Another major contender for an Oscar trips on the way to the awards over allegations that the roles and words of real people were mangled by the filmmakers in an unfair and misleading way for the sake of telling a compelling story.
Jack Dunn, the Boston College spokesman who is portrayed in the new, highly-acclaimed film "Spotlight," about the Boston Globe's uncovering of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, says the film misrepresents his role in the events that took place by relying on words and actions that were not his, and as a result he contends he was falsely painted as part of the abuse cover-up.
Dunn has retained libel Superlawyer Howard Cooper of Todd and Weld to represent him and a blistering 14 page demand letter has been sent to the film's producers.
This comes on the heels of the controversy last year surrounding "Selma," considered by many to be a strong contender for an Oscar, over the allegedly fabricated role President Johnson had in the film of opposing the Selma march and then working with J. Edgar Hoover to blackmail Martin Luther KIng, events critics of the film say never took place and were fully contrived to enhance the dramatic telling of the story, to the expense of LBJ's legacy.
The lesson seems to be if you're going to make a film about an historic event, get the facts right. Most times, reality is more dramatic than fiction anyway.