A week or so prior to its nationwide release last month, the summer action comedy 30 Minutes or Less starring Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride was met with some controversy.
In the film, directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland), Eisenberg plays a pizza delivery man in Michigan who’s taken hostage by two bumbling crooks (McBride and Nick Swardson) while making a delivery. The next day, they strap a bomb to him and give him 10 hours to rob a local bank or go tick, tick, BOOM.
The controversy arose over the fact that the film shares some rather eerie parallels to a real-life incident that occurred in 2003, where a 46-year-old pizza delivery man in Pennsylvania was forced to rob a bank and was later killed when the rigged bomb collar he was wearing detonated before the bomb squad arrived on the scene.
In a statement issued just prior to the film’s release, the film’s distributor, Sony (which released the film under its Columbia Pictures banner), claims the filmmakers were only “vaguely aware” of the 2003 incident. Whether or not that’s true remains a mystery, much like the level of involvement the real-life delivery man may have had in the botched crime.
The controversy got me to thinking about other largely fictional films that were inspired – in one way or another – by actual events. Here are my Top 10.
Ladies First
The Accused (1988)
Jodie Foster won her first Best Actress Oscar for playing Sarah Tobias, a fictional Washington state sports bar waitress who’s ganged raped atop a pinball machine one night at a local bar. Kelly McGillis plays the prosecutor assigned to the case who not only goes after the attackers but also the men who egged the assailants on during the rape. The film was inspired by an infamous 1983 rape case out of Massachusetts that involved Cheryl Araujo, a mother of two who was gang raped by a group of men on a pool table while making a late-night cigarette run. During the trial, Araujo was cross-examined by the defendants’ lawyers to such an extent that the case is now widely regarded as a textbook example of the “blame the victim” defense.
Beloved (1998)
It took Oprah Winfrey a decade to bring Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the big screen, which was loosely inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, a black woman who had escaped slavery with her husband and children. When slave catchers finally caught up to them, Garner murdered her oldest infant daughter before their eyes rather than have her returned to slavery. In the film adaptation, Winfrey plays Margaret’s fictional doppelgänger Sethe, who is haunted by the ghost of her murdered daughter and calls herself “Beloved.”
How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)
Angela Bassett stars as the title character, a 40-year-old San Francisco stock broker who falls for a 20-year-old island native (played by newcomer Taye Diggs) while on an impromptu vacation in Jamaica with her best friend (Whoopi Goldberg). The film, an adaptation of the Terry McMillan novel of the same name, was inspired by McMillan’s real-life romance with Jonathan Plummer, who is some 20-odd years her junior (she was in her mid 40s and he was in his early 20s when they met while she was on vacation in Jamaica). Unlike their fictional counterparts in both the book and movie, McMillan and Plummer’s relationship didn’t last – he came out of the closet, and an ugly, very public divorce soon followed.
Up Close and Personal (1996)
Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford star in this romantic drama about the love affair between a beautiful, ambitious young female reporter in Miami and the seasoned TV news director who helps her rise to the top. The film was “suggested” by writer Alanna Nash’s biography of the late-Jessica Savitch, a successful, yet troubled real-life network newswoman who rose through the ranks of the male-dominated medium before dying at age 36 in a car accident.
To Die For (1995)
In this satirical adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s book of the same name, Nicole Kidman stars as Suzanne Stone, a beautiful, young and ruthless dreamer who will stop at nothing to become a world-famous news anchor. She marries for convenience, but when her hubby (Matt Dillon) wants her to put her dreams of TV stardom on hold so they can start a family, she does what any sensible woman with hopes and aspirations would: she plots to have him killed. She seduces a troubled young man (Joaquin Phoenix) and coerces some of his friends to do the job. The film and the book were both inspired by the Pamela Smart case of the early-1990s. Smart, who is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for “being an accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering,” worked as a media coordinator at a high school in New Hampshire where she met the young man who she would seduce and later coerce into murdering her husband, Gregory Smart.
Fellas, Take The Field
Elephant (2003)
Filmmaker Gus Van Sant originally planned to make a docudrama about the 1999 Columbine High School massacre were two ostracized teens, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a bloody rampage killing 13 people and injuring 21 others before committing suicide. Van Sant eventually opted to make a fictional account instead with a largely unknown cast, moving the action from suburban Colorado (where Columbine happened) to suburban Portland, Ore. In the film, the massacre is orchestrated by two bullied teens and the chilling climax closely mirrors aspects of the Columbine tragedy. The haunting film won the top prize at Cannes, the Palme d’Or.
It Could Happen To You (1993)
Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda star in this romantic comedy as a NYC cop and waitress, respectively, who split $4 million in lottery winnings much to the chagrin of his money-hungry wife (Rosie Perez). With less-than catchy pre-release working titles “Cop Tips Waitress $2 Million” and “Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip,” the film was inspired by Robert Cunningham, a 30-year veteran police officer from Dobbs Ferry, New York, who split a $6 million lottery jackpot with Phyllis Penzo, a happily-married waitress who worked at one of Cunningham’s favorite haunts, Sal’s Pizzeria, in March of 1984. They both picked three numbers and he jokingly promised her that if he won, he’d tip her accordingly. The next day, he and his wife showed up at the pizzeria with the winning lotto ticket in hand, to the complete astonishment of Penzo.
Primary Colors (1998)
Former Newsweek reporter and columnist Joe Klein shadowed Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and took that experience and wrote a thinly-disguised fictional account under the pseudonym “Anonymous.” Told through the eyes of an idealistic campaign aide (played by Adrian Lester), Primary Colors casts John Travolta in the Clinton-esque role of Jack Stanton, a charismatic, well-liked good ‘ol boy governor whose road to the White House is complicated by a potentially campaign- and career-ending sex scandal. Emma Thompson impresses as his long-suffering wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, um, Susan Stanton. And Kathy Bates (in an Oscar-nominated performance) steals the show as Stanton’s ball-busting, gun-toting campaign chief-of-staff Libby Holden.
Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing (Oscar-nominated for recreating her Tony-nominated stage role) star as a wealthy art dealing couple in Manhattan who are hustled by a charming, erudite young black man (Will Smith) in this big screen adaptation of John Guare’s Pulitzer-nominated, Tony Award-winning play. The plot was inspired by the late-David Hampton, a conman who managed to convince a group of wealthy New York City residents (some famous) that he was Sidney Poitier’s son and swindled them out of thousands of dollars before finally being caught. Ironically enough, Poitier is the proud father of six…daughters.
White Hunter, Black Heart (1990)
In this adaptation of the late-Peter Viertel’s novel of the same name, director-producer-star Clint Eastwood assumes the lead role of John Wilson, a world-renowned Hollywood filmmaker (clearly modeled after the legendary film director John Huston – Walter’s son and Anjelica’s dad) who ventures to Africa to make a film. While there, Wilson becomes more preoccupied with hunting and killing an elephant, which leads to an unforeseen tragedy. Viertel was a book and film writer who worked extensively with Huston while making The African Queen (1951) starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn on location in Africa. At the time, it was rare for a Hollywood film to be shot on location – most were shot on sound stages stateside.
