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June 4

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral -- Is there an historically accurate movie?

In all the movies I've seen, details are often wrong and some "facts", plot points and characters are complete fabrications. I assume this was to make the movie more interesting but the real-life events seem more than compelling enough to make a great movie. I'm left wondering if, aside from an actual documentary, a movie has ever been made that accurately depicts the events surrounding the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral? --William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 06:26, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dear WilliamThweatt. I am a historian and a practitioner of historical martial arts since twenty years. I have never seen a single movie in my entire life which was even a bit historically accurate (the portrayal of the medieval period for example is shockingly bad). I do not think that there is a movie of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral that even comes close to a realistic representation (even most documentaries feature more myths than actual facts). The best thing would be if you could read books and documents that were written by eyewitnesses.--178.195.94.230 (talk) 09:40, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with historical films is that most mainstream screenplays are written to a formula, the three-act structure, but historical events don't necessarily fit that structure, so they're altered until they do. Studios will also want there to be a clear hero the audience can identify with, whose motivation is personal and emotional, a villain, a romantic subplot, and a certain amount of suspense, action and excitement - all the things they know audiences respond to. If they can get an explosion or two in there, they will, no matter if it's set in the stone age. They don't want to depict historically accurate attitudes that conflict with modern attitudes - sexism, racism and so on - so they'll give the hero a black friend or add a female character who's as much of a fighter as any of the men, even if they have to invent such a character. Lastly, they'll want a big-name star to play the lead, and stars often demand scripts be changed to make their characters look better and give them more screen time. So the chances of ending up with a historically accurate screenplay at the end of all that are pretty slim. --Nicknack009 (talk) 10:22, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is no such thing as a historically accurate movie, period. If you want accuracy you need to read, and be critically selective about what you read too. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:12, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A crucial thing about the real Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is that the event itself is generally agreed to have lasted only about 30 seconds. That is how gunfights generally are - extremely brief. But that would make for a very poor climax to a film. Long action sequences are currently the fashion, but even when they're not, audiences need to be given time to see what's going on, rather than the smoke and confusion of everybody moving and shooting pretty much simultaneously. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:27, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An early John Wayne movie (Stagecoach ?) features such a gunfight. The two people draw, one is shot dead immediately, and slumps over. Nobody does somersaults while dodging bullets and flying through a window, and, once shot, that person doesn't fly backwards 20 feet as if they had been hit by a truck. It's odd to watch it, because it's so different from what we've come to expect from Hollywood. (There are also many other oddities in that movie, from a lack of any close-ups to John Wayne's hat looking more like something the Pilgrims might have worn to the wagon train being dirty, not the spotless ones we see in later films.)

There are options to make a gunfight last longer on screen, without fictionalizing it. First, there's slow motion, then you can show the gunfight from multiple POV's, in turn. Also, if there's disagreement over the historical facts, you can show each version.

Dialog is a problem though. It's quite rare that we have enough dialog recorded in diaries and such to make a full movie. So then, that means they either have a lack of dialog, maybe just a narrator explaining the known facts, or they make it up. Also, some words and expressions used then might not make any sense now, so such dialog would need explaining to a modern audience.

I bet Ric Burns and Ken Burns could make a realistic documentary, as they did in The Civil War. During that they had voice actors read lots of soldiers' and wives' letters, complete with appropriate accents, and displayed photographs from the events. The lack of sound they fixed by adding period music and they created motion by cutting out the foreground of pics and moving it relative to the background. Note that while all this helps to some extent, it's still nowhere near as exciting as the typical Hollywood movie. Such is the price of realism. StuRat (talk) 14:26, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I almost never watch TV, preferring to wait for Netflix, so I don't know: has there been a backlash against the tic of panning/zooming on still photographs? —Tamfang (talk) 18:47, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not backlash exactly, but I saw a funny parody of it. I think it was a tampon commercial supposedly made by them, with the same slow panning pics and sad violin music playing as a woman read her letter (about tampons) in a thick Southern accent. StuRat (talk) 18:51, 4 June 2014 (UTC) [reply]

Thanks! —Tamfang (talk) 19:29, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Tamfang:, that effect is referred to as the Ken Burns effect. Just in case you needed a name to Google for. Dismas|^(talk) 19:20, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They did what they could, as film footage of the Civil War is hard to find. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:12, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

