Why Nearly Every Film Ends by Saying It’s Fiction | Hacker News Reader

Why Nearly Every Film Ends by Saying It’s Fiction

slate.com

152 pointsyurisagalov83 comments

I particularly liked the use of the opposite statement in Fargo[0] despite it not being a true story.

This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

Which was later used in the Fargo TV series[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_(film)#Factual_vs._ficti...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_%28TV_series%29#.22This_...

I like specifically in one interview someone recalling telling them they can't say it's a true story if it's not.

They replied "Why not"

They were fk you to an audience used to watching fiction under certain rules and they were quite happy to break that.

Yes, how provincial and constraining are those rules about not lying!

What "rules about not lying"? Movies are entertainment. Most of them are based on lies, regardless of what it says at the beginning or in the credits. Actors are professional liars. Hollywood thrives in fiction; story and tropes.

Lies are distinguished from fiction by the intention to deceive about the real world, as opposed to counterfactual imagining.

Given that, what point were you making?

The point is, lying is bad, it rips the fabric of society. Fiction is not lying, it is useful, contextualized nontruth.

Lies are the lubrication of society; you're lied to anywhere between 9-200 times a day.

I see what you did there.

That depends on what the definition of "is" is.

That lying to people in order to make your film feel more realistic is a bad thing to do, even if minor in the grand scheme.

I don't think the intention was in any way to deceive the audience. I personally see it as part of their post-modern filmmaking[0] style.

What personally makes this style interesting to me is that there are usually several layers of meaning and intention. And usually references to other films or common perception or convention.

Even if the intention is to tell the truth or a true story, there's always the bias of the storyteller, the selection of what to tell, and what not to mention etc. So in this case, the Coen brothers re-used the "based on a true story" concept, and even exaggerated it. They re-use the format, but mock it at the same time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernist_film

It doesn't stop being an attempt to deceive just because it's self-aware, ironic, or motivated for other reasons. Likewise, murder during a robbery is still murder even if the primary is theft.

There are no such rules about not lying.

We have societal norms about it, maybe. But there are certainly no explicit rules about this, and the societal norms about lying are already pushed to their breaking point when you walk in to a movie theatre.

Rule and norm are synonymous, IMHO. What is the difference? What makes a rule explicit? Do you mean laws? Law itself is often rather abstract, does that still count as explicit?

I think there are specific laws about fraud. In film they can claim artistic license, though.

"The Amityville Horror: A True Story" was nearly all fiction. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/amityville.asp

I remember as a kid seeing the "nonfiction" on the spine of the book cover, and thinking that mean it was a true story, rather than the reality that it was marketing spin.

Well... the family claimed it was true for decades (especially the father). Granted mostly for money, but there is some grey there.

Is that grey area enough to call a book a piece of non-fiction?

I don't think so.

In the sense that the author and the subjects claim it are non-fiction - yes, quite enough.

For people to approach it non-skeptically, no - not at all.

It's like that rubbish about the child that had visions of heaven or whatever while in hospital, they even made a "based on the true story" movie of it, and it was listed as non-fiction.

Non-fiction doesn't actually mean "factual", technically...

Is the Bible sold as non-fiction? Seems like many of the same logical points apply.

It would be nice if you said what the grey area is. Quoting Snopes:

> The truth behind The Amityville Horror was finally revealed when Butch DeFeo's lawyer, William Weber, admitted that he, along with the Lutzes, "created this horror story over many bottles of wine." The house was never really haunted; the horrific experiences they had claimed were simply made up. Jay Anson further embellished the tale for his book, and by the time the film's screenwriters had adapted it, any grains of truth that might have been there were long gone.

Here we have a co-creator of the story specifically saying that it was not real. We don't have that for the Bible. It doesn't mater if many of the same logical points apply when one rather big logical point doesn't apply.

In any case, many works of fiction, like Aesop's Fables, are classified as non-fiction. My belief that "non-fiction" means it actually happened was wrong.

Also used for effect in the 1969 greek-french-algerian political thriler "Z"[0]:

"Any resemblance to real events, or to people, alive or dead, is no coincidence. It is INTENTIONAL."

