‘Based on a True Story’

We all understand that Hollywood plays fast and loose with the truth. It is, after all, the dream factory. We realize that Erin Brockovich doesn’t really look like Julia Roberts and that Princeton mathematicians aren’t as hunky as Russell Crowe playing John Nash. There’s an unspoken contract between filmmakers and viewers. We suspend our disbelief and, in return, they entertain us. Fair enough. What gets me is when they try to entertain us by insisting that we believe them because their movie is “based on a true story.” Strayed from a true story is more like it.

“Based on a true story” is Hollywood code for “it’s all true except the parts that won’t sell.” It’s a bogus seal of approval that guarantees the patina of authenticity without going to the trouble of actually being true. Inconvenient facts? Write ‘em out of the script. Unhappy ending? Hey, nobody likes a downer. Filmmakers use the based-on-a-true-story imprimatur as a get-out-of-jail card that frees them from the responsibility of being credible. What do you mean, you don’t buy it? Dude, it’s based on a true story. Which leads us to the crowning irony: Movies that are supposedly based on, you know, a true story tend to be more dishonest--more Hollywood, if you will--than ones that are the product of a writer’s imagination.

Not that filmmakers have a monopoly on deception. Far from it. The most popular and profitable phenomenon on the small screen is reality TV, which repackages the based-on-a-true-story concept in an even more dishonest format. And let’s not forget the tripe that passes for “news” shows these days. In a culture where infotainment reigns supreme, we’re never quite sure when fact morphs into fiction--not in movies, not on TV, not even in our political discourse. We’ve grown so accustomed to the artificial sweetening of unpalatable truths that we’ve lost our taste for the real thing. “Based on a true story” is junk food masquerading as granola and soy milk. No wonder audiences lap it up.

Three of last year’s five best picture nominees were based on a true story, and four of the five best actor nominees played real people. Live theater is going down the same road. This summer’s big stage event was “Stuff Happens” at the Mark Taper Forum, which dramatized--theaterspeak, apparently, for “fabricated”--the internal Bush and Blair administration debates that led to the allied invasion of Iraq. (As it turned out, the case for the invasion proved to be a political version of being “based on a true story” rather than actually being true.)

This fall’s top feel-good movie--scheduled for an Oct. 21 release--promises to be a poignant DreamWorks project whose title says it all: “Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story.” Anybody out there ever heard of Mariah’s Storm, a thoroughbred that raced again after suffering a seemingly catastrophic leg break? Didn’t think so. Which raises an interesting question. Characters such as Ray Charles and Howard Hughes come with instant name recognition. But what’s the point of saying that a movie is “inspired by a true story” if nobody’s familiar with the story in the first place? Is it anything more than a nakedly cynical grab for no-questions-asked credibility?

Of course, this is standard operating procedure in Hollywood. You want proof? Leaf through “Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies.” Authors Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen are particularly scathing in their analysis of “A Beautiful Mind,” a three-hankie parable of the triumph of the will and love conquering all. Contrary to the events depicted on screen, Nash wasn’t schizophrenic when he made the breakthroughs that earned him the Nobel Prize, and his wife didn’t stand by her man through the worst of his illness. As Vankin and Whalen write: “Few of us are fortunate enough to have our life played out in three acts, with an ‘inciting incident,’ a single, well-defined conflict, and a tidy resolution--as per Hollywood screenplay requirements.”

“Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story,” meanwhile, is based on an actual incident--a badly injured racehorse that improbably won several races after being nursed back to health. Upon this factual foundation, a fictional superstructure was erected. The result is entertaining and uplifting family fare with several genuinely moving moments. But without giving away any of the predictable plot developments, “Dreamer” also is one of those movies in which no twist is too improbable and every lily is gilded--the kind of syrupy pap that modern audiences would no longer believe. Unless, that is, they were told that the movie was based on a true story.

Technically, “Dreamer” isn’t based on a true story; it’s simply inspired by a true story. But really, this is a pointless, legalistic distinction, sort of like Bill Clinton parsing what “is” is, or George Bush saying he never called Saddam Hussein an “imminent threat.” Since audiences have no way of distinguishing between what’s real and what’s fabricated, they’re asked to swallow the whole sugar-coated confection in one gulp. You can justifiably argue that this falls under the heading of “artistic license.” But if you do, you shouldn’t be allowed to turn around and assert journalistic privilege as well.

