Clint Eastwood at the AFI 40th anniversary eventImage by INSTARImages.com
By
Shawn S. Lealos
Published 18 minutes ago
Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant, CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more.
Shawn has a bachelor's degree in professional writing and a minor in film studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous awards, including several Columbia Gold Circle Awards and an SPJ honor. He also wrote Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, the first official book about the Dollar Baby film program. Shawn is also currently writing his first fiction novel under a pen name, based in the fantasy genre.
To learn more, visit his website at shawnlealos.net.
Sign in to your ScreenRant account Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recapClint Eastwood has been directing movies since 1971, and has made several biopics over his career in Hollywood. Eastwood is best known for his roles in Westerns as well as action movies like Dirty Harry. He has also directed films in both genres, but has also taken the time to direct based-on-real-life stories for the big screen.
Eastwood has made war movies based on real events, and told stories about musicians and politicians in his numerous biopics. However, while Eastwood has made several movies based on true stories, they are not always accurate. The director has often taken liberties to tell the best movie story possible, even if it changes the facts.
American Sniper (2014)
Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle aiming a rifle in American Sniper
American Sniper was a biopic based on the memoir by Chris Kyle, celebrating his life as a sniper for the U.S. military. Kyle wrote in his memoir that he killed 255 people on his tours of Iraq, the most ever in U.S. military history. However, only 160 of those alleged kills were confirmed by the Department of Defense.
As a result, there is a lot of doubt about Kyle's accounts of his military service, which makes American Sniper seem problematic since it is based on Kyle's memoir, while also making significant changes. The biggest change was Eastwood creating a main enemy in the enemy sniper, Mustafa, whom Kyle barely mentioned in his memoir.
Other kills in the movie were also created for dramatic tension, including when Kyle shot a mother and her son who were trying to attack soldiers. In real life, the boy did not exist. There is a lot of fiction in American Sniper, and it is one of Eastwood's least accurate biopics.
Sully (2016)
Tom Hanks as Sully and Aaron Eckhart as Jeff Skiles
Sully was a 2016 Clint Eastwood movie about Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, a pilot who heroically saved the passengers on a flight that crashed by landing in the Hudson River. While there were minor injuries, Sully's actions saved 155 crew and passengers and became a national hero.
In Eastwood's movie, he approaches the fallout of the accident, which sees the authorities investigate Sully when they learn it could have been pilot error, and he could have landed it safely at an airport, although he denies it. They then investigate his life, and sentiment starts to turn against him.
There was a lot of controversy surrounding how Eastwood depicted the National Transportation Safety Board, painting them as villains who were antagonistic against pilots. Sully was also not happy with the final movie, feeling that too many events were fictionalized, especially concerning the investigation.
The Mule (2018)
Clint Eastwood as Earl Stone in The Mule
Released in 2018, The Mule was a story based on a New York Times article about a 90-year-old drug mule. It tells the story of Leo Sharp, a World War II veteran who becomes a drug courier in his 80s after his business began to fall apart, and he needed a way to make a living.
Eastwood didn't just direct the film, he also starred in it. Instead of World War II, it was the Korean War, and the movie changed Leo's name to Earl Stone. The film also goes out of its way to show Earl as a good man who was caught in a bad situation, which made his later conviction a sad moment.
There was also a romance added in to give Earl more of a personal story to go along with the criminal aspects of his tale. All the creative liberties made this a great movie, but it also made it highly inaccurate, other than the main story itself.
Bird (1988)
Forest Whitaker as Charlie "Bird" Parker playing his sax in Bird.
Bird is a 1988 biopic about jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, with Forest Whitaker starring as the musician. This was one of Clint Eastwood's earliest biopics of his directorial career, and it is made up of what is primarily a montage of events from Parker's life, from his childhood through his death when he was 34.
The way Eastwood sets up the movie is to go back and forth throughout Parker's history, and it shows events as the film tries to pick out the truths about his life. Whitaker won a Best Actor award at Cannes, and Eastwood won Best Director at the Golden Globes.
However, when it comes to the accuracy of the film, it gets things right concerning the music and the emotional core of his story, but there are a lot of factual inaccuracies and a focus on the negative stereotypes in his life.
