Mike researched movies based on true stories to determine how much actually happened in real life vs. what was made up strictly for the movie. This episode covers The Revenant, Remember the Titans, Catch Me If You Can, Walk the Line, The Blindside, and The Texas Chainsaw. Mike also gives his review of ‘Bad Boys for Life’ starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Plus his Top 5 List of Things that happen in movies but NEVER in real life such as a police officer taking a civilian's car to use in a car chase.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Movie Mix
Movie Podcast. I am Mike on Instagram and Twitter at
Mike Distro. Now, I did some research on some movies
based on real stories, and I also threw out on
Twitter of what your favorite movies based on real stories were,
and I took all that and kind of compiled it
into this episode. So what I did was researched how
(00:21):
accurate they were, if certain scenes actually happened, and if
characters who were portrayed in movies are representation of what
they were in real life, or in some cases, if
those characters actually existed in real life. We're just made
up to add to the story. So I'll get into
all of that. Um, I'm covering The Revenant, remember the Titans,
Catch Me if you can walk the line, and a
couple of others. I'll also get into my review of
(00:43):
Bad Boys for a Life, which is the third installment
in the Bad Boys franchise. And I'll also give my
list inspired by that movie of things that happened in
movies that don't actually happen in real life. I'll get
my top five there. And also I'm running a contest
right now on my Instagram page. So if you go
follow me at Mike Destro, there's a way you can
enter in to win a fifty dollar gift card and
(01:04):
a movie price back, all just by making your Oscar picks.
So those are happening this Sunday. You screenshot this little
graphic I have up there and make your picks and
tag me in it. Make sure you're following me, and
it'll enter you in that contest. All the details on
my Instagram page at Mike Destro And if it's your
first time here, I just want to say welcome. And
I have brand new episodes every single Monday. So if
you enjoy this episode, um, wherever you're listening, just hit follow,
(01:26):
just hit subscribe and you'll get brand new episodes there
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just to the bottom, hit those five stars, write a
little something about the podcast. It helps other people, maybe
like you, who are just scrolling through and found this
episode on accident, and we're like, oh, this is interesting.
I'll listen to this. If you liked it will help
(01:47):
other people kind of discover it too. So all that
to say, a lot to get to on this week's episode, UM,
A lot of movie research I did, so I hope
you guys enjoy this without further ado, let's get started.
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
(02:11):
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking on MTV
with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Networking Movie Movie Podcast.
So we see this happen all the time. You watch
a movie trailer and you know it's right there at
the bottom it says based on a true story, and
all of a sudden you're like, holy crap, all that
stuff happened. And in some cases it does, but it's Hollywood.
(02:35):
A lot of the times they'll take a story and
there'll be little plot lines, little twists in the story
where it's like, well, maybe it didn't exactly happen, but
for it to be a better movie, to kind of
play out the way you would write a movie, they
embellished just a little bit. So what I did is
I fact check some movies based on true stories. So
I've been working on this idea for a bit. You
(02:56):
really got to dive into some research here. So I
also threw it up on Twitter, asking people what's your
favorite movie based on a true story? So I took
some of those and added of them here too as well.
When I got into this research, I just was kind
of stunned at how they take maybe just a little
portion of like a blurb that somebody said, either written
in a book or in an interview, and they kind
(03:18):
of made that a bigger point in the movie. And
there's also just stuff that just didn't happen, which are
also like some of the most famous things you remember
from this movie that could work completely true. Now, I
don't think it's a bad thing that you kind of
maybe play up some things. It's a it's a movie.
You're gonna make things more dramatic, you're gonna make it
to where, Okay, this feels more like a whole story
(03:41):
that goes together because a lot of times stuff is
taken out of sequence, which is the main thing that
I found, or like it just doesn't happen the way
it did. Maybe it did happen at some point, but
not exactly like, oh, this happened and this happened, and
all this stuff happened that wouldn't happen in real life.
Real life things doesn't don't work that way, So I
think that's a lot of it. I also think there's
just some stuff that is maybe taken an over dramatic step.
(04:03):
And also love interest those just get thrown into a
Hollywood movie. You have to have a love interest, and
in some particular cases there isn't one, so they add
one in to kind of make the story overall have
an encompassing feel to it. So that's kind of what
I found in here. So I am starting first with
The Revenant, which is a story based in like happened
(04:23):
a really long time ago. So it's set in the twenties,
you know it for Leonardo DiCaprio, who actually finally won
an Oscar for playing Hugh Glass in the movie. So
the movie follows his journey in the American wilderness and
the famous scene we all know is when he gets
mauled by the bear. And mainly what I wanted to
know is did he actually get mauled by a bear?
So so in the movie, the scene goes where he
gets in the middle of between a mama bear, and
(04:45):
the cub and then he gets mauled, and then after
he gets mauled, he is just so badly beaten, so
badly just ripped apart, that the two guys stayed behind
um with him until basically he died so they can
bury him. And in the movie they're like, he's you know,
just not dying, so we're just going to bury him
and leave him. So the guy Hugh Glass in the
movie ends up surviving. He crawls his way out and
(05:09):
then seeks vengeance on Tom Hardy's character in the movie.
First of all I wanted to know was he actually
even attacked by a bear? Setting this movie kind of
in a place setting. It's set in really cold, hard times.
And what I found is the actual bear attack took
place during the summer. So in the movie you see him,
you know, he's freezing cold, there's icicles in his beard. Well,
that bear attack actually happened in the summer. So and
(05:33):
there was also no written. Of course, there's not gonna
be a lot of written stuff back in the day,
but there he never gave like a first person account
of the bear attack. It was later he was interviewed
and somebody wrote it down which is the first time
it was ever written. But this actual bear attack was
never really spoken about or written about by him himself,
(05:59):
so by something what they're saying is his bear attack,
which is greatly embellished over time, and it maybe didn't
exactly happen on this trip where the movie takes place,
so he was left for dead, and he did drag
his battered body like over a hundred miles in pursuit
of the guys who left him for dead. But however,
in the movie, he is seeking vengeance on Tom Hardy's
(06:21):
character after he murdered his son, which in real life,
the guy Hugh Glass didn't have a son, and there
was no evidence that he even had a pawny wife
in the movie like he did, so no wife, no
have son, no murder took place, which kind of takes
away that that theme and that plot line of him
seeking revenge in the movie. He did actually pursue those
(06:42):
men who left him behind for dead, but he never
really had that confrontation like he did in the movie
because he later found out that one of the guys
who left him um joined the army, so if he
actually tried to fight him and attack him, he would
be in really big trouble, so that confrontation actually never happened.
It was all just the Hollywood plot line. And one
thing that Leonardo actually did for this movie that was
(07:03):
actually true is he did sleep in discarded bison carcasses
to prepare for this role. Because the director of this
movie wanted to be he didn't want to use a
lot of special effects. He wanted it to be, you know,
really realistic, because he felt if they did it all
like in a studio with special effects, that you wouldn't
get that kind of feel of them actually like struggling
in the cold. So they actually filmed on location and
(07:25):
you know, people were getting upset all the time because
it was harsh environments. But yes, Leonardo DiCaprio did sleep
in a bison carcass to prepare for this role. That
was true. So when all, yes, the bear attack happened,
maybe not at the timeline did they said in this movie.
And he did not have a half son or a wife,
and he really did not seek vengeance in this So
a little bit of Hollywood embellishment here on the revenue.
(07:47):
Moving on to remember the Titans. So we all know
this movie a very inspirational movie that I watched all
the time throughout grade school. It was shown a lot
in my history classes. But let's take a look at
how much of Remember Where the Titans was actually true.
So first of all, we're all the Titans players in
the movie based on real people, and the truth is, yes,
a majority of the people were based on real Titans players. However,
(08:11):
they did add a few characters, so Ryan Gosling's character
in the movie, Allen, was not a real person. Like
in the movie, it shows um Ryan Gosling's character giving
away his spot on the team to another teammate played
by Donald phase On, and that was actually just added
to the movie to kind of emphasize like the selflessness
that characters gained throughout the movie. There was also the
(08:31):
character Ray Buds, who was kicked off by the team's captain,
Jerry Birtier, and that actually never happened. Former Titans players
actually said that this type of player would have been
kicked off the team like during training camp, so way
before the season never started, unlike in the movie. So
in the movie they all get in the bus and
go to training cabin. That actually really did happen. Coach
Boon wanted to put them all into busses to kind
(08:52):
of integrate them together, to force each other to learn
about each other's cultures. But what the movie did make
up is when the Titans go to the camp at
Gettysburg College at him they spent a week training there,
but he never made them wake up at three am
and run to the Gettysburg cemetery. That actually did not happen.
