Saturday, January 14, 2012
The other day I turned on Netflix to rent a movie and remembered that a friend of mine had recommended “Secretariat.” I started to watch it, and then realized that I had not seen it when it came out in the theater because it was not historically accurate. Wondering what was wrong, I went online, the repository of all answers and found an excellent article explaining where the movie had gone beyond mere dramatic license to formulate its own history of the story of Secretariat. I turned off the movie and don’t plan to go back.
Instead I bought the book the producers purchased containing the story of the horse.
Minor changes in accuracy are no big deal. For example, the movie puts Penny Chenery in the stall when Secretariat is born. That did not happen. OK, no big deal. The change serves to give a connection between owner and horse with adds some drama and humanity to the story. Fine. But the movie makes it look like Meadow Stable was a kind of shoestring operation, run by an addled old man who had steered his holdings towards bankruptcy. The book makes no reference to serious financial struggles, and there is no indication Penny’s father had lost any of the millions he had made running major corporations.
And, instead of being a tiny mom and pop operation, the Chenerys had been successful horse owners for years. In fact, while Secretariat was being trained and raced as a two-year old, Chenery also owned the Kentucky Derby winner Riva Ridge, who earned over $1 million in purses.
The fiction of financial hardship and “performance clauses” underlies the entire movie presentation, meaning the film does not represent the story of Secretariat, but instead is a fictional presentation of how the 1973 horse racing season might have been. The book is a far more interesting, if less sappy, relation of the tale of a marvelous horse.
Movies, of course, often alter books to suit their purposes, and sometimes the changes can be overlooked. “Seabiscuit” is an excellent movie based on a terrific book. The movie does alter the timeline of the horse’s return to racing following his injury, ignoring races preliminary to his stunning victory in the Santa Anita handicap. I don’t like excising this part of history but doing so does not undermine the fundamental accuracy of how the horse returned to the pinnacle of racing following serious injury, so I accept it. “Secretariat” but going so much further makes up a story out of thin air.
Other sports movies have done the same. One of my favorite movies, “Friday Night Lights” took similar liberties. In the movie the plucky Odessa Permian team fights its way all the way to the Texas state championships against the highly favored and exceptionally talented opponent, who romps all over them in the first half before our heroes fall just short of victory in the final reel. In reality, Permian lost in the semi-finals in a game where they led early before losing late. While I understand why the producers would want to change the story, I see no reason actual history would have undermined the point of the movie, which was the personalities and relationships of the people in Odessa.
“Remember the Titans,” about a football team at a newly-integrated school in the south, is a fine movie, but rife with false drama. One of the major plot points is the injury to one of their star players, who then inspires his team to victory in the championship game. In actuality, the star did get injured, but not until he was on the way to the victory celebration. Apparently history is not cheesy enough.
The producers of “Chariots of Fire,” a movie about athletes at the 1924 Olympics, felt equally compelled to change much of history, getting a lot of the race results correct, but adding lots of drama that just flat never happened.
There are many other movies which change history—pretty much every one about the Alamo or Custer’s Last Stand—but the sports movies particularly gall me because sports carries drama enough on its own. Most of the stories they choose to tell could be presented in an entertaining enough way without alteration. Too bad the filmmakers don’t see it that way.
Instead I bought the book the producers purchased containing the story of the horse.
Minor changes in accuracy are no big deal. For example, the movie puts Penny Chenery in the stall when Secretariat is born. That did not happen. OK, no big deal. The change serves to give a connection between owner and horse with adds some drama and humanity to the story. Fine. But the movie makes it look like Meadow Stable was a kind of shoestring operation, run by an addled old man who had steered his holdings towards bankruptcy. The book makes no reference to serious financial struggles, and there is no indication Penny’s father had lost any of the millions he had made running major corporations.
And, instead of being a tiny mom and pop operation, the Chenerys had been successful horse owners for years. In fact, while Secretariat was being trained and raced as a two-year old, Chenery also owned the Kentucky Derby winner Riva Ridge, who earned over $1 million in purses.
The fiction of financial hardship and “performance clauses” underlies the entire movie presentation, meaning the film does not represent the story of Secretariat, but instead is a fictional presentation of how the 1973 horse racing season might have been. The book is a far more interesting, if less sappy, relation of the tale of a marvelous horse.
Movies, of course, often alter books to suit their purposes, and sometimes the changes can be overlooked. “Seabiscuit” is an excellent movie based on a terrific book. The movie does alter the timeline of the horse’s return to racing following his injury, ignoring races preliminary to his stunning victory in the Santa Anita handicap. I don’t like excising this part of history but doing so does not undermine the fundamental accuracy of how the horse returned to the pinnacle of racing following serious injury, so I accept it. “Secretariat” but going so much further makes up a story out of thin air.
Other sports movies have done the same. One of my favorite movies, “Friday Night Lights” took similar liberties. In the movie the plucky Odessa Permian team fights its way all the way to the Texas state championships against the highly favored and exceptionally talented opponent, who romps all over them in the first half before our heroes fall just short of victory in the final reel. In reality, Permian lost in the semi-finals in a game where they led early before losing late. While I understand why the producers would want to change the story, I see no reason actual history would have undermined the point of the movie, which was the personalities and relationships of the people in Odessa.
“Remember the Titans,” about a football team at a newly-integrated school in the south, is a fine movie, but rife with false drama. One of the major plot points is the injury to one of their star players, who then inspires his team to victory in the championship game. In actuality, the star did get injured, but not until he was on the way to the victory celebration. Apparently history is not cheesy enough.
The producers of “Chariots of Fire,” a movie about athletes at the 1924 Olympics, felt equally compelled to change much of history, getting a lot of the race results correct, but adding lots of drama that just flat never happened.
There are many other movies which change history—pretty much every one about the Alamo or Custer’s Last Stand—but the sports movies particularly gall me because sports carries drama enough on its own. Most of the stories they choose to tell could be presented in an entertaining enough way without alteration. Too bad the filmmakers don’t see it that way.
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