'Argo' never let the facts stand in the way of a good story

>>> pearl harbor . braveheart. chariots of fire . what's the one thing these historical movies have in common? all in a way inaccurate. fdr had polio and he would not have been able to stand up in " pearl harbor ." "braveheart" from the lowlands of ireland and no kilt and " chariots of fire " he won the race first and lost the second race. even the movies won best picture at the oscars and this year's apparent front-runner "argo." spoiler alert, chasing the plane, didn't happen in real loif.

>> what?

>> what?

>> sorry about that, guys. does playing it fast and loose with the facts matter in historical movies? next guest thinks so. andrew o'hare, a senior film critic for salon.com saying it's a painful history in to a cheesy propaganda thriller. andrew , in your essay this week, which is -- i encourage everyone to read. it's always fun to read. especially when you don't like things. you sdraw a distinction of "lincoln and" the vote on the 13th amendment and connecticut voted no and they voted yes. can you tell us what you found so offensive, you kauld it a propaganda fable. what is it that made you feel that way?

>> really, with "ar go" the entire basically third act of the film didn't happen the way they said it did and converted a real life story in to a conventional kind of hollywood thriller and reassuring film in which the americans are the good guys and the iran hostage crisis works out great and i feel like ben affleck kind of seths it up so that it's historical when they want to be and bring in jimmy carter . i'm sorry if you haven't seen it yet, people.

>> killing it, andrew .

>> to talk at the end of the film and then all these thriller beats with nothing to do with what happened. it's sort of just this very soft focus feel good approach to history i think does a disservice.

>> well, now that people know that carter is in at the end, ticket sales explode.

>> i'm there tonight.

>> i wonder then given all of the liberties that they took in the third act, and given the actual historical story, do you think there was a movie to be made here at all and what kind of movie would you like to have been seen if there is?

>> to me, it is not like the individual things is i think defensib defensible. i like that they blew up the hollywood aspect of it and alan arkin and things i think are totally fine but the wholesale fictionalization to make it feel more like a hollywood movie kind of eventually rubbed me the wrong way. the real stories , in fact, very interesting. they came to teheran with three very different cover stories and they picked in the embassy movie cover story as more successful because more implausible. the revolutionary guard would not suspect a movie crew because it was an outrageous cover story and could have made the film dramatic and realistic at the same time and i think just feel like it's such a formulaic designed film for a conventional audience expectations.

>> why do you have to be such a nudge and the debbie downer ? no. i loved "argo" and under your criticism but tell me behind the scenes , is the academy's job to bring it back to the oscars, the academy's job to judge it as a piece of art or does that matter to judges? is that the point that it should matter?

>> yeah. i think it -- the academy is a trade show and what represents the american film industry in the most favorable light. no coincidence that this film depicts, you know, hollywood as a hero. you know?

>> yeah.

>> as other people besides me observed. the takeaway may be hollywood got the hostages out which really isn't exactly the way it happened but is -- it's very flattering portrayal of sort of sarcastic and flattering portrayal of the film industry and never hurts. think about the artist last year.

>> yeah.

>> this is a very, very butter you up kind of movie and not a terrible movie. not trying to completely rain all over ben affleck 's parade.

>> oh good.

>> but i think it's good less than the sum of the parts.

>> andrew , i really disagree with your thesis here. basically you are saying that hollywood movie is dramatized. oh no. and what they're doing is trying to get at some sort of emotional truth. it was difficult to get out of iran . they're not lying to you and saying they got out of iran and they didn't. trying to use dramatization to give you the feeling of how difficult do gut of iran in this situation. man, using artistic license in the service of emotional truth is what hollywood does and should do and coming off a little bit of a lame scold right now.

>> okay, yeah. but make a better movie. that's my point. this one feels like so many other thrillers. if you're going to fictionalize it, got to deliver. you don't want crazy guards with beards and chasing the plane down the runway at the last minute because you think that plays better with the audience. it's a cynical choice to write. that's what i'm saying.

>> tell it.

>> yes.

>> triple boom!

>> we all have a -- i was saying before the show, we have our own movies that drive us nuts. my personal one is "rudy." all wrong. that's another story. andrew o'hare of salon.com, my writing home, too, thank you for joining us. we might have dominated that segment sort of but research shows that women --

>> what?

>> this is what the script says. read what they put in front of me. go bleep yourself, san diego . actually, talk more than men. but according to the university of maryland school of medicine , the average woman speaks about 20,000 words a day. the average man utters about 7,000 a day. as not a huge surprise and same researchers say they might know why. their brains contain 30% of the so-called language protein.

>> i knew it!

>> no, no.

>> involved in vocalization. like always, we want you to vocalize your thoughts. so this is 7,000 words right here. we asked the facebook friends, who talks about things you want to hear. david says, what? i wasn't listening.

>> wah wah !

>> get on the facebook if you haven't done it already and like "the cycle."

>>> are you young, working hard and sick of a bad rap? enjoy this. straight ahead, millennials fight back. who picked this song?