<sarcasm> Oh, did most of the Civil War newsreels rot or something? </sarcasm>

They did one of the things that they could. Another thing they could do is present still pictures in the way that we somehow tolerate in other media, rather than go out of their way to remind us with every damn shot that they can move the pictures. —Tamfang (talk) 19:29, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think part of their intent was to bring us close to the picture, to get a better sense of the person or place than you can get from seeing just the whole picture at once. Keep in mind that this was well before big-screen TVs were common. As regards the newsreels, you were supposed to say, "Movies weren't invented yet!" and I was going to say "That's why they're hard to find." :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:51, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Someone I knew who was a history buff thought Tombstone (film) was the most accurate portrayal they had seen, especially in terms of capturing the gunfight itself. By contrast, an otherwise really good film called My Darling Clementine has the gunfight extraordinarily different from how the real thing went down. Regarding documentaries, several years ago on the History Channel there was a micro-study of how the gunfight happened, or likely happened based on known facts. This included narration and re-enactors. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:45, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Bugs. I guess Tombstone is a close as I'll get. And I agree, My Darling Clementine, although mostly fiction, was a great film. It ranks among my favorites of all time.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 19:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Back in the early 1970s David L. Wolper produced a series titled Appointment with Destiny. At the time it was praised for their attempts at historical accuracy. Ongoing research can mean that "what was accurate then might not be now" so it may be out-of-date. Here is a link to the OK Corral episode. I haven't seen it in more than 30 years but it may be available on the interwebs somewhere. MarnetteD | Talk 17:40, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the responses everybody. Makes sense, especially Nicknack's take on it. I'm a big U.S. history buff, especially the Civil War era and the (historically accurate events of the) Old West. I'm also, probably not coincidentally, a big fan of Westerns. I've read much of the contemporary source material and history, including our own terribly long Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as well as Stuart N. Lake's (mostly fictional) biography of Wyatt Earp and seen My Darling Clementine, Tombstone, and Wyatt Earp, among others (wasn't aware of the Appointment with Destiny episode though). I'm hoping to share this passion with, or maybe even transmit it to, my children. But it seems they can't sit still long enough to read a book that doesn't have either a boy wizard, zombies or a crossbow-wielding teenager in it. I was thinking maybe a good film might spark some interest.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 19:23, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The affliction of the video-game age. Short attention span. Our generation was more into stories than non-stop action. The thing about the OK Corral story is not just the gunfight itself, but also the backstory of the characters and the moral ambiguity of most everyone involved. By contrast, it's hard to see any deeper meaning in The Transformers. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:58, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Pro/Antagonist never meet

In The Fifth Element, Gary Oldman and Bruce Willis' characters never meet or directly interact. Yet they are the antagonist and protagonist. And, if I remember correctly, Mila Jovovich's character never meets Oldman's either. Is there an industry term for this and can you name any other examples of this either in books or movies? Dismas|^(talk) 19:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to say just exactly who the tagonists in Rebecca are. The title character Rebecca (the first Mrs De Winter) never appears, having died before the book started, and consequently never meets the main active female character, the second Mrs De Winter (the Joan Fontaine character in the movie). Which of these women is the protagonist? The most antagonistic character in the book - one of the most maleficent in all literature - is the housekeeper Mrs Danvers, but that doesn't necessarily make her the antagonist. She did know both the Mesdames de Winter, of course, but we never see her communicating with the first one, because, as I say, Rebecca's a prehumous character. Then there's Max de Winter, who is more powerful than his second wife (something the early critics failed to pick up on), but was apparently under the thumb from his first. Such a fascinating interplay of character structures. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:34, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Frodo Baggins and Sauron never actually meet. --Jayron32 21:11, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the movies From Russia With Love and Thunderball, Bond never meets Ernst Stavro Blofeld, aka "Number 1".

