Hollywood biopics might be great movies but they're still full of lies, writes Karl Puschmann.
It's long been said that there are three sides to every story: your version, their version and the truth. Well, it's high time to amend that saying to include a fourth option: the Hollywood version of events.
I'm talking, of course, about the phenomenon known as the biopic. These filmsare best described as being dirty rotten liars. They're make- believe masquerading as truth. All high falutin' and righteous, claiming to be based on fact while actually being every bit as fantasy as Sir Pete's Hobbit trilogy.
For some reason there's been a glut of them at the cinema recently. Biography must be so hot right now, I guess.
To its credit, the biopic is a fairly inclusive and open genre. No matter what you're into there's most likely a biopic catering to your interests.
Into music? Get on James Brown's Get On Up. Into politics? Try the well made but less than revolutionary Mandela. Into sport? Then get with The Program, a biopic about that cheating, tour de force cyclist Lance Armstrong.
Maybe you're into obsessive, unpleasant, non-showering nerds? Then keep an eye out for the upcoming Steve, a biopic about Mac founder Steve Jobs. Or, if you just can't wait, you could always watch Jobs. That's last year's biopic about Mac founder Steve Jobs.
Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs in the upcoming "Steve". Photo / Supplied
The highly rumoured Steve has not yet been confirmed for release next year.
But it's not just the famous getting the less than factual treatment. Along with the vast array of celebs there are also many biopics about regular, overachieving nobodies. There's biopics about a guy with extremely good balance (The Walk), a guy who can't keep a secret (Snowden), and that one from last year about a wee lass who went for a long walk (Wild).
All of these, the ones that are out anyway, have all been slick, well made and, yes I'll admit it, entertaining. They've also all been full of crap. And that's a problem.
The recent, highly acclaimed N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton is a prime example. As a movie it's insultingly predictable, strictly adhering to the biopic tropes with a ruthless determination.
We've all seen this exact story a zillion times before; young talent breaks through, lives high life, gets ripped off by management and ripped apart by internal conflict, gets broke, rebuilds, redemption and adulation, roll credits.
But the movie pings along at a fair clip, buoyed by some strong performances and the defiant energy of its genre-defining soundtrack.
This makes it an entertaining watch. What it's not is an uncomfortable watch. And, if it had any respect for the "bio" part of biopic, uncomfortable is exactly what it should have been. These guys, putting aside my undying love for their music, were hardcore a-holes back in the day. One member's rap sheet (not the musical kind) includes vicious assault on ex-wives and a female journalist.
A line near the end where the actor playing the rapper obliquely references this ignored history by saying something like, "I done some things I ain't proud of" doesn't really cut it when you're supposedly watching a biography.
The group may have been staunchly about keeping it real, but the biopic about them sure ain't. But it's still a good film. Is that the point? Is that enough? Are we not entertained?
Straight Outta Compton isn't alone in preferring fantasy over fact. This week the excellent Everest, which is about the 1996 climbing tragedy, got lambasted for fitting facts around its fiction.
They're a couple of high-profile current examples but wild biopic inaccuracies are almost a tradition: The King's Speech, The Social Network, Amadeus, Braveheart, Walk the Line, Pearl Harbor, The Doors, 300 and Titanic are all full of baloney.
They're all great films. They're just full of lies.
So should we let facts get in the way of a good story? Hollywood doesn't think so. But I do. I know these aren't documentaries and all these movies have different end goals. But for a lot of people the events of the film tends to become the definitive facts of what happened. The least the film-makers could do is get things right. Life is big and messy and awful and wonderful. Trying to distil a person or group's entire life story into two hours of quality entertainment is a massive ask.
But if it's true that life is stranger than fiction then perhaps biopic makers should accept this and stop sanding away all those rough edges and hiding the inconvenient truths. Show us the people, not the pretend. That's why we're watching these films in the first place. I can handle the truth.
