Netflix’s latest true crime sensation, Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story, since landing on the streaming service this month. If it feels like a Lifetime movie, that’s because it its! This 2022 Lifetime movie dramatizes one of New Jersey’s most shocking murder cases—but how closely does it follow the actual events? Here’s what really happened….
Embed from Getty Images If you’ve seen Timothée Chalamet’s magnetic performance in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, you might be wondering: was there really a ping-pong hustler this audacious and wild? Marty Supreme is loosely based on Martin “Marty” Reisman (February 1, 1930 – December 7, 2012), a legendary American table tennis champion whose life read…
In the 2000 movie Erin Brockovich, the main character finds love with a biker neighbor named George (Aaron Eckhart) who, honestly, had a number of red flags (like his eagerness to take care of her young kids as a stranger.) In real life, their love didn’t have a happy ending. The man who the movie…
The film Zola is a nonstop dangerous adventure of a Detroit waitress and part-time stripper who is way too trusting of a new friend. It’s based on a true story told via a Twitter thread in 2015. The pimp depicted in the Twitter thread and movie has sexually trafficked other women, and is currently serving…
A new adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary premieres this Friday, 30 years after the first adaptation, which debuted in 1989. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly King reveals that that “everything in the book up to the point of the supernatural stuff is true.” So, what is the true story behind Pet Sematary? King…
Last week’s episode of Hulu’s The Act, and adaptation of this Buzzfeed article about the life of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and the murder of her mother Dee Dee, dealt with a romance Dee Dee struck with an older man named Scott she met when he was cosplaying Wolverine at a local comic convention. In the…
The real life love story of Kim and Krickett Carpenter inspired the popular 2012 film The Vow starring Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams. Now the couple are now divorced after 25 years because Kim cheated. While the movie was romantically exaggerated, Krickett did suffer amnesia after a car crash that erased her memory of her…
Tonight’s Sunday Lifetime movie Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey is based on the harrowing true crime tale of a teenager forced to fight for her life when she was kidnapped on her regular bicycle route home. When Lisa McVey returned home from escaping from serial killer Bobby Lee Long, her abusive family didn’t…
Tonight’s Lifetime movie Conrad & Michelle: If Words Could Kill stars Bella Thorne as Michelle Carter, a teenage girl who encouraged her depressed boyfriend Conrad Roy to take his own life via frighteningly coercive text messages. Last year, Michelle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for her involvement in Conrad’s death. Although the text messages…
Like every film in The Conjuring Universe The Nun claims to be based on a true story. Is this really the case? The Conjuring films which is loosely inspired by the “demonologist” work of Ed and Lorraine Warren. They use this couple’s real life claims about what they experienced as a tie to the “based…
The true star of Crimson Peak was the scary gothic mansion itself. Unfortunately, there’s no historic Allerdale Hall in rural England, but director Guillermo del Toro did build the mansion of his nightmares at Pinewood Toronto Studios. In fact, the entire film was shot in Canada, on sound stages and few choice locations including Toronto’s…
Pretty Woman turned 25 yesterday, and it turns out that this Cinderella-inspired fairytale about a “hooker with a heart of gold” may be more off-base than we thought. According to The Mirror‘s Margaret Corvid, the real life Vivian would have been taking a potentially grave risk by getting into Edward’s car and agreeing to be…
Find out more about the real Cheryl Strayed, who turned her 1,100-mile self-discovery hike in 1995 into a bestselling memoir and new movie.
During a Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival, Bill Murray reminded us all how important it is to sometimes take the wheel of life so the driver can practice his musical instrument. Check out the video and smile.
As Above, So Below, the latest found footage style horror flick, hits theaters this week. Although it’s gotten disappointing reviews, the setting of this film is pretty fascinating.
Orange is the New Black is loosely based on the memoir of the same name by Piper Kerman, and while there is no Alex Vause in her account, there is a real life inspiration for the fan favorite character played by Laura Prepon. In the memoir she’s called Nora, but the real woman is 51-year-old Catherine Cleary Wolters, who spoke with Vanity Fair in April about being represented on the popular Netflix show.
The delightfully nerdy The Big Bang Theory, which is gearing up for it’s eight season this September, is so chock full of science jokes it’s easy to wonder if some of them aren’t a little off. Does The Big Bang Theory always get its science right? If so, how?
You don’t have to be in the tech field to get most of the jokes and feel most of the feels in Mike Judge’s HBO Silicon Valley. In fact, the show is so relatable, it seems to be based on someone’s real experience with a tech start-up. Is there a true story behind Silicon Valley?
The character of Norman Bates — as seen in Psycho and Bates Motel — is too crazy to be real… Or so you’d think. Actually, the character author Robert Bloch created in the late 1950s is based on a very real, very creepy murderer from Wisconsin.
We’re two episodes into FX’s Fargo TV series adaptation starring Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton, and we’re hooked. Just like the film, it’s a crime-comedy set in Minnesota that plays up the possibility of dark secrets behind everyday niceness. Both the 1996 Coen Brothers movie and the TV series start out with a declaration that the events depicted are “Based on a true story.” Is there really a true crime inspiration for either?
George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones is a masterful and sprawling work of fiction dealing in the stuff of magic and dragon, but the complex power plays and intrigues between the major players was inspired a bit by history, specifically by the 15th century European chaos and conflicts known as The Wars of the Roses.
