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April 4[edit]

What does "Just Call me Ahab" mean?[edit]

Orson Welles: Ready and willing to hunt the great white whale?

Mank: Just call me Ahab.

It's the dialog from Mank. Rizosome (talk) 05:37, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Both lines form an allusion to Moby-Dick. Mank is agreeing to whatever it is Orson is actually asking him to do. --184.147.181.129 (talk) 06:10, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's also an echo of the famous opening line of the novel: "Call me Ishmael". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:08, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To make that a little bit more specific: the one thing "everyone" knows about Moby-Dick is that Captain Ahab obsessively hunts a specific whale. —Tamfang (talk) 01:09, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The opening line of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael", as noted above, is quite famous and frequently alluded to in other works, besides Mank's line "Call me Ahab", which substitutes in another character from the book in the famous line, there's Kurt Vonnegut's opening line of Cat's Cradle, "Call me Jonah", which alludes to another famous whale story, the biblical Book of Jonah. --Jayron 32 14:14, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Von Trapp Family - Fact vs Fiction[edit]

If the von Trapp Family were a real-life Austrian singing family, how come some parts in the film The Sound of Music are fictional? Examples...

The Family were already a singing group before Maria joined them, thus never teaching them how to sing (not after).
Georg von Trapp was a warmhearted, kind & loving father. And even liked music (not a cold-hearted, strict discipliner).
There were ten children (not seven).
Georg and Maria were married in 1927 (not 1938).
The family went to Italy by train and then to America (not walking over the mountain into Switzerland). 86.129.30.247 (talk) 20:54, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because the film was never intended to be a stricty factual, historically accurate Documentary – it was a fictionalized Drama film, based on a Stage musical, based on an earlier German Comedy Drama film, based on Maria von Trapp's original memoir.

Real life events are often too lengthy, complicated, messy, seemingly illogical and (in parts) uninteresting to make an entertaining story, and nearly all dramas based on real events change (or omit, or embellish) a good deal of the actual facts in order to do so. They may also have to conform to the political and social expectations of their intended audience. This has been the case as long as drama in any form has existed. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.219.35.136 (talk) 21:57, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unless a film is expressly presented as a documentary, but presented as "based on a true story", you can bet your life savings that the scriptwriters altered, inserted or embellished facts for dramatic effect. This does not only include scenes that might have happened, but also scenes that are known not to have happened. A common technique is to merge two different events into a single one, or to create a character as a composite of several real-life characters. In the film A Beautiful Mind, John Nash is depicted as having vivid and detailed visual hallucinations. He had no such thing. He is also shown as giving an acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony. He did not give a speech. For another example, see the lengthy list of historical inaccuracies for the film The Imitation Game. --Lambiam 00:14, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's also worth noting that "based on a true story" stories are sometimes completely made up. Despite the assurances written on the screen at the start of the film, the movie Fargo is basically a wholesale work of fiction and not based on any real cases, except a few details regarding disposing of a body in a wood chipper (which did happen). --Jayron 32 14:06, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Further, some movies deliberately mislead people for the sake of the story, as with The Blair Witch Project where literal missing persons posters were printed up to simulate authenticity. In short: fiction is fictional. Matt Deres (talk) 19:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Sound of Music's storyline, from the 50,000 foot level, was relatively truthful. It also had a healthy budget. I saw The Blair Witch Project, knowing it was fictional, but wondering if any witches were going to show up. None ever did. When you've got a budget that's about the same as the cost of a few videotapes, witch costumes might be hard to come by. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:48, 6 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting example is Sleepers, which like the book it was based on, was presented as non fiction. But unlike The Blair Witch Project, where there was a marketing campaign but I think ultimately it was sort of kayfabe for most people or at least any authorities confused would have been told it wasn't real; as I understand it with Sleepers for a long time (I think still), the author seriously claimed the story was based on a true story leading to people to seriously look in to it. See e.g. [1] [2] for some of the controversy around the time of release. (There's no denying sexual abuse did happen at some reform schools, but the book doesn't seem to have been based on any particular incident.) Nil Einne (talk) 20:38, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The new von-Trapp film The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music was based on the real-life family. But which was better? The Sound of Music or The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music. Depends on the ratings? 86.129.30.247 (talk) 22:08, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]