The team did tour like the battlefield on that Sunday
they were at camp, but there was actually a guide
(09:13):
there who did much of the talking, not like Coach
Boone did in the movie. So although he did give
them like a lot of those motivational speeches that took
place during the movie, this one during the run at
three am did not happen. Just for the movie. We
don't come together right now on his hollow ground, we
too will be destroyed. Looking at some of the characters
(09:35):
in the movie, so you know, Sunshine is the guy
with the long hair who came from California to play
on the team. Um, he was a real character, that
was a real person, but his long haired hippie characteristics
were just kind of made up for the movie. And
even the scene where he kisses Jerry on the lips
like in the locker room that was made up for
the movie didn't happen in real life. Another thing that
we see in the movie is that when they're all
starting the first day of school. Um, it shows a
(09:56):
bunch of protesters outside of the high school on that
first day, and that actually didn't really happen, Like people
knew that way before the first day of school, so
there was nobody out there waiting for him when they
came into school. And um, this kind of takes me
to the other scene is when Coach Boone is in
his living room and a brick gets thrown through his window,
which that scene we all know, so that actually did
(10:24):
happen where somebody vandalized his house like that in like
a dry by situation. But what they actually threw through
his window was a toilet, like an actual toilet commode.
They threw it through his window. But I think Disney
when they were making the movie, they thought that they
would be like a like too funny to be on screen,
that people would laugh if a toilet came through the
window in that scene, so instead they switched it to
(10:44):
a brick to make it more dramatic and coach Boone
in real life didn't actually have a gun, so immediately
in that situation, after that brick comes flying through, he
goes and grabs the gun and then walks out the
front door. Yeah, he said in the interview later that
he actually doesn't own a gun, so that was also
made up just to make it more dramatic. And then
hopping into the actual game at the very end where
there's this whole plot line that the refs haven't rigged
(11:06):
for the Titans to lose so that Coach Boone will
get fired, that actually wasn't true. The other coach who
actually goes in confronts the referee in the movie said
that that didn't really happen. He said, they got their
fair share of bad calls, but on this particular game,
it didn't really have anything to do with racism. So
that was kind of just made up for the movie.
And while we're on this coach, so his daughter in
the movie is Hayden painted t Heear, who in the
movie is just a super football fanatic and she's at
(11:29):
every game yelling stuff and going over game tape. In reality,
she wasn't that big of a fanatic, like she was
there at every game with him, but she wasn't as
animated as they made her in the movie. That was
just kind of added on because there was even a
scene where they go and they visit each other's families
and the two girls are playing. They actually never hung
out like that. Also, going back to that championship game,
(11:50):
is that it's seeing that Jerry is taking out of
the game because he is was paralyzed in a car accident,
but that actually, in real life happened after the season
was over, so the whole plot line of him actually
getting hit by a car and being paralyzed did happen,
but he actually played in that championship game, but in
the movie he's seen in the hospital and doesn't participate.
(12:13):
Moving on now to another Leonardo DiCaprio movie, one of
my favorites, Catch Me If You Can, which is about
Frank abcnail, which all starts with him writing bad checks
and it leads to him in personating an airline pilot,
a lawyer, and a doctor. So, first of all, the
first kind of scene in this movie where he impersonates
his high school teacher because he's in high school, and
(12:34):
then he walks into another classroom and he takes over
the class as him being the teacher, and then he
gets his parents called into the school. That first thing
actually didn't happen. That was all made up for the movie.
But everything after that, of him impersonating an airline pilot
and in personating a lawyer and a doctor, he all
did that successfully. It's not as like like the movie
(12:55):
kind of lays it out as one happening after another
and he's just like on this rampage of doing all
these things at one It didn't really happen like that.
It's kind of taken from different parts of his life
because a lot of these things took a lot more
time than it kind of shows in the movie. He
didn't quickly move on to one after another after another,
but he did in fact pose as like a student
newspaper writer to learn as much as he could about
being a pilot. And he ended up getting that uniform
(13:18):
because he has a claim that he lost his That
actually happened. But everything else is just kind of taken
from different parts of his life and kind of moull
it together to make this kind of movie of where
he's doing all these things. And Tom Hanks's character is
trying to catch him while he's doing them all. It
just kind of creates this like cold cat and mouse
relationship throughout the film, which makes it fun to watch,
but actually not how it happened in real life. So
(13:38):
that kind of leads me to Tom Hanks character, which
in reality, there is no Carl. He plays Carl in
the movie of the guy who's just trying to catch
Leonardo DiCaprio in this and his character is actually a
combination of many agents who over the years try to
find Frank. So there was no one agent in particular
that served as like the main basis of this character.
(13:59):
They kind of just took a bunch of different people
and then put him into this one character and did
not include a real name. So his character is made up,
but what he did was factual. It was just compiled
from several different agents who worked on this case of
capturing him. Tough luck, Carl. Five minutes earlier, you would
have landed yourself a pretty good collar. Ten seconds later,
you'd have been shot. Another part that I thought was
(14:21):
made up was actually true was his night with the escort.
So Jennifer Gardner plays this escort in the movie, so
he meets her at this hotel, and after negotiating a
price for their night together, they settled on a thousand dollars.
The girl convinces him to instead of going out to
cast a check for that, he just endorsed the check
and she'll pay him the difference of four hundred dollars.
So this actually was a transaction that actually happened between
(14:41):
Frank and the woman even went to the police to
report the fraud, but by that time, but by that
time he was long gone and they were after him
for a lot more than this four dollars. So one
thing that the movie did make up was his arrest.
So after evading Tom Hanks's character, he heads to France
and he hides out in his mom's hometown and then
Carl finally catches up with Frank and convinces him to
(15:02):
turn himself over to French authorities. But in reality, it
was Frank who his like womanizing it ended up getting
him captured. That while he was in France, he spotted
a flight attendant that he once dated, and she informed
police about him and he was arrested by French authorities,
but it was without any involvement with the FBI. Frank
actually did end up spending a good amount of time
in French prison. He was there for about half a year,
(15:25):
which it was actually a lot harsher than portrayed in
the film, and then after serving half a year there,
he was transferred to Sweden for serving out some time
for some crimes he committed there, and he was about
to be extradited too Italy, but a judge canceled his
passport so he'd be sent back to America, where it
kind of does kind of line up with the movie,
but there is a scene where he's in the plane
(15:45):
with Tom Hanks, he's finally getting back sent to the US,
and he escapes the plane through a toilet, which they're
saying that never really happened because the pilot said that
that is impossible to do, like those the airplane is
like seal air tight, that there's no way that he
could crawl through such a small hole because it's like
the hole he would have to crawl through his like
four inches, so a person would have to be pretty
(16:06):
small and it would be pretty measy for him to
get to that. But there's real no truth to that
part of a movie. They said, like no matter what,
are able to carve out through that bathroom. There's really
no place to get to any other part of the
plane to escape like that. So it is true is
that the movie does have almost like a happy ending
because he does in fact go to work for the
FBI after this. So since he was such an expert
(16:28):
in foraging checks, they actually used his skills to catch
other people doing the same kind of crimes that he
did in the movie. And it is true that he
also did work with one of the agents who ended
up arresting him, although it was not Tom Hanks. That
was all made up. But yeah, I just thought that
was pretty interesting as far as that he actually did
that stuff in the movie. Like a lot of that
stuff he was able to pull off. It wasn't as
(16:49):
lighthearted and kind of fun as they made it in
the movie that he was just like having a great
time doing all this stuff. Like a lot of that
stuff took a lot of like really diligent work and
planing out and it caused like a lot of stress
on him. All that stuff that he did was actually true.
Moving on now to the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the
Line came out in two thousand five and was one
of my favorite biopics of All Time Um Joaquin Phoenix
(17:11):
is Johnny Cash. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash. The
first thing I kind of decided to dive into was
did Johnny Cash, his older brother, really die in a
table saw accident like he did in the movie. And
the answer is yes, but it was just at a
different location and kind of at a different time that
they place it in the movie. So in the movie,
it shows that Johnny was on his way home from
(17:31):
a fishing spot when his dad Ray Cash picked him
up and he's kind of yelling at him like, hey,
where have you been, and he goes and takes him
home and shows them his brother in bed with you know,
all the blood on him. But in reality, Johnny Cash's
brother Jack was actually working in the high school act
shop cutting oak trees into a fence post on a
table saw that had no guard on it, So he
was not in a shed like it was in the movie.
