Your Next Project - 2

We began talking about writing for writing’s sake last week and some of the choices you have to make when you decide to tell a story. I mentioned that you can be inspired by a true story and then go off and write your own story with a nod to that true story. You can be inspired by something that happened in your life, then go off and write a fictional story that’s just inspired by your life. The film I talked about last week, Julia, claimed to be a true story but may, indeed, have been pure fiction.

Why is this important?

Well, I think when deciding on a project you need to decide what’s important. Is it important to be totally faithful to a true story if you write a film, or can you embellish? If it’s a story about yourself, hey, your decision. The only problem comes if you SAY it’s all true and then it turns out not to be true—in other words, you lied in saying it was true. It’s not that dissimilar from a journalist who is required to be truthful—if a story is true, then it’s true. It’s journalism.

But isn’t it different with film? Sure, in many ways it is. It’s a movie, so perhaps no one expects something based on the Civil War to be true to each person who died in each battle or something, but they have a reasonable expectation that you’re not making stuff up about the Civil War.

So there’s a bit of a higher bar when you’re talking history. Not that viewers, or even critics, always care. Case in point, the movie based on the founding of Facebook, TheSocial Network. In the film, the screenwriter says Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook because a girl dumped him, he wanted to get back at her, so he started up this almost revenge website that rated the girls at his college. That was the beginning. But in reality, Zuckerberg had the same girlfriend in college that he would come to marry [they’re still married] and that’s not how it started. But hey, it makes for a more dramatic story, right?

A 60 Minutes interview with the screenwriter asked him why he made that up. The screenwriter hemmed and hawed, and went on to win the Academy Award for the script.

Nobody cared… well, except a few people like that 60 Minutes reporter and me.

Why did I care in this instance? Because the founding of what has become a major part of our culture is history. And unless you have a disclaimer on the film saying this is NOT true, I don’t think you can try to pass the film off as true. It’s a question of ethics.

I know, I know—ethics and Hollywood in the same sentence? But still… as writers, shouldn’t we try to be true to the reality of history?

So I would tell you that your first choice in coming up with that new project is to determine whether you’re going to tell a true story, a story inspired by a true story, or a story completely of your own creation.

It’s a big decision—one that could determine what you write for the next several months, or longer. So think about it and I’ll see you next week!

Copyright © Diane Lake

22May22

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com