For the most part, novelists limit themselves strictly to the fictional realm. As such, they’re constrained by two fundamental limitations--what they can imagine and what their readers will accept. There are occasions, of course, when fact is indeed stranger than fiction. Case in point: A poor farmer with no obvious prospects teaches himself the law, rises from obscurity and overcomes widespread ridicule and repeated electoral humiliation to become the greatest president in American history. Pure corn, right? That’s what makes Abraham Lincoln such a compelling subject. His story needs no embellishing. And if it weren’t true, nobody would believe it.

Claiming that a movie is based on a true story--when, in fact, the story has been dumbed down and pumped up--devalues the truth more egregiously than, say, beer advertising or erectile dysfunction come-ons. Despite truth-in-advertising laws, we expect commercials to be overblown. We don’t honestly believe that Tiger Woods drives a Buick, or that signing up for T-Mobile phone service is going to make us as hot as Catherine Zeta-Jones. But at $98 million a crack, on average, movies are supposed to have more going for them than marketing hype. Remember the unspoken contract: We suspend our disbelief and they, in turn, entertain us. But we don’t pile into the local multiplex just to hear a 35-millimeter sales pitch. Even if it’s based on a true story.

In the real world, a bald-faced lie is easy to identify. The Holocaust did occur and alien corpses aren’t sequestered in a secret hangar in Area 51. But half-truths are more insidious. They’re a slippery slope studded with outcroppings of fact for people to grab onto as they fall. Thus, we were told that Saddam Hussein was a vicious tyrant who killed his own people, threatened to destabilize the region and might someday attack us with his stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Oh, so he didn’t have WMDs? Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

Polls show that, as recently as a year ago, four out of 10 Americans continued to believe that Saddam had WMDs. Wishful thinking? Willful stupidity? Woeful ignorance? You make the call. But it’s probably no coincidence that six out of every 10 Americans don’t trust the media. Hell, a Canadian study found that one out of every three people who read “The Da Vinci Code” supposedly believes that the book is historical fact rather than modern make-believe. (Which reminds me: I’m waiting for the day when a new edition of the Bible is sold with a “based on a true story” blurb on the cover.)

As the distinction between fact and fiction grows murkier, we no longer know what to believe. The notion of objective reporting, once thought to be an inviolable tenet of serious journalism, has disintegrated as news outlets tailor their material for specific market segments and points of view. And as if the waters needed any more muddying, blogs are an increasingly popular source of misinformation. I don’t think this means we’re getting dumber as a nation. But the whole based-on-a-true-story thing is clearly making us more gullible, and this seems especially true of the kids who are growing up with this junk. Maybe that’s why 21% of Americans younger than 30 consider comedy shows--comedy shows!--a primary source of political news.

The growing inability of Americans to distinguish between fact and fiction finds its ultimate expression in reality TV. For the record, I’ve got nothing against reality TV per se. One man’s trash, and so forth. But I never cease to be amazed by the depths to which contestants will stoop in a prime-time effort to . . . what? Make a couple of bucks? Score a few fleeting minutes of fame? Give meaning to their pathetic lives? And what’s the deal with the audiences? Is reality TV what they watch when they no longer get a charge out of yanking the wings off flies and taunting fat kids with braces?

I must sound hopelessly out of touch with popular culture. Even worse, I’m probably coming off not just as a scold but as a crank. Let me say that some of my best friends, including my mother, watch reality TV. And I’d be the first to admit that people who are a lot smarter than I am argue that reality TV is the ideal entertainment vehicle for an irony-drenched postmodern culture that considers it naive to believe in absolutes such as right and wrong, much less fact and fiction.

Even as I write, university research libraries no doubt are teeming with post-docs who are industriously deconstructing reality TV with the tenets of Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard. If the celebrated French thinker Roland Barthes could call professional wrestling “the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice,” then it can’t be long before some clever academic anoints reality TV as the secular religion of the 21st century. As for me, I figure it’s a matter of supply and demand: Just as sadists need masochists, so too do voyeurs need exhibitionists. Thus, in a perverse sense, the producers of “Survivor” and its progeny are performing a useful civic function.

