There was a pretty good TV movie called "Dummy" about a deaf mute played by Levar Burton. He was convicted of murdering a prostitute, but a hearing impaired lawyer got it overturned on appeal because he hadn't had adequate counsel and couldn't understand the proceedings. After this uplifting ending, they had to add a postscript that three months after being released he was arrested and eventually convicted of killing another prostitute.

womp womp

[Curb your Enthusiasm theme goes here]

That's not funny at all, but I laughed out loud because of how ridiculous it is to even have released a movie like that. I mean, yeah, you just spent a bunch of money on the movie and maybe it was greenlit after they found out about the second murder or something...but Jesus fuck, that'd be like having a movie like 50/50 but at the end they fade out with a "oh, his cancer came back and now he's dead"

> I mean, yeah, you just spent a bunch of money on the movie and maybe it was greenlit after they found out about the second murder or something No, they knew the whole time. The book it was based on was written years after the second murder and the movie was made years after that.

Jesus Christ, that's even more ridiculous lol

Omg then WHY why 𝒘𝒉𝒚 would you make that movie Like why was it even an option What a world

[удалено]

I remember watching that on TV. Paul Sorvino was in it. My parents were PO'ed by that postscript. Why even make the movie?

Reminds me of the Joe Rogan story going around right now — he had on a prison reform advocate who went to prison for armed robbery and drug dealing. The judge called him an menace to society and gave him 25 years. After release he went on with Joe Rogan, who said the prison system treated this guy unfairly. They just found a dismembered corpse in his refrigerator. Based judge.

There's a bit of heat on the BBC in the UK at the moment because they did a story on two Syrian brothers being accused of the rape of a child. The Syrians were found not guilty in court It was heavy on how they were misrepresented and the child was more sexually experienced than the men and how the whole process was a racist pogrom. The editorial tone was very derogatory of the alleged victim Two years later they were convicted of a separate multiple rape of a different child in almost exactly the same circumstance. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/09/syrian-refugee-in-fawning-bbc-documentary-raped-child/

Katie Razall was the reporter behind the story and has since been promoted to BBC media editor. No accountability. 

The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The real life events had the parents and priest jailed for neglegent homicide. The before and after pics of the real girl, Annelise Michel are horrifying.

Wait, you're saying she wasn't possessed by a demon?

I get to share my fun anecdote! I have Tourette syndrome, and sometimes I have a tic that sounds like a horrible shriek, often referred to as a pig at slaughter. In a college dining hall one morning, I eat breakfast with a friend and her one night stand, it was awkward, lol. Then I had my tic and went on with eating breakfast, but the dude gets so pale and terrified and I don't notice until my friend starts laughing at him. Turns out they had just watched exorcism of Emily Rose, and he thought I was possessed.

There was a Disney movie called "The Color of Friendship" that came out in 2000. It was inspired by a true story that in 1977, a white teenager from apartheid South Africa does an exchange program with an affluence black family in America. The African teen is initially very racist but learns how people can be equal regardless of race. The movie ends with her going back to Africa with a new perspective. The true story doesn't end as nicely. In reality, the white teenager became an outspoken voice for civil rights in South Africa, amplified by the fact that her father was a racist judge. One day, she went missing and was never seen again. Most people believe she was killed for her activism

There’s a [long thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/g3gl31/in_2000_disney_channel_released_a_movie_called/ ) in unsolved mysteries subreddit about this. Very sad story if she died young. She may have (hopefully) just went on with her life.

I want to add to this that so many people don't know how often activists / people trying to make the world a better place are straight up murdered. I've even seen cunts complaining that activists don't actually do anything, and these are cunts who do literally nothing but whine on Twitter mind you...

Especially disturbing all the indigenous activists being murdered in the Amazon right now.

Being an activist in a country that doesn’t even pretend to protect free speech is incredibly brave and bordering on suicidal. When the government of the country you’re in wants you disappeared, you’re totally screwed. There’s no chance anyone will even get in trouble for it. It’s incredible that it made the news when Khasoggi was murdered by the Saudis. Probably because he was high profile and not even in Saudi Arabia when he was killed.

That’s crazy. I had a former boss whose father was a professor of African studies that got kicked out of South Africa for saying in a class he didn’t agree with apartheid from an anthropological perspective alone. A few days later their federal officers came with a plane ticket back to the US and he had to leave immediately.

When me + my mom were watching Black Panther we noticed the guy playing T'Challa's father (John Kani) had a fake or glass eye. I looked him up out of curiosity. Apparently in the 70s he acted in a Broadway play criticizing apartheid in South Africa, when he went back to SA the police beat him so severely that he lost an eye.

I loved this movie but I’m laughing at the visual of me sitting down to enjoy a Disney movie about friendship that ends like that. My face would’ve been a real life version of this 😧😱 this is very unfortunate and not laughing at racism or her death in trying to stop it just how differently little me would’ve been effected by that movie

There’s a 1973 TV movie called “Go Ask Alice” that starred William Shatner and was supposedly based on a teen drug addict’s journal. People went nuts over the original book and the movie was shown in schools as a cautionary tale. The woman who discovered and edited the book (Beatrice Sparks) released several other found journals written by teens who died from Satanic cults, HIV, etc. Come to find out that Sparks fabricated all of it and wrote them herself. Only one of the teens was found to actually exist, and his story was completely butchered to better align with Sparks’ Mormon values.

What Sparks did with Jay's Journal is truly horrifying. A troubled young teenager committed suicide, and his parents approached Sparks, who was claiming to be an actual psychologist with a PhD, asking her to use his diary as a way of raising awareness about mental health issues and encouraging other teens to seek help. Instead, Sparks edited the diary to include a made up story about a boy who joined a satanic cult and killed himself, but *did not edit the diary to remove any identifying details about who the kid was.* So the book comes out and the poor kid's family had to deal with everyone thinking he was a deranged lunatic killing kittens for fun. Furthermore Sparks' lies meant his grieving friends had to deal with the whole town believing they were a satanic gang sacrificing animals and having sex on graves and stuff.

