AMERICAN SNIPER makes its most compelling statement an afterthought

When I first finished watching AMERICAN SNIPER, I'd probably have given it two stars out of four. There were a couple isolated good scenes, but it felt episodic and often dull. Worse, I really hated the ending. Like, HATED.  I wasn't sure I wanted to write a review where I focused 90% of it on a footnote at the end. If you want a review of this film in total, check out Drew McWeeny's take, which more or less aligns with mine.

As it happens, AMERICAN SNIPER is from a particular brand of film that makes you angrier every time you consider it. It's like an onion, the more you peel it back, the more it stinks. Because the problem with the ending is really a gangrene that infects this entire putrid piece of superficial filmmaking. There is a truly fascinating movie that could be mined from Chris Kyle's story and it's utterly ignored here.

I don't know how you make this film and NOT make PTSD a major, integral component.

Chris Kyle was "America's deadliest sniper," with more confirmed kills than any other marksman in U.S. history. He served four tours in the Iraq War. What that means is his time was up, but he kept going back for more - despite having a wife and two children back home who needed him. Kyle's wife in particular is perplexed by his need to keep going back there. For me, that makes her the most sympathetic character in the film. It's a lot easier to understand her fear of losing her husband than the compulsions that keep sending him into harm's way.

In one of the film's first scenes, we see a tense moment (depicted in the trailers) where Kyle has his scope trained on a kid who might be carrying a grenade. His other lookout can't confirm and so it's entirely his call to take the killshot. If he shoots and he's wrong, his ass will be fried. If he lets the kid go and he DOES have a grenade, a dozen or more soldiers could be killed.

That's a day at the office for him. And that's the movie I wish I saw more of. It's easy to imagine that self-preservation instincts will kick in and make it okay, but Kyle's not in the heat of battle. He's watching from a safe perch - he'll be fine either way, but his job demands he not only shoot a kid, but be damn sure it needed to be done. And he has seconds to make that call.

Live through four tours of that and you're going to be dealing with some serious Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's estimated that it affects about 11-20% of all combat vets from the Iraq War. We see a few symptoms of this in Kyle, though it's not called out as such until the last ten minutes of the film. There's one point where he returns to the States and doesn't go home or tell his wife. Instead he goes to a bar and she's hurt and confused when she learns he's back in America.

Chris Kyle was a guy who needed help. And this movie could have been a great way to explain PTSD to a wide audience that doesn't understand it. This film made over a $100M this past weekend alone. Think of all the minds that could have been woken up.

In real life, Chris Kyle seems to have been a seriously troubled guy. The movie doesn't deal with some of his more outrageous claims (such as that he went to New Orleans during Katrina and picked off looters with a sniper rifle from the top of the Superdome.) I can understand why the incidents considered unlikely to have happened were not adapted. And yet, doesn't the sheer fact that Kyle made such overblown proclamations point to the fact that the guy was dealing with some pretty major stuff? The movie pulls back Kyle's trauma to the point of defanging the tragedy of what war did to him.

In the final years of his life, Kyle worked with other soldiers suffering from PTSD. We get a taste of this in the film, but not nearly enough to make this land. And then comes the unforgiveable footnote. Kyle's fate - like Turing's in THE IMITATION GAME - is delivered via on-screen captions.  Except here, the fact and circumstances of his death are far more relevant to the film than in IMITATION GAME.

Because Chris Kyle was killed by another vet he was trying to help. A vet suffering from PTSD.

I don't think it does Kyle's memory much good to pretend that his four tours in the Iraq War didn't do incredible damage to the man. I don't think it honors the men who went over there and are still dealing with that to sweep the full scope of their trauma under the rug. This movie could have been a wake-up call to a nation - a call to arms for us to not abandon our soldiers and their medical needs once they've served their time.

It should be impossible to dislodge the contributing factors to Kyle's murder from the rest of his life. You cannot talk about Chris Kyle without talking about his final fate, because it paints an incomplete and erroneous picture of every thing that led up to it.

Throw out the politics of the film, throw out the repugnance of the fact that Eastwood overuses the device of Kyle weighing a killshot against a kid (it happens twice - SERIOUSLY), and ignore some of the uncomfortable racism. Give a pass on on those things that bother a lot of viewers and you're STILL left with a movie that misses the forest for the trees.

