Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies [Library Binding]

J Whalen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2005 | ISBN-10: 1417674903 | ISBN-13: 978-1417674909

Exposing the real stories behind 100 hit reality-based movies, this captivating resource offers interesting facts about some of the most well-respected and much-loved films. For both film buffs and casual moviegoers, this invaluable guide explores Hollywood's ardent and often uncomfortable relationship with the factual accounts it converts into fantasy. Illuminating films such as A Beautiful Mind, Adaptation, Apollo 13, Black Hawk Down, Catch Me If You Can, Erin Brockovich, The French Connection, The Perfect Storm, and Titanic, this work reveals how Hollywood alters history for movie fans, leaving filmgoers often unable to tell the difference between fact and fiction. A riveting examination, this volume focuses on alterations to the "true story" such as concocted love affairs, annoyingly obvious character motivations, trumped-up endings, bigger explosions, more car crashes, and spontaneous songs, all created for the sake of entertainment.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"When legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Director John Ford's quote prefaces Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies, a book that digs into the facts behind 100 movies that were--supposedly--based on true events including popular fare as Hoosiers, Ed Wood, Seabiscuit, and Erin Brokovich. Previous books of this lineage were usually written by historians who looked at every foible of a film. Here, authors Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen come from a more movie-centric position. They know filmmakers must telescope events, create composite characters, and give the Hollywood treatment to other elements to simply be produced and enjoyed. They are movie fans who can praise The French Connection as a grand film with terrific action sequences, but note the true events were far less visceral (leading to the book title's asterisk "but with more car crashes"). More modern films are examined in these 3-5 page segments with excellent further reading notes including Web sites. The authors also question how truthful a film should be, even great films, praising the accuracy of Ghandi and GoodFellas and delivering harsh blows to Monster, Braveheart, and A Beautiful Mind. Besides the usual chapters of factual films (war, sports, biopics), they also search out films "based" on paranormal incidents that can't keep the "facts" straight. Mentioned often, and placed at the end of the book, is Oliver Stone's JFK, the movie that "gave birth to this book." In one sense, the film "must be the most fact-heavy film in Hollywood history" but the sources materials are so questionable. Perhaps Stone realizes the power of Ford's quote better than any other Hollywood filmmaker. --Doug Thomas --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Films that purportedly document real-life events have a special allure for moviegoers, posit journalists Vankin and Whalen, which is why the phrase "based on a true story" is so prevalent in movie promos. But the term is loose and poorly defined, and in this highly entertaining dissection, the authors examine 100 films, detailing what about them is really true and what's simply a story. Wittily working their way through most of the well-known "true" films of the last four decades—Adaptation, Catch Me If You Can, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, The Amityville Horror, etc.—Vankin and Whalen categorize movies by type (e.g., crime thrillers, war movies, sports films). Sometimes, what's on the screen diverges wildly from known history, as in the case of Braveheart, and Vankin and Whalen may be overwhelmed by the differences between truth and fiction. Less often, a film really does provide a mirror, like Coal Miner's Daughter, which left only more subtle details of Loretta Lynn's life for the authors to explore. Most of the movies, though, fall between the extremes, including enough fact to warrant the "based on a true story" tag, but not accurate enough to be completely true. Not surprisingly, readers who've actually seen these films stand to get the most out of Vankin and Whalen's often picky but always jaunty analyses. 110 b&w photos. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Library Binding: 446 pages
• Publisher: Rebound by Sagebrush (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1417674903
• ISBN-13: 978-1417674909
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,809,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun Read but...., January 31, 2005

By 

S. Berner (Cocoa, Fl USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies (Paperback)

"Based on a True Story" is an immensly enjoyable mini-survey of the "real" story behind many of the fact-based films of our time with particular emphasis placed on how much "fact" there is at each films base. The breezily written accounts of these films are always fun to read and, if they don't "expose" many new factual mis-steps (How many film fans are there who don't already know how "fictional" the purportedly fact-based "A Beautiful Mind" is?)they do offer intelligent, brief, discussions of films that (wonder of wonders!) actually merit them. One major quibble though: For a book that is dedicated to exposing falsehoods in films of all sorts, it perpetuates one of the greatest. This is not the first book that attributes the line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" ("When the legend becomes fact, print the legend") to John Ford. Ford DIRECTED the movie. The screenplay was by James Warner Bellah & Willis Goldbeck, from a story by Dorothy M. Johnson. While it is notoriously hard to tell who did what in a film, one would think that the Screenwriters should at least be credited with the DIALOGUE!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An antidote for psychic pain at the multiplex, August 14, 2005

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies (Paperback)

As an historian who is also a film buff, I try to be lenient when faced with a movie that bends the facts more than necessary. Anyone who has ever tried to write a screenplay, even one based on a novel much less on a real person's life or a real historical incident (and I have), knows you do indeed have to adapt a story (or real life) to the medium of film -- but there's a limit, and some flicks are just too much to take. The authors, talented entertainment-journalists, know this, for the most part. They obviously loved *Shakespeare in Love* and admit that it stuck close to the exceedingly few facts that are known about Shakespeare; likewise *Girl with a Pearl Earring* (a gorgeous film), since almost nothing is known about Vermeer. And they'll accept the rather minor biographical changes made in *Erin Brockovich* and *Norma Rae* as being simply unavoidable. But they really rake Mel Gibson over the coals (deservedly, I think), both for the perversion of English history committed in *Braveheart* (the Christ-like martyrdom of Wallace, they suggest, was practice for *The Passion*) and for the equally perverted treatment of the American Revolution in *The Patriot* (which pissed off a lot of people on the other side of the Atlantic with its suggestion of Nazi-style behavior on the part of the British). They come down hard on *The Hurricane* for claiming that Carter won fights that he actually lost, merely to reenforce the theme of racism, nor have they anything good to say about *Elizabeth*, the 1998 version, in which Cate Blanchett portrays a young queen so insipidly naive and trusting, "she wouldn't have lasted longer than a fortnight (or whichever ye olde calendar notation ye prefer)" -- in which they'll entirely correct. (I hated that movie.) They don't have much use for Spike Lee's egotism, either, especially in *Malcolm X*. They reserve real venom for the fact that *Amistad* not only jerks history around, the production company, Spielberg's Dreamworks, actually had the nerve to send out study guides to schools promoting wholly made-up characters as actual historical models to be emulated. In other cases, the authors simply wonder why liberties with real people were taken unnecessarily, as in *Seabiscuit* or *The Elephant Man*. Some of the biopics the pair analyze, such as *American Splendor*, probably don't belong here (Harvey Pekar is hardly "historical"), and some, like *Communion* and *The Mothman Prophecies*, don't belong anywhere, but they presumably had to come up with an even hundred. However, the film that led to this book being written is Oliver Stone's *JFK*, the most vilified film ever made -- before it was even released. As the subsequently published "documented screenplay" demonstrates, every voiced opinion in Stone's film came out of forty years of assassination research. "To its critics, *JFK* was a film that offended their deeply held view of the world. Stone questioned their religion." This is a good book to keep at hand while browsing through your DVD collection.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Read, July 29, 2009

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Bradley M. Matteoni (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This book is a non-stop joy to read. Funny, irreverant, intellectual and endlessly fascinating. It's divided into quick to read chapters so it's perfect for carting off to the doctor's office, your son's baseball game, the line at the DMV, or sneaking in chapters between work assignments at the office, although I pretty much read it to cover to cover in a couple of days. I absolutely loved it.