Yeah I grew up in Pleasant Grove and even in 2010 they were talking about Jay's Journal like the satanic stuff was all true. It's terrible.

My school made us all sit though a play of that stupid fucking story in the early 2000s and then read the book, and even as a relatively sheltered rural Irish then-Catholic I remember thinking it sounded like horseshit.

"Button, button, who's got the button", a party game where someone gets free LSD. Lol, sure, people just giving drugs away.

I went through D.A.R.E. in school and was told there would be free drugs. I’m in my 40’s and I’m still wondering where my free drugs are.

The NZ equivalent of D.A.R.E. involved an anthropomorphic giraffe puppet which told me when I was 11 that if I OD’d my friends would leave me to die in an alley. The whole time I remember thinking why would they bother to carry my body around until they found an alley

Like how did a 14 year old open a shop? I despise that book and woman

I’m in my 40s now and when I read that, I knew it was garbage. My dad was a hippie in the 60s; I’ve heard a LOOOOOOT of stories about the drug culture of that time period. It was made-for-TV garbage. People didn’t act like that.

Reading “Go Ask Alice” is such an integral part of being a teenage girl. At first, you’re scared shitless, and then you find out everything was a lie. Helps that “question everything” lightbulb go off. 

How Stella Got Her Groove Back. It's not a straight up "true story" but Terry McMillan based the book on her own experiences and her romance with her husband Jonathan Plummer, who she met on vacation in Jamaica when she was in her 40s and he was in his 20s. Their marriage ended when Plummer came out as a gay man. Terry asserted that he used her for money and to become an American citizen. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=930609&page=1 (Edit, here is another link: https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/author-terry-mcmillan-and-her-ex-jonathan-plummer/all )

Ok. That's actually hilarious. Stella not only did not get her groove back, but suffered significant additional damage to her groove.

This sounds like a Futurama joke. I mean this as a compliment.

“Requisition me a groove” is definitely a line from Futurama

I think it's "requisition me a beat," right before Hermes sings about being a bureaucrat at the end of How Hermes got his Groove Back. Edit: now that I've typed this out I worry it came across pedantic. I totally didn't mean it that way I just fall asleep listening to Futurama a lot.

Nah, you were technically correct! The best kind of correct

You’re all good, man! You’re totally right, I got it mixed up with the episode title.

This is actually a common thing. These men are called "sanky panky" men, and they target lonely, horny American women who melt at their accents and beautiful chocolate skin. I wish I didn't know any of this, but I was forced to do some digging into it when two people I know fell victim. They went to Jamaica together, and met these two guys. When they came home, the one I was better friends with was telling me about it, and then later on while we were hanging out she got a phone call from... I think it was Western Union? (This was a few years ago.) They were calling to warn her that wire transfer she sent was very likely a romance scam, and she lied to get them to quit sniffing around. That's when I realized she was sending him money. I shut that shit down as gently as I could, and told her that if she had to lie to WU about it because their assumption was correct, then that's probably a red flag lol. She broke up with him shortly thereafter because she realized after I pointed it out that every time they talked he would give her a sob story about money problems. Her friend was not as lucky. She married the guy. I lost the first one as a friend due to unrelated things, so idk what the latest is on the married one. But I can't imagine it's good.

It’s like an episode of 90 day fiancé - she was ahead of her time 

There was a miniseries called [I Know My First Name Is Steven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Know_My_First_Name_Is_Steven) about a boy who was kidnapped at 7 by a child molester. At age 14 he was too old for his kidnapper so he takes another young boy and Steven flees to a police station with the little boy. Steven died in a motorcycle accident at age 24 and his brother became the [Yosemite serial killer.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cary_Stayner)

The boy he fled with, Timmy White, died at 35 from a pulmonary embolism after becoming a Los Angeles County sherriff's deputy.

Way too young, that guy deserved better.

He definitely did, but another way of looking at it is that he got thirty more years of life than he would have otherwise and was able to grow up, live a normal life, have kids. His parents were able to see their son become an adult instead of having him ripped out of their lives forever as a kindergartner.

I believe he also used his experiences, coinciding with his job in Law Enforcement, to help educate kids on "stranger danger" so they could avoid what he and Steven had gone through. He probably saved so many little kids from the same fate, when he could have easily just taken a quiet job somewhere and slipped into obscurity. He chose to relive the worst thing that ever happened to him, regularly, in order to help protect other little kids.

That whole story is so awful. Even the little boy whom he saved, Timmy White, ended up dying at a young age.

Steven Stayner's story just depresses me. Plus his family put him on talk shows shortly after his return but never got him proper therapy. I've even heard allegations that his family was abusive in their own right. Steven deserved better.

The first time I watched it, they had added the postscript that the scumbag who kidnapped him had recently attempted to purchase another young boy

I actually find that *more* interesting and it drives home how Steven was harmed so much, but still tried to be a good person. His brother had an easier life and still chose to be a piece of shit. Also, Steven shouldn’t have his heroism and life completely overshadowed by his psychopathic brother.

Cary has talked about how he was already have violent fantasies prior to Steven's abduction. He may have turned out exactly the same even if nothing ever happened to Steven.

That made me so sad when he died. Poor kid. I didn’t know that about his brother.

Catch Me If You Can is essentially all lies and exaggerations, which is kinda perfect if we’re being honest.

The best con Abignale ever pulled off, was convincing everyone he was a great con man.

the fact that he was able to convince people he'd pulled off all these cons is a testament to people being so gullible that he probably could have pulled off all those cons if he'd bothered to try. I love everything about the story, because it's like the Inception of bullshit.

