Based on a True Story

Compare history with Hollywood's version of The Big Short.Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/dcfa9136-2431-445f-93e2-a30f53a8487e Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/36 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You've seen the movie. But how much of Titanic was true, and how much of it was made up for the film? Let's compare history with Hollywood's blockbuster film, Titanic.Links Titanic movie Last Dinner On the Titanic: Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/c4eadab1-ac8f-468e-8540-34466835a068 Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/35 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

He lived through unthinkable measures. At a time when millions were slaughtered, including his family and friends, Wladyslaw Szpilman managed to survive the Holocaust. He was The Pianist, and in 2003 there was a movie starring Adrian Brody telling his incredible story.But how much of it is true? Let's compare history with Hollywood's version of The Pianist.Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/b16bd10c-386d-42ff-bc79-9e05ea46b518 Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/34 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week we'll do something a bit different as we look ahead. Instead of learning about a movie that's already been released, we'll look ahead to a movie coming out this next weekend.Hidden Figures tells the remarkable story of women at NASA who worked as Computers. Before you go see the movie in theaters, learn more about the women so you'll be able to tell just how accurate the movie is on your own.Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/60669fb9-4cd7-4253-a4b6-3b0fbde4c9db Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/33 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On October 11th, 1994, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced their Nobel prize winners. Three brilliant scientists jointly won the coveted award. They were Professor John C. Harsanyi from the University of California, Berkley, Dr. John F. Nash from Princeton University and Professor Dr. Reinhard Selten, from the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany.Less than a month later, on November 13th, 1994, a writer for The New York Times wrote a great article called The Lost Years of a Nobel Laureate which told the story of one of those men, Dr. John Nash. The author of that article was Sylvia Nasar.Sylvia, who was a staff writer at the Times when she wrote the article, would go on to expand on the article. In 1998, her book called A Beautiful Mind was released to critical acclaim. It would go on to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.Soon after, muti-award winning Hollywood producer Brian Grazer read an excerpt from Sylvia's book in the Vanity Fair magazine. Brian is the co-founder of Imagine Entertainment, a company he co-founded with director Ron Howard in 1986. Brian's films, which include some we've covered on the podcast such as Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon, have won 43 Academy Awards and 131 Emmys. Needless to say, he knows a good story when he sees one. And he wasted no time in purchasing the film rights for Sylvia's book.On December 13th, 2001, the film A Beautiful Mind premiered to a limited audience before it's nation-wide release on January 4th, 2002. With a budget of about $58 million, A Beautiful Mind had an all-star cast led by Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany and more. All under the helm of the talented Ron Howard as director.The film was a smash hit as it earned over $317 million worldwide on its way to winning the coveted Oscar for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.Despite such great numbers, many critics said the filmmakers changed around many of the key details, and omitted many more. Are they correct? Let's find out as we dive into the world of the Nobel Laureate John Forbes Nash, Jr., as we learn the true story behind A Beautiful Mind.Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/6b4526c1-0d27-42fb-b96b-20279540154e Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/32 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With the Christmas season upon us, I wanted to cover a film that'd help represent the Christmas spirit.In 2005, French filmmaker Christian Carion released his second full-length feature film. Joyeux Noël, which translated to English means Merry Christmas, was released in France on November 9th, 2005, and only ended up making about $3.5 million at the box office. That's significantly less than the $22 million it cost to make.The film wasn't released in the United States until June of 2006, which might be why it only made about $1 million in the U.S. A film about Christmas released in June doesn't set it up for success.Still, despite not winning at the box office the film won the hearts of critics. In 2006, Joyeux Noël was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year at the Academy Awards, the Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes and the Best Film not in the English Language at the BAFTA Awards.The story behind the film is of the 1914 Christmas truce, an event that took place as World War I was just getting started, and almost ended it before it began. Seemingly out of nowhere, enemy soldiers decided to lay down their arms and instead spent December 25th, 1914, by singing Christmas songs and exchanging gifts. What more could highlight the Christmas spirit than soldiers deciding to stop one of the bloodiest wars in human history?Even if it was just for a short time.At the end of Joyeux Noël, there's a bit of text on the screen that says the characters are fictional. But it's director, Christian Carion, claims the film is historically accurate. So how accurate is it?Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/13dbc4ab-6d31-4b3e-a602-3a1edb47291a Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/31 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tom McCarthy started his acting career with a short movie in 1989 called Roast Suckling. Although that's probably not something most have seen, he's one of those actors that you'd recognize when you see him. Probably because he's been in a lot of movies and TV shows you've seen.He played a background character in Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts' 1997 thriller Conspiracy Theory.In 2000, Tom has a recurring role on Boston Public as the character Kevin Riley. After more background character roles in movies such as Syriana and the Oscar nominated Flags of Our Fathers, Tom again had a recurring role on a TV show in 2008, this time for The Wire.Some of Tom's more recent characters were Gordon, the loveable doctor who plays the new husband of John Cusack's ex-wife in the disaster movie 2012. Or as Dr. Bob in the comedy Little Fockers.But Tom's career extends way beyond acting.In 2009, Tom worked with Pete Docter and Bob Peterson to write the Pixar movie Up. In 2011, he