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"[P]lease ignore any tiresome scolds who complain that the movie is not really based on fact. Duh."
Roger Ebert, from a review of Hidalgo
Basing a book on a true story is a handy way to get some publicity for a project. But hey! Why not save time and effort by cutting out the middleman? Just come up with your own, entirely fictional story and tell everyone that it actually happened. Who's going to find out?
Everyone who visits IMDb , for a start.
The best case scenario is that you get a wry chuckle from your fans and a nod in a couple of papers. The worst case scenario is that a gaggle of chuckleheads band together and sue you for selling the story to them under false pretences. Best solution? Just say that it's fiction all along.
Compare Very Loosely Based On A True Story. Contrast But It Really Happened.
Examples:
Film
- The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was supposedly based on a true story, but no such "massacre" ever took place. Leatherface is allegedly loosely based on the serial killer Ed Gein, but that's like saying Dirty Harry is based on a real police detective.
- Fargo is supposedly based on a true story. It isn't.
- The Coens like this kind of thing. "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" is supposedly based on the Odyssey. Guess what work of classic literature they had never read.
- It does have very clear parallels to the Odyssey, and follows a similar structure. Possibly they got the cliff notes somewhere.
- Tim Blake Nelson was very familiar with the work, so aside from playing the goofiest character, he also served as unofficial Homer consultant.
- Hidalgo is based on the actual stories of Frank Hopkins — but Hopkins is known to history as a con-man and quite possibly a pathological liar, so it's anybody's guess how much of it actually happened.
- None of it actually happened. Hopkins was not part Native American, did not ever work in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, never visited the Middle East (and certainly was never in a gigantic race in the Middle East) etc. etc. etc. On some level, however you've got to admire the guy for inventing a story that Hollywood decided to make into a movie (given all the writers who have stories they are trying unsuccessfully to sell to Hollywood)
- The Amityville Horror is supposedly based on a true story. However, the book containing said "true story" was admitted by its writer to be fabrication.
- King Arthur is billed as the true historical story of King Arthur, but instead is little more than a "remix" of the popular Arthur mythos. Whether there was a historical Arthur at all remains a matter of fierce historical debate, and there are several potential candidates for the basis of the character, none of which bear more than a surface similarity to the movie's Arthur.
- Back in the 70s, the very first "snuff" film (imaginatively entitled Snuff) purported to depict the actual on-camera murder of an actress. Despite all the controversy that was stirred up — which actually was the entire point — the murder was later revealed to be a hoax, albeit a not-quite convincing one. In fact, the distributers of the movie had actually just bought some random South American B-Movie and grafted on their own, completely different short bit of footage (the "snuff"), replacing the actual movie's ending.
- The Blair Witch Project does this deliberately and plays it to the hilt.
- The Last Samurai is based on an odd amalgamation of the historical Satsuma rebellion and the part played in the earlier Boshin war by French officer Jules Brunet. The Anvilicious "guns vs swords" plot is particularly ironic, considering that even the real "last samurai" of the Satsuma rebellion openly embraced modern weaponry for the tactical advantages it offered. The decline of the samurai class in real life came about in a much slower and less dramatic fashion and there were certainly no embittered American Civil War heroes involved.
- Not to mention the Real Life Japanese threw all their French advisors out in 1871 for Prussian/German advisors. They didn't take advice from losers, no way in the world they'd take advice from a Confederate officer.
- He was a Union cavalryman, but the American military of the time was not considered to be that great, so the point still stands.
- Amadeus was based on an apocryphal tale Salieri, a contemporary of Mozart, went mad late in his life and confessed to killing Mozart. It is a matter of historical record that he died during a long period of illness, but confoundingly, the film accepts both of these stories as true, and sets about to tell a story about how a man can murder someone else with a disease. After that premise, all the other errors on Mozart's life seem insignificant, but are still quite numerous: His mother-in-law is depicted as a harsh shrew when in fact they got along famously; Salieri being depicted as his arch rival when in fact the two were at least friendly competitors, if not actual friends; the Requiem Mass being commissioned by Salieri (Mozart never did find out who the anonymous patron was, but we know now); and Salieri helping to compose the Requiem (it is unknown how much of the piece Mozart finished, and there is some small debate over who wrote the rest of it, but Salieri's name is never, EVER brought up at these debates).