It’s looking like Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott)’s complicated board came Cones of Dunshire is taking off in the world of Parks & Recreation. Is it possible to play this game in real lie?
In 1994 businessman Marc Schiller was kidnapped by the Sun Gym Gang in South Florida. After horrific torturing, he signed away him home and money to the gang. His story was used as inspiration for the 2013 Michael Bay film Pain & Gain, starring Marc Wahlberg. Schiller was not happy about the film’s portrayal of him, and is now filing a lawsuit against Bay, Walhberg, Paramount Pictures, Viacom, and others involved in the film.
Discovery channel’s Amish Mafia is ending it’s 3rd season tonight. While most reality shows have some degree of production manipulation, Amish Mafia seems to blurr the lines between reality and reality television even further. Just how real is this show?
When the $6.5 million mansion seen in exterior shots on Keeping up With the Kardashians went on sale this week it was revealed that the Kardashian/Jenner clan don’t actually on the house! What’s going on here?
John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars was in many ways inspired by a real girl named Esther Grace Earl, a friend of John’s who passed away in 2010 at age 16, but it would be wrong to say it is her story.
The origins of cult classic The Room‘s director, writer and star Tommy Wiseau was one of the biggest mysteries in pop culture. For someone who desired so deeply to be famous, he was extremely cagey about where he was born and where his seemingly vast amount of wealth came from. Last fall his friend and co-star Greg Sestero unearthed a great deal of information about Mr. Wiseau with the help of journalist Tom Bissell in a rollicking book called The Disaster Artist, and a sleuthing Redditor was able to piece together a little more of the puzzle.
This Saturday Flowers in the Attic is getting an updated movie adaptation thanks to Lifetime. The story is so compelling and strange that it seems like it could only be inspired by real life. Is it based on a true story?
At the end of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, there is a brief note that Solomon Northup disappeared shortly after writing his memoir. Historians believe it’s a more complex case than that…
The internet has become enraptured today with the backside of a brunette from New York. Jen Selter’s fanny packs a punch and her rear-view images shared via Instagram have her with over a million followers via that social networking site because – booty and internet of course. Get Jen’s advice on badonkadonk stardom and how, through hard work, you can be just like her.
Before she was Jordan Belfort’s wife and long before she was renamed “Naomi Belfort” in Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, Nadine Belfort was a successful model and Miller Lite girl. See her in action in photos and throwback Miller Lite commercials from 1990…
The Wolf of Wall Street, a Martin Scorsese film starring Leonard DiCaprio as a high-flying financial criminal, is based on a memoir. Find out more about what exactly the Wolf of Wall Street did, and what he’s doing now.
A Volusia County, Florida 911 dispatcher is facing a 5-day suspension after video revealed she was distracted by her personal cellphone while the person she was training was handling a call relating to a man suffering a heart attack. The man died as the ambulance was sent to the wrong location. And now the suspended dispatcher has been arrested today for pulling a gun on a reporter who was trying to follow up!
Matthew McConaughey looks so much like the real Ron Woodroof, his part in The Dallas Buyer’s Club (Limited release Nov. 1) that Mr. Woodroof’s family can’t bare to look at him. Who was the real Ron Woodroof, and what’s his legacy?
Captain Phillips, opening in U.S. theaters Friday, is sure to give Tom Hanks an Oscar nod, and sets up the real Captain Richard Phillips’s enduring legacy as a hero, but some of the crew members are not too happy about Captain Phillips’ portrayal as a hero. Is the film a somewhat accurate portrayal of what happened with the cargo ship Maersk Alabama got hijacked by Somali pirates off the coast of Africa, or is the Hollywood facade too sparkly?
Mythbusters did a special episode testing out some of the science used on the AMC masterpiece Breaking Bad to see if it holds up in the real world. If you’re a Breaking Bad fan it’s hard to forget two key scenes from Season 1: when Walt melts a body with hydrofluoric acid and it ends up dissolving the tub and the floor, and when Walt uses mercury fulminate to walk away unscathed while he dramatically blows up everything in drug dealer Tuco’s office. The windows even blew out! This is the kind of stuff that makes you feel awestruck with the power of science, but is any of it really possible?
The Conjuring is supposed to be based on a true story, but one of the scariest parts of the film is the creepy doll Annabelle. Is she real too?
Tonight HBO airs a documentary about some particularly horrifying events that took place in the town of Cheshire, Connecticut on July 23, 2007. Former endocrinologist William Petit’s wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit and daughters Michaela (11,) and Haley (17) were murdered during a terrifying home invasion that was supposed to be a quick robbery but turned into a brutal seven-hour torture. Now William Petit is trying to rebuild a new life and keep the nightmares at bay.
Hollywood often likes to base their scary movies loosely on accounts from real people, and The Conjuring (in US theaters July 19) is actually using the real people as part of their marketing campaign. Roger and Carolyn Perron and three of their five daughters tell parts of their story during The Conjuring trailer:
If you’re like me, you thought The Vow starring Rachel McAdamas and Channing Tatum, while fodder for some romantic eye candy, was just another of those love amnesia stories made-up for the movies. But it turns out there is a real life couple that inspired the story!
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