Is "artistic license" a license to lie?

[Archae]

Some years back, TV Guide magazine did an article about how many TV movies (especially on the Lifetime channel) had a tendency to distort and flat-out lie about actual events.

A notorious example was a TV movie about the "Atlanta Child Murders," a lot of facts were left out of, or fabricated for the TV movie.

I've seen this in cinema as well, like "Heavens Gate," and worse, "JFK."

This is nothing new, of course.
The 1915 movie "Birth Of A Nation" was racist revisionism at best.

I have heard of a new movie out now, about that guy who was shot by BART security while laying handcuffed on his stomach.

How much of this movie is accurate? How much is fake, added to "juice it up?"
So far I don't know.

[rrneck]

1. Yes.

The problem is "artistic journalism".

[Blue_Tires]

2. Well, dramatizations of historic events are rarely if ever *fully* accurate

Events get time compressed, key details get left out, 2-3 peripheral people involved get morphed into composite characters, there's always an urge to include audience-friendly plot pacing, etc. etc...

[MADem]

3. If they say "Ripped from the headlines' or "BASED UPON a true story..." they can make up shit all

they want. They can make characters more or less sympathetic, they can combine characters, they can invent characters to move the story along, etc.

If they tout a documentary with "recreated scenes" they will usually annotate when they go a bit afield.

[Archae]

4. Even the word "documentary" has lost it's meaning.

"Hearts And Minds" was a documentary. A great one.

"The Clinton Chronicles" and "Bowling For Columbine" are not.

[Bluenorthwest]

12. The entire filmmaking world disagrees with you about Columbine which was

given the Academy Award for Best Documentary and was named as such by perhaps the longest list of film festivals and critic's groups in the history of documentary film. Each of these groups has actual standards and definitions of words like 'documentary' but I noticed you did not offer your own definition as you might want to do when taking such a strange and random view.
'All the makers of documentaries who voted that Columbine was the best documentary of that year were wrong' requires at least a set of reasons I'd think.

[Archae]

17. A "documentary" can lie.

Even an "award-winning one," with the right editing.

Moore did lie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine

Tell me, is "Triumph Of The Will" accurate?

It is, in depicting the Nuremberg rally.

PBS showed film footage of the real Germany that was already begun, namely films of the death camps.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. JFK is about Garrison, not about JFK. The film portrays Garrison very accurately.

Garrison is an actual person and was well portrayed as was Garrison's point of view. The film is not about the murder of JFK it is about the processing of that event by the American people and the bad results that spring from the lack of certainty that exists around that part of our history.
So first you have to understand what a film is to understand the film. People think the film 'Fargo' is based on a true story because the writers make that claim. It is purely fictional. Discuss.

[Archae]

8. Bullcrap.

Garrison was an attention whore who relied on a mental patient for most of the testimony against Clay Shaw.

Even the "BIG CLIMATIC SCENE" where Garrison gave that stirring speech on the last day of the trial was fake.
Garrison wasn't there on the last day of the trial.

And that jury took an hour and a half, including having lunch, to come to a decision.

[Bluenorthwest]

14. Again, the film was not about how long the jury took to eat lunch.

It is also not claiming Garrison is correct, it is just showing you Garrison. Theatrically. Is your theory that if you don't agree with Garrison then Garrison does not exist, that his story did not take place?
The film you would make about him would show him as an attention whore. You should make that film if you want to see it. But the film in question shows him as a very conflicted and troubled person, which is too much nuance. You want that film to have your point of view,which is why you are not able to see what the film's point of view is. 'Not mine' is as far as you take it.
Did you also think Fargo was a true story? Just asking.

[Archae]

19. Nope.

[enlightenment]

6. Hollywood and TV networks

produce fictional movies "based on" fact.

Most of the time, the closest they get to the fact is a location or general plot outline. The rest is fiction.

[arely staircase]

7. pretty much

You think Shakespeare was historically accurate?

[Archae]

10. Heck no.

Like I said, it's nothing new.

Most likely this distortion of real events goes back to the earliest plays in Babylonia.

Even the Bible is partly fabricated.

[Bluenorthwest]

20. Here's one for you from the Shakespeare, and this is an actual 'think about it' tip

not a poke at you, I love film and theater and this is the fact of the matter. JFK? It's Hamlet. Yep. It is about a young man of civic mind and good intentions driven mad by the murder of his leader and the lack of justice exacted upon the guilty. The trial is just the play within a play. In the end, everyone is crazy or dead or just spent and disgusted, justice is not found, leadership is taken yet again by a person who has only scant and military right to that position, the rightful chain of command is broken and the rest is silence. It is about JFK like Hamlet is about the ghost. Both Prince Hamlet and Jim Garrison are tragic heroes in the respective pieces, not role models, perhaps not even sane and certainly poor and flawed conduits for whatever truth and valor they are trying to serve.
Just some stuff. But 'attention whore' is also valid commentary.

[Cleita]

9. Why would you call fiction lies?

Movies like that are fiction based on real life events and characters and are not documentaries. Now if a documentary presents false facts, then it would be a lie.

[Archae]

11. It's when fiction is touted as "factual."

There are people who actually consider "JFK" to be factual.

And it is, in two instances.

JFK was shot in Dallas.

Jim Garrison did put Clay Shaw on trial.

The rest is fiction.

[Cleita]

16. Considering it has a script and actors playing roles

it would be historical fiction IMHO based on real life events. There would be an allowance for artistic license then. Otherwise it would be boring and no one would watch. I haven't seen the movie but Oliver Stone is known for presenting a very personal POV in his movies as well.

[Bluenorthwest]

18. JFK is not a documentary it is a drama about Jim Garrison.

What facts are you upset about, other than the length of the jury's lunch? What facts does the film get wrong? Got any that matter? You should have a list in mind since you harp on it so.
Just so you know, I'm not much of a Stone fan and that film is flawed as fuck, but the film you speak of is not the film by Stone which I have seen. You seem to have seen a different film entirely.

[hunter]

13. "Men In Black" and "Dr. Who" are nothing like the reality of this business...

[jberryhill]

15. Okay, I think I'm going to need to see your artistic license

But only after we read you your rights and discuss the Constitution for a while.