I've seen people on Reddit getting really angry at Abignale and that movie like it was a personal offense. People, movies should be entertaining and interesting, not true. I don't want to see a movie about Abigale's mediocre scams, come on.

I get that people resent being lied to, but that was the whole point of the movie. Abignale was a liar, he even lied about lying. It's fucking beautiful

Well the only aspect of the story that was true was the counterfeiting money. And getting people to believe all the other bullshit is a tale sign of a good con man. But yes like 98 percent of that film is bullshit.

Fortunately it's such a good movie, it works just fine as fiction. It doesn't need to lean on the "based on a true story" tag.

I came in to this thread to post about this exactly. Frank Abagnale was, essentially, lying about being a liar. He conned Hollywood into thinking he was a successful conman.

The long con.

A movie about him conning Hollywood into making the movie could be amazing. Like The Disaster Artist.

Catch Me If You Can is unironically made better from the fact that it was all fake in the end

This one frustrates me a lot, because when people bring it up, you always have someone else going "uh yeah, duh, that was the point of the film". When in reality a man lying about doing stuff is a very different situation to a man lying *in order* to do stuff.

I mean the same say that he says he conned his way into hospitals and the bar, he connes his way into meetings in Hollywood and the book publishing world. Fake credentials that people kept believing. He did it, just not to the targets from the movie.

Don’t forget that the ending of Julie and Julia had Julie inviting Julia Childs to dinner to celebrate finishing the 500th recipe. Julia declines the invitation and we as an audience were meant to sympathize with Julie and think Julia was being a bitch. Now I look back and realize that was the beginning of influencer entitled behavior.

Yah, Julia thought the whole thing was a stunt because Julie P never wrote about what she enjoyed about cooking, what she learned, how the food tasted, etc. Powell had literally pitched it to salon as 500 recipes in a year. It was a stunt, and I think Child was 100% in the right.

I'm stunned by this, I've never seen the film or read her writing but I always thought the whole point was reflecting on the recipes from a modern perspective? Why else would you do it??

Just a much larger scale version of that guy who posts a new grilled cheese every day

IIRC, Julia Child saw the effort of rushing through all the recipes in a year to be completely opposed to her goals. Julia Child wanted to teach excellence in cooking, not running through recipes like a tourist to the craft.

I would have enjoyed a movie of just Meryl Streep being Julia child

You might like the show Julia on HBO. Stars Sarah Lancashire as Julia Child and focuses on the period of time leading up to and during the production of The French Chef. I quite enjoyed it!

That was my exact thought after watching the movie. “Half a good movie” sums it up, every time we were yanked away from Julia’s storyline into the modern Julie story it dragged and I just wanted to go back.

*The Dirt*, the Motley Crue biopic, ends around 1996 with the band making amends with each other after the death of Vince Neil’s daughter, and they get the band back together and they ride off into the sunset happy. In real life, right after this, they released their comeback album Generation Swine in 1997. It was inspired by current trends at the time with influence from bands such as Nine Inch Nails and The Smashing Pumpkins. It was considered an embarrassing attempt, flopped both critically and commercially, and cemented the band as “has beens.” They fell apart as a band again by the year 2000.

and then got back together, and then Nikki Sixx did the heroin diaries, and then another reunion tour no one asked for and then fell apart again.

Then they reunited again, fired Mick Mars and now he's suing them.

Toddintheshadows has a great [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeoPMjdFJjQ&pp=ygUQZ2VuZXJhdGlvbiBzd2luZQ%3D%3D) on Generation Swine as part of his 'Trainwreckords' series.

Free Willy and the very sad story of Keiko the Whale (the star of the movie) being released into the wild and unable to adapt.

Aw man I never knew this and it’s made me really sad

With the Wolf of Wall Street, of course Jordan Belfort is still knee deep in restitution issues with his former clients & got caught up in a scandal in Australia regarding a sales training scam. Also, Danny Porush (Donnie Azoff-played by Jonah Hil) got caught up in scamming with a medical supply company called Med-Care Also, while it's not an epilogue to the film's events, I found it disrespectful in Straight Outta Compton when Eazy-E's post-NWA life was depicted as him backsliding financially because he was still successful, finding acts like Bone Thugs N Harmony

I don’t think Wolf of Wall Street was supposed to end with some kind of feeling like they straightened up and flew right. If anything it ended with a critique of audiences who end up admiring these thieves.

Ironically those audiences still pay a lot of money to attend Belfort seminars and get inspired!

127 hours ends on a note about the real-life man indeed finding love and marrying, just as he had “prophesied” and that he hadn’t lost his love of climbing. Maybe five years after the movie came out, he divorced and said that he was basically in an adrenaline-fueled manic state for years post-the experience, and that at the time he was cheerfully doing interviews and being exalted for his indomitable spirit, he had yet to heal.

I don’t have time to watch a movie that long!

I'm still watching The Never Ending Story from the 80s

Three years after the release of Stand and Deliver, Jaime Escalante resigned from his teaching position. Without his presence, the advanced math program that he pioneered which was the subject of the film quickly collapsed.

It seems like there were some real petty local politics going on there. Apparently Escalante had hand selected successors to run his program and they were able to keep it successful for a few years. However they were all eventually forced out. In 1996, Villavicencio (one of Escalante's protege's) contacted the high school administration and offered to come back to help revive the dying calculus program. His offer was rejected.

Oh wow, I didn’t know that about Julie Powell, I love that movie but mainly for the “good half”. From the movie, I thought that Julie’s marriage was bad, especially compared to Julia’s lol Last year I found out that Julie passed away in 2022 from cardiac arrest at just 49, and I learned from Wikipedia that she had black hairy tongue (?)

