Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. History and Hollywood

Hollywood’s broad dramatization of historical events for entertainment purposes is by no means a new phenomenon. Raping the annals (man, there has got to be a better way of saying that) of history for obscure incidents with even the glimmer of an interesting idea that might be able to hold 100 million dollars worth of audience members’ attention for two hours is a time-honored tradition.

But it’s been a rough twelve months. Already we’ve had U-571 which unapologetically stole the credit from the British for capturing the Nazis’ Enigma device and handed the honors over to the American Navy; The Hurricane which, despite great performances and a moving tale of hope in the face of unimaginable suffering, was almost universally chastised for it’s definition-stretching rendition of a “true story”; and Gladiator which featured two real-life historical figures, Commodus (Caesar of toilets) and General Maximus, in a handicapped, no-disqualification, Coliseum match that, in all likelihood, could never have actually happened. Yup, it’s been a bad stretch of late.

And this is a trend that couldn’t have come at a worse time. We have arrived at a place in human history where, in the words of Alan Rickman’s character from Dogma, “You people! If it hasn’t been made into a movie, it’s not worth knowin’ about, is it!”? I myself remember seeing a bit on Dateline NBC last year where Jane Pauley asked one hundred high school Valedictorians-Valedictorians for Chrissakes!--when the Civil War was fought. Ten of them thought it was fought sometime around 1940.

It’s a sad fact of our modern world that most of America gets its history, right or wrong, from the movies, no questions asked. Given that fact, does Hollywood have a responsibility to get it right, even at the expense of good storytelling?

The Pen thinks so.

The most recent brouhaha has been fought over Mel Gibson’s movie, The Patriot, after an opening salvo fired by Spike Lee who argued (sensibly, The Pen thinks) that by showing a Revolutionary America populated only by happy, healthy, free black men and women, a huge disservice was done to the tortured history of African-Americans in this nation.

The screenwriter Robert Rodat defended his script, and the film’s inclusion of only free blacks, by saying that Mel Gibson’s character was one of a group of “backcountry South Carolina farmers,” many of whom did not own slaves. Despite the fact that I think this explanation is insidiously misleading (see last week’s Pen for the reasons why), there’s an even simpler point to make here, and that is that we the movie-going audience simply cannot be experts on everything. Therefore, if there is something we need to know about the truth behind a particular story, we have no choice but to rely on the filmmakers to provide us with all the necessary information. And while I don’t honestly know what happened in your theatre, at the screening I attended, Robert Rodat was not present to explain this particular nuance of “backcountry” South Carolina life to me and the rest of the folks with whom I saw the film.

Instead, by not making it clear that these free blacks were an exception, Rodat left us free to infer that they were the rule; an inference The Pen is quite certain the filmmakers were more than happy to let us make. And while I would never assign another human being such deliberate dark intentions without good evidence, I’m sure Rodat slept better on opening Friday night knowing that he didn’t have to worry about how summer movie audiences would react to a hero who treated the ancestors of a large portion of the audience like animals.

And then, just this past week in the LA Times, Rex Ellis, a historian from the Smithsonian Institute who consulted on the movie, weighed in with a long dissertation targeting, in particular, a scene where Mel Gibson and his family seek shelter with a colony of free blacks on the beaches of South Carolina. These blacks were, he says, supposed to represent Gullahs, who were a group of free Blacks who operated as guides and spies for the Colonial Army in the Carolinas. Did I miss something? Were these characters wearing T-shirts that said “Hi, my name is Frank and I’m a Gullah… one of a group of free blacks who operated as guides and spies for the Colonial Army”? I don’t think so.

Ever get a ride home from someone who has never been to your house before? You’re cruisin’ along, and somewhere along the way, you forget that the driver has no idea where he’s going and you wind up saying “that was my street” just as you blast by it doing seventy miles-per-hour? Well that’s the way I felt reading Rex’s article. How the hell was I supposed to know that these blacks were anything other than the typical Revolutionary-era blacks unless someone specifically said so (they didn’t)? And are Rodat, and this Smithsonian clown, really going to argue that it’s my fault if I interpret their film incorrectly because I’m ignorant of the history of a very obscure (and tiny, I might add) group of free blacks?

If so, they can kiss my revolutionary ass!

But this doesn’t end with The Patriot. No, The Pen sees more to come. This winter we can expect to see 13 Days, a purportedly accurate, insiders look at the two weeks that encompassed the Cuban Missile Crisis, and particularly, which examines the relationship of Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and… Presidential Advisor Kenny O’Donnell?

Who!?

Supposedly, the film argues, O’Donnell, who will be played by Kevin Costner (lesser-known actors play the more historically significant roles of Jack and Bobby), was instrumental in the policy-making of the period. This despite historical evidence to the contrary, including tapes of policy sessions (upon which screenwriter David Self claims he based most of the script) which reveal a tight-lipped and uninvolved advisor O’Donnell.

But now, an article written by Kim Masters of Inside.com suggests a darker motive for this apparent revision of history. Producer Armyan Bernstein’s company Beacon Pictures is financed, in part, by Earthlink co-founder Kevin O’Donnell, who just happens to be the son of the now-dead former-advisor. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. As they say, history is written by the victors and, if Earthlink’s stock value is any indication, Kevin certainly fits into that category.

But wait, it gets worse. There is ample evidence that Armyan himself cares less about American history than he does about box office history. Witness this quote, given in response to complaints about the accuracy of his last production The Hurricane and in anticipation of similar complaints to come, about 13 Days: “The issue of historical accuracy became the overriding issue while the great themes that the movie was exploring were overlooked… We need to look beyond these controversies to what these films are about. Both Hurricane and 13 Days are very noble and inspiring.”

Maybe. But at what cost? Is this guy really saying that it’s OK to change the way things happened, if the result is a better movie? If so, what is the point of telling a true story in the first place? Make no mistake, Bernstein is using the fact that these movies are based on true stories to sell tickets. Otherwise, he would have just gone out and hired a writer to come up with a story less dramatically problematic. But he can’t have it both ways. Either it’s true, and the important themes flow from that truth, or it’s not, and they don’t.

Not to mention the unavoidable fact that some of the people portrayed in these films, real flesh-and-blood people, are going to be hurt in very real, significant, and unfair ways by distortions of their history. How do you think those people feel about your themes, Mr. Bernstein? More importantly, where do you think they would invite you to shove them?

Movies are entertainment, yes. But in our modern world, they have also become something of a public trust. And to engage in the process of moviemaking, I think, should carry with it some responsibility. We are already, as a society, asking action and horror filmmakers to ease up on the violence and depravity in their films. Now, while the Pen doesn’t care so much about that, I certainly believe that if we’re going to waste time demanding more of our horror movies, then we should certainly be willing to spend a little bit of our time demanding more of the producers of supposedly higher-minded historical films.

Next week: the practical dangers of historical inaccuracies.