Where Credit Is Due

Based on a true story. Inspired by real events. Phrases like these used to predicate the origin of a film’s narrative before it begins to me are almost like an homage. When I see them, I don’t assume that the film I’m about to watch is necessarily historically accurate. What I assume is that the general premise or story is based in reality, but the details may have been invented or changed to fit the medium. To me it doesn’t make sense to treat artistic works that are not documentaries and are obviously artists’ reinterpretations of events as historical renderings. How can they be? Dialogue is always going to be made up, facts are always subject to interpretation depending on who’s reporting them (eye witness testimony, for example), and emotions and internal thoughts are unverifiable.

So I don’t take history from biopics or historical movies, unless they’re HBO or Discovery Channel specials that tell me to.

I find the use of phrases “based on a true story” and “inspired by real events,” rather than to be misleading when the films that follow are not necessarily true to history, to be classy. Yes, classy. It’s like citing your sources, admitting that you didn’t come up with this idea yourself—you took it from something else, and you’re not claiming you didn’t. A film like Hurricane doesn’t say in bold letters “THIS IS A TRUE STORY.” It’s based on one. A base is a foundation, and you can’t argue that Hurricane’s foundation was a true story. Facts were changed to suit the dramatic structure of the story, characters were amalgamated, motives were invented. But I don’t think that’s unethical unless the film purports to be 100% accurate. And the qualifiers “based on” or “inspired by” take care of that.

In fact, I’d be okay with more films tossing those labels on them. If you read a news story and write a film about it, even if you change the details, why not give credit? We don’t live in a vacuum; some ideas will just spring like nothing out of your head, but many times you’ll pick them up other places. To me it isn’t an ethical issue of misleading viewers when the story changes—it’s an ethical issue of content origins.

The ethical issue I do have with a movie like Hurricane is leaving a real life character recognizable, but demonizing him, as in the case of Della Pesca/DeSimone. I understand that the film needed an antagonist, and having four separate ones would confuse the structure, so melding them into one seems like a fine idea. But leaving that megaladon villain with a name that points directly to one of the real-life characters he was based on is sketchy. People are going to associate him with DeSimone, and that isn’t fair to him or his memory. You can change things; don’t vilify real people.

Non-Fiction Filmmaking in a Non-Fiction World

In non-fiction filmmaking, the pesky question of “are you altering or influencing the truth by filming?” unavoidably comes up. This becomes more relevant when the filmmakers have the opportunity to become part of the film. Cameras record truth, so does stepping in front of the camera to intervene or interact with the subjects of the film create an ethical issue of manipulating the truth? In Man Bites Dog, were Remy, Andre, and the rest of the crew culpable of some ethical misstep from the moment they appeared in their own documentary, even before they partook in the crimes?

I don’t think so. Because to me, becoming part of the film doesn’t somehow obscure the truth; it just creates a new truth. You now are part of your own subject, and you may be changing the direction the film goes, but I don’t see that as unethical.

I keep thinking of the movie Broadcast News. It portrays an ethical dilemma that is similar to the question at hand, of altering the truth in non-fiction, and in this case, I think it’s absolutely unethical. One of the reporters, Tom, is doing an interview with a subject, a one-camera operation that keeps the focus on her. Tom tears up at one point when the subject is talking, and afterwards, repositions the camera on himself and makes himself cry. He cuts the footage together so that in the final product, while the woman is talking we see him cry, for the purpose of trying to evoke more emotion from the audience. In this instance, he was inserting himself into his non-fiction work and really was altering the truth—because what he inserted didn’t actually occur at the time he is pretending it did, and he’s doing it to manipulate. But in a documentary like the one supposedly being made in Man Bites Dog, the filmmakers are part of the world within the frame, so I wouldn’t say they’re altering the truth they’re recording—they are the truth they’re recording.

