Last week, Shep Ramsey, of the movie blog moviechopshop, had a few things to say about true stories and their often cheap use to avoid having to tell a good story. In theory, I get where he’s coming from; this is often a crutch relied upon by studios to milk a little extra oomph out of a film. The problem with the Shep Ramsey piece, however, is that he goes a bit too far and ends up missing his exit. Here’s some of what Shep had to say:
“When I ask most people what it is that’s great about a movie like The Blind Side—or any number of “inspirational” stories, mostly sports-related—I always get the same response: “It’s a true story,” they say. Every time; it never fails. “It’s a true story” is the brain-eating amoeba that’s sucking away at my life force. To this claim, I always say “Just because it’s a true story doesn’t mean that it was well told or even worth telling.”
Why is it that people are so interested in true stories? For the answer to that, I have to tell you a story of my own. Recently, on a transatlantic from New York to London, our plane somehow lost power to the engines. The plane surged forward and down, and for the first time in my 15 years of regular flying, I thought I was going to die. The plane was shaking, people started murmuring, then screaming. And before I knew it, the woman in the seat next to me grabbed my arm, hugged her body to it and started praying loudly. Then, without warning, we heard the engine spin up, kick back in and the plane leveled off. The woman next to me apologized. I smiled and told her it was okay, but before I could finish the captain came over the intercom.
“Ladies and gentleman, we apologize for that. We temporarily lost power to the engines, but they’ve been restored, we’ve identified the problem and it should be smooth flying to London. We thank you for your understanding and again apologize for the bumpy ride.” Then we heard the click of the intercom system, but the captain had forgotten to shut it off. “You know, Bill,” he could be heard saying, “after a scare like that, I could use a cup of coffee and a b*** job.” One of the stewardesses, realizing the problem, quickly made her way down the aisle towards the cockpit.
One of the passengers then called after her: “Don’t forget the coffee!”
Now, many of you have already caught on to what I was doing here. This isn’t a true story. It never happened. It’s an old joke that has been passed around for decades. But the kicker about this joke is that in order for it to work, you have to let your audience believe it really happened. Whether you claim that it happened to you or that you heard it on a news story so recent that the listener may have somehow missed the story. Why? Because some things are only funny or interesting if they really happened. This issue is even further compounded in this day and age by the internet, which is radically changing what we find to be worthy of seeing or laughing at.
For example, it is not so funny anymore when someone walks into a frame in a film dressed in thrift-store leftovers from the ’80s while acting like they look cool. We have peopleofwalmart.com for that, where it can still be funny because someone actually thinks they look cool or acceptable. In the film, that wildly dressed actor knows he looks terrible. That’s not as funny as the schadenfruede of someone legitimately thinking that Hammer-pants and a hypercolor shirt makes them look ‘tight’.
There’s something about the reality of a situation, that certain something that lets us know that this wasn’t dreamed up by people and only exists in the fictional universe of the mind. This really happened. And this same concept is exactly what drives true stories. When I tell you that I’ve got a story about a rich family who takes in a poor, uneducated black boy, gives him a leg up and forces him to study only to have him graduate high school, go to college and then one day play professional football, it sounds like a cheesy, hokey setup. But when you discover that it actually happened, that this family really did take in and eventually adopt an unwanted child who no one else would give a chance to – then you have something. That REALLY happened. Sure, you could tell it in documentary form, but just think of it if it starred Sandra Bullock!
As human beings, we have a fondness for truth. As much as we love stories, the idea that these stories not only could occur, but have already, makes them that much more powerful – especially in the case of something like The Blind Side, in which a family exhibits the type of character we all wish we could have on some level. There’s nothing wrong with a true story, nothing amoeba-like in the way it eats your brain. It is true that not every story is one worth telling (honestly, how many of you want to know how I went about getting my breakfast this morning? It was an adventure, let me tell you). But that doesn’t mean because they aren’t as interesting a story as might be dreamt up by the Coens that it isn’t worth telling at all.
