Fictionalizing True Stories

Orly
Adelson Productions often works with true
stories, and producer Jonathan
Eskenas gave this example from one of their
films: “A few years back we produced a
movie for USA Network based on the hunt for the
D.C. sniper murderers, called DC
Sniper: 23 Days of Fear.  That
story actually had more articles written about
it than either O. J. or the Ramseys (according
to media trackers).  So, there was an abundant
amount of press on which to base the story, and
the people involved were part of the public domain.  We
also worked with an award-winning journalist
from Newsweek who acted as our consultant.  Our
lead character in that film was the police chief
who became very well known for his impassioned
speeches.  We didn’t have his rights,
but because of all the information we had and
because of our consultant, the writer was able
to very clearly annotate the script [back to
public domain source material], so that we were
within our legal bounds.  The result was
a terrific movie that ended up winning two NAACP
Image Awards for best MOW or Miniseries and for
Charles Dutton, who played the police chief.”  However,
Eskenas stresses that if you’re telling
a story about a real person using only facts
available in the public domain, “you really
can’t take liberties with their life, otherwise
you are opening yourself up for a lawsuit.  You
absolute can’t show anything negative about
the person unless it is well documented and clearly
annotated in the script.”

Eskenas goes on to say
that having rights to a real person’s life is
often vital for telling a story.  “If the
story is more intimately personal and most of it takes
place ‘behind closed doors’ in ways that
media coverage couldn’t show, than it is usually
necessary to get the life rights.  For example,
we produced a movie last year called The
Madam’s Family for CBS.  It was
the true story of a grandmother, mother and daughter
all living and working in a brothel in New Orleans.  We
made rights deals with each of them so that we could
get into all the dynamics of this family and their
personal lives.  The story behind the story, so
to speak.  There are times where rights help and
times when they don’t.  Having them provides
you with more access to the most intimate details of
a story, and often times the true life people can help
to promote the film.  That said, often times if
you are doing a biopic in conjunction with that person,
you can end up with a one-sided story.  Say you
did the story of a divorce, and just got the husband’s
rights. Chances are you won’t end up with the
complete story.  So, our goal as producers is
to work hard to ensure that the project is in the
best position possible, legally and creatively,
to succeed.”