If We Can’t Get Just Facts, Honesty Will Do

As docudramas blur the line between fact and fiction, the reader is entitled to know what is history and what is twistery.

--William Safire in “Scandalmonger,”

his mostly true “novel” about early

newspaper writer William Callender

How much of “Lincoln” is generally thought to be true? How much made up? This is an urgent question for any reader; and deserves as straight an answer as the writer can give.

--Gore Vidal in his largely factual

bestseller about Abraham Lincoln

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I’m writing a screenplay--a psychological drama--about Bill and Hillary Clinton.

“Hilly and Billy” is told from the point of view of the Clintons’ family therapist. Now, I’ve no idea whether the Clintons have a family therapist, but they could have, and obviously should have, so I’ve created one as a dramatic device that will liberate my story from the shackles of objective truth and give it dimension. In the business, we call this dramatic license.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against facts, especially if they work for me. I have every right, however, to introduce this pivotal character in my TV biography without mentioning that he is fictional. Why?

Because I’m seeking a higher truth, dummy.

Kidding!

The ongoing issue of objective truth versus higher truth (code: fiction) simmers tepidly this week in “History vs. Hollywood,” a four-part documentary on the History Channel that celebrates four movies about actual events or persons, and touches on the reality underpinning them.

What’s not to celebrate? As entertainment, moviedom doesn’t get any better than “MASH,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Patton” and “The French Connection,” each earning a one-hour episode from executive producer Susan Werbe. And what’s not to like about hearing from narrator Burt Reynolds and others about how and why these movies were made.

On the other hand, this issue transcends fun, entertainment and industry economics, given how many Americans get their history directly from movies and especially TV. And if that history is gnarled or false, as it often is? Well, you see the problem. If knowledge is strength, who needs ignorance?

Although much of history is subject to interpretation, art shouldn’t exist in a truth vacuum. Those with a forum to sway opinion--which includes the crowd making movies--shouldn’t be in the business of rewriting history by freely fabricating, however noble the motive. They have a responsibility not only to their art but also to the public reached by their art.

Even most absolutists agree that fudging truth in small ways to enhance a story isn’t necessarily criminal if done judiciously. What’s the harm in changing a time frame or altering or creating a bit of dialogue here and there? It’s not the Congressional Record being filmed, after all. And “a movie can’t be exactly what happened or it wouldn’t be interesting,” historian Ann Meadows noted in a TV Times story about the documentary series.

Higher truth, shmuth, though. Because of my background in journalism, I’m often accused of being too literal about these things. I’ve yet to see a movie biography’s title include “the higher truth,” however. Any work selling itself as history or even historical, though, owes its audience honesty.

Take the books by Safire and Vidal cited above. Although reading as history, each is titled a “novel.”

In a section of “Scandalmonger” titled “notes and sources,” Safire explains clearly where he has and hasn’t taken liberties with history.

In “Lincoln,” and also his historical novels “Burr” and “1876,” Vidal includes a brief “afterword” spelling out the few characters and events he invented.

In contrast, docudramas engage in trickery when usually carrying only generic, fine-print disclaimers informing viewers that some characters may be composites and some characters and events fictionalized. Which ones? Sorry, you’re on your own.

At the very least, everyone should follow the example of NBC when it made a movie of Vidal’s book about the 16th president some years ago that it titled “Gore Vidal’s Lincoln.” His name above the title immediately told viewers this was his subjective view.

As a film titled “Oliver Stone’s JFK” would have alerted moviegoers that on the screen--finding the CIA and even Vice President Lyndon Johnson possibly guilty of conspiring to assassinate John F. Kennedy--was nothing they could take to the bank. It was the filmmaker’s own wildly speculative scenario.

Hardly adversarial in tone, meanwhile, the misleadingly titled “History vs. Hollywood” is much less a sharp critical analysis than a pumping in of collagen that adds mass.

Hardly belonging here, in fact, is “MASH,” the exceptional movie that led to an exceptional CBS sitcom, in the process surely raising no expectations that its Korean War vintage Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit was anything beyond dark farce (and a hooded metaphor for the Vietnam War). Nor did the republic fall when Paul Newman and Robert Redford departed somewhat from the relatively obscure real outlaws they played in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” or when the real French Connection drug case played out differently than in the action movie.

A bit dicier, though, is “Patton,” whose subject, Gen. George S. Patton Jr., remains a controversial military figure who generates considerable historical interest. Spanning his service in World War II, the Oscar-winning movie inflates some incidents and omits other negative ones that don’t coincide with its theme of Patton’s redemption, says an essay by Paul Fussell in “Past Perfect: History According to the Movies.” Fussell also is interviewed in the documentary.

And if the truth gap he cites doesn’t matter, where should the line be drawn in docudrama separating history from myth?

Especially as the nation’s pop historian--otherwise known as television--continues to air biographies galore. In coming weeks, that includes prime-time docudramas with subjects as diverse as Attila the Hun, the Kennedy wives, the Osmonds, dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Ruth Gruber, a woman who brought 1,000 World War II refugees across the perilous Atlantic to sanctuary in the U.S.

It probably doesn’t matter whether Attila was or wasn’t the visionary and hotblooded hunk of a Hun he’s cracked up to be in USA’s gorgeously mounted nonsense. Or that a TV biography some years ago had smallish Bobby Kennedy towering over 6-foot-2 LBJ. And what functioning mind could buy scantily clad dancing girls welcoming Christopher Columbus to the “New World” in 1492, as a TV movie once depicted?

Yet popular art’s portrayal of history does have an impact on the way we see ourselves and others, as anyone can testify who grew up believing that Gen. Custer was heroic and most slaves in the U.S. were treated kindly by their owners.

Safire has the word for it: twistery.

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* “History vs. Hollywood” airs tonight through Thursday at 9 p.m. on the History Channel, with “MASH” (tonight), “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (Tuesday), “Patton” (Wednesday) and “The French Connection” (Thursday).

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail athoward.rosenberg@latimes.com.