Fact Checking “The Founder” | Hacker News Reader

Fact Checking “The Founder”

rayandjoan.com

103 pointsgscott30 comments

I enjoyed the movie, and assumed much of it was dramatized.

For me, the most memorable moment in the movie was when (IIRC, it's been a while) Kroc tightens his grip on the quality control at the restaurants, and introduces disposable bags, plates, and utensils. There's a short scene of people's initial stunned, disbelieving reaction to disposables: "You're just supposed to throw it away?"

That small scene really stuck with me as kind of indictment of modern waste. Today we don't think twice about throwing away a cup we drank out of for 20 seconds. In the past such waste was shocking and absurd.

> Today we don't think twice about throwing away a cup we drank out of for 20 seconds. In the past such waste was shocking and absurd.

This reminded me of Hocking's analysis showing that the energy to make and clean reusable dishes can often exceed the energy spent making the cheapest disposables. Even though one answer may seem absurd, hidden energy costs can make environmental cost/benefit calculations really unintuitive.

PDF: http://www.design4x.com/misc/bus183/handouts/Hocking.Springe...

It's a good startup movie! Not in the same tier as "Ghostbusters" or "24 Hour Party People, but a good rival to "Tucker".

> I enjoyed the movie, and assumed much of it was dramatized.

Same, and this multi-thousand-word nit-pick is just weird. E.g. "Movie asserts: Joan is in her early 30s when they meet. NO. She was 28. Ray was 55." Does 28 vs. 32 really matter? Neither is okay by the "half plus seven" rule.

Seriously, some people need to chill out and enjoy a Michael Keaton movie.

My takeaway from this is that the movie made reasonable changes to provide a compelling narrative while retaining the fact and spirit of the most important bits:

* Ray did marry Joan

* Harry did make McDonald's viable

* The brothers were bought out with a couple million

* Ray explains why he liked their name

Honestly, the movie feels worth watching just to hear Harry explain how to make McDonald's work. (Also, you'll see some pretty good acting and nice cinematography)

The movie is organized around the narrative of Ray Kroc taking advantage of the McDonald brothers, and ends with Franchise Corporation screwing them out of royalties that would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars by reneging on a handshake deal.

But that deal apparently never happened! Not only that, but the McDonald brothers demanded a lump sum payment and rejected an installment, the closest thing in the real story to royalties.

I can't confirm that? Can you provide another source? Because I agree - that would dramatically change the narrative of the movie. (Even still, I'm not convinced that it would make Ray a particularly empathetic character)

Searching, the first three links I get are this (the op), a quora answer that references this, and the below link:

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/founder/

> Did Ray Kroc renege on his handshake deal to pay the McDonald brothers a percentage of the revenue from the franchises? Yes. After the brothers refused to give Kroc the original restaurant, he supposedly cheated the brothers out of the 0.5 percent royalty agreement they had been getting, which would have been valued at $15 million a year by 1977 and as high as $305 million a year by 2012 (according to one estimate). In his book, Kroc wrote, "If they [the brothers] had played their cards right, that 0.5 percent would have made them unbelievably wealthy." Relatives of Richard and Maurice McDonald say that Maurice (Mac) was so distraught that it attributed to his eventual death from heart failure a decade later. -Daily Mail Online

That's the essential narrative Napoli is challenging, and in addition to the fact that she's a reputable journalist reporting the story, there's the fact that the counternarrative doesn't make sense, since 0.5% was what the McDonald brothers were getting prior to the buyout; if they were expected to continue getting that money after the buyout, what, exactly, would Ray Kroc have been buying?

In that fictional premise, Kroc was buying the legally clean & clear right to do with the brand and inside of the restaurants as he saw fit, without having to fight with the brothers over every detail. The movie portrayed that as a key sticking point to Kroc being able to push his vision for McDonald's forward. For example, the powder milkshake battle, or the ability to pursue raising the fees on the franchisees at his own determining.

Aha, good point. I wasn't convinced of her reputation from either this or quora, but, yes. I accept this as fact then.

