Being a Better Writer: Unbelievable Reality · 8:31pm Mar 20th, 2017
Ever heard of a film called To Hell and Back? No?
I'm not surprised. The film came out a long time ago. 1955, to be exact. It's a World-War II movie chronicling the exploits of one Audie Murphy.
Do you recognize that name? Some of you are likely shaking your heads, while a few others are nodding vigorously. You see, Audie Murphy was one of the most decorated soldiers of World War II and remains one of the most decorated soldiers of all time. Exploit after exploit was attached to his name. Naturally, the kind of man you'd want to make a Hollywood blockbuster about, right? That was To Hell and Back.
Well, here's the interesting thing about this movie they made. You would likely expect that a story about a war hero (or anyone, really) coming out of Hollywood would be heavily edited and dramatized, right? Hence the "based on a true story" nonsense that usually means that there was probably a person somewhere who did something similar to this, but its so disconnected you might as well be watching pure fiction.
Well, you'd be right. The movie wasn't exactly like the real story.
It was, actually, less amazing.
That's right, the movie was toned down. And I don't mean that they shied away from the violence or the horrors of war, no. It was that they looked at Audie Murphy's life and said 'no one will believe this, it's too fantastic' and then toned the film down, downplaying some of the man's heroism and accomplishments. All because they were certain audiences, despite the event's truths, wouldn't believe them for the stories they were.
Today, in that vein, we're talking about knowing your audience, and the challenges associated with the possible.
Read the rest of this post at Unusual Things
Ah, Audie Murphy. I remember reading about him on TVTropes.
Speaking of, Reality Is Unrealistic is one of my favorite entries to read there. You learn in Stats that if you have a big-enough sample size, you see all kinds of crazy edge cases crop up. And we have huge datasets to draw from, nowadays.
Heh, truth is stranger than fiction.
Because when something's true, it doesn't matter if you believe it or not ... but fiction has to be believable.