But what if you’re completely acting as a third-party witness (as much as that can be done following a subject with a camera), and something happens that you have a choice to respond to or not—the subject gets hurt, commits a crime, etc. Do you have a responsibility to step in? For me, because the realm is non-fiction—real life—then you’re really you, and you have the ethical responsibilities of a human being, not just those belonging to the subset of filmmaker. I’m imagining a scenario: say I was filming a documentary about some guy’s life, not interacting with him at all, just being a presence. It’s me, the guy, and a camera in a room, and the guy has a heart attack. You can bet your bottom dollar and the bottom dollar of your best friend that I would step out from behind the tripod and do what I could to help him, even if that’s making me part of the world of the film. What it comes down to is that it’s just a movie. Maybe it would make a great dramatic arc for the guy to die on camera, but if I’m just a girl behind a camera in the same reality as this guy, I don’t see how the connection and responsibility can be ignored.

And let's get real: a world in which people don’t go to the aid of others in times of need isn’t one I’d want to document, anyway.

Smoking & the Neuropsychology of the Subconscious

A lot of people, often smokers themselves, dismiss the claims that smoking onscreen influences the decision of viewers (especially young ones) to smoke, saying, “I didn’t walk out of a movie and decide to start smoking.” This is probably true enough, but to say that means the movies didn’t at all influence them to smoke is probably understating the matter. The movies may have just done it subconsciously.

While usually we can put up a veil of “the viewer’s actions are completely their own choices and we are not responsible,” we as a society don’t tend to hold people accountable for their subconscious impulses; we accept the separation between the conscious mind where decisions are made and the subconscious mind where actions are unknowingly influenced. So we as filmmakers are in a uniquely manipulative position; we have the conscious power to influence the subconscious—by showing certain elements in our films, even if they’re not focused on, we can be making a statement that the viewer doesn’t even know he or she is perceiving.

I think in this way, smoking onscreen can be held accountable for some people—especially the younger demographic—taking up smoking. Characters smoke off-handedly because it’s just a normal part of their day, characters smoke when stressed, characters smoke as a social ritual: without even delving into the issue of characters who sexualize smoking, it’s evident that viewers are often presented with images of smoking as part of a character’s normal life. No one has to say, “Look how cool cigarettes are” for there to be an impact—if we like a character, we may subconsciously accept their habits as well. And if you’re at all like me, and let’s assume some people are, you often want to, at least to some extent, model yourself after people and characters that you like. Consciously. What’s going on below the surface is anybody’s bet, but I’d bet some serious opinion-shaping and modeling is going on as well.

For these reasons, I think it’s important to acknowledge that showing smoking onscreen does influence people’s decisions of smoking off-screen. People are going to make their own choices about whether or not to smoke and need to be held accountable for them, no doubt. But since we are in a position of power where we potentially can show positive effects of smoking (i.e. stress-relief) without having to have the viewer experience any negative effects (i.e. the smell) there should at least be an ethical twinge when we realize we may be showing a skewed appearance of smoking that can become embedded in a viewer’s subconscious. As Sean Penn points out in the documentary we watched in class, some films necessitate showing smoking onscreen because of things like time period and historical accuracy. Here the justification is clear. If it’s just because an actor smokes and wants to smoke in his scene, solid justification is much harder to come by.

It isn’t necessarily our job to posit the morality of smoking itself; as Steven Pinker notes, smoking only recently switched from being simply a lifestyle choice to a perceived immoral act. But I think we would be remiss as filmmakers if we didn’t ponder the ethics of depicting a known health hazard in unspoken positive light without justification. Yes, smokers can continue to say, “I didn’t walk out of a movie and decide to start smoking;” but wouldn’t it be tough if one day yours was the film that broke the smoking camel’s back?

The Art of Manipulation?

I think that in terms of purposefully manipulating the truth in filmmaking, one of the questions we have to ask is, “Do the ends justify the means?” If we knowingly misrepresent facts—of historical events, people’s lives, etc.—and something good comes out of it, does that mean the misrepresentation was ethically sound?

For a question as general as that, my answer would be no, and I’d be done. But delving into specifics complicates things and makes it harder to accept a blanket rule. For instance, JFK misrepresents the life and theories of real-world character Jim Garrison. It also misrepresents the JFK assassination as seen through the Zapruder film. Two concrete examples of manipulating the truth (can we just call it lying?). But JFK’s message and controversy led to the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board. The public was finally allowed to see previously classified documents. Light (at least a little light) was shed on JFK’s death—and that’s a good thing, right?