- Curiously enough, this is unlikely to be an example of Did not Do the Research, as the movie depicts a number of aspects of Mozart as accurate, particularly whenever he stumbles accross to a piano or an orchestra. He actually could do all of the things that the movie shows him doing, and so much more.
Literature
- In the 1970s, the book The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail (retitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States) claimed to reveal the truth about a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene that was hidden in various Renaissance paintings. It was later revealed to be completely fictional, but not before hundreds of thousands of people had been conned.
- That book heavily inspired (i.e., was ripped off by) The Da Vinci Code, which caused an identical resurgence in public interest.
- Amusingly, the authors of the first book sued Brown for plagiarism, but it was pointed out that either they claim that the book is true, thus destroying their own case, as you cannot copyright history and facts; or that it was false, thus destroying whatever credibility they had and losing anyway as you can't copyright ideas. Needless to say, they lost. The Da Vinci Code actually gives HBHG a mention, but "inspired by" isn't the same as plagiarism.
- They got exactly what they wanted, though: tons of free publicity.
- This is part of the plot in Mike Nelson's Death Rat!, where the main character, an author who "doesn't look the part" of an adventure novelist, hires a handsome lunkhead to pose as the author of his eponymous book. Trouble is, said lunkhead didn't read the book first and sold it as a true story: a true story featuring a 6-foot-long rat.
- All of the angsty teen-lit novels written anonymously by Beatrice Sparks were written as cautionary tales to children about whatever the author didn't like. Go Ask Alice is probably the most famous of these. The most ridiculous one was Jay's Journal, which has Jay being forced to commit suicide by fallen angels after he gets involved with drugs and Goths — ironically making the book and character a cult favorite for teenage Satanists. The family who showed Sparks the journal on which she loosely based the story wrote a play about their son's life and suicide, with Sparks as the main villain.
- Lucian's True Story is a very old example of this. The clue to it not being what it says it is, is the fact that it is the earliest known story about a trip to the moon.
- This troper actually believed that Kensuke's Kingdom really was based on Michael Morpurgo's childhood.
- James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. Oprah (who had plugged the book for Oprah's Book Club) was pissed.
- Which makes one wonder why he agreed to go back on the program after it was all revealed. I mean, what's the best he thought could happen?
- German author Karl May (1842-1912) is best known for his stories about 'his' travels through the American West and the Middle East long before he actually visited the US and the Orient in person. (Today that's no longer a major issue, but some of his contemporaries took it less well at the time.)
- House Of Leaves plays with this, with the framing manuscript claiming to be a critical analysis of a documentary that the editor of the manuscript assures us doesn't really exist, about a photojournalist who documents footage of his very strange house...
Video Games
- The Japanese Tengai Makyou comedy Role Playing Game series is purportedly based on a Western author's writings about Japan. Said author and his writings never existed, although they are genuinely inspired by the largely- to entirely-fictitious accounts of life in Japan that used to be popular in the West.
- Similarly, the US release of Fatal Frame is said to be based on a true story, while, at best, it could only accurately be said to be based on legends and stories.
WesternAnimation
- This is actually parodied in the episode, Arrgh!, of Spongebob Squarepants. Spongebob and Patrick quickly come to believe their pirate quest is a scam (and that Mr. Krabs has gone Cloudcuckoolander) finding out the treasure map is just a game board they used earlier in the episode. Chance kicks in as they do find the treasure according to the map (the game board) with the remarks of Spongebob saying "It really IS based on a true treasure map!" The Flying Dutchman comes in to take his treasure back, willing to share with Spongebob and Patrick. But much to the dismay of Mr. Krabs, he only gains a piece from the game board, and gets replied "But it's based on a REAL treasure chest!".
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