(17:53):
He was actually at a high school and in the
movie he kind of dies right after this, But in reality,
his brother Jack, who was fourteen years old, he actually
held a long a week before passing away. And then
you kind of get into did Johnny Cash's father really
blame him for his brother's death, and the answer was yes.
Like in the movie, his father openly stated that they
took the wrong son. It was actually Johnny Cash's daughter
(18:16):
Cathy who stated in the biography about Johnny Cash that yeah,
her grandfather did blame Johnny Cash for the death of
Jack and that Johnny had this real, just sad guilt
about his brother passing, like his whole life. So, in
a lighter note, why they all dressed in black. So
in the movie, they imply that Johnny Cash and his
band had nothing else to wear going into their audition,
(18:36):
so they all decided to wear black. And he even
says kind of this dramatic line of like, oh, his
wife tells him, Oh, it looks like you're going to
a funeral, and he's like, maybe I am. That actually
didn't happen. So it was actually the first concert they
ever did in public. It was at a church in
North Memphis, and Johnny Cash in the band were just
trying to find shirts that were alike and they wanted
to address the same and the only color they all
(18:57):
owned was black. They wore all black for the first
time at that performance, and it kind of just stuck
so it wasn't really for the audition like it said
in the movie, which you getting into this audition. In
the movie, it shows that Johnny Cash waited outside of
Sun Records, um for the studio exact Sam Phillips. They
come into work and he kind of like tracks him
down and tries to get an audition. Um, it didn't
(19:17):
really go down like that. Like Johnny had been knocking
on the door at the record place for a long
time and getting turned away. He like called him several
times for an interview, and one morning he did actually
like track him down. He found out like when he
went into work and he sat down with his guitar
and played on the steps for him and he introduced himself,
and then after that he told him to come back
tomorrow with some better musicians. So in the movie, Sam
(19:39):
Phillips stops them mid performance and it's like, hey, what
are you guys doing here? One song that would sum
you up? You're telling me that's the song you'd sing
that same Jimmy Davis tune. We here on the radio
all day about your piece within and how it's real
and how you're gonna shout it or would you sing something?
(20:00):
So the actual audition was not as dramatic as they
made it seem. Johnny Cash did claim that at one
point he did sing a gospel song in the audition.
He actually did play Folsom Prison Blues and other non
gospel songs before that whole thing kind of played out
like it did in the movie, and he even ended
up recording that song. I was there when it happened
four Sun Records in nineteen fifty seven. Also in the movie,
(20:22):
it shows Johnny Cash being arrested for smuggling drugs and
his guitar case, and yes, that actually did happen. In
October nineteen sixty five, Johnny Cash was arrested in El Paso,
Texas for attempting to smuggle and phetamines across the Mexican
border in his guitar case. It's a fairly accurate depiction
of his arrest that's shown in the movie, so that
part was true. There was one thing that was a
(20:44):
big part of Johnny Cash's life that I thought wasn't
shown in the movie, which kind of revolves around his
um drug abuse, was that he actually trashed the stage
of the Grand O Operty, but it's not shown in
the movie. The real Johnny Cash broke the stage lights
after he was told that he couldn't perform there, and
then four years after that happened, he actually found himself
back at the Grand Old Opry performing for his show,
(21:06):
The Johnny Cash Show, which debuted in nineteen nine. The
only kind of did they showed this in the movie
is there's a scene where they're all on a stage
drinking and smashing beer bottles, and then um Reese Witherspoon
comes in and like tells them, like, you're not gonna
be able to walk the line for acting like this.
That scene actually didn't really happen, but I thought that
was the only kind of similar thing they worked in
through the Opry incident. And then you know in the
(21:26):
movie he performs at Folsome prison, but in real life,
he didn't have to fight to make this concert happen.
He had actually been performing at prison since the late fifties.
And then, although it's not shown in the movie, but
Johnny Cash's father, Ray Cash, was actually in attendance at
the Fulsome Prison concert. And the other thing that the
movie did get right is Johnny Cash actually did propose
(21:47):
to June Carter Cash on stage in front of seven
thousand people while singing Jackson, although it was made a
little more dramatic in the movie that actually happened. And
then we get to the movie The Blindside, which is
about Michael or the football player who went on to
playing the NFL, and he kind of has come out
saying that he doesn't like the way he was portrayed
in this movie at all. Um He even took it
(22:08):
so far that he came out with the autobiography after
the movie because he felt it wasn't a real representation
of his life, that it kind of downplayed his situation,
not only what he was going through and when his
family was going through, but also just him as an athlete.
He felt like it kind of made him seem like
like a bit of a not a joke, but it
(22:29):
kind of like lessen the hard work he put into
playing football because in the movie, unlike it happened in
real life, is that he was actually playing football before
this and he was actually a really great athlete leading
up to this when he met the Towy family. But
in the movie he shown that first of all, he
was not found by the family just walking on the
(22:51):
side of the road in the rain like he had
actually known them beforehand, so they had started doing stuff
like buying him clothes and paying for his lunch way
before they encountered him like on the side of the
road look at it in the movie, So they did
take some just artistic liberties where in that scene he
is um found walking on the side of the road
like he's going to the gym, But in reality, they
didn't offer to take him to their place immediately. Instead,
(23:12):
they picked him up the next day and took him shopping,
mainly because they saw him walking in the cold and
cut off jeans and a t shirt, so they did
take him home. Also in the movie, the Tweet family
wasn't the only family that he stayed with. In reality,
was several months after um that roadside encounter where the
Tweet family welcome Michael into their home. He was just
saying with other people in the community at least five
(23:32):
different other families who helped him have a place to
stay when after they realized that he had been homeless.
But I think what the main thing that I'm kind
of surprised was that the movie just dumbed down Michael's
knowledge of football, and it kind of made it seem
like he was pushed to play football, and also that
he didn't really know anything about it, which he said
later that it kind of took away like his kind
(23:54):
of worth as an athlete in the NFL because he
was just seen as the guy, oh who had a
Hollywood movie made about and it just downgraded him as
a player. Like he liked the person who played him
in the movie, but he felt that the producers and
the directors and the writer of the movie just didn't
give him the accurate portrayal of him to play like.
He did a great job in the movie and even
(24:15):
him Sandra Bullock playing his mom, who ended up winning
an Oscar for the performance. Everything in the movie was great.
It was just not really his story the way he
wanted it to be told, because even in the movie
he's seen as really like shy and reserved and kind
of timid. In reality, the people at school said he
had a really big personality. He was always outgoing and
in this in the movie, he just kind of played
(24:36):
that way because it kind of fits the story a
little bit better. So just from reading about his story
in his life, it looks like it was just oversimplified
and just kind of made into like a picture perfect
Hollywood story, which I don't think is a completely bad thing.
I think in the end, it's a great movie that
people resonate with, even though it's not completely accurate in
his life. I think it more so it kind of
maybe sucks for him that he's portrayed as just now
(24:58):
being the guy in that movie, which I get is
just the downfalls of having somebody else tell your story.
All Right, I got one more I want to throw
out you on this episode is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
This one's a bit different because it's not actually based
on a true story, but it was marketed that way.
Like the entire plot is fictional, but when it came
out in the seventies, it was marketed as a true story,
(25:21):
and since then I think people forget that it was
a fictional story. That even people announced it this day.
I'd like, talk to people about Texas Chainsaw massacre from
Texas and they're like, oh, yeah, that really happened. No,
this never happened. It was just all kind of misconstrued
over the years. So I just wanted to put this
one in there because it was actually based on a
(25:42):
real murderer, a real serial killer, and his what he
did to his victims was inspired to create this character
Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But all of this just
did not really happen. So the character Leatherface in this
movie was inspired by the real crimes of real life
murderer ed Again, who would keep human remains. He would
(26:05):
take human bones and skin and make things like couches
out of him were masks out of him. So in
real life Edgin did take several victims between nineteen fifty
four and nineteen fifty seven, and they were pretty gruesome.
Like the real Edgain did take a human scalp and
face and wear it like a mask, just like leather
Face did, so there is some truth to that, but
it wasn't because of a skin disease like they said
(26:26):
the leather Face has in the movie that was made up.
