Fictionalized History

Posted by thegreatredhope

Made it a point to stay up late and Finish "Frost/Nixon" the other night. Why did I do this? Well calm the hell down, I'm gonna tell ya...

I was extremely invested in the story, mainly because it extracted legitimate drama from real-world people and the situations they found themselves in. The real icing on the cake, however, was that it was all BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Oh, what a fun blanket statement. Hollywood can ride for miles and miles on that sentence.

I really enjoyed the movie overall, but I was hesitant to look up any info about the film afterwords (as I'm prone to doing) in fear of having the drama become undermined. I wanted to remain just a little naive and assume that whole thing was strongly rooted in reality. I mean, it was Richard Nixon after all. That guy could stir up some pretty dramatic shite. But, of course, curiosity got the best of me, and I looked it up. Go figure, a lot of it was altered for the purposes of drama. Should've expected this from the team that brought you "A Beautiful Mind". Ech.

I just wonder how much further films could ride on their drama if they didn't cling so tightly to the "based on a true story" angle. I'm guessing most people take that phrase with a grain of salt. And since the filmmakers never claim WHICH PART of the film comes from the real story, we're left to optimistically assume that all of this happens in the real world. Would it perhaps be easier to downplay the fact that these have their roots in true stories? An innumerable amount of films are based on true events, even if those events are just small moments of inspiration. Think about how many horror movies ride the hype of "based on a true story". Now think about how ridiculous it is to claim that a movie about ghosts is trying  to recreate something that actually happened. OOhhhhh.

Maybe the most compelling angle you could hype is to keep the "true" parts to yourself. Compelling stories will sell regardless of their source material, and rigidly pairing a Hollywood film with reality can only harm its credibility.

Oh, and here's a funny article to support my argument.