bit of realism into the movie.

When creating characters or heroes, you MUST give them a flaw.  (Potential for having a heart-attack at any moment is not a flaw.)  Being brash and taking unnecessary risks is a flaw (Top Gun).  Unsure of yourself and what you’re capable of and struggling to succeed is a flaw (multiple films).  Even being stuck in a foreign land after making bad decisions is a flaw (Wizard of Oz).  In fact, most films are described as someone who is stuck trying to get un-stuck and therein the conflict arises.   But I never ever felt that Monro was stuck in any sort of way.  Nor does the character go through any sort of arc?  He doesn’t change throughout the story which also leaves the story flat.  He’s the same guy from frame one through frame million.

What would I do differently?  I would have him lose his bike (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure).  I would have him suffer a heart-attack.  I would have destroyed the bike and forced him to rebuild it.  I would have had him arrested.  I would have a tire blow-out and break his arm.  ANYTHING more than just:  “You can’t do it.”  30 seconds later.  “Okay you can do it.”

Again, I’m not disputing the potential facts of the story.  Again, it could have happened EXACTLY that way and wouldn’t I look like an idiot?  But there are facts here that could have been used to enhance the story beyond what it already is.  In real life Mr. Monro was divorced.  He could have talked about that.  In real life Mr. Monro had four kids.  Where?  Not a mention in the story.  What about them confronting their father about this trip.  Their concern for his health.  Even a plot point used in the story blurs the truth.  In the story Mr. Monro has a wonderful speech about his twin brother who died when a tree fell on him.  In real life Mr. Monro had a twin sister who was still-born and an older brother who died when a tree fell on him.  Is it too difficult to change the speech to an older brother?  ie:  The truth?  I guess the writer’s felt it would have more impact on him if it was a twin.  I can see that – but you could even use the real life still-born twin.

Back to the God Complex.  According to Wikipedia this film broke box office records in New Zealand so it is obvious to me that this Monro guy is a folk hero and no one wants to see their folk hero struggle.  They want to see their folk hero succeed on every level.  Who wants to see them hurt/die/suffer?  It may make a wonderful fairy-tale, but it sure as heck doesn’t make a compelling film.

There was another “fact based” film from down-under entitled “Phar Lap.”  I learned of Phar Lap from a co-worker who loved horses.  “Phar Lap” was one of the fastest horses that ever lived and it got to the point where they had to put weights on the horse just so he wouldn’t win every race.  Eventually those weights wore him down and he died.  (I can’t remember if he died on the track or what.)  My co-worker told me that when they did an autopsy on Phar Lap they found out that the horse’s heart was twice the size of a normal horse’s heart.

Australia had a hero horse, New Zealand had a hero old codger.

 

When I watched the film and it ended with the dead horse, one of the characters said:  “Wow, that horse must’ve had some heart.”  And...that was it.  Nothing about the double size.  No title screen where it said this.  Just....the end.  Go figure.  Like some weird inside Australian joke.  Where everyone who knows can nod knowingly.  But for the 90% of us out there that didn’t know – we miss out on amazing little bit of fact.

I assume this is the horse's actual heart, him being

 a hero to a nation and all...but, still, kinda gross.

 Pretty horse, but could it go 200 mph?  I doubt it.

Well, as they say:  “Never let the facts get in the way of a story.”