He also actually did reportedly wear a vest made of skin,
complete with like female breast and other stuff on it,
so this all was taken from a real life murder scene. However,
they never found that he actually used the chainsaw to
kill his victims. Instead, he shot people with a pistol,
So I might get a little gruesome here, But in
(26:46):
November of nineteen fifty seven, police found a woman hanging
from the rafters of a shed behind his house, and
her body had been gutted, they said, like a deer,
and her head had been removed. And over time edgain
was linked to a lot of miss person reports, But
that element of him having a chainsaw tracking people down,
that was just made up in connection to the film,
(27:07):
and in real life, Edguin was not even from Texas.
He lived in Wisconsin. So this was all just taken
by the director of the first movie and turned into
a successful movie franchise, saying it was kind of based
on a real story. Never really happened. None of those
reboots never really happened. There's no such thing as leather Face.
So let it be known, made up for a movie,
all right, So let me know if you enjoy this,
(27:27):
because there are several other movies on my list. I
tweeted this out um a few days ago, and just
a bunch of people replied to me with all these
movies that they love based on true stories, and I
really had a great time researching these and if this
was interesting to listen to, let me know because I'll
do a part two or maybe even turn this into
a series. So if you enjoyed this look into fact
checking movies, let me know and I'll do some more.
(27:49):
You have any suggestions, um drop them on my Instagram
or my Twitter at my cadistro. All right, got to
get into my review now of Bad Boys for Life,
which is a third installment and the Bad Boys franchise.
You got Martin Lawrence back, Will Smith back. And I
went into this movie just wanting to have a good time.
I've been watching all these Best Picture nominees, a bunch
of dramas which kind of you really have to be
dialed into and think about. And I wanted to go
(28:11):
into the theater and just watch something that I could
turn my brain off, laugh at and just enjoy some big,
high action on the big screen, which sometimes you just
need that in life. So when I review this movie,
just know that I hold it to a bit of
a different standard because I kind of know what it
this is. You kind of know that it's not gonna
be nothing groundbreaking. I just wanted something to enjoy and
(28:31):
here is a little bit of Bad Boys for Life. Marcus,
somebody's trying to kill me. I don't trust a person
that don't want to kill. He'll put my name Mark.
Thanks a lot. We got it, Marcus, we appreciate it.
So this one was directed by two guys who go
by all the end Belal, which is a departure from
Michael Bay who directed the first two movies. He's known
(28:52):
for transformers and really the guy who loves to put
explosions in movies. So this movie did have a bit
of a different feel. I'll kind of compared this one
to Fasten the Furious, which in the early days those
movies are just straight on action movies and over the
course of time they're almost superheroes now, which is weird
going into a like a fast in the Furious movie.
(29:13):
So in this one, I did feel like they kind
of had that a bit of approach to making Will
Smith just like a really big, impenetrable character, like a
superhero almost. But that aside from the movie, I really
just enjoyed this movie. So it's supposed to be like
they're one last time together, kind of reliving early days
as police officers in this final attempt to find a
(29:34):
bad guy. I thought the action in it was great,
the overall story was okay, There's some cheesiness in it,
it's an action movie with you know, you expect the
cheesy lines and the plot just kind of moves along
very dramatically. But I really like Martin Lawrence and Will
Smith together. I think Martin Lawrence is just a very
underrated comedic actor and it's good to kind of see
him in this role again, which I think them together
(29:56):
is just a really great pairing. And it's also kind
of nice to see Wilson b what a hit again,
Like this movie has been number one now for a
few weeks, and I think they did that by giving
audiences exactly what they wanted. You have to see it
in theaters, probably not unless you're a really big Will
Smiths fan. You could probably wait a bit to see this.
But I was just surprised at just how solid of
an addition to the franchise that this was, and it
(30:18):
did kind of inspire me to the segment I want
to do next, because in the movie, there's this scene
where they're in the pursuit and Will Smith runs out
of a club in order to chase down one of
the bad guys and he goes up to a guy
and asks him for his car, which I see this
all the time in action movies where a police officer
can just go to anybody and say I need your
car police activity. They'd steal the car and end up
(30:40):
probably destroying it in the chase, and you never see
the repercussions of that. I also didn't know if you
can actually do that in like real life of an
officer stops you on the street and says they need
your car for police activity. Can they actually do that?
So in my next list, I want to include things
that happened in movies that never happened in real live
So can an officer actually do that? Let's see. So
(31:03):
here are my top five things that are normal in
movies but totally unrealistic in real life. First of all,
is what happens in action movies where a police officer
demands um a civilians car. Can they actually legally take
that away from them? And what I found is they
actually can, Like that is a real thing that can happen.
It's different state by state, but the law in California
(31:25):
states that if a police officer says that they need
your vehicle, you legally have to give it to them,
and if not, you can actually be fine, ticketed and
if not arrested for not giving a police officer your car.
So I hope that never happens to me in real life.
I've never really heard of it actually happening, but apparently
that is a real thing that can happen. At number
two on the list, which kind of also happens in
(31:47):
Bad Boys, is that when somebody is heavily outnumbered in
a fight or in any kind of attack, that the
people attacking them way to attack them one by one.
This would never really happen in real life. Why would
somebody just sit back and wait for the action to unfold, like, oh,
he just beat up that guy. Oh he just beat
up that guy. Oh I'm got to get beat up next.
I think in real life they would all just attack
(32:09):
the person, And there's no real way that one guy
could essentially clear a room of like ten. You only
see that happening in movies. Why would they wait? At
number three of things that happened in movies but don't
really happen in real life, is that the phone only
rings or you only get text messages that move the
plot line along. So every phone call that you get
(32:29):
in a movie is essentially like somebody revealing another part
of the plot or something that needs to go down
in it, but in reality you get a lot of
several like phone calls that have nothing going to do
with happening in your life at that time. But yet
in a movie everything pertains to the plot. And also
in movies, they never in the phone call with saying goodbye,
the conversation is just over. And the number four of
things that happen in movies but don't happen in real
(32:51):
life is that no criminal charges are ever charged after
these people have crazy shootouts in a movie, like they
just go. They have high be chases going down where
they crash into buildings, probably hit other people's cars, and
that never comes again. In the movie. It's just all
about them catching the criminal. They catch the guy, and
everything kind of gets wrapped up into a nice little
bull with It's like, hold up, dude, you ended up
(33:13):
wrecking three cars, you hit like three pedestrians back there,
and you get no criminal charges for that, all because
you caught the bad guy. And at number five of
things that happened in movies but don't happen in real life. Um,
there was a scene in this Bad Boys movie where
they're going to drop off the baby, um with his
wife and and they pull right up to the spa
(33:34):
and get a front row parking spot to that place,
when in real life, there is no way you're going,
let alone, to a place in Miami and getting a
parking spot right outside of a place, which happens all
the time and movies that are going somewhere and they
pull right up into a front row parking spot when
in reality they would probably have to go into a
parking garage, pay like twenty bucks to park, and go
up like three levels before they even got to that.
(33:55):
So you see that happening in movies doesn't happen in
real life. And I'll throw a bonus went in there
if this one kind of gets to me. I didn't
see it in Bad Boys. But when people make plans
in a movie, they automatically know like when it's gonna happen, because,
like saying rom Com, they're like the guy finally asked
the girl to go out on a date, and he's like,
oh how about tomorrow seven pm? Okay, great, and the
(34:16):
scene is over. They don't make any plans of what
restaurant they're going to, there's no exchanging the phone numbers,
and they just end up showing up at that place
at the same time and everything works out fine. In reality,
you could never make plans like that and be like, oh,
you want to go tomorrow night at seven pm, and
it'd be like, oh, I can't do tomorrow night. How
about next Tuesday? Tuesday is no good for me? How
about this night? Okay, I'll text you my number, you
(34:38):
text me back later. Like that's how it happens in
real life. People don't don't just show up because you
say it's gonna happen, and even then now you make
the plans and then you follow up on text like
the day before like oh we're still on for tomorrow.
Oh yeah. You don't just make plans and it goes
away and then it all happens. So anyway, that's just
a little rant there on my own I got into.
But yes, things that happened in movies that don't actually
(34:59):
have been in real life. There's the list, all right,
and that's the episode for this week. Let me throw
out my Instagram shout out to Tyler's s Arnold on
Instagram who was doing a really cool painting and said
he was catching up on the podcast. So thanks Tyler
for listening. I think he's also like working on this
cool painting that he's gonna give me, so um, I'll
be excited to see what he ends up doing with that.
