Let's face it: Hollywood is not great at keeping its based-on-a-true-story movies very accurate.
The most you can reasonably expect a Hollywood biopic to do is get some of the names right
-- and even that's not guaranteed.
Here are some biopics that forgot the facts and lied right to your face.
Green Book attempted to tell the story of pianist Don Shirley, and his former driver,
Frank "Tony Lip" Vallelonga - better known now for his work on the Sopranos.
When the movie was released, it was already towing a U-Haul full of controversy behind
it.
Some people were disappointed that the film seemed rooted in the outdated and well-worn
story structure of a white guy going on a life-changing trip and totally understanding
the plight of the black community by the end.
But, for some members of Don Shirley's family, there were deeper issues.
According to them, Shirley specifically stated that he didn't want Nick Vallelonga, the son
of Tony Lip and co-screenwriter on the picture, to tell his story.
More than that, however, they said that the portrayal of Shirley was flawed, and that
the friendship between him and Tony was a fabrication -- even famously calling the movie,
quote, "a symphony of lies."
Bohemian Rhapsody was a movie that took decades to make -- burning through multiple directors,
writers, and actors before finally hitting the big screen.
Like lots of biopics, Bohemian Rhapsody paints the truth in broad strokes, and some stuff
got reworked for time.
For example, Freddie Mercury didn't spontaneously do a back-alley audition to join the band
-- but he did spend a long time bugging Brian May and Roger Taylor until the original singer
was eventually replaced.
The most dramatic deviation from the truth comes at the film's conclusion.
Because Mercury was so tight-lipped about his diagnosis, details are pretty murky -- but
it's generally accepted that he probably wasn't aware that he had AIDS until two years after
the Live Aid concert.
Remember the emotional conclusion of the film where Freddie gets the band back together
by clueing them in on his tragic circumstances?
"They'll be alright, they just need a bit of time."
"What if I don't have time?"
Yeah, that never happened.
One, Freddie didn't even know about his tragic circumstances -- and two, the band wasn't
actually broken up at the time.
Cool soundtrack, though!
Life is complicated, and the human race is a multi-faceted hive of both good and bad.
Universally speaking, people involved in the most heinous and unforgivable acts perpetrated
throughout history also had at least a couple of pleasant qualities.
This leads us to the super uncomfortable topic of 12 Years A Slave's historical accuracy,
specifically as it applies to Benedict Cumberbatch's character, William Ford.
In the film, Ford is portrayed as a nightmarishly abusive taskmaster with a penchant for antithetical
Christian sermons.
Weirdly, the man who would've likely argued the most with this presentation was Solomon
Northrup, the slave played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in the movie.
Northrup wrote that Ford was a kind, "noble, candid, Christian man" who was caring and
thoughtful, and recounted being saved by him on more than one occasion.
In contrast, Michael Fassbender's character was apparently even worse in real life, known
for joyfully whipping slaves for entertainment.
So maybe some people have no redeeming qualities after all.
Starring Hugh Jackman as P.T.
Barnum, The Greatest Showman supposedly tells the origin story of the world famous Barnum
and Bailey's circus -- but the truth is that this fun, family flick couldn't be farther
removed from reality.
Among the glaring discrepancies are Zendaya and Zac Efron's characters, who never actually
existed.
If they had, their love story would have ended much differently, as Barnum's views on the
inherent humanity of non-white people were pretty disturbing.
When he was 25, Barnum illegally purchased an elderly slave named Joice Heth, whom he
billed as the nurse to George Washington.
Advertising her as 161 years old, he fed her a strict diet of whiskey and eggs to bring
her weight down, and then got her drunk and had her teeth pulled out.
It was sort of what started his career, but in a surprise to no one, the movie decided
to gloss right over that piece of unsettling information.
The 2011 biopic J. Edgar follows the shady, enigmatic life of one John Edgar Hoover, the
first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It stars a pre-Academy Award Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover -- but despite all the talent attached
to the film, it proved to be too complicated of a story to tell accurately.
The movie makes a pretty huge deal out of Hoover's sexuality, painting him as a closeted
homosexual who was held back from happiness by a strained relationship with his domineering
mother.
However, the truth is a lot more complex than that.
Hoover's sexuality is a point of historical speculation steeped in unknowns.
"Don't get in the car!
You can walk back!"
"But Edgar, we have lunch.
We don't miss lunch, no matter what.
Remember?"
"You pulled away from me in there."
Some historians say he was involved in a relationship with Clyde Tolson, but others assert he was
firmly asexual -- or, as his biographer believed, a terribly private, heterosexual guy.
Whatever the case, the big lie in J. Edgar was one of omission: Under Hoover's watch,
the FBI was deep into investigating homosexual people as "potential security threats."
They regularly tore people's lives apart in huge ways, threatening to expose their sexualities
if what they perceived as problem behaviors persisted.
Conveniently, this was left out of the biopic.
Starring Mel Gibson as Scottish warrior, William Wallace, Braveheart took the world by storm
in 1995 -- garnering Academy Awards and big bucks at the box office.
It was an incredible success -- and also incredibly inaccurate.
For starters, Wallace definitely didn't start the Scottish rebellion over the death of his
wife.
In fact, he may not have been married at all.
He wasn't a farmer, either -- instead, he was actually small fry nobility.
And it's really, really unlikely that he got Queen Isabella pregnant, seeing as she would've
been somewhere around 9 years old at the time, unmarried, and nowhere near England.
The list doesn't stop there.
The film gets important dates muddled, and the weapons and armor in the movie are anachronistic
— especially the kilts, which wouldn't really be a thing for a few hundred more years.
But despite the discrepancies, we still owe Braveheart a great debt for gifting us with
this ever-quotable gem:
"...And tell our enemies -- that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our
FREEDOM!"
1998 was an unusual time for Robin Williams' acting career.
His last two movies, What Dreams May Come and Good Will Hunting, put laughs in the backseat,
instead breaking the hearts of moviegoers everywhere.
Third in the sob-worthy trifecta was Patch Adams, the based-on-a-true-story flick about
a doctor by the same name who started a medical institute focused on zany hijinks as a facet
of healing.
On the surface, Patch Adams seemed like the part Williams was born to play — a sad-eyed
funny man with a boyish playfulness and heartwarming personality to comfort the sick and bring
joy to the dying.
Here's the thing: the guy that Williams' character was based on is about a thousand percent more
complex than the guy we see in the movie.
Clowning around is just part of his philosophy: He's also deep into holistic therapy, ecological
responsibility, and tarot.
In fact, some of his beliefs -- like how love can fix mental illness better than medicine
-- are quite controversial.
While we're on the subject, Patch Adams' girlfriend -- the one who was tragically murdered in
the film -- never existed.
The real Patch Adams did the famous "room full of balloons" gag on a date with his wife,
to whom he was married for 21 years.
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