The controversial Clint Eastwood movie accused of “malicious fabrications”
Controversy and Clint Eastwood have rarely gone hand-in-hand, especially as it relates to his work behind the camera, where the four-time Academy Award winner has gained a reputation for being efficient, economical, and never rocking the boat to a significant extent.
However, in transforming a true story into a pointed drama that claimed to be based on nothing but facts, the portrayal of one character, in particular, opened the doors to outrage, calls for a boycott, and accusations of “malicious fabrications” being levelled at the production.
There was an air of cruel irony, too, considering the fate that initially befell the subject of 2019’s Richard Jewell. The titular security guard was hailed as a hero for discovering a bomb in Atlanta’s Centennial Park, with the authorities being immediately contacted to oversee a rapid and large-scale evacuation that resulted in one fatality and over 100 injuries when the device detonated.
However, during the course of the subsequent investigation, Jewell was shoehorned into the profile being developed by the authorities and ended up becoming a suspect himself. It was journalist Kathy Scruggs who initially broke the story that Jewell was under investigation, with the investigative reporter being played in the film by Olivia Wilde.
On-screen, it’s intimated that she trades sexual favours for information from Jon Hamm’s FBI agent. While the latter’s character was an amalgamation based on several different people, Wilde’s carried the name and personality traits of a very real person, which led to those who knew Scruggs condemning the film for the way she’d been depicted, especially when she’d died from a prescription drugs overdose in 2001 and was unable to defend herself.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution where she worked released a scathing statement in rebuttal of Eastwood’s movie, where Scruggs’ conduct was described as not only “entirely false and malicious,” but “extremely defamatory and damaging” to not only her reputation, but that of the publication where she was employed.
Another open letter was then issued, which demanded that studio Warner Bros. “immediately issue a statement publicly acknowledging that some events were imagined for dramatic purposes and artistic license and dramatization were used in the film’s portrayal of events and characters.” The studio did eventually acquiesce to that request, but it was kept until the very end of the credits once the story had drawn to a close.
It was putting a plaster over a bullet wound, with those who knew Scruggs personally and professionally continuing to decry Richard Jewell for what amounted to a character assassination in their eyes, with a studio-approved disclaimer outlining the artistic and creative licence hardly compensating for somebody they knew being played as a person ripped right from the big book of cinema’s female journalistic cliches.
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