Jersey Boys (2014)
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on Jersey Boys
Released in 2014, Clint Eastwood directed Jersey Boys, an adaptation of the popular Tony Award-winning musical about The Four Seasons and their rise in the 1960s. The band had a series of number one singles, including "Sherry" and "Big Girls Don't Cry," and they also had a surprising relationship with the Italian mafia.
Neither the Broadway play nor the movie strays too far from the real story about this musical group. However, it does stray a little when it comes to the roles each band member played in their story. There were also changes in the timeline, such as when Frankie Valli's daughter died and when the band members were arrested.
There were also inaccuracies about the members who left, and when they left, and how the members got along throughout their history. However, when it came to their story, it was pretty much an accurate depiction of the band's rise.
Invictus (2009)
Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman shake hands in Invictus
In 2009, Clint Eastwood directed a movie about Nelson Mandela and the events surrounding the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Morgan Freeman stars as Nelson Mandela, while Matt Damon stars as Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African rugby team.
The movie focuses on Nelson Mandela's efforts to unite post-apartheid South Africa during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and that part of the story is mostly accurate. However, Eastwood does make changes along the way, especially when retelling the plot points and characters' actions leading up to the World Cup.
The most essential parts, such as Mandela's leadership and actions, were highly authentic, although his friendship with Pienaar was altered, and many of their interactions were fictional.
Richard Jewell (2019)
Paul Walter Hauser as Richard Jewell sat in an office wearing a suit
Richard Jewell was a Clint Eastwood biopic following the security guard who found a bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, and saved countless lives. However, he was then accused by authorities of having placed the device himself. Paul Walter Hauser stars as Jewell in the movie.
This is a situation where Richard Jewell was mainly loyal to the real events as they happened, including the character assassination of Richard Jewell, who was turned into a scapegoat when he was actually a hero. However, as with most biopics, there were elements that were added for dramatic tension.
That said, there was one major thing that holds this movie down when it comes to its accuracy. Journalist Kathy Scruggs was shown as someone who offered sex to an FBI agent in exchange for information, which the editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called "false and malicious."
J. Edgar (2011)
Leonardo DiCaprio as J Edgar Hoover
In 2011, Clint Eastwood made a biopic based on the life and career of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Leonardo DiCaprio played Hoover in the movie, which starts with the 1919 Palmer Raids and moves on throughout his tenure in the FBI, up to his death in 1972 during the Nixon administration.
This was a movie where Eastwood delivered a mostly accurate story when it comes to Hoover's life and career in the FBI. Beverly Gage, who wrote a biography of Hoover, said that the film portrayed the man's goals of cleaning up the FBI and introducing scientific methods as highly accurate and true to life.
However, the movie also fictionalizes many aspects of Hoover's life, including the scenes where Hoover dictated his memoirs to FBI agents. Despite this, as a story of a man who helped the FBI rise to prominence, it is a reasonably accurate depiction of historical events.
Changeling (2008)
Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins smiling while exiting a building in Changeling
Changeling is a Clint Eastwood biopic based on real-life events, and specifically the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop murders in Mira Loma, California. Angelina Jolie stars as a woman who is reunited with a boy, only to realize, as time goes on, that he is not her real son. However, set in the 1920s, she is determined, delusional, and institutionalized.
The story of the police institutionalizing the mother was mainly true. In real life, these officers not only faced little to no punishment, but they were allowed to return to their positions and never paid the restitution money the courts ordered. The facts that her son had been murdered and that this child was not hers were also accurate.
However, in all, the story is fictional, mainly in the dramatic scenes, although everything that Eastwood showed concerning the case of the treatment of Jolie's character was accurate, and that is what matters most in this story.
The 15:17 To Paris (2018)
The 15:17 to Paris movie
The 15:17 to Paris is a Clint Eastwood biopic where the director does something unusual for any film of this type. He didn't cast actors in the roles for the movie, but instead hired the actual people involved in the true story to play themselves in his retelling of the events in question.
The film tells the story of three men on a train from Amsterdam to Paris. While on the train, the three men realize that a terrorist attack is underway, and they set out to stop it and save lives. Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos are the three real-life heroes, and they play themselves in the movie.
The 15:17 to Paris is one of the most accurate of Clint Eastwood's biopics, and this is particularly true concerning the actual attack on the train and the men's work to overpower the gunman and end the threat. The actual climactic event was reportedly exactly what happened in real life.
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