Having a movie made about your life might seem like a modern dream, but for those who've
watched their stories play on the big screen, it can sometimes be a nightmare.
For these real life people who were depicted in movies, the experience of becoming film
famous was not all it was cracked up to be.
Here's why.
Moneyball
If you're unfamiliar with the story of Moneyball, it's a retelling of how Oakland Athletics
general manager Billy Beane reshaped the way professional baseball scouts and front offices
put together a competitive roster.
The movie was critically acclaimed, but Oakland's real-life manager Art Howe was not pleased
with what he saw.
Howe was portrayed in the movie by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and while Hoffman may have
been an Oscar-winning prestige actor, Howe thought he was too hefty to play him.
But that was the smallest of his concerns with the depiction.
Howe also took issue with the fact that he was represented as little more than an old
school baseball dinosaur who was being lapped by brilliant minds like Beane.
He even called the movie "character assassination," saying,
"People who don’t know me are going to think that’s how I was.
You work to build a reputation and then in two hours this movie breaks it down."
He was also less than impressed with the movie's attention to players' on-base percentages
because, in his words, that was a "duh" moment.
“No, seriously, that is.”
The Blind Side
For Baltimore Ravens' offensive lineman Michael Oher, all the buzz that followed his portrayal
in The Blind Side was a bit infuriating.
While it was true that the Tuohys took him in and have since become his family, the movie
made it seem as though he was a gentle giant with protective instincts whom Sandra Bullock
guided into getting good at football.
But in real life he'd been playing football for years before he was brought into the Tuohy
crew.
As he told NPR,
"...I could not figure out why the director chose to show me as someone who had to be
taught the game of football.
Whether it was S.J. moving around ketchup bottles or Leigh Anne explaining to me what
blocking is about, I watched those scenes thinking, 'No, that's not me at all!
I've been studying, really studying, the game since I was a kid!'
That was my main hang-up with the film."
"Well alright then."
All Eyez on Me
This bio-pic of Tupac Shakur was a critical miss for several reasons, not the least of
which was how the movie recreated Jada Pinkett Smith's involvement in his life story.
The actress skewered the film on Twitter and accused the filmmakers of fabricating a scene
wherein Shakur read her a poem and claimed they completely invented a farewell between
the two.
She also denied the occurrence of an argument portrayed in the film, according to Rolling
Stone, calling the movie's version of events "deeply hurtful."
Sully
It's a scientific fact that everybody loves Tom Hanks, and the man he portrays in 2016's
Sully is a bona fide hero.
Captain Chesley Sullenberger III was the pilot who pulled off the Miracle on the Hudson,
so named because it was one of the most insane emergency landings ever attempted and saved
every person on board the plane.
But if the film's plot had been true to the actual events, it would have been over in
half an hour because all that time spent investigating whether or not he'd done right thing was greatly
exaggerated.
There was never any significant doubt as to whether Sully made the right call.
The first set of simulations, shown in the film to constitute damning evidence that the
emergency landing was unnecessary, showed just the opposite.
And the final report praised both Sully and the crew for their heroism.
The real investigators were none too happy about this, accusing director Clint Eastwood
of making manufactured villains out of them for the sake of dramatic tension.
Now-retired lead investigator Robert Benzon complained that the film had hurt his reputation,
while putting its level of realism "somewhere between Sharknado 2 and Sharknado 3."
Spotlight
In an age where news outlets consistently get accused of alleged bias and fakery, Spotlight
provides a noble portrait of journalistic courage and integrity.
The Oscar-winning movie revisited how the Boston Globe exposed heinous sexual abuse
and a dastardly cover-up by the Catholic Church.
So, a picture this serious might seem to demand a standard of truth-seeking worthy of the
journalists it represents.
However, one of real-life people depicted in the movie was more than mildly offended
as to how he came off in the pic.
School representative Jack Dunn was painted as a morally ambiguous figure who tried to
excuse away abuses.
"It's a big school, Robbie, you know that.
And then we're talking about seven, eight victims over eight years?"
The real Dunn subsequently sued the studio for defamation, and ultimately, the filmmakers
apologized to him and settled for an undisclosed sum.