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

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  (#15) If 'The Walk' Were More Accurate, All Of Petit's Friends Would Have Been Deported

  2015's The Walk, a treatment of the real-life story captured in 2008's Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire, took an inspirational subject and lionized him in an inspirational movie. Problem is: the real-life story doesn't have the same happy ending as the movie. In The Walk, Phillipe Petit (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who just successfully scaled a cable linking the Twin Towers, decides to stay in New York with his friends after his girlfriend decides to move back to Paris.

  In real life, Petit quietly stayed behind as all of his friends got deported. 
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  (#11) 'The Motorcycle Diaries' Flinched When It Came To Che Guevara's Racism

  In the actual, written, diary form of The Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto "Che" Guevara includes a passage that details his thoughts on Black folks. At one point, he describes "[the] Blacks" as "those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of affinity with bathing."

  At another moment, he characterizes "the Black" as "indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink," whereas "the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

  Granted, scholars are in disagreement over whether this constitutes racism on Guevara's part or is more of an example of general "Argentinean superiority" that was prevalent among most people in Guevara's social class at the time. While this may seem like splitting hairs, one thing that's certain is that these reflections on Guevara's part don't make their way into the 2004 film, which sees Gael García Bernal starring as Guevara.

  Rather, his awakening to the conditions of the poor and disenfranchised around South America is the dominant stuff of the narrative.
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  (#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. 
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  (#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. 
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  (#13) 'Walk The Line' Skipped Over Johnny Cash Killing Like 50 Endangered Condors

  No one can say that Walk the Line makes Johnny Cash look perfect, but it does ignore the fact that Cash once almost drove an entire species of birds to extinction. In the summer of 1965, after a particularly toxic fight with his then-wife Vivian, the troubled singer drove a camper to Los Padres National Forest in California with his nephew, Damon Fielder.

  Unfortunately, Cash, who was high on amphetamines at the time, accidentally ignited some underbrush while trying to start a campfire and - oopsie daisy - burned three entire mountains of forested area. When informed by a judge later on that his actions had wiped out 49 of the area's 53 endangered condors, he quipped: "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." Swoon!
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  (#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.

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