( additionally in From Russia With Love, Bond also doesn't meet Kronsteen, the Russian chessmaster. )

90.244.129.56 (talk) 00:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on what you mean by "meet," IIRC (and as far as my dad can remember, too), Kirk and Khan are never in the same room in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, though they do communicate by viewscreen. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:17, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I'm not aware of any such term, industry or otherwise, for this specific dramatic archetype, and I'd be surprised to learn one existed, given it's a rather specific scenario unlikely to necessitate a go-to shorthand. At the same time, it's not all that much of a rarity -- plenty of stories feature adversaries (or individuals working at cross purposes) who never physically cross paths, whether that means they are unaware of one-another or utilize intermediaries or some other remote antagonism. In this case, even though Oldman's character, Zorg, never occupies the same room as Willis' (Korbin Dallas, AKA Space John McClane), Zorg nonetheless directs every element of conflict in the plot (though a pawn himself). In fact, the two nearly come face-to-face and only miss doing so by a mater of a few seconds after Oldman's character exits a hallway in one direction even as Bruce Willis enter the scene by exiting an elevator. And this immediately follows the scene, which you must have forgotten, in which Oldman's character shoots Jovovich's half to death, so he did in fact interact directly with the other protagonist. The primary villain being the head of a vastly powerful and innately dangerous organization who works initially or entirely through lieutenants and other agents is so common to Luc Besson's films that I honestly can't think of a single exception. The only other plot device that can be said to be more common to his films is that the female lead will inevitably at some point (or throughout the film) be completely dependent upon heroic and flashy rescue by the male lead, whether the rescued female lead is altogether helpless in general or outside that context is a "genetically perfect" fighting machine...but I digress. In any event, I expect if you are going to find a name for this plot mechanism, you will find it at TVTropes.org -- here is their list of identified common themes for villains, so I'd start looking there for your best chance at finding a term and a listing of other examples; though it's by no means a certainty even there and any term found is unlikely to be in common use elsewhere, if you do find one, there will be a list of stories known to employ it. A fair warning, however -- if you have not visited TVtropes previously be prepared for the eventuality that you might end up spending an evening of feverish reading not all that dissimilar to what you might have experienced the first time you utilized Wikipedia! At least, that was the similar experience for me. :) Snow talk 00:36, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Another thought - is the original question about fiction only, or does it include productions based on historical events ?

In movies such as Battle Of Britain and Battle Of Midway, the opposing commanders never meet, as they never met in real history...

90.244.129.56 (talk) 03:31, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the responses. I hadn't considered war films/books but you raise a good point about them. And yes, Snow Rise, I've been to TVTropes and agree that it's harder to get out of than quicksand. :) Dismas|^(talk) 07:43, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ownership of a television show

I don't know much about how the TV industry works. But who "owns" The Brady Bunch TV show? So, back in 1969 (when the show began), someone somewhere had – for example – audition tapes, publicity photographs, scripts, interview notes, props, sets, payroll records, cast lists, and all sorts of material of that nature. Who would "own" all that stuff? Who would "own" it back then? And who would "own" it today? Thanks! Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:02, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The studio or production company would have been the original owner, and may still be. That company may sell the entire program to a syndicator, but usually they sell just the distribution rights. → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:25, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am not really talking about the TV program itself (the 117 episodes). I am talking about all those physical items (props, photos, audition tapes, scripts, etc.). Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:01, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would have been owned by the studio where the show was shot; it is unlikely that after nearly 40 years they still kept all that stuff in storage. Some of the stuff may have been since kept as mementos or given out as gifts to people who worked on the show; some may have been repurposed or reused in other shows, some may have been sold off to collectors, museums, or the like, and a lot of it was probably just thrown away. --Jayron32 21:10, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. OK, the physical props and sets and such are probably long gone. My main interest is photographs. Here is an example. Since Ann B. Davis died just recently, old photos of her are showing up all over the place. Old photographs from The Brady Bunch, old photographs from The Bob Cummings Show, etc. Where do people (TV stations, magazines, newspapers, internet sites, etc.) get these old photographs from? They go and contact the studio (that existed fifty years ago) that owns these photographs? That's what I am not understanding. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 21:41, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many of these would be publicity photos which were often mass produced and given to various press agencies to use for promotional purposes. The copyright on these would be owned by the original copyright holder. If you want to know who owns the actual prints; there were hundreds or thousands of these things made. You'll often find racks of them in antique stores, poster shops, used record stores, and places like that. Or you did before the Internet killed those businesses. Now you can find them on E-bay: here is a bunch for sale featuring the aforementioned Ms. Davis. Some of these (probably the cheap ones) are likely reproductions of questionable provenance and legality, but I'm sure some number of these are authentic publicity photos produced by the studio at the time of the show's original run. --Jayron32 23:43, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, when a news organization runs one of these photos, they don't need to get an original copy. They all have digital copies on file already (and probably have for decades); they have a license to reproduce them in their publications. That's what publicity photos are for and how they are intended to be used. --Jayron32 23:46, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And actually, now that I think about it more, I don't believe news agencies maintain their own photo libraries much anymore either. It's probably all outsourced to companies akin to Getty Images or the like who maintain all the photos for use, and the newspaper just gets it from them. --Jayron32 00:02, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not unusual for some of those items to be donated, bequeathed or otherwise gifted to various (often public or non-profit) film and television archives. There are large "prop houses" and "costume houses" that have made a point, over the years, of purchasing props and costumes for archiving, collecting and re-selling purposes. Those are often more commercial. With regard to images in particular, film and television archives often keep these as part of the production records for a particular television show. Television channels and news media organisations regularly contribute to those collections from their own archives (from my Australian experience) and so a quid-pro-quot arrangement often exists to ensure that those channels (in turn) then have access to other materials kept by those archives. This gives them easier access to footage and images that they might not have themselves. Archives, and often the channels themselves, develop "packages" for older television, movie and music stars so that they have something prepared should that person pass away. This is especially the case where someone has a long-term or terminal illness. But when a personal passes away, those archives will often search their records, pull everything they have relating to that person and make those resources available to various news organisations. So items not previously in the public domain or not otherwise available in advance might suddenly become available. Hope that provides some further insight. St★lwart¹¹¹ 00:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:54, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Groucho Marx - movie joke about searching a woman suspect....