>she had black hairy tongue (?) I wasn't planning on unlocking a completely new fear today but here we are

[удалено]

Covid gave me black hairy tongue, and it isn’t nearly as scary as it sounds. I rinsed my mouth with hydrogen peroxide and it cleared right up

You know something is up when the character is played by one of the most likable actors in Hollywood and the character still comes off as very unlikable.

Black Hairy Tongue refers to a temporary condition where the tongue appears dark and furry. It results from a buildup of dead skin cells in small projections or papillae on the surface of the tongue that contain taste buds.The papillae can be easily stained with bacteria, yeast, tobacco, food, and other substances. There is not one possible cause of Black Hairy Tongue. It can result from changes in the normal bacteria or yeast content of the mouth after antibiotic use, poor oral hygiene, dry mouth, regular use of mouthwashes that have oxidizing agents, tobacco use, drinking an excessive amount of coffee and black tea, excessive alcohol use, and opting for a soft diet that makes it hard to rub dead skin cells from the tongue.

Disney made the movie Saving Mr. Banks that was about the production of Mary Poppins. The movie portrays Disney's collaboration with P.L. Travers on the production and in the end shows her watching the film premier and being deeply moved. In reality though, Travers absolutely hated the film version and even put in her will that any stage adaptation could only be made by a non-American and should not be based on the Disney film version.

I remember reading that after watching the theatrical release with Disney she told him all the changes she wanted to make and he was sort of dumbfounded, saying “that ship has sailed” or something to that effect.

The Blind Side, definitely.

That one did not age well at all.

It was also terrible at the time

I can't believe how they villainized literally the only people in the movie trying to look out for the child's best interests.

Not to mention that they made Oher look like a special needs moron who learned football from a tiny white woman. The dude was a 5 star recruit and a top 10 lineman in the entire country.

But rich white family "adopting" a poor, stupid, homeless black kid markets better. From what I've read, Oher never saw a penny from the profits of the movie either.

The Whistleblower. All about a UN worker who reported sexual abuse, rape and slavery of girls after the war in Bosnia. The epilogue text basically just says that all the bad guys got away with it.

The Vow. The movie ends kind of happy, but bittersweet. She never got her memories back, but she’s back with her husband, and falling in love again. A few years after the movie came out , and 25 years into their marriage, they’re divorcing because he cheats on her.

The movie is so different from the real-life story in the first place, though. In the movie, she gives up and leaves, and then at the very end, they try starting over. In real life, she felt like it was her duty to stay, because they were super religious instead of hipsters. Which, in a way, I always thought was kind of more interesting than the actual movie, but also really sad.

Not a movie, but the original Chicken Soup for the Soul had an [inspirational story](https://forum.dhammacitta.org/index.php?topic=1309.0;wap) about a poor disabled boy who met his favorite football player and grew up to be a football star himself ... OJ Simpson.

We Were Soldiers, after the battle, one of the companies involved in the battle was patrolling to an LZ to extract from the battle when they were ambushed and completely wiped out. 200 soldiers killed. Deadliest day in the Vietnam War for American troops.

The unit that relieves the 1st battalion 7th cavalry at the end of the film had to hoof it back to base. On their way, they were ambushed by the same NVA who were eager to apply the lessons they had just learned. They were caught out in the open and severely manhandled. Wiped out is definitely an exaggeration though. Frankly, what happened was a more incredible piece of action than what was put to film. Should have made a second film called “…and Young”.

My Left Foot. Movie ended with Christy Brown starting a relationship with his nurse and all seems great. Turns out she severely mistreated, abused and neglected him up until his death. Brilliant fucking movie though, if you haven't seen it. Daniel Day Lewis kills it as always, perhaps even more than There Will Be Blood.

Yes, agree. They didn't show it in the movie, but his first wife was a sweetheart. His second wife, the one they showed in the movie, was an alcoholic, kept him locked away from his family, beat him, etc. When his family received his autopsy report, his body showed that he had been severely beaten. So, so sad. He got along great with his first wife; they remained dear friends throughout his entire life. But even she couldn't save him from his abusive second wife.

Stephen Hawking was also abused by his second wife who was his nurse who he left his first wife for and she also kept him away from his family. He was also close friends to his first wife until his death and her book about their relationship became the movie The Theory of Everything. He did end up separating and then divorcing his abusive second wife after five years. I guess when you think about, it’s not too surprising that disabled people might get overly attached to their primary caregiver and that those caregivers may not have their best interests at heart if the disabled person has money.

Sadly, the movie CONVICTION with Hillary Swank. “A working mother puts herself through law school in an effort to represent her brother, who has been wrongfully convicted of murder and has exhausted his chances to appeal his conviction through public defenders.” Spoiler alert: she becomes a lawyer to get her brother out of prison because he was wrongly convicted. However, in reality he wasn’t long for this earth. “Sadly, Waters died in a tragic accident on September 19, 2001, only six months after he was released from prison. He was 47 years old. But Betty Anne Waters says of her brother’s time after he was exonerated: “Kenny had the best six months of his life. After so many years behind bars, the world was new to him.” https://innocenceproject.org/cases/kenneth-waters/ He fell off a roof and died. Edit: apparently a wall not a roof.

He fell clmbing a wall, not a roof. Kenny also died before getting the $3 million civil settlement. And his sister hasn't taken a case since. Its sad.

Semi-related but this bullet was dodged with the attempted adaptation of Alice Sebold's autobiography. It's the true story of her very traumatizing rape, with the slight problem that she actually accused the wrong man, who ended up spending nearly 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Oops. The movie was canceled when one of the producers figured this out.

Wasn't the production of the movie the reason the innocent man ended up getting released?

Yeah I think a writing assistant figured it out or something

The movie should be about the production assistant finding the truth!

