How much fact should you get with your fiction?
By Jocelyn Noveck |
February 25, 2013, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE scene: Tehran's Mehrabad airport, January 1980. Six US diplomats, disguised as a fake sci-fi film crew, are about to fly to freedom with their CIA escorts. But suddenly there's a moment of panic in what had been a smooth trip through the airport.
The plane has mechanical difficulties and will be delayed. Will the Americans be discovered, arrested, even killed? CIA officer Tony Mendez, also in disguise, tries to calm them. Luckily, the flight leaves an hour later.
If you saw the film "Argo," no, you didn't miss this development, which is recounted in Mendez's book about the real-life operation. It wasn't there because director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio replaced it with an even more dramatic scenario, involving canceled flight reservations, suspicious Iranian officials who call the Hollywood office of the fake film crew, and finally a heart-pounding chase on the tarmac.
Crackling filmmaking - except that it never happened. Affleck and Terrio, whose film is an Oscar frontrunner, never claimed their film was a documentary, of course. But still, they've caught some flak for the liberties they took in the name of entertainment.
And they aren't alone - two other high-profile best-picture nominees this year, Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," have also been criticized for different sorts of factual issues.
Filmmakers have been making movies based on real events forever, and similar charges have been made. But because these three major films are in contention, the issue has come to the forefront of this year's Oscar race, and with it a thorny question: Does the audience deserve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? Surely not, but just how much fiction is OK?
The latest episode involved "Lincoln," and the revelation that Spielberg and his screenwriter, the Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner, took liberties depicting the 1865 vote on the 13th amendment outlawing slavery. In response to a complaint by a Connecticut congressman, Kushner acknowledged he'd changed the details, having two Connecticut congressmen vote against the amendment when, in fact, all four voted for it.
Kushner said he "adhered to time-honored and completely legitimate standards for the creation of historical drama, which is what 'Lincoln' is. I hope nobody is shocked to learn that I also made up dialogue and imagined encounters and invented characters."
His answer wasn't satisfying to everyone. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called on Spielberg to adjust the DVD version before it's released - lest the film leave "students everywhere thinking the Nutmeg State is nutty."
One prominent screenwriting professor finds the "Lincoln" episode "a little troubling" - but only a little.
"Maybe changing the vote went too far," says Richard Walter, chairman of screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Maybe there was another way to do it. But really, it's not terribly important. People accept that liberties will be taken. A movie is a movie. People going for a history lesson are going to the wrong place."
Screenwriter and actor Dan Futterman, nominated for an Oscar in 2006 for the "Capote" screenplay, has empathy for any writer trying to pen an effective script based on real events, as he did. "This is fraught territory," he says. "You're always going to have to change something and you're always going to get in some sort of trouble with somebody," he says.
Futterman also doesn't begrudge the "Argo" filmmakers, because he feels they use a directorial style that implies some fun is being had with the story. "All the inside joking about Hollywood - you get a sense that something is being played with," he says.
Of the three Oscar-nominated films in question, "Zero Dark Thirty" has inspired the most fervent debate. The most intense criticism has been about its depictions of interrogations, with some, including senators, saying the film misleads viewers for suggesting that torture provided information that helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden.
Mark Boal, the movie's screenwriter, said in a recent interview that screenwriters have a double responsibility: to the material and to the audience.
"There's a responsibility, I believe, to the audience ... and to tell a good story," he said. "And there's a responsibility to be respectful of the material."
The plane has mechanical difficulties and will be delayed. Will the Americans be discovered, arrested, even killed? CIA officer Tony Mendez, also in disguise, tries to calm them. Luckily, the flight leaves an hour later.
If you saw the film "Argo," no, you didn't miss this development, which is recounted in Mendez's book about the real-life operation. It wasn't there because director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio replaced it with an even more dramatic scenario, involving canceled flight reservations, suspicious Iranian officials who call the Hollywood office of the fake film crew, and finally a heart-pounding chase on the tarmac.
Crackling filmmaking - except that it never happened. Affleck and Terrio, whose film is an Oscar frontrunner, never claimed their film was a documentary, of course. But still, they've caught some flak for the liberties they took in the name of entertainment.
And they aren't alone - two other high-profile best-picture nominees this year, Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," have also been criticized for different sorts of factual issues.
Filmmakers have been making movies based on real events forever, and similar charges have been made. But because these three major films are in contention, the issue has come to the forefront of this year's Oscar race, and with it a thorny question: Does the audience deserve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? Surely not, but just how much fiction is OK?
The latest episode involved "Lincoln," and the revelation that Spielberg and his screenwriter, the Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner, took liberties depicting the 1865 vote on the 13th amendment outlawing slavery. In response to a complaint by a Connecticut congressman, Kushner acknowledged he'd changed the details, having two Connecticut congressmen vote against the amendment when, in fact, all four voted for it.
Kushner said he "adhered to time-honored and completely legitimate standards for the creation of historical drama, which is what 'Lincoln' is. I hope nobody is shocked to learn that I also made up dialogue and imagined encounters and invented characters."
His answer wasn't satisfying to everyone. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called on Spielberg to adjust the DVD version before it's released - lest the film leave "students everywhere thinking the Nutmeg State is nutty."
One prominent screenwriting professor finds the "Lincoln" episode "a little troubling" - but only a little.
"Maybe changing the vote went too far," says Richard Walter, chairman of screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Maybe there was another way to do it. But really, it's not terribly important. People accept that liberties will be taken. A movie is a movie. People going for a history lesson are going to the wrong place."
Screenwriter and actor Dan Futterman, nominated for an Oscar in 2006 for the "Capote" screenplay, has empathy for any writer trying to pen an effective script based on real events, as he did. "This is fraught territory," he says. "You're always going to have to change something and you're always going to get in some sort of trouble with somebody," he says.
Futterman also doesn't begrudge the "Argo" filmmakers, because he feels they use a directorial style that implies some fun is being had with the story. "All the inside joking about Hollywood - you get a sense that something is being played with," he says.
Of the three Oscar-nominated films in question, "Zero Dark Thirty" has inspired the most fervent debate. The most intense criticism has been about its depictions of interrogations, with some, including senators, saying the film misleads viewers for suggesting that torture provided information that helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden.
Mark Boal, the movie's screenwriter, said in a recent interview that screenwriters have a double responsibility: to the material and to the audience.
"There's a responsibility, I believe, to the audience ... and to tell a good story," he said. "And there's a responsibility to be respectful of the material."
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