But this one actually is based on a true story.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(1969_film)

Which led to also to this strange story of fiction and truth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takako_Konishi_(office_worker)

> Irina Yusupov sued the studio, and the jury found in her favor, awarding her £25,000, or about $125,000. MGM had to take the film out of circulation for decades and purge the offending scene for all time.

I wish articles would make it clear if they are using inflation-adjusted figures or not. Looking at the source document, the above is not adjusted for inflation.

Therefore it's $2,200,000 in today's dollars[1]. A non-trivial amount even for a big studio.

[1] http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=125000&year1=19...

There is no doubt that the amount mentioned is the amount awarded at the time. There are several clues:

1) The amount. The odds that an amount awarded would, when adjusted for inflation, come out to exactly £25,000 is infinitessimal.

2) The language. The first and direct meaning of the sentence is that he's telling you what the jury awarded at the time of the award.

3) The lack of language. It's highly unlikely that a writer would give you the value today without mentioning that he'd converted the amount to "today's dollars."

Given that all three clues point in the same direction, you can safely conclude without being explicitly told that the award amount is stated using the original number.

Well, for a big studio today it's close to the amount they spend on catering for a blockbuster (most of which budget regularly extends above $100-$200 million dollars, which 10 and 20 years ago was extremely rare).

What? It's not adjusted for inflation unless they say it is, obviously. They didn't say whether the figure was in US or Singapore dollars, either, and for the same reason.

Well said. Giving non-inflation adjusted prices is such piss-poor journalism. It's as bad as the practice of making time-relative statements like "since last year", so the reader has to work out what that means.

How is giving inflation-adjusted values any better than statements like "since last year"? Both are relative to the time the article was written and thus no longer adequate some years later.

Or "summertime". For half the planet that means precisely the opposite time of year.

It's relevant to the local context of the story. The time of year doesn't really matter, the season does.

> time-relative statements like "since last year"

And then omitting the publication-date from the article.

Well, this is Slate after all.

Slate is shit.

But just because they have fallen doesn't mean you can make a statement that's crap about them, as per other comments.

Anyone confused as to how £25,000 could exchange to $125,000: we "changed currency" in 1971. A pre-decimalisation pound comprised 240 pence (instead of 100.)

The pound did not change its value in 1971 as a result of decimalisation. Nor did the shilling or the guinea, in fact - only the penny and amounts derived from that.

The reason £25,000 was then worth $125,000 and is now worth less is the fluctuation of currency prices over time. You can see a graph and some macroeconomic reasoning for why the dollar has continually strengthened against the pound at, among other sources, http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/dollhist.htm

Thanks

No, this was about the exchange rate at the time.

As sterling has devalued over the last century it correlates nicely with the decline of British industry, especially manufacturing. Yet you still quite often hear some business group spokesman (CBI etc) on the news hoping for a devaluation of sterling so they can remain competitive.

100 years and they still haven't figured it out.

thats ok, we got rid of all our competiton now :P now, every british person has to buy our goods! we are saved! :D :P

I was reminded of the Small Penis Rule after reading this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_penis_rule

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/24/books/writers-as-plunderer...

Here's Michael Crowley's response which I thought is interesting.

https://newrepublic.com/article/62416/cock-and-bull

Ugh, that's clearly a joke that got converted into a factoid as it passed through a dim NYT reporter and then Wikipedia

This is a bad flaw in Wikipedia -- it only cares about sources, not credibility of sources.

Why can't the small penis be part of the libel?

It can, it's just that the plaintiff has to prove they have a small penis.

If the small penis is part of the libel then surely the plaintiff has to be prove he doesn't have a small penis.

The small penis isn't the libelous part, just an identifying feature.

Which doesn't actually make any sense. It's a fun joke, but you could make the same "it's just an identifying feature" argument about any libelous part.

I'd always thought the reason was obviously because someone lost a libel lawsuit over it. Read the article, and sure enough, that was it. Nothing strange about it.

I've assumed the same is true of the "views expressed on this DVD do not necessarily reflect those of (studio)" unskippable disclaimer that is on every DVD these days. But I'm still curious what specific event motivated it.

I have always imagined a software service that would identify clauses in contracts and show you what the clause is a reaction to.

