Filmmaker Steven Spielberg wanted the cast of his adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s 1982 historical novel to keep something in mind: “We’re not making a film, we’re making a document,” as he put it. “By centering these difficult stories, in a moving, respectful and honest way, I think Spotlight is one of the best movies ever produced.” — Suyin Haynes. “I reacted to the movie less as a history student, which I was at the time, than as a product of my own time—a young woman who was fed up with the gender stereotypes I’ve been brought up with.” — Cady Lang, A younger generation might know Bob Woodward for his exhaustive chronicles of the Trump Administration in his books Fear: Trump in the White House and Rage. Though World War II ended 75 years ago, the film’s lesson is a timeless one. The film is adapted from the Lebanese-Canadian writer Wajdi Mouawad’s play of the same name. Director William Friedkin never regarded his Oscar-nominated adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel as a horror film, despite being regarded now as one of the best horror movies ever. “What is especially striking about the film is how well the director and writers effectively conveyed the real-life story of this group of courageous journalists—while carefully and delicately unveiling the personal lives of the victims of abuse,” says Keisha N. Blain, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. While the incident is mentioned in both the book and movie, Peter Benchley has said that the mere reference of the event should is not to be taken as a sign that it inspired the plot of Jaws. By signing up you are agreeing to our, French Oscar Entry Two of Us Is a Romance and Thriller, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. But of these films that sport the "inspired by true events" claim, which can also claim to be the best horror movies around? Believe it or not, Count Dracula was an actual person: a Romanian prince named Vlad who took on the name Dracula, which meant “son of Dracul,” his father. After disqualifying movies that had been seen by fewer than half of the respondents, as well as movies with overwhelmingly split votes (i.e. Nevertheless, the film has earned acclaim as one of the best horror movies of its kind for its ultra realistic depictions of violence and, especially, for its sinister antagonist, Mick Taylor (John Jarratt). Although based on a fictional story, the book was inspired by true encounter the author had with her family and a young girl with a severe facial deformity, according to a story she told NPR. It was the first time I’d seen men willing to admit a woman into their adventures and allow her to be a real friend to one of them without any rivalry between them,” Coontz recalls of seeing the movie when it came out. No, as far as I can tell, the writers have never claimed that Insidious (2011) is based on or even inspired by a true story. As if that could be any worse than it already is, her attacker is an invisible apparition of great evil and unstoppable strength. On a scorching 1972 summer day, the Vietnam War veteran made a clumsy attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank, only to be penned in with hostages for a 14-hour standoff. The 2019 film is the third version of a 1937 movie. Look for his name in just about any article related to Batman. Originally Answered: Was the movie based on a true story? It does make sense that The Strangers is really just inspired by a plausible concept based on something that happened to the director, because I cannot imagine a trio of killers preying on two helpless victims in a cabin in the middle of nowhere taking that long to finish the job. Based on the memoir of the real Maria, the movie tells the story of a free-spirited nun sent to become a governess for seven musical children, just before the start of World War II. The 1979 “The Amityville Horror” was based on a supposed haunting from 1975 (“You will believe,” the trailer intoned). That is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to art imitating bizarre, disturbing reality. While not entirely a lie, the real Australia-based hitchhiker murders that inspired the film occurred far from the scenic national park the title borrows from… and misspells (Wolfe Creek). Movies based on true stories are a special breed of entertainment. A gripping tale of how the husband took extreme measures to plan and device a way to get his wife out of prison, the movie managed to engage the audience intellectually as it unfolded the meticulous methods the husband took and emotionally as we sympathized and cheered him on (despite knowing his act is against the … To see cities and towns recreated as they were 20, 50 or 100 years ago, to look at the clothes people wore, to hear patterns of speech that have since become outmoded: all of these things remind us that the past was a real place, peopled with human beings who cared about the same things we do, who faced challenges that nearly broke them and who found delight in the same joys we ourselves treasure. — NIAWILSON and SANDRABLAND (@definejulius) February 29, 2020 There are clearly some big differences between Masuka’s story and the one presented in John Q. , but there are also some undeniable similarities which the filmmakers understandably found very fascinating. Viewers of the film, however, are left with plenty of reasons why a life in the mob might not be quite so desirable. The film is based on Courtney Hargrave's 2018 novel, Burden: A Preacher, a Klansman, and a True Story of Redemption in the Modern South. Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon depicts the agonizing time spent inside the bank, during which Wojtowicz agonized over his actions and unexpectedly bonded with some of his captives. All Rights Reserved. While Friedkin took some liberties with the film, including its iconic car chase, he was committed to keeping the story fairly realistic. However, did you know that both of these fearful playthings are inspired by alleged fact? Insidious follows the story of the Lambert family who are haunted by a collection of malevolent entities and a powerful demon. The film would make Wojtowicz a folk hero to many—and actually did help fund Eden’s real-life surgery. It shows in graphic detail the torturous experience Walton alleges that he endured in traumatically graphic detail. Unlike Woodward and Bernstein’s book of the same name, the film focuses less on the actual details of Watergate, instead homing in on the personalities and procedures behind one of the biggest investigations of the 20th century, and important real-life supporting characters like Washington Post’spublisher Katharine Graham are left out. The prolific murdered also paved the way for Alfred Hitchcock’s most iconic creation. It was based on a war novel written by E.M. Nathanson about 12 servicemen criminals who were offered reduced sentences to blow up a fancy house filled with German generals right before D-Day. Robert the Doll was made for Gene by his family’s Bahamian servant, who happened to be skilled in voodoo. After she died, leaving him a state of crippling loneliness, he eventually began identifying as a woman, taking up cross dressing and skinning female victims to create a bodysuit to help assume his gender of choice. Released in theaters in the fall of 2011, The Help was adapted to the screen based on the best-selling novel of the same name written by Kathryn Stockett. All I can say, in regards to the life of Ed Gein AND the plot of Psycho, mothers, please be careful how you raise your children. Perhaps that unique approach to the thriller, as well as its fact-based origin, is what has kept audiences intrigued and in fear more than 40 years since The Exorcist was first released. In reality, there was more than one list, written not by Schindler, but by a Plaszów camp orderly named Marcel Goldberg, that had the names of those cleared to be transported to Schindler’s factory—but that departure from fact did not mar the movie’s impact. It was indeed an intellectual and emotional experience. We know better than to believe every detail or line of dialogue—movies are always a fiction in the broad sense—and that filmmakers who are dealing with real-life events need to take liberties. She eventually succumbed to her injuries and died at just 16. Steven Spielberg’s masterful creature feature (and the first blockbuster) was inspired by Peter Benchley’s novel, Jaws. Yet, that has not stopped Hollywood for continuing to use the story as franchise material. On March 7, 1965, as voting-rights demonstrators attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., during a march to the state capital in Montgomery, they were met by heavily armed police. In fact, it's not even the only story … Even the central relationship was really more of a casual working partnership than the best friendship portrayed in the film, according to Cassidy’s sister Lula Parker Betenson, and the film’s famous ending is still the subject of historical debate: did the two men die in Bolivia or, as Cassidy’s sister and great-nephew contend, did Cassidy escape? Following is our list of the top 10 movies based on a true story, as chosen by TIME staff and a select group of historians. In 2010 the movie, Insidious, was released in theatres and my inbox exploded with thousands of people asking me whether the events in the movie were anything like real astral projection. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our. No, there is no record of a massacre involving a chainsaw that took place in Texas in the early 1970s. After exhaustive research, they found that the break-in was part of a massive campaign of political espionage and sabotage on behalf of Nixon and against his opponents; the Watergate scandal soon brought about the downfall of Nixon’s presidency. Whether or not the movie was accurate, Wojtowicz is right about one thing: Pacino is undeniably fantastic, imbuing the character with pathos and pent-up frantic energy. One time i went into a strange dream world and could not wake up from my sleep cause i was kidnapped by a darth maul looking creature. Paul Newman and Robert Redford stole hearts and set a new standard for the buddy film when they portrayed notorious real-life outlaws Robert “Butch Cassidy” LeRoy Parker and Harry “The Sundance Kid” Longabaugh in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Subscribe for just 99¢. yes actually. Sir James Murray was a real person — he’s even listed on the Oxford English Dictionary website . Two years later, director William Friedkin’s Oscar-winning film of the same name debuted, with a slightly