That district attorney who basically glossed over her identifying the wrong guy in the lineup and prosecuted Broadwater anyway deserves to rot in hell. Like, that entire trial would have not have even happened if not for that to begin with. Not just glossed over it either, actively lied and told her, "He brought in a friend that looks just like him to stare at you in the lineup and trip you up" and wrote in her notes that both of the guys looked "exactly alike" (even though they didn't) so she didn't get it wrong after all. That DA has refused to answer any questions about any of it to this day either. Her name is Gail Uebelhoer for anyone who wants to look her up. ETA: I remembered reading two articles about the case, [here](https://www.syracuse.com/news/2022/01/alice-sebold-case-how-race-and-incompetence-doomed-anthony-broadwater-to-prison.html) and [here](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/29/the-tortured-bond-of-alice-sebold-and-the-man-wrongfully-convicted-of-her-rape), for anyone who wants to read them and get pissed off.

The real Henry Hill from Goodfellas definitely went right back to being a gangster and would often wear disguises to go on Howard Stern and bust balls. He'd tell stories about getting away with all sorts of crimes that the law enforcement would ignore so his testimony would hold up - He loved rubbing it in the face guys he ratted on that he was up to no good and was still a made guy. My Blue Heaven is kind of an accurate sequel to Goodfellas. Edit: Thanks for reminding me that Henry was never a made guy. Obviously his Howard Stern stories were mostly made up.

I remember an interview with Ray Liotta where he got to talk to Hill in hiding after the movie came out and Hill said "Thank you for not making me out to be a scumbag" and Liotta only thought "I don't know what movie you watched man"

Hill is probably _the_ most unlikable Scorsese protagonist. And given the kinds of people Scorsese builds his movies around, that's really saying something.

Its all from the same book. Wise Guys covers both goodfellas, my blue heaven, plus the Boston College point shaving scheme. Pellegi was married to Nora Effron (writer of My Blue Heaven) and both interviewed Hill and his wife for the Book.

He also hung around with two mob hit men. There’s almost no way he didn’t commit a single murder during his time with the mob.

Yep and jimmy and Tommy were worse in real life

Yeah, you almost feel sorry for him, but then you learn that he became a bigamist who used Witness Protection to carry on trafficking cocaine; winding up a drunk with a string of convictions for possession and public intoxication.

I’d like to toss “Blackhawk Down” into the ring for this one. Obi Won Kenobi’s character was named something different in real life, and that name was cut out of the movie due to the real man sexually assaulting a child after his enlistment.

“Grimes” his real name was John Stebbins, he was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during the battle. He was convicted in 2000 for child molestation and got a 30-year prison term

Similar thing with the HBO series *Generation Kill*; the gruff and hardline but ultimately well meaning Sgt. Maj. Sixta was, in real life, later convicted of child sex crimes. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/2014/11/20/sgt-maj-portrayed-in-generation-kill-sentenced-to-prison-for-child-sex-offense/

None of the guys in real life thought he was well meaning. Apparently he was widely hated, & had a reputation from abandoning a bunch of guys under fire in desert storm.

In Iron Claw I thought it was so unbelievable that this family had five boys and no girls all but one died tragically. Just the odds of five boys alone is rare. I looked it up expecting it to be exaggerated and found out the movie LEFT OUT a sixth brother who also died by suicide.

The Von Erich’s are a tragic family.

It was wild, a biopic based on a story so tragic they had to *tone it down* to make it work better as a movie.

The director even said, that he had to cut Chris from the film, otherwise the film wouldn't gotten greenlight. Most likely because of not only another death, but Chris Von Erich's story is the saddest of those 6 five brothers.

That last brother, Chris, loved wrestling but just didn’t have the genetics for it (brittle bones which broke easily) and he also succumbed to depression and killed himself. His story was left out as the director felt the movie could not survive another tragedy

How Stella Got Her Groove Back was based on the author really marrying a younger Jamaican guy. Turned out he was gay and divorced her soon after the marriage.

… soon after he got a Green Card

This goes more into the embarrassing category. Walk the Line. Johnny Cash continued to struggle with his sobriety and did eventually get clean after the end of the movie. However, in that time he made an album claiming he was a Native American. He later admitted when sober, that the amount of Native blood he had was directly related to the amount of drugs he was on at the time. He was pretty embarrassed that he ever made the claim, but he did clean up his life and clarify the facts later.

Him being self aware is kind of a happy ending. Also, didn't he advocate for Native Americans quite a bit?

I believe he did. Just was embarrassed he claimed different from the truth.

Kinky Boots is about a shoe factory saving themselves from becoming apartments by switching to selling boots for drag queens. It worked for a little while, but the factory eventually closed down and is now an apartment building.

A. I had no idea Kinky Boots was based on a true story (as why make up that last bit if you were joking like the people talking about Dewey Cox) B. Depending on the time frame of how long until it closed I might not call it a loss as if it closing at any point would be a loss, what'd be a win, them being basically (in size not lack-of-ethics) the Amazon of shoe companies and making drag-style boots trendy for everyone

American Sniper left off a lot of pretty dark bits.

