History Main / RomanAClef

BTW, it's pronounced "Ro-''mahn'' ah ''clay''." It's French for, roughly, "novel with a key" (for which read: decoder ring). As seen [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_a_clef here]] on TheOtherWiki, sometimes the key to who the names were supposed to be would be published and in circulation. It has nothing at ALL to do with [[IncrediblyLamePun unusual Italian musical notation]], or [[SCPFoundation Dr. Alto Clef]].

* It's widely implide that [[{{Bones}} Temperance Brennan]] does this, too.

-->''"Everything that happens in the play [[RomanAClef actually occurred in Cyrano’s life]] [[VeryLooselyBasedInATrueStory except what many now remember about the story: his unrequited love for Roxane]]"''

* Cyrano de Bergerac: A strange case of a subverted RomanAClef where the names did not change combined with a VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: According to [[http://cyranose.wikispaces.com/the+real+Cyrano this wiki about the play]]: -->''"Everything that happens in the play [[RomanAClef actually occurred in Cyrano’s life]] [[VeryLooselyBasedInATrueStory except what many now remember about the story: his unrequited love for Roxane]]"''

BTW, it's pronounced "Ro-''mahn'' ah ''clay''". It's French for, roughly, "novel with a key" (for which read: decoder ring). As seen [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_a_clef here]] on TheOtherWiki, sometimes the key to who the names were supposed to be would be published and in circulation. It has nothing at ALL to do with [[IncrediblyLamePun unusual Italian musical notation]], or [[SCPFoundation Dr. Alto Clef]].

* Elie Weisel's ''[[Literature/{{Night}} Night]]'' is generally labelled a novel, although it is an account of his experiences

* ''IslandOfTheBlueDolphins'', which tells the story of the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island".

* TheFilmOfTheBook "{{Z}}", mentioned above. During the opening credits, the text "Toute ressemblance avec des évènements réels, des personnes mortes ou vivantes n'est pas le fait du hasard" appears on the screen. The English translation: "Any similarity to actual persons or events is deliberate."

* On ''BarneyMiller'' Harris's book "Blood on the Badge" was based on his experiences as a NY cop. He got all his collegues to sign waivers (or whatever it's called, to allow their likenesses in the book), but he didn't bother with an AmbulanceChaser that he had occasional dealings with and who was in the book. When the lawyer found out about the book he sued Harris for defamation (or something) and bankrupted him.

-->The crimes you are about to hear have all been specially committed for this programme.

* The plane crash at the start of ''FinalDestination'' is obviously based on TWA 800 — same plane, same route, same cause, same group of students going to Paris; Roger Ebert criticized this as being a bit tasteless.

->''The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed, to protect the innocent.''
->--notice from {{Dragnet}}.

->''The story you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record.''
->--a parody of the above notice, from [[StanFreberg ''St. George and the Dragonet'']].

--> ''The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed, to protect the innocent.''
--> -- notice from {{Dragnet}}.

--> ''The story you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record.''
--> --a parody of the above notice, from [[StanFreberg ''St. George and the Dragonet'']].

* The Vassilis Vassilikos novel ''Z'' writes about the assassination of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregoris_Lambrakis a left-wing politician]]. That it is a RomanAClef is made particularly clear in TheFilmOfTheBook, below.

* TheFilmOfTheBook "Z", mentioned above. During the opening credits, the text "Toute ressemblance avec des évènements réels, des personnes mortes ou vivantes n'est pas le fait du hasard" appears on the screen. The English translation: "Any similarity to actual persons or events is deliberate."

* ''The Devil Wears Prada''

* ''Almost Famous'' is a fictionalized autobiography of writer-director Cameron Crowe's teenage years as a writer for Rolling Stone, with the FakeBand Stillwater as expy of numerous bands he had encounters with in TheSeventies.

* ''The Glass Menagerie'' by Tennessee Williams is widely believed to be essentially autobiographical.