Thanks again for listening to the podcast, and I will
(35:21):
talk to you guys again next week. Um. It will
be after the Oscar, so I'm gonna record a bit
of it, like right after the Oscars, of my reactions
to who wins so um, go to my Instagram check
out my picks and picks on the oscars. That that
is not just my pictures, but if you want to
see those, those are there too. All Right, I'll talk
to you guys next week later
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Movie Mix
Movie Podcast. I am Mike on Instagram and Twitter at
Mike Distro. Now, I did some research on some movies
based on real stories, and I also threw out on
Twitter of what your favorite movies based on real stories were,
and I took all that and kind of compiled it
into this episode. So what I did was researched how
(00:21):
accurate they were, if certain scenes actually happened, and if
characters who were portrayed in movies are representation of what
they were in real life, or in some cases, if
those characters actually existed in real life. We're just made
up to add to the story. So I'll get into
all of that. Um, I'm covering The Revenant, remember the Titans,
Catch Me if you can walk the line, and a
couple of others. I'll also get into my review of
(00:43):
Bad Boys for a Life, which is the third installment
in the Bad Boys franchise. And I'll also give my
list inspired by that movie of things that happened in
movies that don't actually happen in real life. I'll get
my top five there. And also I'm running a contest
right now on my Instagram page. So if you go
follow me at Mike Destro, there's a way you can
enter in to win a fifty dollar gift card and
(01:04):
a movie price back, all just by making your Oscar picks.
So those are happening this Sunday. You screenshot this little
graphic I have up there and make your picks and
tag me in it. Make sure you're following me, and
it'll enter you in that contest. All the details on
my Instagram page at Mike Destro And if it's your
first time here, I just want to say welcome. And
I have brand new episodes every single Monday. So if
you enjoy this episode, um, wherever you're listening, just hit follow,
(01:26):
just hit subscribe and you'll get brand new episodes there
every single Monday. And if you're listening on Apple Podcast,
it helps me out a whole bunch when you leave
a five star review. So if you go down there,
just to the bottom, hit those five stars, write a
little something about the podcast. It helps other people, maybe
like you, who are just scrolling through and found this
episode on accident, and we're like, oh, this is interesting.
I'll listen to this. If you liked it will help
(01:47):
other people kind of discover it too. So all that
to say, a lot to get to on this week's episode, UM,
A lot of movie research I did, so I hope
you guys enjoy this without further ado, let's get started.
In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast,
one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like
never before in a movie podcast. A man with so
(02:11):
much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking on MTV
with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Networking Movie Movie Podcast.
So we see this happen all the time. You watch
a movie trailer and you know it's right there at
the bottom it says based on a true story, and
all of a sudden you're like, holy crap, all that
stuff happened. And in some cases it does, but it's Hollywood.
(02:35):
A lot of the times they'll take a story and
there'll be little plot lines, little twists in the story
where it's like, well, maybe it didn't exactly happen, but
for it to be a better movie, to kind of
play out the way you would write a movie, they
embellished just a little bit. So what I did is
I fact check some movies based on true stories. So
I've been working on this idea for a bit. You
(02:56):
really got to dive into some research here. So I
also threw it up on Twitter, asking people what's your
favorite movie based on a true story? So I took
some of those and added of them here too as well.
When I got into this research, I just was kind
of stunned at how they take maybe just a little
portion of like a blurb that somebody said, either written
in a book or in an interview, and they kind
(03:18):
of made that a bigger point in the movie. And
there's also just stuff that just didn't happen, which are
also like some of the most famous things you remember
from this movie that could work completely true. Now, I
don't think it's a bad thing that you kind of
maybe play up some things. It's a it's a movie.
You're gonna make things more dramatic, you're gonna make it
to where, Okay, this feels more like a whole story
(03:41):
that goes together because a lot of times stuff is
taken out of sequence, which is the main thing that
I found, or like it just doesn't happen the way
it did. Maybe it did happen at some point, but
not exactly like, oh, this happened and this happened, and
all this stuff happened that wouldn't happen in real life.
Real life things doesn't don't work that way, So I
think that's a lot of it. I also think there's
just some stuff that is maybe taken an over dramatic step.
(04:03):
And also love interest those just get thrown into a
Hollywood movie. You have to have a love interest, and
in some particular cases there isn't one, so they add
one in to kind of make the story overall have
an encompassing feel to it. So that's kind of what
I found in here. So I am starting first with
The Revenant, which is a story based in like happened
(04:23):
a really long time ago. So it's set in the twenties,
you know it for Leonardo DiCaprio, who actually finally won
an Oscar for playing Hugh Glass in the movie. So
the movie follows his journey in the American wilderness and
the famous scene we all know is when he gets
mauled by the bear. And mainly what I wanted to
know is did he actually get mauled by a bear?
So so in the movie, the scene goes where he
gets in the middle of between a mama bear, and
(04:45):
the cub and then he gets mauled, and then after
he gets mauled, he is just so badly beaten, so
badly just ripped apart, that the two guys stayed behind
um with him until basically he died so they can
bury him. And in the movie they're like, he's you know,
just not dying, so we're just going to bury him
and leave him. So the guy Hugh Glass in the
movie ends up surviving. He crawls his way out and
(05:09):
then seeks vengeance on Tom Hardy's character in the movie.
First of all I wanted to know was he actually
even attacked by a bear? Setting this movie kind of
in a place setting. It's set in really cold, hard times.
And what I found is the actual bear attack took
place during the summer. So in the movie you see him,
you know, he's freezing cold, there's icicles in his beard. Well,
that bear attack actually happened in the summer. So and
(05:33):
there was also no written. Of course, there's not gonna
be a lot of written stuff back in the day,
but there he never gave like a first person account
of the bear attack. It was later he was interviewed
and somebody wrote it down which is the first time
it was ever written. But this actual bear attack was
never really spoken about or written about by him himself,
(05:59):
so by something what they're saying is his bear attack,
which is greatly embellished over time, and it maybe didn't
exactly happen on this trip where the movie takes place,
so he was left for dead, and he did drag
his battered body like over a hundred miles in pursuit
of the guys who left him for dead. But however,
in the movie, he is seeking vengeance on Tom Hardy's
(06:21):
character after he murdered his son, which in real life,
the guy Hugh Glass didn't have a son, and there
was no evidence that he even had a pawny wife
in the movie like he did, so no wife, no
have son, no murder took place, which kind of takes
away that that theme and that plot line of him
seeking revenge in the movie. He did actually pursue those
(06:42):
men who left him behind for dead, but he never
really had that confrontation like he did in the movie
because he later found out that one of the guys
who left him um joined the army, so if he
actually tried to fight him and attack him, he would
be in really big trouble, so that confrontation actually never happened.
It was all just the Hollywood plot line. And one
thing that Leonardo actually did for this movie that was
(07:03):
actually true is he did sleep in discarded bison carcasses
to prepare for this role. Because the director of this
movie wanted to be he didn't want to use a
lot of special effects. He wanted it to be, you know,
really realistic, because he felt if they did it all
like in a studio with special effects, that you wouldn't
get that kind of feel of them actually like struggling
in the cold. So they actually filmed on location and
(07:25):
you know, people were getting upset all the time because
it was harsh environments. But yes, Leonardo DiCaprio did sleep
in a bison carcass to prepare for this role. That
was true. So when all, yes, the bear attack happened,
maybe not at the timeline did they said in this movie.
And he did not have a half son or a wife,
and he really did not seek vengeance in this So
a little bit of Hollywood embellishment here on the revenue.
(07:47):
Moving on to remember the Titans. So we all know
this movie a very inspirational movie that I watched all
the time throughout grade school. It was shown a lot
in my history classes. But let's take a look at
how much of Remember Where the Titans was actually true.
So first of all, we're all the Titans players in
the movie based on real people, and the truth is, yes,
a majority of the people were based on real Titans players. However,
(08:11):
they did add a few characters, so Ryan Gosling's character
in the movie, Allen, was not a real person. Like
in the movie, it shows um Ryan Gosling's character giving
away his spot on the team to another teammate played
by Donald phase On, and that was actually just added
to the movie to kind of emphasize like the selflessness
that characters gained throughout the movie. There was also the
(08:31):
character Ray Buds, who was kicked off by the team's captain,
Jerry Birtier, and that actually never happened. Former Titans players
actually said that this type of player would have been
kicked off the team like during training camp, so way
before the season never started, unlike in the movie. So
in the movie they all get in the bus and
go to training cabin. That actually really did happen. Coach
Boon wanted to put them all into busses to kind
(08:52):
of integrate them together, to force each other to learn
about each other's cultures. But what the movie did make
up is when the Titans go to the camp at
Gettysburg College at him they spent a week training there,
but he never made them wake up at three am
and run to the Gettysburg cemetery. That actually did not happen.