The PTSD story is right there and this movie is too dumb to see it. It's like doing the Magic Johnson story WOLF OF WALL STREET-style, showing him sleeping with hundreds of women and then tossing up a caption at the end saying "Oh, btw, Magic got AIDS."

Hell, it's like doing WOLF OF WALL STREET and ending after he's smuggled his cash into the Swiss Account, only to reveal via captions that he eventually got nailed by the FBI and turned informant.

I usually try to stick to the "critique the movie you're presented with, not the one you wish was made" style of criticism. In this case, the movie walks right up to pieces that would make it a much better film and just stands there. It's filmmaking malpractice to leave such rich dramatic material on the table. That the rest of the movie isn't all that good is pretty much a side note.

I did not enjoy AMERICAN SNIPER. I do not recommend AMERICAN SNIPER. That is not a judgement on Chris Kyle as a person or on veterans in general. I've seen a lot of idiots respond to criticism of this film by shouting something like "Chris Kyle was a great American! See this to support our boys! If you don't like it, you're a libtard Commie pinko!" A movie about a great man isn't necessarily great.

You want to support our boys? You want to honor Chris Kyle? Give to the Wounded Warrior Project or to Disabled American Veterans.

12 Organizations working to raise PTSD awareness.

Ignoring when real life gives you a better ending: THE IMITATION GAME

I saw THE IMITATION GAME and AMERICAN SNIPER last week. As the two of them have had a lot of Oscar buzz surrounding them I went into both films with high hopes. As it turned out, the Top 20 films of 2014 posts that I wrote a couple weeks ago are in no need of being revised.

Both films are "based on a true story," and what was interesting to me was that both films shared a common infuriating flaw: the protagonist's death was relegated to a footnote. My jaw dropped when THE IMITATION GAME tossed off Alan Turing's suicide as a text caption over a final celebratory moment. Later, I was flat out infuriated at the way AMERICAN SNIPER threw in a description of Chris Kyle's murder with all the grace of a handwritten note explaining "Note: Poochie died on his way back to his home planet."

I am not one of those people who thinks a "based on a true story" film needs to be a total biopic of its subject from birth to death. Hell, I prefer it when it's not. When I was a reader, I saw so many bad biopic scripts that were just trying to cram in EVERYTHING about their subject. You can usually get a far more effective movie if you hone in on one particular aspect of a character's life and explore that. A good example of this done right? SELMA.

The issue with the two movies I'm discussing today is that their subject's deaths inform so much about their lives and are directly relevant to the stories that are told in the narrative. Alan Turing built a computer that broke Nazi codes in World War II and in doing so, likely shortened the war by two years and saved tens of thousands of lives. This man was a hero as surely as anyone who fought in World War II.

And what happened to him later in life? Well, his work was classified, so there was no public recognition of what he did. Even worse than the lack of glory was the fact that he was later prosecuted for being a homosexual, because in 1952, it was a crime to be gay in the United Kingdom. Offered a choice of going to jail or chemical castration, he took the castration.  (Presumably the irony of punishing homosexual acts by sending one to jail would not set in until years later when the HBO series OZ reached the UK's shores.)

In the film, we're not shown a trial. There's no big dramatic moment when we see the state pronounce sentence on a man who saved their asses in World War II. We're given a framing story that would have set all this up, but we learn about the conviction and the castration in one scene between Turing and his ex-beard. It dulls the impact of the injustice somewhat and then even more offensively, his suicide gets NO on-screen depiction.

Yeah, he kills himself - almost certainly because of that pain of what the state put him through and somehow the movie glides right past that. I'm not just angry as someone fascinated by Turing, I'm angry as a writer. How the hell do you leave that dramatic moment on the table?

Despite that, THE IMITATION GAME is a serviceable movie. It's well-acted and competently directed. It's not standout and is the kind of film that in a few years you might strain to remember, but it does more right than it does wrong.

AMERICAN SNIPER on the other hand.....

You know what? Let's deal with that tomorrow.

The need for truth in "based on a true story"

Let me give you a little background to this post.  A little over a week ago, my friends Geoff LaTulippe and Scott Beggs over at Broken Projector discussed the issue of fidelity to the truth in content that's labeled as "based on a true story." In particular, they were discussing the case of a twitter account whose author claimed to be dying of terminal cancer.  Those who followed the feed found it to be inspirational and quite moving, and they were saddened when a final tweet announced the author's passing.

