[bell-cot]

That I've seen, the problem is worse than that. A movie merely says it's "based on a true story". If you're a lawyer or literature professor, that "based on" might be correct usage - since 40-ish percent of what the movie told was true. The other 60-ish percent was utter fiction.

Meanwhile, people who saw the movie and found it decently engaging are busy convincing themselves that it was 99% true. And 99% of 'em will never bother to check.

[genghisjahn]

There is no data to support your last paragraph. But it is fun to talk about how dumb the “other” people are.

[bell-cot]

I coulda added another "That I've seen" disclaimer to my second para. My dataset is just friends & family who I've seen "based on a true story" movies with, where I happened to know the history.

The term to describe my "99%" isn't "dumb". It's "don't care".

[bombcar]

It's all variations of Gell-Mann Amnesia. Any portrayal is a betrayal.

Of course, if I'm going to talk about something I know deeply, I'm almost certainly going to begin with "this is all incorrect in the details, but correct in general" or similar.

[bell-cot]

> Any portrayal is a betrayal.

For those sufficiently pedantic, true. OTOH, there's a rather wide spectrum in how well (say) Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, Ken Burns's The Civil War, and McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom portray the U.S. Civil War.

[nkrisc]

Actually 99% do understand it’s not all factual and do bother to check.