A film lies in order to reveal the truth; this is an ethically complicated mess.

It’s also a question of your intent in manipulating the truth/your intent with the film. To change historical facts for a narrative whose purpose is to serve strictly as a piece of entertainment is a much less sketchy territory than manipulating facts for a piece whose purpose is clearly a political thesis with implications reaching farther than the subject matter itself. Even though Oliver Stone says his film is fiction, it’s undoubtedly fiction aimed at influencing the way people view a controversial subject. To deliberately distort the truth in order to guide people to see things the way Stone wants them surely can’t be right. And if your point rides on changing the facts, how accurate can we really trust that point to be?

For my money, it’s unethical to manipulate the truth so unabashedly. To meld fact and fiction into a confabulated tale that obviously enters the collective consciousness as a certain kind of truth because it’s veiled in so many other truths (the text at the end of JFK describing the outcome of the case, etc.). Taking a creative liberty is one thing; quite literally rewriting history is another.

For Your Consideration: Virtue Theory as a Means of Evaluating On-Screen Violence

Many of the ethical dilemmas brought up in filmmaking are consequence-based: will people smoke because my characters do? will my film inspire criminal activity? will someone harm themselves or others because of what my film says? and so on. Consequentialism is undoubtedly a valid means of evaluating ethical dilemmas, but I’m coming to realize that because the consequences of on-screen actions are so often so far removed from the films themselves, it’s hard to judge the ethics of any particular film based on a consequentialist mindset.

I’m considering virtue theory, which emphasizes being over doing. It emphasizes the morality of character, the creation of exceptional human beings who do good and avoid bad not because of consequences but because they know intrinsically it’s right. The virtues are things like honesty, benevolence, fairness, nonmalevolence, etc. So maybe filmmakers should consider the ethical implications of their films in terms of whether or not they promote the virtues that will inspire viewers to be…well, virtuous. I think that F. Miguel Valenti may have had something similar in his mind when he wrote, “There is now really no question that we are helping to shape the world in which we live, not simply entertaining it. It sounds both anticreative freedom and a bit wet-blanket-ish, but we should consider what sort of world we want it to be.”

So, let’s talk about violence.

I think the ethics of violence is all about how it’s portrayed. The issue I find with a lot of films is the glorification of it, the use of it as a symbol of status, power, and for lack of a better word, badassness. Violence is often stylized—and when we find aesthetic value in things like literally slicing people’s faces off (to reference Equilibrium, just the first thing that came to mind), I think we’re running into sketchy territory. I don’t think a scene like that necessarily runs the risk of inspiring copycat violence, but it makes viewers think violence is really cool. The Mediascope report about media violence released after the Columbine shooting states that “when violence is rewarded or goes unpunished, imitation is more likely to occur.” I think “made to look really, really cool” can be squished into that sentence, too. If we are inspiring people to believe violence is cool, I think that’s promoting something like malevolence, which is not an ethical virtue. And so our dilemma has an answer.

Violence, then, that doesn’t promote itself as a good thing to do falls into safe territory. In Set It Off, the shooting of the bank customer at the beginning of the film is not glorifying; it is horrifying. The moment is uncomfortably graphic and harsh, the results detrimental to the character of Frankie. It isn’t saying though, “Shooting people in the head is a good thing to do;” in fact, I think it makes the point that shooting people in the head is very, very wrong. So I think according to virtue theory, because of the way the violence is dealt with there, that case of portraying violence is not unethical.

Virtue theory is obviously only one option for the way to approach evaluating the ethics of violence in films (or any other ethical dilemmas in films), and it is no doubt still subjective; however, if we want one theory by which to evaluate our choices, virtue theory seems a better one than some others. I’m going to keep it in mind for the time being when I watch movies. Considering not the direct consequences but the implications on the character of the viewers as a guideline for morality is something I as a writer am happy to do.

