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

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  (#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. 
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  (#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. 
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  (#3) 'The Miracle Worker' Ignores That Helen Keller Was Wildly Into Eugenics

  There's no way that The Miracle Worker, a 1962 film about tutor Anne Sullivan teaching Helen Keller about friendship, self-confidence, and hope, was not going to make audiences feel good. Helen Keller is considered to be one of the most heroic people of all time, and for good reason: though blind and deaf from a young age, she went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts and inspire people across the country through lectures and writings.

  Despite her own disadvantages, however, she still didn't believe that other disadvantaged people should be allowed to coexist with normal citizens. In the early 20th century, as the international public began to embrace eugenics - AKA the process of filtering out undesired traits from the gene pool through breeding and genetic experiments - Keller was one of the first to write:

  "It is the possibility of happiness, intelligence and power that give life its sanctity, and they are absent in the case of a poor, misshapen, paralyzed, unthinking creature.”

  She also added that allowing a "defective" child to die was simply a “weeding of the human garden that shows a sincere love of true life.” 

  Apparently, Helen Keller didn't want any competitors for the title of "most inspirational blind/deaf person in history." 
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  (#4) 'Remember The Titans' Forgot To Mention That Herman Boone Was A Massive Jerk

  Who can forget Remember the Titans, the inspirational sports drama from 2000 that tells the story of Black and white football players coming together - despite the unbelievably high racial tension of their recently integrated high school - under the courageous tutelage of their coach, Herman Boone, played by Denzel Washington? And Herman Boone doesn't just bring the players together; he brings the entire Virginia town into peaceful unity around his championship-winning Titans. 

  Here's the thing, though, that wasn't actually what Herman Boone was like - at least according to his former players. In reality, a few seasons after the the events portrayed in Remember the Titans had taken place, Herman Boone left T.C. Williams High School in disgrace; his players and coaching staff had mutinied against him and his dictatorial coaching style and verbal and physical abuse. According to former player Greg Paspatis, Boone definitely treated all of his players equally - equally terribly. 

  "Herman Boone treated everyone one horribly, no matter what race," Paspatis remembered. That probably would have for a less-inspirational film, though.
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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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  (#6) 'A Beautiful Mind' Overlooked John Nash's Anti-Semitism And Sexual Assault

  Yep, this beautiful, heartfelt movie about overcoming mental illness and finding true love was also about a rapey, closeted gay man who hated Jewish people. Although John Nash and his wife deny any allegations that he slept with men, the records prove otherwise. Several of his male friends from young adulthood have gone public about Nash's awkward passes at them. There's also plenty of proof that Nash had ill feelings towards Jewish people, but he has since blamed those actions on being crazy. 

  These allegations were actually used against A Beautiful Mind in one of the nastiest Oscar-smear campaigns of recent history. 
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  (#7) 'The Theory Of Everything' Glosses Over The Hawkings' Terrible Marriage Disintegration

  In 1999, Jane Hawking (the former wife of Stephen Hawking), released her 610-page memoir, Music to Move the Stars, and, in it, she recounts some of the darkest moments from her marriage to the genius. She describes Stephen Hawking as an "all-powerful emperor" and "masterful puppeteer" because of his incredibly large ego and the degree of control he exercised over not only their relationship but also on most of those around him. She also records the relationship between Stephen and his nurse, Elaine Mason, whom he would later marry, as well as her own affair with Jonathan Hellyer-Jones, whom she would also go on to marry, as well. 

  This account doesn't really jibe with the love story portrayed in the 2014 movie, which stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as Stephen and Jane Hawking. Instead, The Theory of Everythingcenters on their romance along with Stephen's genius and physical degeneration. The film primarily shows the two as a unit oriented against the world; it glosses over their mutual affairs; and it says nothing about the intense and well-documented abuse that Elaine has been accused of perpetuating against Stephen.
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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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  (#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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  (#10) Abraham Lincoln Was Racist, But 'Lincoln' Didn't Show It

  In its focus on Abraham Lincoln's fight to pass the 13th Amendment, the staid and stirring 2012 biopic Lincoln glossed over the fact that the man wasn't actually 100% anti-slavery. Although he agreed that slavery wasn't the best look for America, he also wasn't very gung-ho about eradicating one of the country's most long-standing institutions. Even more surprising was the fact that he was actually pretty racist. He wrote:

  "There is a physical difference between the white and Black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality."

  The Great Emancipator's solution? Sending Black people to Liberia, Haiti, and Central America - basically anywhere outside the United States.
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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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  (#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.
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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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  (#14) 'Straight Outta Compton' Left Out Dr. Dre's History Of Assault

  In its attempts to focus on the racism that N.W.A. fought during their rise to stardom, Straight Outta Compton elided some of its characters' less appealing traits. When the movie came out, music journalist Dee Barnes wrote on Gawker about being assaulted by Dr. Dre (played by Corey Hawkins) in 1991. Dre, who settled out of court with Barnes after his assault conviction, has since expressed remorse.

  The film, which follows Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, and Ice Cube through 'all' of N.W.A.'s trials and tribulations, conveniently leaves this out. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Dr. Dre served as a producer on the film.
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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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