Random Horrible True Stories Left Out Of Biopics To Make Person Look Bett (15 items)

• 

  (#2) 'Gandhi' Slept With Underaged Girls

  Everyone, including the Oscar-winning Gandhi, assumes that Mahatma Gandhi was morally pristine because he was starving all the time. Not the case. As it turns out, the brave, peaceful hero of Colonial India was actually kind of a pervert. As a 'test' of his piety and purity, he would sleep next to young girls - including his grand-niece - and force himself not to touch them or become aroused.

  This disrespect for women fell in line with his documented assertion that menstrual blood is a "manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality." Oh and he also believed that Black people are sub-human. But Ben Kingsley's acting (and brownface), tho. 
• 

  (#12) 'Get On Up' Left Out The Small Detail Of James Brown Stealing His Biggest Song

  The James Brown biopic Get On Up isn't a hagiography, as it doesn't shy away from James Brown's (played by Chadwick Boseman) history of marital assault by painting him as a saint. It does, however, gloss over the fact that he stole his biggest song from a girlfriend. Brown's ex Betty Jean Newsome took him to court over the fact that he lifted the main melody of "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" from a riff she sang during a car ride.

  Newsome won the lawsuit, but Brown never formally apologized. And neither did the film.
• 

  (#8) 'Birdman Of Alcatraz' Conveniently Leaves Out The Part About Robert Stroud Being A Violent Prison Instigator

  The 1962 biopic, Birdman of Alcatraz, tells the story of the mild-mannered first-Leavenworth, then-Alcatraz prison inmate, Robert Stroud. In the film, Stroud, played by Burt Lancaster, is certainly rebellious (he's in prison for something, after all), but his overall tenor is one of care and affection; after all, he nurses and breeds sparrows and canaries in a specially designated area of the prison. In the film, Stroud's rebelliousness peaks in his penning of a critique of the US prison system.

  In real life, though, this overwhelmingly gentle, mild-mannered version of Stroud is far from accurate. In fact, Stroud remained incredibly violent and aggressive throughout his prison sentence, and some of his fellow inmates have even characterized the film as a "comedy" because it's portrayal of Stroud is so far from the truth.

  The real "Birdman of Alcatraz" once viciously assaulted a hospital orderly, stabbed a fellow inmate, and constantly created "chaos and turmoil and upheaval" while behind bars. Conveniently, most of this behavior didn't make the biopic.
• 

  (#5) 'The Social Network' Wrongly Portrayed Eduardo Saverin As A Saint

  The Social Network needed a villain, and to solve that problem, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin painted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as an arrogant thief who exploited Eduardo Saverin's (played by Andrew Garfield) work ethic.

  In reality, Zuckerberg and his family were heavily invested in Facebook from the beginning, while Saverin wasted the company's funds at parties in New York. He also went behind his friends' backs and took out free ads on Facebook for his own fledgling startup. 
• 

  (#1) 'Kundun' Leaves Out Torture And Human Slavery

  History - and popular culture - remember the Tibetan monks as victims of Communist China's cruel mid-century takeover of Tibet. The reality is much more complicated. Before China invaded the Tibetans' homeland, the 'peaceful' monks often kept and tortured human slaves. They also overtaxed and mistreated most Tibetans under their rule. 

  Martin Scorsese's Kundun, which follows the life of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th and current Dalai Lama, paints Tibetans as nonviolent victims for the sake of story. Before the 1997 movie arrived, this myth had already been promulgated by the monks themselves in an effort to curry national favor. 
• 

  (#9) 'The Iron Lady' Magically Erased Margaret Thatcher's Racism And Homophobia

  The 2013 death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent ripples throughout the British public, with some memorializing her lasting effects on British politics and others reflecting upon her less-charming qualities. The 2011 biopic Iron Lady seemed to fall in the former camp, as it failed to include Thatcher's toxic attitudes towards non-whites and non-straights.

  According to close associates of the Iron Lady (played by Meryl Streep in an Oscar-winning turn), she stubbornly stigmatized LGBT people in legislation and encouraged Australia to block immigration from Asia. 

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking