Random Horrible True Stories Left Out Of Biopics To Make Person Look Bett (15 items)

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  (#2) 'Gandhi' Slept With Underaged Girls

  Everyone, including the Oscar-winning Gandhi, assumes that Mahatma Gandhi was morally pristine because he was starving all the time. Not the case. As it turns out, the brave, peaceful hero of Colonial India was actually kind of a pervert. As a 'test' of his piety and purity, he would sleep next to young girls - including his grand-niece - and force himself not to touch them or become aroused.

  This disrespect for women fell in line with his documented assertion that menstrual blood is a "manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality." Oh and he also believed that Black people are sub-human. But Ben Kingsley's acting (and brownface), tho. 
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  (#12) 'Get On Up' Left Out The Small Detail Of James Brown Stealing His Biggest Song

  The James Brown biopic Get On Up isn't a hagiography, as it doesn't shy away from James Brown's (played by Chadwick Boseman) history of marital assault by painting him as a saint. It does, however, gloss over the fact that he stole his biggest song from a girlfriend. Brown's ex Betty Jean Newsome took him to court over the fact that he lifted the main melody of "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" from a riff she sang during a car ride.

  Newsome won the lawsuit, but Brown never formally apologized. And neither did the film.
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  (#7) 'The Theory Of Everything' Glosses Over The Hawkings' Terrible Marriage Disintegration

  In 1999, Jane Hawking (the former wife of Stephen Hawking), released her 610-page memoir, Music to Move the Stars, and, in it, she recounts some of the darkest moments from her marriage to the genius. She describes Stephen Hawking as an "all-powerful emperor" and "masterful puppeteer" because of his incredibly large ego and the degree of control he exercised over not only their relationship but also on most of those around him. She also records the relationship between Stephen and his nurse, Elaine Mason, whom he would later marry, as well as her own affair with Jonathan Hellyer-Jones, whom she would also go on to marry, as well. 

  This account doesn't really jibe with the love story portrayed in the 2014 movie, which stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as Stephen and Jane Hawking. Instead, The Theory of Everythingcenters on their romance along with Stephen's genius and physical degeneration. The film primarily shows the two as a unit oriented against the world; it glosses over their mutual affairs; and it says nothing about the intense and well-documented abuse that Elaine has been accused of perpetuating against Stephen.
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  (#11) 'The Motorcycle Diaries' Flinched When It Came To Che Guevara's Racism

  In the actual, written, diary form of The Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto "Che" Guevara includes a passage that details his thoughts on Black folks. At one point, he describes "[the] Blacks" as "those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of affinity with bathing."

  At another moment, he characterizes "the Black" as "indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink," whereas "the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

  Granted, scholars are in disagreement over whether this constitutes racism on Guevara's part or is more of an example of general "Argentinean superiority" that was prevalent among most people in Guevara's social class at the time. While this may seem like splitting hairs, one thing that's certain is that these reflections on Guevara's part don't make their way into the 2004 film, which sees Gael García Bernal starring as Guevara.

  Rather, his awakening to the conditions of the poor and disenfranchised around South America is the dominant stuff of the narrative.
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  (#15) If 'The Walk' Were More Accurate, All Of Petit's Friends Would Have Been Deported

  2015's The Walk, a treatment of the real-life story captured in 2008's Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire, took an inspirational subject and lionized him in an inspirational movie. Problem is: the real-life story doesn't have the same happy ending as the movie. In The Walk, Phillipe Petit (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who just successfully scaled a cable linking the Twin Towers, decides to stay in New York with his friends after his girlfriend decides to move back to Paris.

  In real life, Petit quietly stayed behind as all of his friends got deported. 
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  (#1) 'Kundun' Leaves Out Torture And Human Slavery

  History - and popular culture - remember the Tibetan monks as victims of Communist China's cruel mid-century takeover of Tibet. The reality is much more complicated. Before China invaded the Tibetans' homeland, the 'peaceful' monks often kept and tortured human slaves. They also overtaxed and mistreated most Tibetans under their rule. 

  Martin Scorsese's Kundun, which follows the life of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th and current Dalai Lama, paints Tibetans as nonviolent victims for the sake of story. Before the 1997 movie arrived, this myth had already been promulgated by the monks themselves in an effort to curry national favor. 

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