Given that most of it is copypasta and legal counsel isn't researching the relevance of their boilerplate clauses either

You won't believe what happens next!

To be fair though, a Hollywood-Rasputin connection is still pretty funky.

>It’s only recently that studios have relaxed the disclaimer to allow that certain films are inspired, in part, by real events—maybe that’s because, in 1967, Felix Yusupov finally died. Now, blessedly, you can say whatever you want about him.

An estate doesn't have libel rights?

Edit: hm. https://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2014/feb/18/def...

Also, it was his wife that was libeled, so his death isn't the relevant milestone here.

I'm missing the strange/bizarre part. MGM, despite their own research, made up a rape between two people who never met in a film about people who were still alive. The alleged victim sued and won.

She'd still win today, with or without the disclaimer. Imagine some OJ movie where they decide to have a subplot about him molesting his daughters, for dramatic effect.

Or inventing a conspiracy theory around the JFK assassination?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)#Critical_reaction

The problem is that the statement at the end of films is always a lie, even for fantasies.

There is a misunderstanding, mainly among people who write themselves off as uncreative, that creative people are endowed with a gift, where they can come up with stories out of nothing. The truth is, they are all inspired by past stories and experience, and characters are based on parts of themselves or relatives or friends or people in a newspaper.

There has never been a story created out of pure nothing, that is utterly original in every way, ever.

Everything is a remix https://vimeo.com/14912890

I think the op overstates the power of these statements. Take the south park intro. It doesn't provide absolute cover for libel. If they make statements about people that to a normal person's understanding are not clear parody, they can still be sued. If it looks like Tom Cruise, and talks like Tom Cruise, and you tell the audience with a strait face that it rapes people, expect lawyers.

It's parody, not libel.

Here's a summary of what the court considers in a libel case - https://popehat.com/2015/09/02/satire-vs-potentially-defamat... .

> Finally, the court will look at the statement from the perspective of the audience to which it was directed, taking that audience's knowledge and understanding into account. (Seelig v. Infinity Broadcasting Corp. (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 798, 809-10.)

> That's why satire and parody are protected even when directed at a fairly narrow audience. For instance, when the proprietors of WorldNetDaily sued Esquire for a parody suggesting they were withdrawing one of their birther tomes, Esquire won because the piece was viewed from the perspective of someone familiar with Esquire's history of satire and WorldNetDaily's history of nuttery, not from the perspective of a person encountering all these figures for the first time. Similarly, my post about the case is protected satire even though I made up excerpts from the D.C. Circuit opinion suggesting that WorldNetDaily staff routinely molests walruses.

Most watchers of South Park know it has a history of satire, including last year's "Where My Country Gone?" depicting Trump being raped to death, or years ago "The China Probrem" portraying Spielberg and Lucas raping Indiana Jones and a stormtrooper.

Comedy Central's own lawyers have a solid defense against the libel case you describe.

> Comedy Central's own lawyers have a solid defense against the libel case you describe.

They do indeed. But those defences do not begin and end with a title card calling everything fiction, as the OP would suggest.

Are you a lawyer who specializes in libel or just an assertive internet denizen?

A lawyer with background enough to know that parody and libel are not opposites. I mostly deal with security and IP issues, but I do teach slander/libel in some of my classes. SouthPark's reliance on parody and the assertion of fiction aren't absolute defences, especially since much of their comedy isn't meant as parody nor fiction (See the episodes on Scientology and Mormonism which while parodic also rely on other defences.)

My apologies. I used the wrong term. It's not "parody" but "satire".

No, satire isn't an "absolute defense." I never claimed it was. Nor did I say they were opposites. I was making a comment about a satire defense specific to the Tom Cruise and rape scenario you presented.

You wrote: "If they make statements about people that to a normal person's understanding are not clear parody, they can still be sued"

That is not the criterion. It isn't a "normal person's understanding", but a viewership who is aware of South Park's history of satire, including straight-faced satire.

Yes, Comedy Central/South Park could still be sued, but to win it would need to be a scenario where it's not understood as satire even to South Park's audience.

That really depends on the jurisdiction. The UK famously has very different libel rules, and judges that are much less willing to tolerate satire, hence the "I'll sue you in England" line in SouthPark's Scientology episode.