directed the pilot episode for a little show on HBO called Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, HBO didn't like how it turned out, so they had to reshoot it.Tom's career hit new heights when he wrote and directed the film that won the Best Picture at the Academy Awards.Eight movies were nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture in 2016. While the writers for films like Room and Brooklyn were inspired by things that happened in history, their stories aren't based on those events. Still, that leaves four movies that were based on a true story.They are The Revenant, which was a movie we already learned about in the first episode, The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, and last but not least, the movie that is the topic of our story today.Spotlight ended up beating out the other seven nominees as it won two of the seven Oscars it was nominated for, including the coveted Best Picture and Best Writing, Original Screenplay for Tom McCarthy and his writing partner, Josh Singer.Although Spotlight tells the story of corruption and cover-ups in the Catholic Church, Josh Singer explained in an interview with Creative Screenwriting that was secondary to the movie's plot. Josh said, "This story isn’t about exposing the Catholic Church. We were not on some mission to rattle people’s faith. In fact, Tom came from a Catholic family. The motive was to tell the story accurately while showing the power of the newsroom—something that’s largely disappeared today. This story is important. Journalism is important, and there is a deeper message in the story."So if the cover-up was secondary to the movie's story, how much of the film was true?Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/f6dfccac-8cb9-404b-bc42-e108ee9b879b Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/30 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are few movies that stand near the top of the all-time list for income. One of those movies is The Sound of Music.With a budget of about $8 million when it was produced in the 1960s, it was one of the bigger budget films when it was made. That $8 million is about $62 million in today's United States dollars.When it was released in 1965, it raked in over 35 times that amount, about $286 million on its way to an impressive five Academy Awards, including the Oscar for Best Picture in 1966. That equates to about $2.1 billion dollars today. Yes, that's billion with a "b". And since then it's made a couple hundred million more. So when you adjust for inflation, as of this writing, that ranks The Sound of Music as the fifth-highest grossing film of all time. That's behind Gone with the Wind at number one, followed by Avatar, Star Wars, and Titanic.In a 2008 interview, the youngest of the von Trapp family portrayed in the film, Johannes von Trapp, said, "The Sound of Music was great, but it was an American version of my family’s life. It wasn’t what we were."So if the movie isn't who they were, that begs the question: who were the real von Trapp family?Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/954c855d-47b5-436b-9e55-ff5ddfb8f1e8 Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/29 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Between 2004 and 2016, Paul Greengrass directed a total of six movies. Four of those have Matt Damon in them. Three of them are about the fictitious Jason Bourne character. Two of them are based on a true story.Today, we're going to be looking at one of those movies.In an effort to make 2013's Captain Phillips as authentic as possible, Paul Greengrass kept two groups of actors separate. One group had Tom Hanks playing the man the movie is named after, Captain Rich Phillips. In the other group were the actors portraying the Somali pirates.These two groups of actors never met until their roles on set together. In an interview after the film was released, Tom Hanks explained, "We were kept separate for all that time. We could see guys that looked like they were Somalis but we didn't know who was who until they came roaring into us the day that we were shooting the scene where they were taking over the bridge of the ship."Despite attempts at making the film as realistic as possible by doing things like keeping the actors separate, after Captain Phillips was released, many of the crewmen claimed the movie didn't accurately depict what happened.With a budget of $55 million, Captain Phillips made about half that on opening weekend on its way to a profitable $107 million in theaters. It was also nominated for six Oscars, and while it didn't end up winning at the Academy Awards, much of the movie's success can be attributed to the amazingly intense way the film portrays the situation. It seems so real. But is it?Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/b6897ca7-3043-477e-93f2-4b2c774dfc2c Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/28 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With the Thanksgiving season upon us, I thought it'd be a great opportunity to travel back in time to the days of Colonial America. Then I realized there's not really a lot of movies about the actual Thanksgiving story. So I decided to go with something that, although not about the Thanksgiving story itself, could transport us back to those days. And it's also a great opportunity to do something we haven't tackled yet on the podcast, a Disney animation.In the mid-1990s, the animation team at Disney was on a roll. Tapping into their pool of talent, Aladdin animator Eric Goldberg and The Rescuers Down Under director Mike Gabriel teamed up to take on a new challenge: adapting a true story for the big screen in Pocahontas.Timed to release on exactly 400 years after the real Pocahontas was born, Disney released their own musical interpretation of the story on June 16th, 1995. The movie boasted an amazing all-star cast including Irene Bedard, Mel Gibson, and Christian Bale, just to name a few.With a budget at about $55 million to make, it was a smash hit in the box office as it raked in over half that in the opening weekend. In all, it made over $140 million in theaters. At the time, that put it at #8 on the all-time Disney list of box office results. Of course, as time goes on its dropped quite a bit—as of recording this, thanks to Disney's acquisition of Pixar and Star Wars, Pocahontas is #65.While it was certainly a box office success, Pocahontas was severely criticized by a lot of historians for telling a tale that most people now believe to be a true story when, in fact, it was almost entirely inaccurate with what actually happened.Did you enjoy this episode? Leave a comment: https://galas.fm/episode/727a37fb-bf8f-4590-a16c-4251510dcf65 Find the transcript and full show notes: https://links.boatspodcast.com/27 Support our sponsors: https://links.boatspodcast.com/advertisers Remove the ads by supporting the show: https://links.boatspodcast.com/support Leave a voicemail: https://links.boatspodcast.com/call Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.