It didn't take long for people to begin questioning the veracity of the account.  As the story became less and less plausible upon examination, the followers started to feel duped and hoodwinked.  Geoff and Scott batted this issue around, with Geoff essentially taking the position, "Who cares? Does it matter?"  Is there a responsibility to be 100% accurate when telling a story that's ostensibly based on actual events?  They invited their listeners to write in with their thoughts on that debate.

This happened to be an issue I've given a lot of thought over the years, so I dashed off a not-small email to the fine gents.  On their show this week, they gave the issue another airing and encouraged me to post the letter in full on my blog. Then to drive home the point, they got on Twitter and attempted to get their followers to bully me into posting it.

Message received.  What follows is the email I sent them, with a few revisions and additions for clarity:

The first time I can ever really remember thinking about this question was when I was in middle school and ran across a Roger Ebert piece on JFK. The whole piece is worth reading in full, but I'll reproduce a few key paragraphs below:

"Their criticisms all boiled down to a couple of key points: They felt Stone's movie was based on unsupportable speculation, and they believed his film's hero, former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, was an unscrupulous publicity seeker who drummed up his celebrated case against Clay Shaw out of thin air.

"These points are no doubt well-taken. I believe they are irrelevant to the film, which is not a documentary, not a historical study and not a courtroom presentation, but a movie that weaves a myth around the Kennedy assassination - a myth in which the slain leader was the victim of a monstrous conspiracy. The pollsters tell us that most Americans believe this anyway. Even Tom Wicker, down deep in his piece, says he does not believe the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Well, who does? And yet the image of Oswald as the lone killer has been the official establishment myth for 28 years. Is it such a terrible thing Stone has done, to weave a countermyth?

"Here on the movie beat, I always sort of quail when anybody makes a film that ventures out of pure Hollywood fantasy and into the real lives of the experts in the front section of the newspaper. I'm sure to be treated to many analytical studies of the factual accuracy of the film, in which the writers may be sound in their knowledge of history, but seem to have little idea why they or anyone else in the audience really goes to see a movie. People will not buy tickets to "JFK" because they think Oliver Stone knows who killed Kennedy. And when "Babe" comes out this summer, and inspires all sorts of disillusioned analysis on the sports page, that movie's factual accuracy will have nothing to do with the tickets it sells, either.

"People go to the movies to be told a story. If it is a good story, they will believe it for as long as the movie lasts. If it is a very good story, it may linger in their memory somewhat longer. In the case of "JFK," which I think is a terrific example of storytelling, what they will remember is not the countless facts and conjectures that the movie's hero spins in his lonely campaign to solve the assassination. What they will remember (or, if they are young enough, what they will learn) is how we all felt on Nov. 22, 1963, and why for all the years afterward a lie has seemed to lodge in the national throat - the lie that we know the truth about who murdered Kennedy."

A perspective like that is why I'm generally pretty forgiving about "inaccuracies" in movies like CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. When the distortions are in service to the story and as long as nothing truly batshit happens like aliens rescuing the ship, I can live with some fudging in terms of specific characters and attitudes. But then I can't help but remember that in another review of a movie based on a real-life incident, Ebert muses that "for an entire generation, this will be how they remember the truth." I can't remember the film or the real life incident, unfortunately. But I get where this is coming from - if APOLLO 13 implied that the malfunction was the work of Russian spies looking to cripple the NASA space program, that would be beyond the pale, no matter how much drama it made for.

So to some degree, I think that the need for fidelity in filmmaking varies with the scope of the incident and the significance of the incident to the larger world. It'd be easy to say a blanket "Who cares?" but I don't think it's that black-and-white. Now just to contradict myself, I'll revisit an issue that was batted around a few weeks ago.  The whole story with THE BRINGING really strikes me as distasteful. To take a real life incident where someone actually died and use their real names while wrapping it up in a supernatural context strikes me as really distasteful. Even though this real-life story is relatively unknown (I hadn't heard of it until the film), it bothers me that the script seems to capitalize on that tragedy when it would be so easy to change the names and merely allow the story to be vaguely inspired by the real incident, as most LAW & ORDER eps are.