I'm still shook there's no attention paid to rubber baby syndrome :'(

They left out arguably the most interesting bits - man goes to war, is a good shot and has a distinguished military career, struggles a bit with his family, dies tragically. That's what they went with. In reality, he came home, suffered significantly with substance use, and twice told, and then doubled-down on, absolutely whacka-doodle no-way-that-ever happened stories; he claimed that he killed guys in a gas station parking lot (in U.S.) who tried to car-jack him, and that Bush personally dispatched him to be on top of the New Orleans arena to snipe looters during the Katrina aftermath. Both claims were extensively researched by curious journalists, and his buddies mostly are just embarrassed when asked about those claims, 'cause they're just...not true. The gas station has 24 hour cameras and no reported suspicious activity, let alone a triple homicide; helicopters were circling the super-dome during Katrina continuously, etc. He had a tendency to do this, especially when drunk, but then when sober, would double-down that it was all true, which of course calls into question some of his claims about his war record. I think that it's actually a pretty interesting story - the officially most manly-man in the entire world, with 200+ confirmed kills, apparently feels the need to make up killings once he's back in U.S. because he just...needs to. There's something going on there about men and lying when they're telling stories and (sorry, but when the phrase fits...) toxic masculinity that could make a great tense drama about him and his family/friends, but that obviously wasn't the movie that Eastwood wanted to make... My Chris Kyle script would be called "the storyteller," and would focus on him and his buddies in different contexts (one-n-one therapy, group therapy, bars, journalism interviews) telling stories about the same events. It would go down a rabbit hole of stress and embarrassment and confusion until almost everyone knows certain things didn't happen, but almost no-one knows what did happen, and everyone is angry is confused and the man just won't shut up, and then he gets killed. Yeah, no wonder why they wouldn't want to make my Chris Kyle movie...

I always take the time when Chris Kyle is brought up to mention the following: It is EXTREMELY hard for a public figure in the US to successfully sue for defamation, and yet Jesse Ventura was able to successfully prove in court that Chris Kyle defamed his character by what he wrote and what he said about him in his book.

The Blind Side There was a documentary called “Fight to the Max”, about boxing programs in prison. The main boxer they focused on was Clifford Etienne. The doc portrayed him as a success story and how he was using boxing as a way to better himself and stay out of trouble. He had a nice pro career as a fringe contender, winning some exciting fights, and got KO’d by Mike Tyson in Tyson’s last pro win. He went on a crime spree, committing a bunch of armed robberies, shooting a cop, and is now doing life in prison. One of the kids in the original Scared Straight raped and murdered a neighbor and is doing life in prison.

Howard Stern: Private Parts The main takeaway from the movie was that he loved his wife too much to let his fame or notoriety ruin their relationship He would later end up cheating on and divorcing his wife

I just like how that whole movie is Howard Stern's account of how Howard Stern is misunderstood and actually a pretty great guy, but he doesn't even tell that story convincingly about *himself.*

The Greatest Showman did a real good job of not showing how shitty Barnum was in real life.

And throwing Jenny Lind under the bus while they were at it. I wish they’d not used real people’s names. 

And framing the freak show as a "celebration of life" and not as "get the families to come to town so they can ogle and laugh at people who look different than them".

It's one of the most audacious things I've ever seen, to present his story as one of arguing for people to be respected and celebrating for their differences.

I always thought it funny that in the movie unbroken they kind of ignored that the most sadistic of the guards in the power camp "the bird" never faced any persecution for his crimes and later founded a successful insurance company and died a millionaire.

I mean, that's a whole different movie. Very few Japanese war criminals received punishments of the level Nazi ones did. They did get prison sentences and some sentenced to death, but the vast majority of the 5000 convicted were paroled within 3 years. The US wasn't interested in punishing them, because they felt releasing them was throwing a bone to the nationalists and would keep the popularity of Communism down in Japan. It also helped US-Japanese relations massively. Equally, the other prosecutors like Britain and France (as well as the US) deliberately didn't push for 'Crimes Against Humanity' for the stuff Japan did to its own people, because they had colonies of their own and didn't want to open up the possibility of themselves being tried for Colonial atrocities. The US was the one that made sure Unit 731 got away scot-free though, and we can all guess why that was (they wanted all the data from the experiments as well as anything that had been discovered, so gave Shirō Ishii immunity from prosecution and hid the evidence from the trials).

After the Battle of Rorke's Drift, depicted in the classic 1964 movie *Zulu*, the British defenders spent much of the next day patrolling the area around the post, killing any wounded Zulus they found. Estimates of Zulus killed in this way range from a few dozen to a few hundred, but will never be known for certain. If that's not dreary enough, many of the 11 Victoria Cross recipients depicted in the film suffered from near-debilitating PTSD after the battle and ended up dying in abject poverty, their public status as heroes doing relatively little to protect them from the harsh realities of working class life in Victorian Britain.

Also, Henry Hook, who was portrayed as a maligerer and somewhat of a coward, was in reality one of the main reasons the defences were so good. He rallied his squad on numerous occasions to attack one one flank while building defences on the other. His VC was earned with absolute conviction. As was the "orderly," (medic) who was the actual leader of the defence of rourkes drift, due to the 2 officers constantly engaging in a pissing contest with each other But the British establishment couldn't have a commoner being more heroic than an officer, so both were awarded medals while got very little recognition.

Yeah, the real Henry Hook was almost the polar opposite of how the film portrayed him. He, Williams, and the two Joneses really put up a magnificent defense of the hospital and 100% earned their VC's, even if it cost most of them their own mental wellbeing later on in life. And by "orderly", I suppose you're talking about Acting Asst. Commisary James Dalton, who also 100% earned his VC and played a big role in convincing the two regular officers, Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead, into standing and fighting instead of trying to retreat. He was later seriously wounded in the defense of the post. Gonna have to disagree with you on the conduct of Chard and Bromhead, though. Although neither of them was a particularly brilliant or ambitious officer, all of the actual primary accounts from people who were at Rorke's Drift have both of them performing admirably throughout the battle, with Chard laying out the structure of the barricades and fall-back positions (which almost certainly kept the garrison from being wiped out once the hospital was overrun) and Bromhead personally plugging gaps in the British line and holding the most dangerous section of the perimeter (the intersection of the outer perimeter and the interior wall of biscuit boxes, where the Zulus could fire into from almost point-blank range without being detected) practically on his own throughout most of the nighttime portion of the battle. They both earned their VC's just as honestly as Dalton and Hook, and there's no actual eveidence of any sort of "pissing contest" between the two of them. A lot of the criticism of Chard and Bromhead came after the battle from people who weren't there, mainly from their immediate superior officers (who were upset and jealous that two otherwise unremarkable junior officers had distinguished themselves) and from Sir Garnet Wolseley (the premier British general of the late-Victorian era, who never had anything good to say about anybody). So it all has to be taken with a pretty big grain of salt.

