Can Hollywood show historical truth? Or not?

[Archae]

I saw that in that Clint Eastwood movie "Jewell" the movie showed a female reporter sleeping with a source, although there is ZERO evidence of this.
Just added for "artistic license."

And it's nothing new.

The 1916 movie "Birth Of A Nation" showed the KKK as heroes, and blacks as thugs and rapists.

"JFK" from Oliver Stone got 2 facts correct, President Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, and Jim Garrison did put Clay Shaw on trial for that killing.
But the rest of the movie was bullshit.

Now we have "historical" dramas up for Oscars this year, and the bullshit is being flung around.

Link to tweet

[msongs]

1. movies are made by individuals, there is no such thing as "hollywood" nt

[Archae]

2. So Mr Wants-To-Make-A-Movie shows up saying he'll do historical drama accurate.

Hollywood studios will show him the door.

Gotta have the usual cliches.

[lame54]

3. Stay away from the movies if you don't know how to watch one...

This is not Galaxy Quest

These aren't historical documents

They are fictional interpretations

They don't have an obligation to the truth

Besides JFK is one of the greatest movies ever made

[Wounded Bear]

4. Truth is stranger than fiction, and real life is actually rather boring...

unless you happen to live in a war zone, or a violent inner city or something.

Hollywood always feels the need to sex things up a bit to get people into the theaters. It's gotten worse over the years, not better, probably in part because of all the comic book bullshit now being passed off as drama. Real investigative work is boring. It involves digging through musty piles of paper, or scanning through terabytes of computer data.

Yeah, historical dramas do tend to focus on the drama, not the history.