And yet, I don't have a problem with the myriad of time-travel stories that deal with someone going back to the Kennedy Assassination, even when the story reveals that the traveler ends up being the assassin. I recognize there are a lot of contradictions in my stance.

With regard to the internet hoaxes discussed on the podcast, I think that it's ridiculous to get fired up over things like if Diane in 7A was real or not. If someone was using that viral lie to solicit money or otherwise profit from it, then I'd have an issue. In general, most harmless Twitter hoaxes don't bug me. This also includes THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. I thought it was brilliant how they tried to add some verisimilitude to the whole thing by building that internet rabbit hole for people to fall down if they attempted to do an internet search on that story.

When it comes to someone like James Frey, though, fuck that guy. I mean, it turns out that lying to Oprah is the least of that guy's sins, but I think once you've gone on Oprah and tried to pass your hack writing off as a real memoir, you deserve what you get when people call it out. If the BLAIR WITCH filmmakers appeared on Oprah under the pretense they wanted to raise awareness about these missing kids and how Maryland was doing nothing to find them, then they'd be rightly drawn and quartered when the truth came out.

(And as indicated, my disgust with Frey is at an extreme because of the story in the link above. I think people who prey on naive writers are the lowest of the low.  Taking advantage of someone's naivete in order to get them to sign over basically all rights to their creative work with an insulting low pay scale is really offensive.  As far as I'm concerned it's indefensible.  For a fellow writer to do that to people who look up to him as a mentor is about the slimiest thing ever. So yeah, fuck that guy.)

So I don't know. I think it would help if there was agreement on what consisted a major inaccuracy in an adaptation. I'm tired of every Oscar season turning into hit piece after hit piece on these "based on a true story" films. Sometimes the changes are major, but when we get to stuff like nitpicking deliberate timeline inaccuracies or composite characters, it gets out of hand.

In the second podcast, Geoff touched in this and said that he had no issue with those kinds of articles if they approached it from a more academic standpoint.  In other words, if they come from the angle of "Look at what they changed and understand why some of that was necessary," it could be educational about the process of writing a script.  Too often, these pieces carry the subtext of "They changed a few facts so this movie doesn't deserve an Oscar."  I'm not sure that should be one of the main criteria when evaluation how effective a film is as a piece of drama.

So what are your feelings on adapting true stories?  I'm curious to see where some of you draw the line.

Reader questions: putting fictional characters into real history and making sure your idea is original

Let's take a few questions.  Doug asks:

I love your blog and wanted to ask a quick question about a specific subject matter: historical fiction. Specifically, incorporating a fictional character into real events over a period of time. Is it too risky to attempt, especially for a first-time screenwriter? Or if risky is not the word, maybe too daunting when maybe something less complex might be a better alternative for a first attempt at screenwriting?

That's a pretty broad question, and as with many concerns - a lot depends on the story you're trying to tell.  For example, Forrest Gump does this sort of thing rather well, but it could be argued that a lot of that has to do with the film's tone.  The movie manages to be dramatic while still having a light enough touch that moments like Forrest meeting President Kennedy don't come across as too silly.  Perhaps mastering that delicate balance is something that's beyond a first-time writer, but then, there are LOT of things beyond the first-time writer.

There's also the Titanic approach, where a fictional character is weaved into established history and even interacting with significant players in the real events.  This is an approach that would demand a lot of research and the writing ability to translate that research into compelling drama.  The degree of difficulty on that is higher than your standard spec, so it's probably fair to say the first-timer may be vexed by it.

I think this comes down to knowing how to walk before you run.  If you've never written a screenplay before, the challenge of knowing when to be true to established events and knowing when to take dramatic license can be a tricky one.  But I think part of pulling off difficult projects is the knowledge that it SHOULDN'T be easy.

If it was me, I'd cut my teeth on something less ambitious first, knowing that other story will always be there for me when I'm ready for it.  But if you're feeling bold and don't have any delusions that it'll be a cakewalk, maybe you want to take the plunge.

Sharup asks:

I have one quick question: Is there a way I can find out that if a logline or concept I've come up with has been already done before or is in current development by someone else? I'm currently working on a couple of screenplays but I'd like to ensure that the storylines behind them are purely original before committing so much time and effort into writing them and then have a reader tell me that it's already been done before. 

