“Based on a true story” don’t always mean you’re about to hear the
truth. Filmmakers are producing entertainment; they have to change a few
things to make it work. It’s only natural that a movie is going to leave a few things out.
But it can be more than just a few things. Sometimes, the people who inspired our favorite movie heroes are completely different from what we see on the screen. Occasionally, they’re the exact opposite.
Every character in the movie Black Hawk Down shares a name with a real person who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, except for one. Ewan McGregor’s character, John Grimes, is based on a real person named John Stebbins. They changed the last name because they didn’t want people Googling him. If they did, they’d find out that the movie’s hero is a convicted child rapist.
Like in the movie, the real John Stebbins was a brave hero in Somalia. When he came home, though, he turned into a horrible monster. That’s something his wife found out five years after the battle, when Stebbins’s six-year-old daughter told her that her father “did sex to [her].”[1]
Stebbins was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison for raping and molesting a child. All of that came out before the movie was made, but they still kept him as one of the main heroes of the film, only agreeing to change his name when the Pentagon asked them to.
Stebbins’s ex-wife was furious about it. “They’re going to make millions off this film in which my ex-husband is portrayed as an All-America hero,” she complained when the film came out. “The truth is he is not.”
But it can be more than just a few things. Sometimes, the people who inspired our favorite movie heroes are completely different from what we see on the screen. Occasionally, they’re the exact opposite.
Every character in the movie Black Hawk Down shares a name with a real person who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, except for one. Ewan McGregor’s character, John Grimes, is based on a real person named John Stebbins. They changed the last name because they didn’t want people Googling him. If they did, they’d find out that the movie’s hero is a convicted child rapist.
Like in the movie, the real John Stebbins was a brave hero in Somalia. When he came home, though, he turned into a horrible monster. That’s something his wife found out five years after the battle, when Stebbins’s six-year-old daughter told her that her father “did sex to [her].”[1]
Stebbins was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison for raping and molesting a child. All of that came out before the movie was made, but they still kept him as one of the main heroes of the film, only agreeing to change his name when the Pentagon asked them to.
Stebbins’s ex-wife was furious about it. “They’re going to make millions off this film in which my ex-husband is portrayed as an All-America hero,” she complained when the film came out. “The truth is he is not.”
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