POP-CULTURE COLUMN: This Column is Based on an Incredible True Story
By Dan Brown Based on a true story. Inspired by real events. Based on the incredible true life story. When it comes to marketing movies, phrases like these matter a lot. How do I know? Because no studio marketing team in Hollywood history has ever passed up a chance to use them in their ad campaigns, even if the film in question bears only a passing resemblance to the truth. But my purpose today isn’t to argue movies inspired by real-life events aren’t all that real or true. It’s to try to understand why these phrases keep popping up on movie posters and in trailers. So here’s the thing: When a motion picture is marketed as a true story, it lands differently. In the minds of movie fans, it’s not in the same category as fictional stories. It’s more compelling. In 1976, the film version of All the President’s Men debuted. It was based on the reporting of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who were real journalists whose Watergate stories helped to force Richard Nixon, an actual U.S. president, to resign. About a year later, a George Lucas movie called Star Wars was released. It featured actors playing aliens, starship dogfights in space, laser swords, and a mystical power called the Force. None of that stuff is real. These two studio productions were received by audiences in radically different ways, and no discerning movie fan would put them in the same category. All the President’s Men horrified audiences because it told a story that everyone had lived through in real life. Even if Star Wars enthusiasts loved wookies or droids or Jedi Knights, no one expected to bump into them on the street. All the President’s Men appealed to a different part of an audience member’s brain, the part that detects BS. As I’ve noted in this space before, I work with young adults in both of my day jobs. And the word I hear the most from university students these days is “authenticity.” They are starved for it. They distrust its opposite – the fake, the plastic, the constructed. If a product is perceived as authentic, they will want to try it. If a celebrity is suspected of being a different person from how they outwardly present themselves, they are repelled. They distrust slick, surface representations. They want the real deal. And the big brains who work in the marketing departments in Tinseltown are aware of this, and they use this knowledge to their advantage. That’s why you still see films being sold on the fact they are true stories. That is, they are authentic. Which is why another 1970s release, The Amityville Horror, had the tagline “The terrifying truth behind a real-life haunted house.” The 1993 UFO-abduction flick Fire in the Sky had a similar advertising prompt: “Based on a true story. White Mountains, Arizona . . . Six workmen entered the forest. One didn’t come out. What really happened?” And it’s never going to stop. Even decades from now, when hologram technology has been perfected, or the studios invent a way to beam movies directly into the human brain, you can bet future marketing professionals will be making the same claims. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
But What About the Movie?
By Dan Brown Movie advertising in 2025 is about everything but the movie. What I mean is, the folks in Tinseltown who devise campaigns to advertise big-budget motion pictures, like the latest Mission: Impossible and the upcoming Superman, want the public to be aware of some important details – that have little to do with the content of each film. Why is this a problem? Because Hollywood isn’t exactly doing blockbuster business in the age of streaming. Let me make clear at the outset that I’ve never worked in marketing: This is a civilian take from someone who has never made a movie ad or trailer in his life. All I’m basing my thoughts on are my decades of experience as a moviegoer and movie fan. Let’s start with the obvious example, the publicity campaign for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which landed in theatres last month. Whether you’ve seen it yet or not, you already know one thing about this sequel – that Tom Cruise did his own stunt work. You know this factoid because long before Cruise appeared at the Cannes Film Festival or on TV chat shows, Cruise was bragging about it in online clips that appeared while he was still on location two years ago. What he didn’t talk about while hanging off a brightly coloured biplane was the movie’s premise, or his acting in it, or the script. Or any other detail. Doing his own stunts may be a foolish thing for an actor to do, I don’t know, but I do know it’s an odd claim to make since an action star risking certain death in real life and Cruise’s character risking his on-screen life are two different things. What are we supposed to do with this knowledge? Or think of it this way: Did anyone who bought a ticket to see Final Reckoning walk out of the theatre and say to their date, “That movie was pretty mediocre, but I’m just glad knowing Tom Cruise risked life and limb to make it.” As Peter Suderman over at Reason magazine said in his review, the Mission: Impossible films are “ extravagant stunt spectacles, powered by the awe of watching an aging movie star appear to risk his life for our entertainment.” Not by the plot, or the camera work, or anything else intrinsic to the movie. Another example. As Cruise did, many movie actors appear on TV shows like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to drum up interest in their latest work. One question that always comes up while this promoting goes on is how much fun the performers had while making the upcoming feature. This must be very important, as I have never once heard a celebrity plugging the fact they had a bad time on set. There are inevitably anecdotes about what a riot it was to work on the production, and if George Clooney is involved in any way, there will be a story about how he pulled pranks on his co-stars during shooting. Again, does this factor in anyone’s decision to see a particular film over another? Does anyone exiting the movie say, “That was a fantastic film, and knowing the cast had a fun time makes me want to see it again.” Not to be cold, but I don't care. As a moviegoer I just want to be entertained. If a movie is strong, it doesn’t matter to me whether the cast was having fun or utterly miserable. I don’t care. I just want my money’s worth of entertainment. Heck, Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the filming of Apocalypse Now, which can’t have been fun, but I don’t think that fact alone interfered with anyone’s enjoyment or non-enjoyment of the Vietnam War epic. A final example. Word has also reached my online feeds, maybe yours too, how actor David Corenswet put on a large amount of muscle while preparing to play Superman in the James Gunn-directed picture that will reset the DC cinematic universe this summer. These posts show Corenswet pumping iron. Again, I’m not sure what to do with this news nugget. It would be like, if Raging Bull was released today, the studio first released video of Robert De Niro stuffing his face in order to gain the necessary weight to play Jake LaMotta in his over-the-hill years. If publicity tactics like these come across as acts of desperation to you, then I agree. What happened to traditional trailers that tried to give you a sense of the flavour of the film, that boasted about intriguing characters, talented directors and the script’s twists and turns? All of this is another sign Hollywood is in crisis, with the big studios still hurting from the pandemic years and unable to supply a compelling answer to the rise of streaming as the dominant method of entertainment. They’ll do anything to put butts in seats. Now, I’m no marketing genius. But I do see one ploy the Hollywood big brains haven’t used yet that just might work: Try making better movies. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