Well, you could always try googling your idea. Regularly reading all the entertainment news and trade websites should keep you abreast of a lot of things in the pipeline too.  You also should remember that the story concept is just one part of what makes a script great.  Even if you come up with a concept that's been done before, if your execution is unique, you can overcome that familiarity.  After all, both Armageddon and Deep Impact deal with an asteroid headed for Earth, but the two movies almost couldn't be more differnt.

Perhaps a more relevant example is that of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN and WHITE HOUSE DOWN, both of which are built around terrorist attacks on the White House.  I imagine that many a reviewer will enjoy drawing comparisons between the two once the latter opens later this year.

"Based on a true story."

Jeff asks:

 

My question has to do with when is a story "based on a true story" and when is it not. I imagine it's a fuzzy line that varies case-by-case.

Here's my case. Some years ago, I wrote a magazine article about a family that survived a life-and-death experience. A producer I respect is encouraging me to write the story as a script (no, he's not offering money for that). He wants me to get permission from each of the three people involved so they're on board. The trouble is the mom divorced the father and neither she or the daughter want to have anything to do with him. They say that if he's involved, they won't grant me permission. So, I'm left with these options: (1) write the script but replace the father's character with a fictional one, nothing like the real guy, or (2) forget the whole thing. I think it would make for a hell of a story even with a fictional husband, but I'm wondering if doing so means the movie wouldn't qualify as "based on a true story". Am I right in thinking an action story is an easier marketing sell if it can claim to be "true"?

 

First off, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak to specifically when the "based on a true story" disclaimer becomes invalid.  I would think that if you have the permission and participation of one of the principals, that makes it valid.  Not knowing the particulars of this specific story, I can't really offer an opinion on how much it would harm the accuracy to change the characterization of the father.

If you've got a producer who's interested, this should really be a question for him.  He already knows the story and he'd be better positioned to tell you how much it hurts his marketing angle.

Not knowing the story itself, I can't say how much of a difference the "based on a true story" tag would make for the marketing.  My gut reaction is that it becomes more valuable to you the more fantastic the story gets.  A good recent example is Argo.  The notion that the CIA would use a fake Hollywood movie as cover for a hostage rescue operation seems so unlikely and so absurd that you can't help but have your interest piqued once you know this really happened.

(Of course, many of the complications in Argo's third act are entirely invented and the script takes some other liberties along the way, but the core of the story really happened.)

In the case of Argo, the fact it really happened undoubtedly intrigued the producers who eventually made it, and I'd be shocked if they didn't use that fact to sell the studio on an idea that might have otherwise seemed to absurd to be plausible.

On the other hand, if you're dealing with something slightly more run of the mill like a family fighting back after a home invasion, perhaps the "true story" tag is less essential.  This is one of those case-by-case basis things - but as I said, your producer is probably the guy to give you a real answer on this.

Reader questions - Overdone concepts and integrity in "true stories"

Lamtim had a few good questions. I'll tackle the first bunch.

How about a blog about how you'd approach tackling a really hoary old story? If you were well-paid by a company (and let's assume you need the gig) to adapt or develop material that felt played-out?

I've thought about doing something like this, but the problem is that any time I've started, I've fallen so in love with the idea that I feel like I'd rather develop it in private. And when I haven't fallen in love with the concept, I find that I don't have much enthusiasm for spending a blog post or several going through the motions.

On a related note, it'd be great to see a list from you on the top ten overdone stories you see in specs. Which ideas land on the readers' desks over and over again? 

I feel like I've touched on this before. Overdone cliches tend to bug me more than overdone stories, though I have really hit my limit on the following:

1) Morally-conflicted hitman has to pull one last job.

2) Teenage guys are determined to lose their virginity before Prom/Homecoming/Graduation only to get into a lot of gross, bodily humor-driven conflict. (An inventive way to flip this that I really can't recall seeing? Make the protagonists teenage girls!)

3) Dramas where the long suffering lead character is a martyr dealing with an aged parent with Alzheimer's/Cancer while dealing with their own terminal illness/evil spouse/hellion of a spawn.

4) Slasher scripts that don't bring anything new to the table.

5) Scripts where an uber-straight male is forced to "act gay." The motivation is always forced and implausible. This is the updated version of "I have to pretend to be married so I can get that big promotion" and it's not any more inventive here.