* Bertolt Brecht's ''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui'' tells of the rise to power of AdolfHitler up to the Night of the Long Knives, but tells it through the setting of a MobWar in 1930s [[{{gangsterland}} Chicago]]. Quoting from TheOtherWiki: "All the characters and groups in the play had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui representing Hitler, his henchman Ernesto Roma representing Ernst Röhm, Dogsborough representing Paul von Hindenburg (a pun on the German Hund and Burg), Emanuele Giri representing Göring, the Cauliflower Trust representing the Prussian Junkers, the fate of the town of Cicero standing for the Anschluss in Austria and so on."

A fictional account of RealLife events, loaded with {{Captain Ersatz}}es of real people. These are often autobiographical, but not always so. These differ from InspiredBy and VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory in that the story is not [[{{Dramatization}} dramatized]], merely [[LawyerFriendlyCameo retold with different proper nouns]].

* ''The Wave'' by Ron Jones.

* The vast majority of Jack Kerouac's novels are simply retellings of things that happened to him and the other Beat writers, with the names changed (and some parts taken out, as the first draft of ''On The Road'' reveals). ''On The Road'' and ''Visions of Cody'' focus on his best friend Neal Cassady, ''The Dharma Bums'' are about his adventures with Gary Snyder, ''And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks'' (written with William S. Burroughs) was about a mutual friend who murdered a lover, and so forth. It became so well-known that the publisher insisted he use different character names in each book to prevent legal trouble for anyone involved, but they can still be decoded easily.

** Note that the translation is a {{Woolseyism}} -- a literal rendering would be "Any resemblance to real events, or to persons dead or alive, is ''not'' accidental." Both anti-disclaimers are slight modifications of the standard disclaimers in their respective languages.

BTW, it's pronounced "Ro-''mahn'' ah ''clay''". It's French for, roughly, "novel with a key" (for which read: decoder ring). As seen [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_a_clef here]] on TheOtherWiki, sometimes the key to who the names were supposed to be would be published and in circulation. It has nothing at ALL to do with [[IncrediblyLamePun unusual Italian musical notation]].

* The ''Dear America'' series, which is in diary format. Usually it will recreate things that happened in history, only on a smaller scale and before the actual event happens.

* Although Proust denied it, ''In Search Of Lost Time'' is rife with barely hidden {{Captain Ersatz}}es of his contemporaries, such as [[CampGay Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac]].

** Probably to keep Hearst from suing him, there is a line in the beginning of the film where one of the men who is making the documentary about the late Mr. Kane asks what makes him different from other famous newspaper magnates like Pulitzer, or Hearst. Since they're mentioning Hearst as someone ''other'' than Kane, if they were sued they could argue they've made it clear it ''isn't'' him. The film ''RKO 281'' tells the story of the making of ''Citizen Kane''.
*** Legalities might also be part of the reason Kane buys his ingenue an opera house, as opposed to the movie studio Hearst purchased for Marion Davies. In real life, millionaire Samuel Insull built the Chicago Civic Opera House in order to feature his less-than-talented wife; if Hearst had sued Welles, RKO or Herman Mankiewicz, they could have claimed that the film was based on Insull as much as anyone else.

* Bertolt Brecht's ''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui'' tells of the rise to power of AdolfHitler up to the Night of the Long Knives, but tells it through the setting of a MobWar in 1930s [[{{gangsterland}} Chicago]]. Quoting from TheOtherWiki: "All the characters and groups in the play had direct counterparts in real life, with Ui representing Hitler, his henchman Ernesto Roma representing Ernst Röhm, Dogsborough representing Paul von Hindenburg (a pun on the German Hund and Burg), Emanuele Giri representing Göring, the Cauliflower Trust representing the Prussian Junkers, the fate of the town of Cicero standing for the Anschluss in Austria and so on."

** A more exact rendering would be "Any resemblance to real events, or to persons dead or alive, is ''not'' accidental," i.e. more ironic?
*** It would be helpful if a Francophone troper could confirm this, but the French anti-disclaimer appears to be a slight modification of a standard French disclaimer - which makes the English translation a perfectly legitimate {{Woolseyism}}.
*** Correct.