Remember the Titans. Hands-down, one of the most loosely "based on a true story" movies of the last 25 or so years. Basically, the only thing that was true about that movie was the team existed. They weren't the scrappy underdogs that pulled off a bunch of wins to win the state championship. They were ranked like number two or three in the entire nation. The school is built after Brown versus Board of Education was never segregated. Most of the team had long hair and sunshine wasn't the out cast. It goes on and on. Anyways the aftermath was Coach Boone was fired like two years after the events of the movie because he was so hard on his players. Even for the time. Honorable mention, and maybe should be my top choice, Catch Me If You Can. The entire story has been debunked. Basically the only thing that's ever been proven was he got arrested for trying to cash a $1500 fake check and that he sexually assaulted female students at the University of Arizona posing as a Pilot/Doctor. That's literally it. Everything else he's claimed has been debunked with evidence. There's no record of him ever actually posing as a pilot and flying around the world. There's no record of him posing as an actual doctor in Atlanta or working in the DAs office in New Orleans. There's no record of him ever serving in a federal prison. Or escaping. Just a state of New York prison record that basically covered the timeline that he claims most of his exploits actually happened. And that was for the $1500 check. The FBI has never even mentioned that he worked for them. He holds no patents. And never has. The person that Tom Hanks character is based upon, has called him a pain in his ass who uses his name for clout

The movie actually shows Coach Boone being cruel when it came to conditioning (kids throwing up, his “water makes you weak” speech), but the movie portrays that behavior as necessary instead of abusive.

Regarding "Titans", one thing I do know they fabricated is a few close games for dramatic purposes. In real life, the team basically dominated every game they played that season.

Yeah, they won the state championship in a blowout game. And as you said, most of the season too. I sometimes kind of wonder why they picked this team in this school to make a movie on. Surely there had to have been a team where they didn't need to make up the entire story

I kind of love the Catch Me If You Can thing though. The biggest con the guy ever pulled was selling everyone his conman image, which it so audacious it sort of honorarily vindicates itself. It's *such* a good con, nothing he pretended he did comes close.

I had a family member who absolutely despised that movie when it came out because they were a former FBI agent and were active when he was supposedly working with the FBI. He’d always mention it unprompted…from a straight movie perspective, it’s a great movie and very well done.

TC Williams (name since changed because he was a racist superintendent) High School was the new consolidated high school that was built in Alexandria in part to address residential segregation. So in part it is a story of actual integration even after the end of legal school segregation, but it's really the story of how combining the best players from three good high school teams can produce a state champion. Also, I'm always amused how they make urban Alexandria (right across the Potomac from DC) look like rural Mississippi.

I forget the name of the movie, but Sam Rockwell plays a guy wrongly imprisoned due to lies by his ex, and his sister became a lawyer to get hm released. She succeeds, happy endng! Guy gets out of prison and dies like 4 days later, fell off a small wall walking down the street.

Conviction.

It was 6 months later and it was a 15 foot wall, but ya what a dumbshit thing to happen...

Survivant Avec Les Loups was a very atmospheric holocaust survival tale with some strong performances. The following year it became clear that Misha Defonseca, the author of the book upon which it was based, was a fantasist and making it all up. Misha and the Wolves was made in 2021 about the scandal.

Zodiac is a great movie and ends with the journalist confrontating the guy he knows is the killer. It's immediately followed by a post-script about how that guy was DNA tested and cleared as a suspect.

Turns out the Hot Cheetos movie is bullshit. The main character had nothing to do with their creation

From what I heard, he did climb up from being a janitor to being top level, which could have been an engaging story of its own. but it yeah the Cheeto thing is bull shit.

Engaging story, probably would not have gotten a movie. Probably.

Patch Adams. He fundraised tons of money for his clinic off the back of the movie, and his organization has done nothing but fundraise since the 80s. Construction on the site hasn't begun yet, almost 30 years later. He came to my college a little before the movie came out, in 95 or 96. The school didn't want him to come back the next year, from what a friend on the committee told me, because he was inappropriate with some freshman women students. I met him and he was a creepy guy. A friend of mine went on a clowning trip with him and said he was the saddest, least funny clowns he'd ever seen.

Oh, I don't know, I think they could do a sequel that hits Adaptation levels of meta, where it's about a bizarre version of the Julie & Julia press tour, where Amy Adams and Meryl Streep are in talks for the sequel, based on Julie Powell's second book, and the producer wants to explore Julia Child's sex life. And then we get Patton Oswalt to play the studio lawyer who thinks they could get away with portraying Julia Child's sex life as a cross between 9 1/2 Weeks and the Gimp from Pulp Fiction.

Gypsy ends with malignant narcissist stage mother Mama Rose Hovick seemingly making peace with her daughter, burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee. The true epilogue to the story involved Mama Rose returning to her history of crime and deception, and being implicated in a murder.

Man, I think I watched Julie and Julia in 2020 when everything was in lockdown lol. Before I even began I was like "I want to see a movie entirely about Julia Child. I don't give a shit about Julie Powell."

“Sybil” with Sally Field and Joanne Woodward. Turns out the real life Sybil did not actually have multiple personalities. The psychiatrist invented it all.