A silly question perhaps. :)

Which Marx Brothers movie contains the following scene:
A woman is suspected of... having stolen a secret document or such ?
Someone suggests: "You should search her"

Groucho turns to the camera and says:
"You know, if this was a French movie, I'd be allowed to..."
90.244.129.56 (talk) 22:10, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's been a while since I've last seen it, and I don't remember all the gags, but Animal Crackers involves the investigation of a theft. You might want to look into that one. --Jayron32 23:33, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Much of the description also fits the plot of Duck Soup (1933 film). I did some googling and didn't come up with anything. May be a good excuse to pull the DVD off the shelf but it will be a few days before I can get to it. MarnetteD | Talk 01:58, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't sound familiar. Groucho is a detective in a movie called Love Happy which I have never seen. Could that be it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:44, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Groucho isn't onscreen much in that one. I thought it might be the scene with Marilyn but this shows that it isn't. A Night in Casablanca is another possibility as it has some spy type shenanigans in it. MarnetteD | Talk 03:08, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Someone at this Snopes message board thread (search for "Groucho") remembers the gag somewhat differently, specifying that Groucho's interlocutor was Margaret Dumont. Of course, the brothers may well have repeated the joke in more than one film/context, but I have to admit, it's not ringing any bells with me. Deor (talk) 19:55, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think I may have it... ( well don't give it to me... o_O )

Searching on groucho "If this were a French" returns among the results the following from Google Books:

The Comic World of the Marx Brothers' Movies: "anything Further Father?" by Maurice Charney - page 19

Even in a late movie like Love Happy in 1950, in which Groucho plays a minor role, he is still making fun of the censors when he is about to search for the Romanoff diamonds in Mme. Egelichi's spectacular cleavage. His hands travel up to Ilona Massey's capacious bosom then stop abruptly: "If this were a French picture I could do it"

After searching on YouTube with various combinations of: ilona massey, marx, groucho, love happy ; the only copy of the scene I've been able to find thus far is in a full copy of the movie, dubbed in Spanish, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiaAUeukKQ8.

Late in the movie - 1hr 19m - Groucho moves to search Harpo's character, changes his mind, moves instead to search Ilona Massey's character, stops, turns to camera, and says... something dubbed into Spanish... :)

90.244.129.56 (talk) 21:15, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He says "Si fuera una película francesa, lo haría" (If this were a French film, I would do it). --NorwegianBlue^talk 17:03, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think we can safely say this question is solved then... ?

90.244.132.79 (talk) 05:34, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]