Satire/parody-related defences can fall apart when saying something that is allegedly true (ie "Tom Cruise is gay"). Truth is a defence in the US, but not in England and other jurisdictions that place privacy above "the public's right to know". SouthPark has in the past run some serious risks in this regard, but they seem more restrained lately.

When you wrote "If they make statements about people that to a normal person's understanding are not clear parody, they can still be sued" were you primarily talking about the UK system?

I see that you write 'defences', instead of the American 'defenses', so I think the answer is "yes."

The Slate article was talking about a case in the US system (and the HN readership is US-centric), so I think it's fair to expect that comments which refer to some other jurisdiction would mention that change.

I ask that you make this context shift more explicit in the future.

Here's a more complete analysis of what a First Amendment defense might look in the US system in regards to Tom Cruise being called gay: http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20051206.html .

One of the more philosophical points in that essay applies to British law. The Defamation Act 2013 requires serious harm to the reputation of the claimant. Do you, as a lawyer, wish to defend the belief that it's harmful to call someone gay when they are not gay?

Reading about that new(ish) law, it seems the updated line should be "I'll sue you in Belfast."

There you go, oldmanjay, very good.

When you encounter an opinion you don't agree with, the first thing you try to do is discredit the person speaking that opinion. That is EXACTLY the correct, adult way to handle things.

The best part about your method is that it's impossible for you to be wrong! If someone ever says something you don't agree with, all you need to do is find out how you are smarter than that person, and then use that as evidence for why their opinion can't possibly be true.

You, good sir, are a role model.

Does anyone have a better written version of this? The entire thing is distractingly clickbaitily written and has both not written enough about the subject, and paradoxically, written too much.

Without an explanation helping to illustrate what was too much and what more you expected, I fear your comment may suffer from the same paradox.

"but MGM couldn’t do that after casting a real-life brother and sister in those roles."

Ha, if that was the actual logic then they deserved it.

'Nearly every film'? I can't think of the last film I watched where I saw a disclaimer like this. Maybe I just don't watch a lot of movies that could be interpreted as true, but this title seems hyperbolic.

Edit: it's at the very end of most films.

Just checking a few random movies.

Movies I checked that have this disclaimer:

- Despicable Me 2

- Django Unchained

- Inception

- Jurassic World

- James Bond: Spectre

- Avatar (extended cut)

- Spaceballs

Movies I checked that don't have this disclaimer:

- Tangled

It's usually among the very last lines of the end credits, among the statements about dedication to the environment, distance from the tobacco industry, lack of animal abuse etc. If you're not watching the end credits you will never notice it.

Ah got it. I thought the author meant the disclaimer came right in the beginning of the credits. Thanks for clearing that up!

"If you're not watching the end credits you will never notice it." Which of course, makes it mostly meaningless.

If you want these things to have any meaningful legal effect, people have to know it.

But you should have known it if you watched the entire movie (which includes the credits).

If you're concerned, after-credit scenes are a good way to force people to sit through the end credits. Then the defense "I left earlier and thus didn't read that" becomes "I was talking to my friend while that disclaimer was on screen and thus didn't read it".

So, EULAs and TOSes have no meaninful legal effect?

Historically that's correct.

The software industry has routinely been denied enforcement of their agreements by the way they make users agree to them

The reaction is some companies have slightly different agreement things such as making you scroll to the bottom first

But then everyone decides again that the risk is pretty low and user engagement matters more and the tos agreement stuff takes a backseat again

You cannot agree to what you cannot read so anything that can only be read after purchase is not part of the contract that you agreed with the seller.

At least in Germany, any clause that the average user wouldn't expect in such an agreement isn't binding.

I've seen it in a lot of obviously-fiction books. The first time I noticed it was in a Disk World novel, which was so obviously fictional-and-yet-based-on-real-places-and-people that I thought it was a joke. The back even had descriptions of the locals in the series with that of the continent Klatch saying "Not loosely based on Africa at all. Honestly."

Just saw "A Tale of Love and Darkness". The disclaimer was so sweeping that I wondered whether we were to believe that there is such a place as Jerusalem.

Can we change the title to something less "clickbaity"? Is that even a word?

Edit: Fixed

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