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| - The truth is a funny thing. It's slippery, it's not always self-evident, it can seem implausible, it can even be inconvenient, and more often than not it's just plain boring. Very Loosely Based On A True Story occurs when a writer decides that reality just doesn't pack enough punch in some way, and decides to improve on the historical record. Arguably, this has actually saved some er...true stories. For example, The Patriot would have been two and a half hours of a group of Minute Men hiding for hours in swamps sniping English troops and then running away had they kept it true to the historical events of the time. Doesn't exactly sound riveting, does it?
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| abstract
| - The truth is a funny thing. It's slippery, it's not always self-evident, it can seem implausible, it can even be inconvenient, and more often than not it's just plain boring. Very Loosely Based On A True Story occurs when a writer decides that reality just doesn't pack enough punch in some way, and decides to improve on the historical record. Arguably, this has actually saved some er...true stories. For example, The Patriot would have been two and a half hours of a group of Minute Men hiding for hours in swamps sniping English troops and then running away had they kept it true to the historical events of the time. Doesn't exactly sound riveting, does it? This isn't always a bad thing; after all, having the Von Trapps climb a mountain to freedom was much more uplifting to Cold War audiences than sticking them on a train to Italy would have been. The problem comes when writers go too far and take all semblance of reality out of a character they claim to have based on a real individual. It can leave knowledgeable members of the audience wondering if the writers only claimed to have based the story on a real event to attract fans, and it can leave less knowledgeable members thinking they know more than they really do about the past. Very Loosely Based on a True Story often occurs because of Executive Meddling, especially if some of the characters are based on living persons who might sue them if the depiction is too unsympathetic. Another reason can be to make characters less three-dimensional so as not to confuse the viewers, whom they believe won't accept a socialist, atheist, or gay hero or a villain who loves his spouse. Sometimes historical incidents will be changed because they don't fit into Hollywood History or because the truth would be inconvenient, as when cowboys in old Westerns were all played by white actors when many real cowboys were black, Hispanic, or American Indian. This is a common enough phenomenon in books and movies based on supposed paranormal events that this prologue was originally only about movies based on paranormal stories. Paranormal incidents often have to be exaggerated because the original narratives (especially supposed "eyewitness" accounts) tend not to be very plausible or exciting, especially to anyone with a grain of common sense. So filmmakers and writers edit the story to make it seem more dramatic, authentic, or in tune with society's (or the writers') beliefs about religion, the supernatural, and UFOs. They may even claim it really happened if they think that'll scare the viewers more. There are two parts to this, stories with the actual names of the individuals involved and stories where everything except the general story is fictionalized (with considerable overlap). If a film or book says it's Inspired by, it's a sign that it'll be nowhere near the actual true story. See also Skepticism Failure, Documentary of Lies, But It Really Happened!, Inspired By, Suggested By. Anything based on Urban Legends overlaps with this trope pretty heavily. Compare Roman à Clef, which is tightly based on a true story, and Biopic. Examples of Very Loosely Based on a True Story include:
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