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Why Nearly Every Film Ends by Saying It’s Fiction
- mysterypie 10y ago> 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=1934&year2=2016 http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=125000&year1=19...
- coldtea 10y agoWell, 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).
- ProxCoques 10y agoWell 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.
- nl 10y agoOr "summertime". For half the planet that means precisely the opposite time of year.
- harryjo 10y agoIt's relevant to the local context of the story. The time of year doesn't really matter, the season does.
- forgingahead 10y agoWell, this is Slate after all.
- aaron695 10y agoSlate 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.
- Rockslide 10y agoHow 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.
- manarth 10y ago> time-relative statements like "since last year" And then omitting the publication-date from the article.
- switch007 10y agoAnyone 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.)
- dmurray 10y agoThe 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 http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/dollhist.htm
- switch007 10y agoThanks
- nl 10y agoNo, this was about the exchange rate at the time.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoAs 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.
- hughperkins 10y agothats ok, we got rid of all our competiton now :P now, every british person has to buy our goods! we are saved! :D :P
- ternaryoperator 10y agoThere 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.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoWhat? 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.
- ValentineC 10y agoI was reminded of the Small Penis Rule after reading this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_penis_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_penis_rule [2] http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/24/books/writers-as-plunderers-why-do-they-keep-giving-away-other-people-s-secrets.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/24/books/writers-as-plunderer...
- wodenokoto 10y agoWhy can't the small penis be part of the libel?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mmanfrin 10y agoIt can, it's just that the plaintiff has to prove they have a small penis.
- Digit-Al 10y agoIf the small penis is part of the libel then surely the plaintiff has to be prove he doesn't have a small penis.
- empath75 10y agoThe small penis isn't the libelous part, just an identifying feature.
- Dylan16807 10y agoWhich 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.
- vermontdevil 10y ago
- colejohnson66 10y agoCan we change the title to something less "clickbaity"? Is that even a word?
- colejohnson66 10y agoEdit: Fixed
- gingerlime 10y agoI 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._fictional https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_(film)#Factual_vs._ficti... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_%28TV_series%29#.22This_is_a_true_story.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_%28TV_series%29#.22This_...
- aaron695 10y agoI 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.
- dalke 10y ago"The Amityville Horror: A True Story" was nearly all fiction. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/amityville.asp 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.
- abritinthebay 10y agoWell... the family claimed it was true for decades (especially the father). Granted mostly for money, but there is some grey there.
- dalke 10y agoIs that grey area enough to call a book a piece of non-fiction? I don't think so.
- WalterBright 10y agoI'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.
- cooper12 10y agoYou won't believe what happens next!
- toyg 10y agoTo be fair though, a Hollywood-Rasputin connection is still pretty funky.
- jcl 10y agoI'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.
- cloudjacker 10y agoI 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
- DiabloD3 10y agoDoes 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.
- glitcher 10y agoWithout an explanation helping to illustrate what was too much and what more you expected, I fear your comment may suffer from the same paradox.
- sandworm101 10y agoI 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.
- dalke 10y agoIt'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-defamatory-factual-statements-an-illustration/ 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.
- sandworm101 10y ago> 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.
- 10y ago
- pessimizer 10y agoI'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.
- harryjo 10y agoOr inventing a conspiracy theory around the JFK assassination? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)#Critical_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)#Critical_reaction
- ikeboy 10y ago>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/defaming-dead-relatives-european-ruling-right-sue 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.
- thatcherc 10y ago'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.
- tgb 10y agoI'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."
- wongarsu 10y agoJust 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.
- thatcherc 10y agoAh got it. I thought the author meant the disclaimer came right in the beginning of the credits. Thanks for clearing that up!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- DannyBee 10y ago"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.
- Dylan16807 10y ago"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.
- combatentropy 10y agoThe 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 https://vimeo.com/14912890