The team did tour like the battlefield on that Sunday
they were at camp, but there was actually a guide
(09:13):
there who did much of the talking, not like Coach
Boone did in the movie. So although he did give
them like a lot of those motivational speeches that took
place during the movie, this one during the run at
three am did not happen. Just for the movie. We
don't come together right now on his hollow ground, we
too will be destroyed. Looking at some of the characters
(09:35):
in the movie, so you know, Sunshine is the guy
with the long hair who came from California to play
on the team. Um, he was a real character, that
was a real person, but his long haired hippie characteristics
were just kind of made up for the movie. And
even the scene where he kisses Jerry on the lips
like in the locker room that was made up for
the movie didn't happen in real life. Another thing that
we see in the movie is that when they're all
starting the first day of school. Um, it shows a
(09:56):
bunch of protesters outside of the high school on that
first day, and that actually didn't really happen, Like people
knew that way before the first day of school, so
there was nobody out there waiting for him when they
came into school. And um, this kind of takes me
to the other scene is when Coach Boone is in
his living room and a brick gets thrown through his window,
which that scene we all know, so that actually did
(10:24):
happen where somebody vandalized his house like that in like
a dry by situation. But what they actually threw through
his window was a toilet, like an actual toilet commode.
They threw it through his window. But I think Disney
when they were making the movie, they thought that they
would be like a like too funny to be on screen,
that people would laugh if a toilet came through the
window in that scene, so instead they switched it to
(10:44):
a brick to make it more dramatic and coach Boone
in real life didn't actually have a gun, so immediately
in that situation, after that brick comes flying through, he
goes and grabs the gun and then walks out the
front door. Yeah, he said in the interview later that
he actually doesn't own a gun, so that was also
made up just to make it more dramatic. And then
hopping into the actual game at the very end where
there's this whole plot line that the refs haven't rigged
(11:06):
for the Titans to lose so that Coach Boone will
get fired, that actually wasn't true. The other coach who
actually goes in confronts the referee in the movie said
that that didn't really happen. He said, they got their
fair share of bad calls, but on this particular game,
it didn't really have anything to do with racism. So
that was kind of just made up for the movie.
And while we're on this coach, so his daughter in
the movie is Hayden painted t Heear, who in the
movie is just a super football fanatic and she's at
(11:29):
every game yelling stuff and going over game tape. In reality,
she wasn't that big of a fanatic, like she was
there at every game with him, but she wasn't as
animated as they made her in the movie. That was
just kind of added on because there was even a
scene where they go and they visit each other's families
and the two girls are playing. They actually never hung
out like that. Also, going back to that championship game,
(11:50):
is that it's seeing that Jerry is taking out of
the game because he is was paralyzed in a car accident,
but that actually, in real life happened after the season
was over, so the whole plot line of him actually
getting hit by a car and being paralyzed did happen,
but he actually played in that championship game, but in
the movie he's seen in the hospital and doesn't participate.
(12:13):
Moving on now to another Leonardo DiCaprio movie, one of
my favorites, Catch Me If You Can, which is about
Frank abcnail, which all starts with him writing bad checks
and it leads to him in personating an airline pilot,
a lawyer, and a doctor. So, first of all, the
first kind of scene in this movie where he impersonates
his high school teacher because he's in high school, and
(12:34):
then he walks into another classroom and he takes over
the class as him being the teacher, and then he
gets his parents called into the school. That first thing
actually didn't happen. That was all made up for the movie.
But everything after that, of him impersonating an airline pilot
and in personating a lawyer and a doctor, he all
did that successfully. It's not as like like the movie
(12:55):
kind of lays it out as one happening after another
and he's just like on this rampage of doing all
these things at one It didn't really happen like that.
It's kind of taken from different parts of his life
because a lot of these things took a lot more
time than it kind of shows in the movie. He
didn't quickly move on to one after another after another,
but he did in fact pose as like a student
newspaper writer to learn as much as he could about
being a pilot. And he ended up getting that uniform
(13:18):
because he has a claim that he lost his That
actually happened. But everything else is just kind of taken
from different parts of his life and kind of moull
it together to make this kind of movie of where
he's doing all these things. And Tom Hanks's character is
trying to catch him while he's doing them all. It
just kind of creates this like cold cat and mouse
relationship throughout the film, which makes it fun to watch,
but actually not how it happened in real life. So
(13:38):
that kind of leads me to Tom Hanks character, which
in reality, there is no Carl. He plays Carl in
the movie of the guy who's just trying to catch
Leonardo DiCaprio in this and his character is actually a
combination of many agents who over the years try to
find Frank. So there was no one agent in particular
that served as like the main basis of this character.
(13:59):
They kind of just took a bunch of different people
and then put him into this one character and did
not include a real name. So his character is made up,
but what he did was factual. It was just compiled
from several different agents who worked on this case of
capturing him. Tough luck, Carl. Five minutes earlier, you would
have landed yourself a pretty good collar. Ten seconds later,
you'd have been shot. Another part that I thought was
(14:21):
made up was actually true was his night with the escort.
So Jennifer Gardner plays this escort in the movie, so
he meets her at this hotel, and after negotiating a
price for their night together, they settled on a thousand dollars.
The girl convinces him to instead of going out to
cast a check for that, he just endorsed the check
and she'll pay him the difference of four hundred dollars.
So this actually was a transaction that actually happened between
(14:41):
Frank and the woman even went to the police to
report the fraud, but by that time, but by that
time he was long gone and they were after him
for a lot more than this four dollars. So one
thing that the movie did make up was his arrest.
So after evading Tom Hanks's character, he heads to France
and he hides out in his mom's hometown and then
Carl finally catches up with Frank and convinces him to
(15:02):
turn himself over to French authorities. But in reality, it
was Frank who his like womanizing it ended up getting
him captured. That while he was in France, he spotted
a flight attendant that he once dated, and she informed
police about him and he was arrested by French authorities,
but it was without any involvement with the FBI. Frank
actually did end up spending a good amount of time
in French prison. He was there for about half a year,
(15:25):
which it was actually a lot harsher than portrayed in
the film, and then after serving half a year there,
he was transferred to Sweden for serving out some time
for some crimes he committed there, and he was about
to be extradited too Italy, but a judge canceled his
passport so he'd be sent back to America, where it
kind of does kind of line up with the movie,
but there is a scene where he's in the plane
(15:45):
with Tom Hanks, he's finally getting back sent to the US,
and he escapes the plane through a toilet, which they're
saying that never really happened because the pilot said that
that is impossible to do, like those the airplane is
like seal air tight, that there's no way that he
could crawl through such a small hole because it's like
the hole he would have to crawl through his like
four inches, so a person would have to be pretty
(16:06):
small and it would be pretty measy for him to
get to that. But there's real no truth to that
part of a movie. They said, like no matter what,
are able to carve out through that bathroom. There's really
no place to get to any other part of the
plane to escape like that. So it is true is
that the movie does have almost like a happy ending
because he does in fact go to work for the
FBI after this. So since he was such an expert
(16:28):
in foraging checks, they actually used his skills to catch
other people doing the same kind of crimes that he
did in the movie. And it is true that he
also did work with one of the agents who ended
up arresting him, although it was not Tom Hanks. That
was all made up. But yeah, I just thought that
was pretty interesting as far as that he actually did
that stuff in the movie. Like a lot of that
stuff he was able to pull off. It wasn't as
(16:49):
lighthearted and kind of fun as they made it in
the movie that he was just like having a great
time doing all this stuff. Like a lot of that
stuff took a lot of like really diligent work and
planing out and it caused like a lot of stress
on him. All that stuff that he did was actually true.
Moving on now to the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the
Line came out in two thousand five and was one
of my favorite biopics of All Time Um Joaquin Phoenix
(17:11):
is Johnny Cash. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash. The
first thing I kind of decided to dive into was
did Johnny Cash, his older brother, really die in a
table saw accident like he did in the movie. And
the answer is yes, but it was just at a
different location and kind of at a different time that
they place it in the movie. So in the movie,
it shows that Johnny was on his way home from
(17:31):
a fishing spot when his dad Ray Cash picked him
up and he's kind of yelling at him like, hey,
where have you been, and he goes and takes him
home and shows them his brother in bed with you know,
all the blood on him. But in reality, Johnny Cash's
brother Jack was actually working in the high school act
shop cutting oak trees into a fence post on a
table saw that had no guard on it, So he
was not in a shed like it was in the movie.