The movie is quite good. One of my favorites in the last couple of years. I'm sure it's embellished but makes for a good story.

I quite enjoyed the movie, and was taken aback afterwards when I found out that much of the conflict was added in to create drama in the story.

I'm kind of conflicted because usually I prefer an accurate take over a dramatic one, but without it the movie would have been one big advertisement for McDonalds.

I've never researched a "historical" film or "biopic" and not found out that much of the conflict was added in to create drama in the story. Even many so-called "documentaries" do the same thing, such as King of Kong. This duplicity is taught in Hollywood as standard operating procedure. It is an industry wide norm that they care about entertainment above all else.

I’d say the industry norm is that they care about money above all else. It’s the moviegoers who care about entertainment above all else.

In any case, the result is the same in the end....

> I’d say the industry norm is that they care about money above all else. It’s the moviegoers who care about entertainment above all else.

I'd say the moviegoers have been like that for long enough that the industry norm really is "entertainment above all", not "whatever the audience wants, and it might or might not be entertainment". If audiences suddenly shifted to wanting historical accuracy, I think a lot of people currently in the industry would fall out of it and get replaced by people with "historical accuracy" values. I don't think current moviemakers would just seamlessly switch values.

Interesting hypothetical. You may well be right.

Some care about ideology / politics more, some care about money, some care about sex or some other social capital; I think if one wants to relate facts, books are much more efficient. My favorite documentary maker is probably Werner Herzog and he opens his Aguirre with a complete lie that it was based on something written by missionaries. On the commentary track he doesn't really have a justification other than it looked nice.

Some of them seem like a stretch. The Fred Turner one for example, the movie supports either interpretation.

The last fact-check bullet, about the 1% of future profits owed to the McDonald brothers, is a doozy.

Came to the comments looking for a tl;dr, saw your comment and "oooh, bullets!"

Sadly this is true of many/most of these “based on a true story” movies. The very high level concept is typically real (there was a restaurant named McDonalds eventually taken over by a guy named Kroc), but beyond that the main plot is mostly just all made up—often to the detriment of many real life people who are made to look bad on the basis of a story or scene that’s completely made up.

Considering that a lot of people learn about history often through movies this is pretty dangerous.

Um, this is definitely not an objective source.

It's more objective than you'd think from the domain name, which refers to a book and not to the estate of Ray and Joan Kroc. The author is a journalist, and if she has an affinity to any of the characters in this story, it's to Joan Kroc, who is central neither to the movie nor to the fact-checking on this page.

The movie isn't either though, as they have motive to play up the drama. Independent writing on the topic is available if you do want it, but I quite enjoy hearing the other side as a kind of meta-drama.

It was baffling to me why they changed the story in all these ways that didn’t even make for a better story. The scene where Harry just happens to be standing there when Ray is trying to get a loan, for example, felt sort of odd. Screwing the brothers out of the handshake deal for royalties is another odd thing to make up.

The movie was all plot, anyway, just sort of a timeline of facts in movie form, so it’s not like altering the facts at random, in large and small ways, made it more cohesive or something.

> Not since musician Mark Knopfler immortalized the irascible CEO in his 2004 song “Boom Like That” has the early beginnings of the company been depicted in popular culture.

Is Mark Knopfler post Dire Straits really considered pop culture? I am a fan, and I love the song mentioned (in fact, the entire Shangri-La album is amazing) but I’ve barely met anyone in the past 20 years or so who even knows who the man is. Maybe I just hang out in the wrong circles.

Curious why they screwed up some minor details in ways which made the movie worse -- going from Early Times to Canadian Club. Product placement?

If there's ever a Southwest/Kelleher movie and they similarly replace Wild Turkey with Blanton's or some shit, I will be incensed.

All biopics / "historical" films should be consumed from the starting point of assuming them as pure fiction, other than, for an example using The Founder, knowing that there is a company called McDonalds and maybe some people with these names were involved with it.

The world needs more Joans

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