 Starring: Powers Booth, Meg Foster, Charley BoormanDirector: John Boorman Year Of Release: 1985 Plot: American engineer Bill Markham is working on a dam project on the edge of a Brazilian rainforest when his son, Tommy, is kidnapped by a local tribe. Bill spends the next decade looking for his child, eventually discovering him amongst The Invisible People. However the child is not the one he once knew, and only has dim memories of his biological family, instead feeling loyal to his adopted tribe. |
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Should there be a limit on what movies can claim is based on a true story? Although when you make a real life film, changes to the actual truth are inevitable after all you cant physically show every relevant event word for word, and real life doesnt often come as a readymade story that will fit into two hours but surely there must be some kind of limit on what can and cant be said to be a film based on true story?
The reason I ask this in relation to John Boormans The Emerald Forest is because from the moment the marketing started in 1985 its been sold as a true story, and ever since then its been generally accepted that much of what happens in the film is based on reality. The only problem is, very little of it is.
Well, to be fair, there is a nugget of truth. The movie came about after director John Boorman was shown a short article about a father whose child had been taken by a local tribe in South America, but who eventually found him again years later. However thats about as far as it goes. For a start the father wasnt an American working in Brazil with a white skinned, green-eyed son, he was a Peruvian man with a Peruvian son. Pretty much every event in the film is fictional, from the locations and the tribe to the journalist getting cannibalised and even the dam that plays a large part in the movie.
The screenwriter has claimed some of the things in the movie did happen, but not in relation to that specific child, meaning that overall, to claim its a true story is rather like saying that because sometimes sharks do kill people, Jaws is based on a true story.
Apparently with The Emerald Forest, it was sold to the financiers on the strength that it was based on a genuine newspaper article that Boorman had seen, and thats what they bought it as, with little questioned about it from then on. Certainly nobody bothered to amend things after it became clear they were deviating rapidly from the established events (not that it appears they did too much to even investigate what really happened). Inevitably then, as thats what had attracted the backers, thats what it was sold as to the audience.
Its a trick thats become more commonly associated with supernatural horror films, with endless movies from The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror onwards claiming a basis in truth. While William Peter Blatty only claimed a light dusting of reality for The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror was sold full tilt on the idea that it was a true tale about a family terrorised out of their home by spirits. Thats despite the fact that by the time the movie came out in 1979, huge amounts of water had been poured on the familys claims (although at least the film could say it was based on what the Lutzes said was true).
In more recent years weve had a wave of flagrantly not based on a true story movies, but which claim they are due to the tiniest nugget of fact, like The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, The Haunting In Connecticut, An American Haunting and The Mothman Prophecies. Some were okay films and some werent, but the fact is they were all sold as true stories to a far greater extent than they actually were, with none of them even being able to say most of the events in the film were even based on what someone has claimed was true.
Its an odd situation, because in most circumstances, claiming something is true and making money off it when it isnt, isnt just a bit of a con, its actually illegal. Itd be rather like trying to raise interest in selling your house by saying its was built in the 16th Century, when actually it was erected in 1982. But then you say that because it has walls and a roof, its pretty much true it was built 400 years ago.
But thats the magic of the words based on or inspired by, as they pretty much allow you to get away with anything when it comes to art. As long as you can, if questioned, bring out something that says at least some of the events in a film might have happened, or that at least that theres some basis of fact hidden in there somewhere, its immensely difficult to actually challenge such a claim in a legal sense. If you went to court, the fact that the words based on or inspired by were used, allow them to pretty change anything they want to with impunity. Even so, if I sold a normal 1982 house, sight unseen, claiming it was inspired by 16th Century houses, the buyer would be more than in their rights to sue me when they saw what theyd actually purchased.
It doesnt work like that with art, which means that theres virtually no way to challenge the film worlds tendency to make these claims, even when they get to the point of being so tenuous that pretty much any film could claim to be true (e.g. you could say Star Wars is a true story because sometimes young people do befriend weird hermits who live in the middle of nowhere). I dont think there is an answer, because theres no legal way to stop them, other than to kindly ask Hollywood to be a bit more sensible when it comes to making these claims. Admittedly, with the supernatural horror movies, most of the audience know to take it with a pinch of salt, but when it comes to things like dramas, part of the audience expectation is that theyre watching something thats more than tangentially based on the truth. (BTW, despite the fact Emerald Forest isnt as true as it would like to suggest, it is a good movie purely on its own merits).
In the book world, the likes of James Frey have learnt to their cost the vitriol that can be spewed when its discovered something that was assumed to be 100% autobiographical, actually isnt. The same doesnt happen with film, partially because as I said, some changes are inevitable, but also because theres now so little trust between the studios and the audience, viewers are pretty much expecting to be lied to anyway.
TIM ISAAC
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