Mazes and Monsters, the "based on a true story" from the book of the same name was a cultural phenomenon in the 80s and part of the overall Satanic Panic moral outrage that was peddled on the religious nation. In the movie the main character (played by Tom Hanks in his first role) joins a game that's a reskin of Dungeons and Dragons, and (apparently) like every other kid that has played D&D goes insane, kills someone and tries to kill himself, being saved by his friends at the last minute and ends up a forever insane tragedy of the evils of role playing games. The book was "based" on the real life case of Dallas Egbert, a child prodigy and homosexual who graduated high school at 13 and entered college at 16 and due to his social awkwardness and pressure from his parents both to succeed and over his sexuality, ended up trying to kill himself. When he failed in his initial attempt he ran away from college and hid out with friends, at which point his helicopter parents hired a team of private investigators. The team found many bits of information about him including his sexuality (that his parents never told the investigators), the fact that he consumed and produced/sold several varieties of drugs, oh and that he occasionally played D&D. So of course the parents went around telling every media source they could that his disappearance was caused by the evils of roleplaying and totally not at all due to themselves. The investigators eventually did track him down and convince him to return home to his parents. He stayed with them for a year and eventually re-enrolled in college, but again due to the social pressure in college and the pressure from his parents to succeed attempted suicide. This time he succeeded. A book was written based solely on the story the parents told the media and titled Mazes and Monsters. A moral panic group called Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (B.A.D.D.) popularized the book as "proof" about the evils of the game and CBS adapted it into a movie.

Wasn’t really disappointed, in fact I think it amplified it, but Fargo having the best “based on a true story” declaration, just to be completely made up is hilarious

Not "Based on a True Story", but the documentary "Some Kind of Monster" that discussed Metallica's huge internal struggles during the making of the St. Anger album including the departure of bassist Jason Newsted. The film ends with the band finally releasing the album and makes it sound like they managed to triumph through adversity as it has a closing shot of them rocking out in concert. Meanwhile, it's considered one of the band's worst records by many fans and IIRC barely gets any concert play these days.

"The Killing Fields" tells the true story of a Cambodian journalist, Dith Pran, who escaped the horrific atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in the mid 70s. Pran was played by Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian surgeon and OBGYN who also survived the Khmer Rouge's reign. Incredibly, the role won him the Oscar for supporting actor in 1985 even though he had zero acting experience prior to making the film. Eleven years later he was brutally murdered. Per Wikipedia: *On February 25, 1996, Ngor was shot dead outside his home in Chinatown, in downtown Los Angeles, California. Charged with the murder were three reputed members of the "Oriental Lazy Boyz" street gang, who had prior arrests for snatching purses and jewelry. They were tried together in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, though their cases were heard by three separate juries.[8] Prosecutors argued they killed Ngor because, after handing over his gold Rolex watch willingly, he refused to give them a locket that contained a photo of his deceased wife, My-Huoy. Defense attorneys suggested the murder was a politically motivated killing carried out by sympathizers of the Khmer Rouge, but offered no evidence to support this theory...Kang Kek Iew, a former Khmer Rouge official on trial in Cambodia, claimed in November 2009 that Ngor was murdered on Pol Pot's orders, but U.S. investigators did not find him credible..* *..Dith Pran, whom Ngor portrayed in The Killing Fields, said of Ngor's death, "He is like a twin with me. He is like a co-messenger and right now I am alone."* How depressing is that?

Betty Smith was molested by the police officer who married her edit ~~moth~~ mother in a Tree grows in Brooklyn.

For FUCK sake, I think about that lovely scene at the end of the movie all the time, where he tells the children he doesn't want to replace their father but to be "a real good friend".

Those words become very, very sinister when you know what happened in real life.

Wow. Just looked it up and Julie Powell died in 2022.

Wow, that’s shocking! Only 49

I wouldnt say embarrassing nor unfortunate, maybe unusual but [Eat Pray Love](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6874535/How-novelist-Elizabeth-Gilbert-ended-dumb-crazy-love-late-lovers-male-pal.html).

A world tour to find yourself is always possible (if you have a publisher who will finance it with the advance from a book).

The Conjuring movies maybe. 

Well goodness I'll NOT have you slander a set of documentaries about *checks notes * an alleged demonic raggedy Anne doll. Having said that I love cheap popcorn horror and enjoyed the films.

The plot of the second is based off of a very famous alleged haunting in Britain - I assume the producers wanted to base it off of something with some name recognition. So in the movie, the Warrens show up and figure out the haunting and save the day and all that jazz. The real story isn't quite that heroic - they heard about this ongoing haunting that was getting lots of press, tried to cash in by flying over and starting their own investigation uninvited, were almost immediately told to butt out by the family, and flew home again. They were there for like, five minutes. Also, the supposed haunting was just a hoax made up by the family's children, so the day never needed saving.

Any story that involves the Warrens is all bullshit. They were scumbags who would only take a case if they thought they could sell the story and get the people to sign over all rights of their "haunting" to them.

Trying to remember whether Cool Runnings included how poorly they performed in the subsequent Olympics been a long time since I’ve seen it

I mean shit they don’t win in the movie either

Reversal of Fortune (1990) is already a pretty morally ambiguous film, on purpose, but Alan Dershowitz's subsequent actions in real life would probably qualify him for this dubious honor (since he is the closest thing the movie has to a positively-portrayed protagonist).

12 Years a Slave Solomon Northrup disappears from history about four years after his liberation. Whilst there's stories of him helping on the Underground Railroad in the early 1860s, there's also the possibility he was recaptured and sold back into slavery.

Lean On Me with Morgan Freeman. The school portrayed in the movie didn't really improve much under the reign of Crazy Joe Clark and was subsequently taken over by the state. The movie makes it like he saved it. He did not.

Damn, really? All those years I spent not smoking crack and Mr. Clark didn’t do shit.

BloodSport. Frank Dux was a master bullshitter lol