[Fricken]

When Hollywood trots out an endless procession of superhero sequels dumbed down for a global audience you can complain about greed and lament that they've run out of ideas.

When Hollywood mythologizes a real story that has captured the public imagination and is emblematic of our era, it's Hollywood at it's finest. It's Hollywood doing exactly what it ought to be doing but rarely does.

[dctoedt]

> When Hollywood mythologizes a real story that has captured the public imagination and is emblematic of our era, it's Hollywood at it's finest. It's Hollywood doing exactly what it ought to be doing but rarely does.

The problem is that Hollywood sometimes "mythologizes" a real story in the vernacular, non-academic sense of the quoted term: It adopts a false narrative, often in the form of a conspiracy theory, which then gets embedded in our collective cultural memory for a long time. (Examples: Amadeus; Zero Dark Thirty; Oliver Stone's JFK [0].)

Another version is when Hollywood creates a false narrative, or sub-narratives, in the name of "making a catchier story line" and with the excuse of "artistic license," which unjustly damage the reputations of real people. (Examples: Spotlight and All the President's Men. [1] [2].)

[0] http://www.livescience.com/27364-oscars-innacurate-historica...

[1] http://news.wgbh.org/post/how-hollywood-distorts-reality-spo...

[2] http://www.mhsmantra.com/2014/04/06/history-vs-hollywood-mir...

[tptacek]

Hollywood didn't do that to Amadeus; Peter Shaffer did. It was a very successful play (and even further from a historical document) before it became a period movie.

JFK is another odd example; the movie was notorious as a departure from the historical record, and cemented Stone's reputation as a conspiracy enthusiast. Very shortly after the film was released, that reputation became part of the marketing for the movie!

[Fricken]

I don't have a problem with that. A generation from now we'll have the Theranos movie, and no one will be too uptight about the specifics of what happened- that's a job for journalists and historians, they're a different breed of storyteller than what you conventionally find in Hollywood, with different goals. It's more important to get the tone right than the details.

I mean, the biggest movie made about the vietnam war was 'Apocalypse Now'. It was made up. None of that actually happened, but it set the tone for how the war is remembered for millions who were never actually there. As factual accounts get passed through the generations they become myths, and myths are what they are because they're worth remembering.

And with regards to Holmes reputation, well, from where she's at now, there's nowhere to go but up. As for all her investors: they deserve what they've got coming.

[smacktoward]

> with regards to Holmes reputation, well, from where she's at now, there's nowhere to go but up

It's not impossible to imagine a telling of this story that's actually sympathetic to Holmes: a very smart young woman has an idea, the idea leads to a ton of money and hype being dropped on her head, and by the time she realizes the idea won't work she's been strapped into a rocket that's going to launch regardless. A story of being trapped inside a prison of one's own creation.

(I'm not saying this angle necessarily fits the facts, but movies are stories first, and this would be one way to turn Theranos into an audience-engaging story.)

[dctoedt]

> A generation from now we'll have the Theranos movie, and no one will be too uptight about the specifics of what happened .... It's more important to get the tone right than the details.

That strikes me as a very Stalinist take on things. I would paraphrase it as the movie director's saying: It doesn't matter how many actual, real, flesh-and-blood people I hurt; what matters is that I advance what I imagine to be the greater long-term good. (Or, classically: The ends justify the means.)

Not for me, thanks.

[dctoedt]

> As for all her investors: they deserve what they've got coming.

Why is that?