"Making" One Another: Responsibilities as a Human & Filmmaker

There’s a line in The Fallen Idol that, while not necessarily central to the ethical dilemma in the film, I find to be incredibly relevant to the ethical dilemma of filmmaking in general. “Perhaps she was what she was because I am what I am,” Baines says. “We ought to be very careful, Phile. ‘Cause we make one another.” These words terrify, thrill, and enlighten me. I accept them because I believe that we are ever-changing products of our environments, that we are amalgams of both chance and choice, that because we can’t turn off the world outside ourselves, we are influenced by it all. As such, one word, one encounter, one day, one moment, anything can at any point shape us. Thrilling to think we can shape people for the better. Terrifying to think we can shape people for the worse. Either way, I think as human beings, we must be responsible for our every action because of the possible implications they can have in the creation of other people.

My gut instinct as a staunch idealist tells me that if I as a human being am bound by a certain ethical code, then according to the syllogism “Human beings are bound by an ethical code. Filmmakers are human beings,” it follows that as a filmmaker I am inextricably bound by the same ethical code. That I cannot exculpate myself from the responsibilities I have toward society simply because I can hide behind the lens of a camera. Ideally, I want this to be so. Cognitively, realistically, I don’t see how it can be.

There are ethical dilemmas inherent in filmmaking as a form. Lying, by most ethical systems, is wrong. Does distorting the truth in the pursuit of making a great film—one which would suffer from some of the more realistic details—constitute lying and therefore become unethical? What about less well-defined issues; does portraying evil characters or actions, by virtue of the fact that they are featured, somehow give them validation? Should we show the world as a realistic imperfect mess, featuring violence, hatred, and crime, or should we instead of mirroring it, try to perfect it in celluloid form in hopes of influencing audiences to more positive ends? By making the audience sympathize with evil characters, are we saying that everyone has something worthwhile in them, or are we saying it’s okay to be bad because someone will still care about you? The questions are endless; their answers, elusive.

I am not conceited enough to believe that a film I write will ever “change the world,” as it were; however, I do know that when someone hears or sees something, regardless of how seemingly insignificant, it breaches their consciousness and can ostensibly remain forever. Someone could theoretically see a film I wrote, and, some years later, a small line in it could suddenly mean something to them. This, I assume, is generally accepted to be a real possibility. But what if we take it a step further: what if years later something from a film I’ve written—even a toss-off piece of dialogue—suddenly clicks in a viewer’s brain and becomes the impetus for that person to do something unethical—to cheat on a spouse, to embezzle money, to commit a violent crime? I am paralyzed by fear of unintended consequences. I like to be able to see leagues into the future, to determine courses of action based on almost certain outcomes. In the field of filmmaking though, that task is impossible. One can’t predict, as J. Peter Euben states, “the emotional baggage moviegoers bring to the theater.” Viewers make their own life decisions and are responsible for their actions. But to exonerate ourselves by saying we can’t control what other people will do lets us off too easy, I think; if we are in a position to be heard by the masses, we are responsible for what we say, regardless of how far removed we are from our art’s consequences.

If I allow myself to get caught in this web of feeling bound to never accidentally influence someone to do something bad, then the only assuredly ethical safe ground I can find as a filmmaker is to not be one. This is not a viable option; filmmakers exist, surely answers to their ethical questions must exist as well.

The only conclusion I can begin to draw, then, is that a weighty portion of the answer to the ethical dilemmas inherent in filmmaking lies in intent. We must continuously ask ourselves questions, beginning with the broad and easy (Do I intend this film to incite violent crime? If “yes,” reevaluate. If “no,” move on to question #2.) to the specific, deeply buried possible ethical liabilities (Do I want the motivation of this character to be interpreted by audiences to be both unethical and laudable at the same time? If “yes,” consider further implications. If “no,” move on to question #183.).

I think that only in examining and taking ownership of our creative choices can we begin to take responsibility for the ethical implications of the work we create, and in turn create work that can be judged as ethically sound. Ignorance of our own psyches cannot be an excuse; we must understand the choices we are making if we hope to at all comprehend their consequences to viewers. They say it takes a village to raise a child—but what does it take to raise a village? I think it takes the rest of the world. As people who hypothetically have the power to affect the rest of the world with their works, filmmakers ought to be careful—‘cause for better or worse, we might "make one another," and wouldn’t it be dreadful if we helped create people we couldn’t stand?