BLOG POST *1

The movie Radio, released in 2003, was based on a true story of a South Carolina High School Football coach, Harold Jones, and his mentally challenged assistant James Robert "Radio". The inspiration for the movie came from a 1996 Sports illustrated article by Gary Smith entitled "Someone To Lean On". Radio had always been teased and mocked by the community that he lived in, but then the coach began to mentor him. Their friendship raised some eyebrows at first but once Radio began helping coach the football team, the community came to love him. He continued to work with the team for 38+ years.

When you watch this movie in theatres you feel like it is really happening like you were there when the kids pick on him. The movie pulls on your heart and makes you cry because you can feel what he, Radio, must be feeling. The Things They Carried does the same thing. Like in the story of the baby buffalo you feel as if you were there with Rat Kiley watching him torture the animal.

Another example would be when movies are made about murders, more than likely the people who are writing the books and making the films were not there to watch the murder. So the only thing that they can do is base their story off of someone Else's. At that point no one would know what was real and what wasn't because all of the true memories would become tangled with the details that were made up to fill the places of the ones that were lost because no one could remember.

In both movies and books, directors and writers have to add a details to the true story to make the story more real to their audience, just like Tim O'Brien tells us. "The normal details are necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness".

I believe that this enhances your viewing experience more than anything, anything that all owes you to truly feel what is going on with the characters does not detract from an experience at all. Whether it is truth or based on truth is not the point, the point is the experience.