fictionalized twist on the thrilling real-life drug seizures. Her skills apparently proved effective as Robert would take enjoyment in taunting children and mutilating Gene’s other toys, among other unexplainable phenomena. The true tale of the infamous criminal couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Champion Barrow has been told by media time and again, most famously in the … Well, of course, Hollywood has a way of stretching the truth, especially when scaring audiences is involved, but that does not mean the claim is always a lie either. I think he would approve.” — Suyin Haynes, Read more: 13 True Stories That Would Make Oscar-Worthy Movies. Sometimes our skepticism and our awe have to walk hand-in-hand. For instance, the creepy child's plaything from Annabelle Comes Home, the latest upcoming entry in The Conjuring Universe, was inspired by an allegedly possessed Raggedy Ann doll. While many have speculated what famous murder cases could have inspired this gorefest starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, director Bryan Bertino claims the inspiration was a group of mysterious strangers who knocked on the door of his childhood home in Texas, who turned out to be looking for empty houses to rob. The journalists and editor Ben Bradlee, says Barbara A. Perry, Gerald L. Baliles Professor and Presidential Studies director at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, are “genuine American heroes.”, Just four years after the break-in, Alan J. Pakula’s film was released, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing Woodward and Bernstein, respectively, in their dogged hunt for the truth. The brilliant film Selma tells the story of the fight for voting rights.. As in the film, Maria married Georg von Trapp (who was 25 years her senior in reality) and the family toured Europe in 1937 as the von Trapp family choir. But nearly half a century earlier, he was uncovering the secrets of another president: Richard Nixon. These events are the backdrop for the Ava DuVernay-directed film Selma, which, with its re-creation of the months leading up to the marches, illustrates the complexities of social justice movements and their leaders. it's not based on a true story. I have chosen 14 of some of the best films that made a scary movie-going experience out of a true disturbing event. Bryan Bertino decided to flip that idea on its head by making the thieves masked serial killers and changing the purpose of their shocking, gory visit into, as what is now regarded as one of the best horror movie quotes in recent memory reveals, “because you were home.” So, it's based on a true story, perhaps just not what you would guess. Fossil hunting is encouraged (independently and via organized walks) on the Jurassic Coast, and Lyme Regis is one of the best and safest places to find fossils in the area, especially ammonites. While Crocodile Dundee was a film that greatly helped the tourism industry in Australia, Greg McLean’s 2005 cult slasher film was the film that could have come close to ruining it. It, too, claimed to be based on a true story. We began by creating a pool of 70 contenders: every movie that met our own “based on a true story” standard and appeared at the time of the survey on the IMDB top 100 movies list, IMDB’s list of popular movies based on a true story, the AFI top 100, the Rotten Tomatoes top 100 or the All-TIME 100 Best Movies list. What do you think of our list? “It is for the most part extremely faithful to the original narrative of Solomon Northup, which I had taught in my class for years before the movie came out. I know what you're thinking: Horror movies that are "based on a true story" are bologna. “It is about the actions of someone who refused to go along with the evil,” says historian Julian Zelizer. Each of us can live only one life, but movies that draw on history are windows into the selves that we might have been, had we been born in another time or place or circumstance. The Conjuring would spin off its own universe, which has gone on for some time. So it'd be ideal if the movie wasn't based on a real story, but sorry! And movies based on true stories put us in touch with the past in a visceral way. There are plenty more out there, but hopefully this provides a few for you to choose from. Subscribe for just 99¢. It just barely earns its PG-13 rating. Attica!”, After the film’s release, Wojtowicz complained in a letter written from prison that the film was only “30% true,” although he also called Pacino’s depiction of himself “flawless.” However, some reporters have cast skepticism on Wojtowicz’s version of events, saying that his stated motive—to pay for a gender-reassignment surgery for his lover Liz Eden—was a cover for a mafia plot. Marty Baron, the current editor of the Washington Post, was the editor of the Globe at the time the film takes place, and is portrayed by Liev Schreiber in the film. Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know now on politics, health and more, © 2021 TIME USA, LLC. Let me clear this up for you right off the bat: No, The Strangers is not based on a specific, true story of a young married couple teasingly stalked and killed by masked assailants. Not to be confused with the 2004 comedy about a high schooler in love with an adult film star, The Girl Next Door is based on Jack Ketchum’s novel, which was inspired by the tragic story of Sylvia Likens. “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,” declares Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, protagonist of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, the 1990 classic crime film charting the rise and fall of a mafioso and his network in Italian-American Brooklyn. Or, perhaps, he and Steven Spielberg would rather one of the best horror movies of all time, and one of their most iconic creations, not be linked to tragedy. Of course, we're referring to horror movies and here you can explore our research behind the ones that are based on true stories. The film nabbed eight Oscar nominations; 20 years later, longtime Post writer Ken Ringle called it “the best film ever made about the craft of journalism.” — Andrew R. Chow and Cady Lang, Al Pacino has played many criminal masterminds over the course of his career, but John Wojtowicz isn’t one of them. Wes Craven was smart to not market his slasher-fantasy hit as inspired by true events because no one would have believed that a badly burned, clawed, wisecracking boogeyman would be real. This is a list of films and miniseries that are based on actual events. IT is based on Stephen King’s novel and was written on a culmination of ideas with its main character fashioned after serial killer John Wayne Gacy [1] who performed at children's parties as Pogo the Clown. The events depicted in the The Girl Next Door are just as unsettling and unspeakable as the original shockingly sadistic case. ride in recent film history,” by TIME’s film critic on its release, Goodfellas was based on the 1985 Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film. The film was based on Northup’s own 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave, which documented his treatment on the plantation and his eventual freedom and reunion with his family, as well as on input from historians and researchers. Egan and Grosso served as technical advisers on set for the entirety of production, as well as both acting in small cameos in the film. “12 Years a Slave meets the high bar for historical accuracy as well as artistic excellence,” says Manisha Sinha, Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut, who recommends the film to her students as a source for their work. But is the book based on a true story? Of course, no confirmed evidence of that haunting exists (as I have mentioned) and the story has already been done to death in Hollywood. Please attempt to sign up again. Julie Andrews running through the Austrian hills as Maria in the 1965 filmThe Sound of Music is perhaps one of the most well-known opening scenes in cinema history. A gripping story of a family in search of help for their son, Dalton, who fell into a coma after a mysterious incident in the attic. Billed as “the fastest, sharpest 2 1/2-hr. Heroes of investigative journalism, bank robbers and mob informants and gunslingers, ordinary citizens who fought for justice: These people can come to seem more real to us through movies. The film is largely faithful to true events and based on real people; in January 2002, the Boston Globe Spotlight investigations team published their first story in a series of articles exposing the cover up of the abuse by Roman Catholic priests. Say what you want about UFOs and alien abductions, according to Travis Walton, it happened to him. This is your last free article. The complex drug trafficking scheme known as the French Connection was cooked up by Corsican gangsters in the 1930s: poppy seeds were shipped from Turkey and Lebanon to Marseille, a major French seaport, where they were processed into heroin, before being shipped out to U.S. By the 1960s, up to 44 tons were being moved in the U.S. yearly, prompting then-President Richard Nixon to dramatically crack down on drugs—and providing plenty of fodder for Robin Moore’s 1969 nonfiction book about some of the NYPD’s busts during the time, The French Connection. The 1993 film Fire In The Sky is based on the memoir of the same name and recounts the most famous and best-documented alien abduction in history. it's based on many true stories. While Run borrows from real-life cases, it is not based on a single true story. It is not for the faint of heart. Much like Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins’ bone chilling role in Psycho), Ed Gein was very close to his mother Augusta, who sealed him off from the rest of the world for much of his life. Leatherface is not the only killer on our list to be inspired by Ed Gein. He wanted to use the fictionalized take of the St. Louis possession (changed to a 12-year-old girl played by Linda Blair) and make a film that commented on the mystery of faith. The film may have only just premiered on Amazon, but fans are wondering whether the events of the movie are based on a true story. In order to qualify, the central story in a film must be at least inspired by a real story that happened to real people—not just a fictional story set against a real backdrop—and a central character based on a real person must do things that his or her real-life counterpart actually did. So, where did the chainsaw element in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre come from?
is insidious movie based on a true story