Sporting events offer a different take on reality entertainment. Better still, they’re not just based on a true story; they are true stories, told in real time, before our eyes. When we watch a baseball game or a tennis match, the athletes are our surrogates--brave, skillful knights representing us at a jousting tournament governed by an arcane set of rules and rituals. Reality TV scratches a different itch--the visceral pleasure of playing what-if? We know we don’t have the chops to play in the World Series, but we can picture ourselves on reality shows, voting some other clown off the island or telling Donald Trump, “Fire this, you insufferable buffoon. And lose the hairdo while you’re at it.”

The paradox, of course, is that reality TV is, by definition, unreal. After all, how many of us are marooned on a tropical island along with 15 photogenic refugees, not to mention high-def cameras and a huge production crew? But we accept this silly fiction because, frankly, we’ve already got enough real reality, with its oppressive tedium and inevitable disappointments, in our quietly desperate lives. In fact, reality is what we’re escaping when we watch so-called reality TV.

Even the most rabid fans of these shows presumably understand that they’re made-for-TV entertainment, hence the baroque scenarios and transparently stage-managed conflicts. But at a certain level, they’ve got to believe that some truth is being revealed somewhere along the line. Otherwise, what’s the point? The on-screen scorn would have no bite and the triumphs would produce no pleasure. It’s not reality in the dictionary meaning of the word, so supporters say, but every now and then, they insist, a few transcendent rays of authentic emotion shine through.

But this, I think, is the biggest lie of all. Contrary to what the producers would have you believe, the cameras located strategically all over reality TV sets aren’t unblinking documentary eyes. On the contrary, they are themselves part of the action. Like any large object in any solar system, a television camera exerts a gravitational pull that bends the very fabric of time and space. Even when the camera is ostensibly being ignored, it affects the dynamic of what’s being observed. Only when its existence is a secret to those being filmed--as when it’s being wielded by spies, for example, or that latter-day Allen Funt, Ashton Kutcher--is a camera an objective witness.

We live in an age when cameras are ubiquitous and access to what had once been off-limits is virtually universal--operating rooms, police cars, the boudoirs of the rich and famous. Increasingly, events unfold in real time, and thanks to reality TV and the proliferation of media, the public sphere is larger than it ever has been before. At the same time, television docudramas and movies that are “based on a true story” encourage us to believe that we can view the world from on high, like omniscient narrators. But nothing’s really changed. The idea that we “know” the “real” people behind the celebrity remains an illusion no matter how often our overexposed movie stars visit Jay Leno’s couch or how many embarrassing admissions they make on “Larry King Live.”

How many times have we read a heart-warming feature story about the good works done by some athlete or actor, only to see his face flash on the TV screen a few weeks later in a grainy police mug shot? It’s easy to blame journalists for giving celebrities a free ride, but, really, stuff like this is the nature of the beast. Even the simplest human beings are enormously complicated creatures, and there are bound to be some aspects of everybody’s life that nobody’s allowed to see. Does anyone actually believe that “Being Bobby Brown”--reality TV meets celebrity worship--is going to give us the lowdown on his relationship with Whitney Houston?

Even the most honest memoirists shade the truth. We are, in the end, the stars of our own life stories, so who’d begrudge us a diva turn or two? Biographers strive to be more clear-eyed. But even after they spend 10, 20, 30 years chasing their quarry, there are some rooms that biographers can’t enter. And rooms that the subjects themselves may never have entered. Haven’t we all committed inexplicable acts? And has anybody ever deceived us more ruthlessly than we’ve deceived ourselves?

But some people out there we truly understand. Not our friends. Not even our family. I’m talking about folks such as Madame Bovary, Huck Finn, Jay Gatsby, Rabbit Angstrom--characters born of a novelist’s imagination and fleshed out on the printed page. Bigger Thomas. Daisy Miller. Ahab. Yossarian. Atticus Finch, too good to be true. Nurse Ratched, too bad to be believed. I’ll never know beyond a reasonable doubt what prompted President Bush to launch the U.S. attack on Iraq--maybe he won’t either--but I can tell you all about Raskolnikov’s crime and punishment, not to mention Portnoy’s hilarious complaint.

Truth isn’t limited to reality, and reality isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. So don’t tell me that something’s based on a true story or inspired by actual events. Just tell me the story, and I’ll decide whether to believe it or not.