(17:53):
He was actually at a high school and in the
movie he kind of dies right after this, But in reality,
his brother Jack, who was fourteen years old, he actually
held a long a week before passing away. And then
you kind of get into did Johnny Cash's father really
blame him for his brother's death, and the answer was yes.
Like in the movie, his father openly stated that they
took the wrong son. It was actually Johnny Cash's daughter
(18:16):
Cathy who stated in the biography about Johnny Cash that yeah,
her grandfather did blame Johnny Cash for the death of
Jack and that Johnny had this real, just sad guilt
about his brother passing, like his whole life. So, in
a lighter note, why they all dressed in black. So
in the movie, they imply that Johnny Cash and his
band had nothing else to wear going into their audition,
(18:36):
so they all decided to wear black. And he even
says kind of this dramatic line of like, oh, his
wife tells him, Oh, it looks like you're going to
a funeral, and he's like, maybe I am. That actually
didn't happen. So it was actually the first concert they
ever did in public. It was at a church in
North Memphis, and Johnny Cash in the band were just
trying to find shirts that were alike and they wanted
to address the same and the only color they all
(18:57):
owned was black. They wore all black for the first
time at that performance, and it kind of just stuck
so it wasn't really for the audition like it said
in the movie, which you getting into this audition. In
the movie, it shows that Johnny Cash waited outside of
Sun Records, um for the studio exact Sam Phillips. They
come into work and he kind of like tracks him
down and tries to get an audition. Um, it didn't
(19:17):
really go down like that. Like Johnny had been knocking
on the door at the record place for a long
time and getting turned away. He like called him several
times for an interview, and one morning he did actually
like track him down. He found out like when he
went into work and he sat down with his guitar
and played on the steps for him and he introduced himself,
and then after that he told him to come back
tomorrow with some better musicians. So in the movie, Sam
(19:39):
Phillips stops them mid performance and it's like, hey, what
are you guys doing here? One song that would sum
you up? You're telling me that's the song you'd sing
that same Jimmy Davis tune. We here on the radio
all day about your piece within and how it's real
and how you're gonna shout it or would you sing something?
(20:00):
So the actual audition was not as dramatic as they
made it seem. Johnny Cash did claim that at one
point he did sing a gospel song in the audition.
He actually did play Folsom Prison Blues and other non
gospel songs before that whole thing kind of played out
like it did in the movie, and he even ended
up recording that song. I was there when it happened
four Sun Records in nineteen fifty seven. Also in the movie,
(20:22):
it shows Johnny Cash being arrested for smuggling drugs and
his guitar case, and yes, that actually did happen. In
October nineteen sixty five, Johnny Cash was arrested in El Paso,
Texas for attempting to smuggle and phetamines across the Mexican
border in his guitar case. It's a fairly accurate depiction
of his arrest that's shown in the movie, so that
part was true. There was one thing that was a
(20:44):
big part of Johnny Cash's life that I thought wasn't
shown in the movie, which kind of revolves around his
um drug abuse, was that he actually trashed the stage
of the Grand O Operty, but it's not shown in
the movie. The real Johnny Cash broke the stage lights
after he was told that he couldn't perform there, and
then four years after that happened, he actually found himself
back at the Grand Old Opry performing for his show,
(21:06):
The Johnny Cash Show, which debuted in nineteen nine. The
only kind of did they showed this in the movie
is there's a scene where they're all on a stage
drinking and smashing beer bottles, and then um Reese Witherspoon
comes in and like tells them, like, you're not gonna
be able to walk the line for acting like this.
That scene actually didn't really happen, but I thought that
was the only kind of similar thing they worked in
through the Opry incident. And then you know in the
(21:26):
movie he performs at Folsome prison, but in real life,
he didn't have to fight to make this concert happen.
He had actually been performing at prison since the late fifties.
And then, although it's not shown in the movie, but
Johnny Cash's father, Ray Cash, was actually in attendance at
the Fulsome Prison concert. And the other thing that the
movie did get right is Johnny Cash actually did propose
(21:47):
to June Carter Cash on stage in front of seven
thousand people while singing Jackson, although it was made a
little more dramatic in the movie that actually happened. And
then we get to the movie The Blindside, which is
about Michael or the football player who went on to
playing the NFL, and he kind of has come out
saying that he doesn't like the way he was portrayed
in this movie at all. Um He even took it
(22:08):
so far that he came out with the autobiography after
the movie because he felt it wasn't a real representation
of his life, that it kind of downplayed his situation,
not only what he was going through and when his
family was going through, but also just him as an athlete.
He felt like it kind of made him seem like
like a bit of a not a joke, but it
(22:29):
kind of like lessen the hard work he put into
playing football because in the movie, unlike it happened in
real life, is that he was actually playing football before
this and he was actually a really great athlete leading
up to this when he met the Towy family. But
in the movie he shown that first of all, he
was not found by the family just walking on the
(22:51):
side of the road in the rain like he had
actually known them beforehand, so they had started doing stuff
like buying him clothes and paying for his lunch way
before they encountered him like on the side of the
road look at it in the movie, So they did
take some just artistic liberties where in that scene he
is um found walking on the side of the road
like he's going to the gym, But in reality, they
didn't offer to take him to their place immediately. Instead,
(23:12):
they picked him up the next day and took him shopping,
mainly because they saw him walking in the cold and
cut off jeans and a t shirt, so they did
take him home. Also in the movie, the Tweet family
wasn't the only family that he stayed with. In reality,
was several months after um that roadside encounter where the
Tweet family welcome Michael into their home. He was just
saying with other people in the community at least five
(23:32):
different other families who helped him have a place to
stay when after they realized that he had been homeless.
But I think what the main thing that I'm kind
of surprised was that the movie just dumbed down Michael's
knowledge of football, and it kind of made it seem
like he was pushed to play football, and also that
he didn't really know anything about it, which he said
later that it kind of took away like his kind
(23:54):
of worth as an athlete in the NFL because he
was just seen as the guy, oh who had a
Hollywood movie made about and it just downgraded him as
a player. Like he liked the person who played him
in the movie, but he felt that the producers and
the directors and the writer of the movie just didn't
give him the accurate portrayal of him to play like.
He did a great job in the movie and even
(24:15):
him Sandra Bullock playing his mom, who ended up winning
an Oscar for the performance. Everything in the movie was great.
It was just not really his story the way he
wanted it to be told, because even in the movie
he's seen as really like shy and reserved and kind
of timid. In reality, the people at school said he
had a really big personality. He was always outgoing and
in this in the movie, he just kind of played
(24:36):
that way because it kind of fits the story a
little bit better. So just from reading about his story
in his life, it looks like it was just oversimplified
and just kind of made into like a picture perfect
Hollywood story, which I don't think is a completely bad thing.
I think in the end, it's a great movie that
people resonate with, even though it's not completely accurate in
his life. I think it more so it kind of
maybe sucks for him that he's portrayed as just now
(24:58):
being the guy in that movie, which I get is
just the downfalls of having somebody else tell your story.
All Right, I got one more I want to throw
out you on this episode is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
This one's a bit different because it's not actually based
on a true story, but it was marketed that way.
Like the entire plot is fictional, but when it came
out in the seventies, it was marketed as a true story,
(25:21):
and since then I think people forget that it was
a fictional story. That even people announced it this day.
I'd like, talk to people about Texas Chainsaw massacre from
Texas and they're like, oh, yeah, that really happened. No,
this never happened. It was just all kind of misconstrued
over the years. So I just wanted to put this
one in there because it was actually based on a
(25:42):
real murderer, a real serial killer, and his what he
did to his victims was inspired to create this character
Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But all of this just
did not really happen. So the character Leatherface in this
movie was inspired by the real crimes of real life
murderer ed Again, who would keep human remains. He would
(26:05):
take human bones and skin and make things like couches
out of him were masks out of him. So in
real life Edgin did take several victims between nineteen fifty
four and nineteen fifty seven, and they were pretty gruesome.
Like the real Edgain did take a human scalp and
face and wear it like a mask, just like leather
Face did, so there is some truth to that, but
it wasn't because of a skin disease like they said
(26:26):
the leather Face has in the movie that was made up.
He also actually did reportedly wear a vest made of skin,
complete with like female breast and other stuff on it,
so this all was taken from a real life murder scene. However,
they never found that he actually used the chainsaw to
kill his victims. Instead, he shot people with a pistol,
So I might get a little gruesome here, But in
(26:46):
November of nineteen fifty seven, police found a woman hanging
from the rafters of a shed behind his house, and
her body had been gutted, they said, like a deer,
and her head had been removed. And over time edgain
was linked to a lot of miss person reports, But
that element of him having a chainsaw tracking people down,
that was just made up in connection to the film,
(27:07):
and in real life, Edguin was not even from Texas.
