combining fact and fiction

Is it ever appropriate for a director or author to distort the facts of someone's life in a biographical work?


In my opinion, it is not always appropriate for a director or author to distort the facts of someone’s life in a biographical work. Distorting someone’s personal history determines how that person will be remembered for the rest of his or her life. For example, in the film Basquiat, the masses that saw this movie and have no formal knowledge of the artist may only remember him as the druggie who overdosed (as according to the movie). Basquiat is a much more complex character than this and the film is portraying him as a drug addict, which was a characteristic of his life, but not really showing the whole life as Basquiat, a man who had his quirks but became one of the first recognized Africa-American artists in United States history.
On the other hand, I would say that most of the entertainment industry sees distorting facts of someone’s biography as widely acceptable because they are doing it purely for entertainment value and to make money or win an award. This is seen when a lot of books are made into movies, such as the Harry Potter sagas and Lord of the Rings Trilogies. Although these aren’t biographical works, they are taking the facts that the reader lays out for them and changes them exclude or emphasize certain material. Film is very tricky when creating a biography because they have to condense the whole of a person’s life into a few short hours.
It is hard to really represent someone’s true bibliography in film as seen in most of the movies that we have watched. I don’t think any movie or book can capture the true essence of a persons life because the writer/director as well as the person the bibliography is about can choose to omit facts and events that they don’t think are relevant to their life. The fact is, the audience will never know the person’s deepest fears, how something makes them feel or anything else that is going on in their head. Biographies are interesting because they tell you about the person and their accomplishments but may omit very important events in their life; like how they the person felt when they first held their new born child, this is one event that can’t be described in words or captured from an actor on film. The closest we can really get to a person’s biography is them telling us about themselves, much like the cuts of the true comic book artist Harvey Pekar in American Splendor.
I did like how the movie Frida included her paintings to link her suffering and difference to life events. Through her paintings, we were able to see the emotions and pain she was feeling and could see the real Frida, emotion and all. I think it was a very interesting and noble concept for the director to somewhat add truth back into the biographical movie because her painting symbolize her life and are basically what will always to me, remain as her true biography.