How much of the story is true? How often have we seen the beginning or the end of a movie say "inspired by" or "based on a true story" and wondered how much of the plot is "fact"?
Years ago I contemplated this very question and made the decision to pursue a life of making scripted movies. Here's how it happened.
I was commissioned to shoot a documentary series about the passion of exploration and adventure with the world renowned mountaineer and explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary. The first film in the series was shot in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. The second was to be a yachting expedition to the Southern extremes of South America, "Tierra del Fuego." And the 3rd, a return to Mt. Everest 21 years after Sir Ed and his Sherpa companion, Norgay Tenzing, conquered the world's highest peak.
Just prior to setting off from New Zealand for Chile, Salvador Allende, the elected president of the country, was overthrown and killed in a coup led by Augusto Pinochet. Our plans were thrown into chaos. Should we still travel to Chile? Was it safe to turn up in the middle of a coup? Sir Ed got word from New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Department that Pinochet and his junta were planning a state reception for him on our arrival. They planned to use Ed's visit for political gain. Ed was warned that unless he was happy being paraded in front of the world's press as the first visiting dignitary acknowledging the new juntas legitimacy, it would be un-wise to go. Sir Ed's political sympathies definitely did not lie with the concept of overthrowing duly elected governments by force. He had no intention of letting his reputation be associated with Pinochet and his military junta. The rest of us were not faced with the same moral dilemma, so, we decided to travel without Sir Ed. On our arrival in Chile we were confronted with a situation not unlike what was later brilliantly portrayed in Costa Gavras' film, Missing. New Zealand's top diplomat met me and my soundman, Dave Mitchell, at the Santiago airport and took us to our hotel on the outskirts of Santiago. We were to meet the rest of the expedition members in Punta Arenas in southern Chile. On the way to the hotel he drove us past the Presidential Palace and showed us where the front doors had been destroyed by rocket fire delivered by the Chilean air force.
That night, due to the limited budget of the production, Dave and I shared a hotel room. A curfew came into effect at 6pm and intense gunfire started up around the hotel soon after. It was a hot evening and we had left the windows of the hotel room open in an attempt to cool it down. However, it soon became clear that if we hoped to get some sleep someone needed to shut the window. We tossed a coin to see who got the job. Dave lost and I remember him crawling across the floor in his underpants and reaching up, making sure his body was not visible to any snipers. I remember thinking it was funny and also being scared as the gunfire echoed in the night around the hotel.
Our expedition was to start in Punta Arenas, and from there, we were to make our way South to Cape Horn and try and make landfall on this iconic piece of real estate. We set off for Punta Arenas in a 40 foot gaff rigged, canvas sailed cutter that you wouldn't want to circumnavigate Staten Island in. On board were: myself and Dave, 4 New Zealand sailors, a Chilean Naval captain who was to guide us through the tricky international waters between Chile and Argentina, and an engineer to look after the working of the boat. As we left port, the people on the wharf shouted their " good-byes" and "good lucks." It was evident they didn't expect to see us again.
I remember heading out into the Straits of Magellan, sailing past Robbins Island where the enemies of the Pinochet junta were imprisoned. As we sailed past this bleak outpost, I contemplated the fate of those poor souls. I still wonder if anyone survived that hell-hole.
Very soon into our trip (that was planned to take a few months) it became clear our group had very different opinions about the overthrowing by force of an elected government. Salvador Allende was a communist. He was the first Marxist leader brought to power in a democratic election. Pinochet, on the other hand, took power by force with the now confirmed help of the US government of the time.
Everyone soon realized that if we were going to survive this trip, politics should not be discussed anymore. As time went by, and our adventure unfolded, I began to feel more and more uncomfortable with the film I was making... everybody pretending to be getting on famously well, lots of exotic wildlife, fantastic scenery, a jolly good, boy's own adventure....and nothing about the boiling subtext that was simmering under the surface. We really had had a "guts full" of each other.
Dave and I had particularly strong opinions. While in Punta Arenas, we had been held at gunpoint by two young soldiers -- probably about 16 -- they caught Dave and I filming some old sailing ships that were, unbeknownst to us, hiding some military boats. They held their guns to our heads and yelled at us in Spanish making it clear we were under arrest and were to come with them. We were well aware of the danger we would be in if we complied with their orders. A cab driver, who had driven us to the location and was waiting for us, bravely stepped in as a translator and convinced these two boys of our innocence.
As filming the documentary progressed I became more and more convinced of the lack of 'truth' of the film I was making. I felt that I really ought to be making a film about what was really in front of me however I also realized how impossible that would be and that it would be a betrayal to the others on our trip (not to mention the financiers) to not honor the original intention of our film -- a series that celebrated adventure. The documentary was never intended to be about politics.
This experience was a turning point for me in the films I wanted to make. I decided it would be much easier to make a film with real honesty if it was scripted from the start and I knew from the outset what I was trying to say. I realized that documentaries are approached in much the same way as feature films that are based on fact are created; you set out with a point of view and present it as fact. All films have to take a point of view and it becomes difficult for the viewer to know what is fact and what is fiction -- what is manipulated, what is put it, what is left out. Over the years I have made a number of films that have been inspired or based upon true events. The Bounty, Marie, Thirteen Days, The World's Fastest Indian, and The Bank Job. While they are based on true events, the truth I have tried to stick to in these stories does not make them dramatized documentaries -- I try to hold true to the spirit of the facts that inspired these stories. In the long run they reflect the writers' and director's point of view.
My film, The Bank Job, is about a 1971 London bank heist. It tells the story of an attempt to recover compromising pictures of a member of the British Royal family from a safe deposit box in a Lloyd's bank on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road in London. The reason this robbery has lived on in history is that the bank robbers were overheard by a ham radio operator as they communicated by walkie-talkie to their lookout on a nearby building. Scotland Yard was unable to locate them while the robbery was in progress and the rifled vault was not discovered until the thieves had long left the bank. In making the film, I tried to get to the truth of what really happened with this robbery. The deeper I dug; the deeper I researched the subject, the more I was really unable to prove to myself conclusively what did happen. But what I did feel, and what I was able to commit to, as a filmmaker, was the spirit of the story; to portray as accurately as I could this particular theory of what had happened. Many details have been verified and others are impossible to prove or disprove. Some of the facts in the film have been changed in the interest of entertainment. True stories can never be true stories -- because you are always telling a story from a particular point of view. Journalists do this; photographers do this; documentary filmmakers do this, and we all do when we relay a memory from a unique point of view.
So, how much of a story is true? Well, it depends on who you ask...