![]() And "Hollywoodland" does a superb job of portraying that essence, who George Reeves was, what his world was like, and what impact he had on those who knew him and those who only knew of him. What matters is whether the essence of a true story has been faithfully told. What matters is not whether a costume is the right shade of blue or whether there's really a gas station at the intersection of Sunset and Benedict Canyon. But as Alfred Hitchcock said, drama is life with the dull bits left out. It is true that "Hollywoodland" takes occasional liberties with specific facts, in no less way than Shakespeare took liberties with the real life facts of Hamlet or Julius Caesar. ![]() ![]() In any event, in any life, there is what happened and then there is the truth, and the two may not always equally serve our understanding of the event or life in question. While this is not a biography nor a documentary, and while adhering to each and every fact of Reeves's life would have resulted in a film exactly as long as his life, the artists here have done a powerful and affecting job of telling Reeves's story, and have framed it in a fictional setting that illuminates rather than obscures the truth. All I can say is that the makers of "Hollywoodland" came as close as is humanly possible in the real world of movie-making to achieving exactly what I would have hoped for - an examination of George Reeves's life and death that is true to the times he lived in, true to the kind of man I found him to be, and as true as possible to the most likely scenarios that have been projected to explain his death. I had previously turned down several offers for the film rights to my own book because I felt it unlikely that those projects would result in a film truthful to the essence of the man I had come to know so well. As someone who has spent a number of years preparing the definitive biography of actor George Reeves, I approached this film with great trepidation.
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