6) Plotless stories where a bunch of guys in their early 20s sit around talking about their lives, drinking, and getting laid by insanely hot but insanely stupid women.

Next question. "Based on a true story." How faithful to actual events/people do you think a movie carrying this description needs to be... or is it nothing but a marketing hook? 

Honestly, I struggle with this one. If we're talking about an incredibly well-known event, then I think the filmmaker has a responsibility not to take too many liberties. If I was working on something like this, I'd never forget that this film could be how an entire generation remembers the events depicted therein. I'd want to be able to look at the finished project and feel like I maintained my integrity in telling that story.

With something like The Social Network, I get the sense that most of the events happen in a way close to the truth, though they take some liberties with regard to Mark Zuckerberg. There's no mention made of the woman he was seeing at the time, who eventually became his wife. There's also a sense that Jesse Eisenberg plays him with a demeanor rather unlike how he is in real life.

The thing is, The Social Network is a great movie, so I'm more willing to overlook some of the changes made for the sake of drama. On the other hand, if Apollo 13 had been less faithful, my appreciation of it would probably be diminished.

And yet, it doesn't really bother me at all that A Beautiful Mind took so many apparent liberties with regard to its protagonist. JFK is another film that brings up this conflict. Compelling as a film, but historically dubious.

Better example - I loved The Hoax (see it if you haven't) and when I bought the book detailing the true story, I discovered that I think there's a limit to what the audience will accept. Mess with a history they know, and they'll approach the whole thing with skepticism. Give them an "untold" story, and you might have more leeway in how loose you can play with the truth.

Tuesday Talkback: "Based on a True Story"

I saw THE BLIND SIDE this weekend, a movie based on the true story of a homeless teenager who gets taken in by a wealthy southern family and eventually becomes and All-American football player and first round draft pick after developing both his athletic and academic ability. It was a decent film, and certainly worthy of all the good reviews it has been getting. However, I get the sense that it's one of those movies that in three years I'll have completely forgotten.

Anyway, during the film there were a few moments here and there where I would occasionally - and involuntarily - think "I bet that scene is either made up or at least an embellishment." In fact, after the movie, I briefly considered looking up more about the real story and seeing if any of my guesses were right. Then I asked myself, "Does it really matter? Shouldn't the only question be 'Was it an entertaining movie?'"

There are no Oscars given out for "Best Movie Based on a True Story" or "Best Movie Most Like the Actual Events" that inspired it. If the only objective is to produce a well-made movie that's an engaging piece of drama, why should it make any difference if the story is faithfully adapted or made up out of whole cloth?

I see a lot of scripts - some interesting, many boring - that put "Based on a True Story" on the cover page. While I can see the merit in it, there are times when the concept is so dull, or so overused, that it seems like the "true story" hook is meant as a preemptive defense against criticisms of derivative plots or weak drama. Suppose the script in question is yet another story about a teacher who inspires inner city students to find their inner Whitmans. Let's say it hits every expected beat - with the added bonus of only tepid conflict between the main characters.

But when one tries to give the writer notes that would make the script more interesting and dramatic, or suggests changes to make the lead character more flawed and compelling - the writer resists, saying "That's not what happened in real life!"

Should we care? Is there anything that says one can't just change the names to divorce the story from the real people and then rewrite the story with abandon? It is that important for a story to be "based on a true story?"

I've felt that if the only hook your story has is that it's "true," then you're in trouble. Real life is often boring. Would sticking "Based on a true story" on top of, say, BRIDE WARS automatically make it a better script? And at the same time, is the only appeal of PIRATE RADIO that it's "based on a real story?"

That's why the yearly scandals about how the "true life" Best Picture nominee takes liberties with real life are so ridiculous. By the same token, if you enjoy a particular reality show, do you watch because you find the drama compelling, or because the show is "real?" If the former, would it really matter if something like THE HILLS is staged and scripted more tightly than your average sitcom?

So let me ask you this - does it matter to you if a movie is "true?" Would that fact alone get you into the theatre? If not, at what point does that fact become a selling point? If you wouldn't see the movie when it's total fiction, why would claiming fidelity to actual events make the story any more compelling?

And if any of that makes a difference, why is it that audiences care about such details?