Title: Reel v. real
First published: 2003
Description: According to the author, a more accurate subtitle for *Reel v. Real* would be *How Hollywood INACCURATELY Turns Fact into Fiction.*

In order to tell a good story rather than make a documentary, fiction filmmakers, directors and writers, often play fast and loose with the historical record.

Sometimes current mores require changes. What was accepted in the past, like child brides, would be unthinkable today in the wake of ongoing crimes committed by child predators/molesters.

Most often, however, box-office considerations determine what accurate historical information ends up on the cutting room floor.

Just one of the many historical bloopers Frank Sanello reveals in *Reel v. Real*: 

In Mel Gibson's Celts in Kilts epic, *Braveheart*, a major plot point involves his affair with the Princess of Wales, who bears his baby because her husband, the future Edward II, was exclusively homosexual and ignored his wife.

In reality, the Princess of Wales, sister of the king of France, was only six years old at the time the actual story takes place. Deceptive but it allowed the screenwriter to create a scene where the princess tells her sadistic father-in-law, King Edward I, who is paralyzed by a stroke and can't speak, that the child she is carrying is Mel Gibson's William Wallace's, not his son's. The king twitches violently when the princess whispers in his ear,

"It is Wallace's child who will bear your name and inherit your crown!"

The best scene in the movie and made entirely out of unholy cloth. 

But as many directors of historical films plead the 11th Amendment: "We're not making a documentary here!"

Frank Sanello, author
Subjects: Historical films, History and criticism, Motion pictures and history
Places: Hollywood, Europe
People: Mel Gibson, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi Mahatma (1869-1948), Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, Sgt. Alvin York, Richard Nixon, Larry Flynt
Time periods: From prehistory to 2000:) (Quest for Fire to Erin Brockovich)
LC classification: PN1995.9.H5 S26 2003