That’s Entertainment!
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Anyone who looks to Hollywood for historical accuracy, recent event or not, is very foolish. Equally foolish are living witnesses to the event who call the representation inaccurate. By going public with their objections they feed the hype. Media compound the hype by giving factions time and space to discuss “the truth.”
Most films are adaptations. Thus constriction, combining, eliminating and inventing--of characters, events, time. Selectivity is all.
Rivele, Wilkinson and Oliver Stone did all of the above. A theatrical release is fiction. A theatrical release with bibliography is still fiction. All else is hype.
The bottom line of an industry is profit. Fealty to source is not a first priority. If in addition to being entertained an audience is enlightened then that is a bonus--a bonus removed from the basic intent; profit from product, accurate or not.
Writers (I count myself a minor contributor) take from our own and others’ lives. What we cannot take we invent. We are, in a sense, thieves and liars.
“Nixon” is an entertaining movie. So is “Forrest Gump.”
WARREN C. SHERLOCK
Cosgrove Professor of Communication Arts
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles
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