[WWI] Hooray for Hollywood....!

[Andy Bannister]

Really? What kind of inaccuracies? Merlin powered He111s, or Mk XII
Hurricanes & Mk IX Spits? I can forgive that just as I can forgive the
Harvards masquerading as Zeros in Tora, Tora, Tora because at least they
tried and they did the best they could with what they had. With CG aircraft
they really have no excuse. 
Perhaps they dramatised a lot of the scenes but they are close to what I've
read about both battles. Not like that means they told it exactly like it
was to a pilot who was actually there, but then, I would imagine (and again,
from what I've read) everyone involved had different experiences.
Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: wwi-bounces at wwi-models.org [mailto:wwi-bounces at wwi-models.org] On
Behalf Of ernest thomas
Sent: 25 September 2006 21:44
To: wwi at wwi-models.org
Subject: Re: [WWI] Hooray for Hollywood....!


Andy,
Try watching Battle of Britain with an old Spitfire pilot who was there and 
you'll get a feel for just how wildly inaccurate that movie was. He(Doug 
Tidy) had all of the same type of complaints that we have with Flyboys. I 
suspect it would be the same with Tora Tora Tora, especially if you watched 
it with someone who was there on the Japanese side.
I also watched Hunt for Red October with a guy who was an officer on a 
modern nuke sub and he laughed his ass off all the way through. Anyway,
you're right, a lot of the 'crap' in Flyboys would have been just as 
easy to do correctly, like saying they were short on linen instead of 
canvas, giving Casidy 16 or less kills instead of 20. A historically 
accurate script doesn't cost a dime more than an incorrect script. E.

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose 
both, and deserve neither."
Thomas Jefferson


>From: "Andy Bannister" <a.bann at ntlworld.com>
>Reply-To: World War I Modeling Mailing List <wwi at wwi-models.org>
>To: "'World War I Modeling Mailing List'" <wwi at wwi-models.org>
>Subject: Re: [WWI] Hooray for Hollywood....!
>Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2006 20:55:44 +0100
>
>Sorry, no I disagree with you there Joel. "Battle of Britain" and 
>"Tora, Tora, Tora" (for instance) were both superb films and for the 
>most part historically accurate (yes the characters in BofB were 
>fictious but they were based on real characters and most of the events 
>were accurate). I know many people who know nothing about aircraft 
>and/or military history yet they still enjoyed the films. I enjoy them 
>both as much now with a bit of knowledge as I did when I saw them as a 
>child with no knowledge of history or accuracy.
>They've obviously done quite a bit of homework for Flyboys - how much 
>harder
>would it have been to go all the way and make them even more accurate? 
>Would
>it have made it any less enjoyable or profitable? I doubt it. Seems to me
>it's just as easy to make a historically & technologically accurate film as
>it is to make one that's complete bollocks and it will stand the test of
>time better. I wonder if "The Ten Commandments" would have been taken
>seriously if there were dinosaurs tramping about Egypt and Moses was a CG
>creation?
>Andy