Did I tell you the one about the man who was murdered in a wood chipper? Or the ghost that made its unlikely cinematic debut in Three Men and a Baby? I promise you, the stories are true and you won’t believe how I know!
We all have that one friend. The guy with the unbelievably offbeat and dark story which happened to a friend of a friend’s half sister but which absolutely, 100% definitely, maybe happened. Try as we might, we cannot squeeze the truth out of the friend’s mouth. Stubborn to the end, the over-exaggerating storyteller is ironically faithful to the blatant lie, never letting up for a second. What, then, when the over-excitable friend is writ large to an entire industry or an entire population? Do we listen to what they say? Do we play along with them? We’re talking film and Hollywood, that industry of stories and legends that sometimes gets a little too ahead of itself. Whilst pushing untruths into the laps of millions of cinema-goers, sometimes, Hollywood goes one further and perpetuates myths about itself.
The very best urban legends have been spawned from some of the very best cinematic legends. Good storytelling seems to travel far; as if one great tale isn’t enough, a lot of our favourite on-screen narratives have outlived themselves, creating legends which last beyond the boundaries of the cinema screen. And whilst we probably can’t trust many of them, like the friend who always tells us lies, we can’t stop going back.
Let’s start, then, with the most innocuous of all cinematic legends, the tale which will make you blink a few times, scratch your head and say “ah well”. 1987 brought us many, many things. The perm, for one. In the midst of that year of memorable delights was nestled Three Men and a Baby, the wacky yet heart-warming tale of three men inexplicable thrown into the role of raising a single human being. Ahhh. What the film won’t tell you, though, is that it has a darker side, bubbling beneath its saccharine exterior. In a famous long take, Ted Danson’s character and his mother stroll through the vast, empty space of his apartment. For a split second in the background can be seen the chilling figure of an angry, dark-haired young boy, looking menacingly into the camera. Was it a ghost? Was it a demon? Sadly, no. Despite protestations from fans across the globe, it turned out that the boy was merely a cardboard cutout of Curson’s character in a top hat and tails. Hey, if it was a ghost, at least it was a fancy ghost.
Beloved to many, representative of a cinematic genre in their own right, the Coen Brothers have a back catalogue of work that is so comprehensive and developed, they could have written the book on cinema. In Fargo, they tell the tale of a grisly, small-town murder, conducted on the whim of a struggling husband. Whilst most remember the film for its depiction of the unfortunate demise of Steve Buscemi’s character, there may have been a little more going on behind the scenes. Whilst the film’s opening text “this is a true story” is as pared down as it gets, there have been rumblings that there may be truth in the vague claim, after all. Released in 1996, the film was scrutinised by a disconnected audience. In the early days of the internet, there was little way for cinema goers and critics to determine whether or not events in the film really took place. And so, they took the Coen Brothers at their word. Since its release, however, technology has somewhat advanced. It hasn’t taken people long to dispel the claims the Coen Brothers so nonchalantly placed in our laps. Just because someone says something, it doesn’t make it true. Shame on you, audience of 1996.
Like a broken clock which reads the correct time twice per day, so there are moments in which the urban legend turns out to be true and the yeasayers are left feeling even more smug. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has gone down in cinematic history as one of the most gruesome and chilling films ever to have been made. And whilst claims at the time of its release that the story was real may have been overblown somewhat, there are creepy aspects of truth to the grim tale. Leatherhead was based on a real man, Ed Gein, who took several lives over the course of a few years. Whilst the frenzied nature of the film condenses and manipulates the real killings, the acts of Ed Gein were none the less chilling. In fact, so lasting was the legend of Ed Gein that he was used as the model for both murderers in Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs. Proof that the truth never dies.
The final and perhaps most unsettling story comes from the darkest place imaginable. We all know that The Omen resurrected the antichrist in child form but it is what occurred away from the camera’s gaze that is truly unsettling. As if it were struck by maleficent force from the beginning, the film’s crew suffered a number of grisly near-misses and tragedies that have created a truly creepy aura around the film. Subject to multiple aeroplane malfunctionings, hotel bombings and near-fatal accidents, it seemed like the cast and crew couldn’t catch a break. But it didn’t end there. Special effects designer John Richardson was the mind behind one of the film’s most gruesome scenes, a decapitation by glass. Two months later, basking in the success of the film, Richardson was travelling down a road in the Netherlands. It was there that he was involved in a freak accident, tragically decapitated by glass. According to some reports, Richardson’s accident had occurred by a road sign indicating that he was 66.6km away from the nearest town, Ommen.
Of course, we can never be sure. But, truly, do we want to be? When the legends surrounding a film are so intriguing, who cares to ever find the truth.