He lived in Wisconsin. So this was all just taken
by the director of the first movie and turned into
a successful movie franchise, saying it was kind of based
on a real story. Never really happened. None of those
reboots never really happened. There's no such thing as leather Face.
So let it be known, made up for a movie,
all right, So let me know if you enjoy this,
(27:27):
because there are several other movies on my list. I
tweeted this out um a few days ago, and just
a bunch of people replied to me with all these
movies that they love based on true stories, and I
really had a great time researching these and if this
was interesting to listen to, let me know because I'll
do a part two or maybe even turn this into
a series. So if you enjoyed this look into fact
checking movies, let me know and I'll do some more.
(27:49):
You have any suggestions, um drop them on my Instagram
or my Twitter at my cadistro. All right, got to
get into my review now of Bad Boys for Life,
which is a third installment and the Bad Boys franchise.
You got Martin Lawrence back, Will Smith back. And I
went into this movie just wanting to have a good time.
I've been watching all these Best Picture nominees, a bunch
of dramas which kind of you really have to be
dialed into and think about. And I wanted to go
(28:11):
into the theater and just watch something that I could
turn my brain off, laugh at and just enjoy some big,
high action on the big screen, which sometimes you just
need that in life. So when I review this movie,
just know that I hold it to a bit of
a different standard because I kind of know what it
this is. You kind of know that it's not gonna
be nothing groundbreaking. I just wanted something to enjoy and
(28:31):
here is a little bit of Bad Boys for Life. Marcus,
somebody's trying to kill me. I don't trust a person
that don't want to kill. He'll put my name Mark.
Thanks a lot. We got it, Marcus, we appreciate it.
So this one was directed by two guys who go
by all the end Belal, which is a departure from
Michael Bay who directed the first two movies. He's known
(28:52):
for transformers and really the guy who loves to put
explosions in movies. So this movie did have a bit
of a different feel. I'll kind of compared this one
to Fasten the Furious, which in the early days those
movies are just straight on action movies and over the
course of time they're almost superheroes now, which is weird
going into a like a fast in the Furious movie.
(29:13):
So in this one, I did feel like they kind
of had that a bit of approach to making Will
Smith just like a really big, impenetrable character, like a
superhero almost. But that aside from the movie, I really
just enjoyed this movie. So it's supposed to be like
they're one last time together, kind of reliving early days
as police officers in this final attempt to find a
(29:34):
bad guy. I thought the action in it was great,
the overall story was okay, There's some cheesiness in it,
it's an action movie with you know, you expect the
cheesy lines and the plot just kind of moves along
very dramatically. But I really like Martin Lawrence and Will
Smith together. I think Martin Lawrence is just a very
underrated comedic actor and it's good to kind of see
him in this role again, which I think them together
(29:56):
is just a really great pairing. And it's also kind
of nice to see Wilson b what a hit again,
Like this movie has been number one now for a
few weeks, and I think they did that by giving
audiences exactly what they wanted. You have to see it
in theaters, probably not unless you're a really big Will
Smiths fan. You could probably wait a bit to see this.
But I was just surprised at just how solid of
an addition to the franchise that this was, and it
(30:18):
did kind of inspire me to the segment I want
to do next, because in the movie, there's this scene
where they're in the pursuit and Will Smith runs out
of a club in order to chase down one of
the bad guys and he goes up to a guy
and asks him for his car, which I see this
all the time in action movies where a police officer
can just go to anybody and say I need your
car police activity. They'd steal the car and end up
(30:40):
probably destroying it in the chase, and you never see
the repercussions of that. I also didn't know if you
can actually do that in like real life of an
officer stops you on the street and says they need
your car for police activity. Can they actually do that?
So in my next list, I want to include things
that happened in movies that never happened in real live
So can an officer actually do that? Let's see. So
(31:03):
here are my top five things that are normal in
movies but totally unrealistic in real life. First of all,
is what happens in action movies where a police officer
demands um a civilians car. Can they actually legally take
that away from them? And what I found is they
actually can, Like that is a real thing that can happen.
It's different state by state, but the law in California
(31:25):
states that if a police officer says that they need
your vehicle, you legally have to give it to them,
and if not, you can actually be fine, ticketed and
if not arrested for not giving a police officer your car.
So I hope that never happens to me in real life.
I've never really heard of it actually happening, but apparently
that is a real thing that can happen. At number
two on the list, which kind of also happens in
(31:47):
Bad Boys, is that when somebody is heavily outnumbered in
a fight or in any kind of attack, that the
people attacking them way to attack them one by one.
This would never really happen in real life. Why would
somebody just sit back and wait for the action to unfold, like, oh,
he just beat up that guy. Oh he just beat
up that guy. Oh I'm got to get beat up next.
I think in real life they would all just attack
(32:09):
the person, And there's no real way that one guy
could essentially clear a room of like ten. You only
see that happening in movies. Why would they wait? At
number three of things that happened in movies but don't
really happen in real life, is that the phone only
rings or you only get text messages that move the
plot line along. So every phone call that you get
(32:29):
in a movie is essentially like somebody revealing another part
of the plot or something that needs to go down
in it, but in reality you get a lot of
several like phone calls that have nothing going to do
with happening in your life at that time. But yet
in a movie everything pertains to the plot. And also
in movies, they never in the phone call with saying goodbye,
the conversation is just over. And the number four of
things that happen in movies but don't happen in real
(32:51):
life is that no criminal charges are ever charged after
these people have crazy shootouts in a movie, like they
just go. They have high be chases going down where
they crash into buildings, probably hit other people's cars, and
that never comes again. In the movie. It's just all
about them catching the criminal. They catch the guy, and
everything kind of gets wrapped up into a nice little
bull with It's like, hold up, dude, you ended up
(33:13):
wrecking three cars, you hit like three pedestrians back there,
and you get no criminal charges for that, all because
you caught the bad guy. And at number five of
things that happened in movies but don't happen in real life. Um,
there was a scene in this Bad Boys movie where
they're going to drop off the baby, um with his
wife and and they pull right up to the spa
(33:34):
and get a front row parking spot to that place,
when in real life, there is no way you're going,
let alone, to a place in Miami and getting a
parking spot right outside of a place, which happens all
the time and movies that are going somewhere and they
pull right up into a front row parking spot when
in reality they would probably have to go into a
parking garage, pay like twenty bucks to park, and go
up like three levels before they even got to that.
(33:55):
So you see that happening in movies doesn't happen in
real life. And I'll throw a bonus went in there
if this one kind of gets to me. I didn't
see it in Bad Boys. But when people make plans
in a movie, they automatically know like when it's gonna happen, because,
like saying rom Com, they're like the guy finally asked
the girl to go out on a date, and he's like,
oh how about tomorrow seven pm? Okay, great, and the
(34:16):
scene is over. They don't make any plans of what
restaurant they're going to, there's no exchanging the phone numbers,
and they just end up showing up at that place
at the same time and everything works out fine. In reality,
you could never make plans like that and be like, oh,
you want to go tomorrow night at seven pm, and
it'd be like, oh, I can't do tomorrow night. How
about next Tuesday? Tuesday is no good for me? How
about this night? Okay, I'll text you my number, you
(34:38):
text me back later. Like that's how it happens in
real life. People don't don't just show up because you
say it's gonna happen, and even then now you make
the plans and then you follow up on text like
the day before like oh we're still on for tomorrow.
Oh yeah. You don't just make plans and it goes
away and then it all happens. So anyway, that's just
a little rant there on my own I got into.
But yes, things that happened in movies that don't actually
(34:59):
have been in real life. There's the list, all right,
and that's the episode for this week. Let me throw
out my Instagram shout out to Tyler's s Arnold on
Instagram who was doing a really cool painting and said
he was catching up on the podcast. So thanks Tyler
for listening. I think he's also like working on this
cool painting that he's gonna give me, so um, I'll
be excited to see what he ends up doing with that.
Thanks again for listening to the podcast, and I will
(35:21):
talk to you guys again next week. Um. It will
be after the Oscar, so I'm gonna record a bit
of it, like right after the Oscars, of my reactions
to who wins so um, go to my Instagram check
out my picks and picks on the oscars. That that
is not just my pictures, but if you want to
see those, those are there too. All Right, I'll talk
to you guys next week later
Host
Mike D
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