Mel Gibson's "The Patriot" and historical inaccuracies

[Trevor Barnes]

{geek}Someone asked me a while ago what the historical inaccuracies were in Mel Gibson's movie The Patriot. This was posted on a Rev War list I belong to from some reenactors that were actually in the movie... {/geek}

>Howdy,

>I could really use some help in
> determining the accuracy of this film - can you recommend any
> specific
> books to read? did any of you actually help with consultation for
> the
> film? if so, how receptive were the producers/director?
>
> Any help will be appreciated.
>
>

I don't know if you are the same person that me and Jay wrote back to, but if you are, here is the response that we both wrote:

From Jay:

I'll defer to Patrick on book titles (other than his own, which I highly recommend). There are plenty.

As to inaccuracies in the "Patriot" (spit)

Good gosh! Where to start?

1. The most egregious pap was the blatant, grotesque overstatement of atrocities. The war WAS brutal and very ugly in the back country of the Carolinas. The Director could have had all the blood and gore he could have wanted and done a great piece of history, and action, with it. But there's not a single, solitary, even a HINT of regular troops or organized militia on EITHER side deliberately killing women or kids (other than in Indian actions - where all bets are off). Fairly
young men were hanged and hacked, to be sure, but not children. Women were turned out in their shifts while their homes were burned - but they were NOT raped or murdered. That church - burning scene was the worst of the whole flick.

2. POWs were not slaughtered wholesale as was shown at "Ben Martin's" home. It just didn't happen.

3. Cornwallis never lost a single battle in the field. Not one. Ever. He was indeed defeated in a siege by overwhelming forces on land and sea, but didn't lose a fight on the open field.

4. WHERE did they come up with the "battle of the Parthenon" where the objective was to take the LOW ground??

5. Of course, the real Green Dragoons wore green uniforms, but that's not that big a deal to me since the whole unit was fictitious anyway.

6. Runaway slaves with a steel drum band and marimbas - -
and "hiding" in the open on a beach?

7. The pistols that were accurate to a couple of hundred yards - moving - and automatically replenished their rammers as those were repeatedly tossed away.

8. Firing in ranks more than a dozen deep.

9. Siege artillery on the field.

10. New England Continental troops in the South (at least that's what the flags and facings said).

11. Blue facings on a Brit regiment carrying a green and a buff
colour?

12. The disclaimer that "no animals were hurt or killed in the making of the movie" was false. At least one horse died when it got stuck in a bog and another lacerated a leg on the rebar stakes that were used to mark the sites of ground burst charges on the field - - the "rice field" - - - where you could raise a cloud of dust.

13. Cornwallis was not interested in land grants in Ohio. Nor did he conspire with any of his officers to commit atrocities with Ohio as a prize!

14. There's no documentation to indicate even a single "Betsy Ross" flag being carried on ANY battlefield of the war - much less dozens of them on the same field.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Jay

From me:
Jay pretty much summed it up. The director, Roland Emmerich,
didn't get anything right at all. There was a place called South Carolina, and there really was a war there a couple of times in history. However everything else in the movie was a lie. The ironic part about this is that there were some of the best historians on the set, working as extras, and whenever we made suggestions about how to make the movie better they would just ignore us. It didn't fit the director's "vision" of history and we constantly heard the mantra "its a movie, its not a documentary". This was a total cop out, since there were movies that did try to follow history a lot closer and made huge amounts of money. This would be movies such as Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List and Titanic. The movie itself
bombed at the box office, barely recovering what it cost to make it. Our joke on the set was that it was almost blown away by Hurricane Fran while making the movie, and then it was blown away by A Perfect Storm at the box office.

Since the director didn't want to even listen to anyone
around him a few of our guys inserted their own private jokes on the film. In the beginning scenes, when it shows the Continental army trying to recruit outside the capital in Charleston, the guys are yelling "sign up for the Confederacy boys, we'll whip them Yankees" in the background.

When Mel talks about the French and Indian war he mentions
the massacre at Fort Wilderness. One of the production people came to us during the filming and asked us where was a famous French and Indian war battle down here. We told them there wasn't one. That wasn't a good enough answer, so one of our guys then told him that there was a massacre at Fort Wilderness and they liked it so much that they put it in the movie. However you have to realize there was no Fort Wilderness in the 18th century. Fort Wilderness is actually part of Disney World in Florida.

There were other silly things that we inserted into the
movie, and it eventually got so bad that we walked off the set and didn't come back. About the only part of the movie where there were a lot of reenactors was the very first battle scene. This was the scene where Mel and Heath Ledger are looking out the window at the battle. We had a highly trained British unit at that time, the best in fact. They could do everything just like the original units and were sharp. However the German director wanted them to start doing things that we hadn't taught them, and many of the things he wanted were totally unsafe. We refused many of the things he wanted to do,
such as firing the muskets into the back of the heads of the guy in front of you so it looked more "chaotic". However that first battle looked like a real British army and the men responded as soldiers (even though the German director added a thousands more guys by computer to make it look like there were 50 lines of men instead of the single thin red line). That one scene in the movie, that lasted less than two minutes, took three days to film.

By the time of the last battle in the movie, the one where
Mel kills the bad guy, there were almost no reenactors on the set.

You can tell the difference too. The armies now looked like a mob. They were begging for anyone to show back up to be in the movie, and they eventually put anyone and everyone who showed up onto the set. In some instances they took Junior ROTC students from local High Schools and dressed them up.

If you want to see a movie that pretty much depicts exactly
what happened on the set of the Patriot, go get the 1980s
movie "Sweet Liberty" with Alan Alda. It is almost a documentary of what happened there on the Patriot.

As for books on the Revolution in the South, look below my name. If there is a more complete history of the war in the Carolinas, beside that one, I would love to know.


Patrick O'Kelley
http://www.2nc.org/
Author of "Nothing but Blood and Slaughter" The Revolutionary War in
the Carolinas
Available at Volume One 1771-1779
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1469.html
Volume Two 1780
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1707.html

[Spartan Grapple]

dork

[Trevor Barnes]

Originally Posted by Spartan Grappler

dork

Dude...I've seen your picture.

[NativeandProud]

Should anyone believe everything they read on a message board?

[Adrock]

I guess this means that OT season has officially begun...

[MSU addict]

Methinks this thread is not a worthy use of bandwidth.

[Spartan Grapple]

Originally Posted by Trevor Barnes

Dude...I've seen your picture.

WTF is that supposed to mean Trevor?

[SpartyScott]

"Sweet Liberty" is actually a good flick, by the way.

[OldWiseOne]

It is historically accurate in its depictions of the brits as cowardly savages with no honor. And it proves that the best of their "men" was defeated by mere boys.

[Green Cheesiest™]

[Fletch]

I don't mind if a movie is inaccurate, but I do mind if it SUCKS, which this one did.

[340DUSTER]

I didnt realize the movie was a documentary,i thought it was just an action packed movie.I enjoyed it,historically accurate or not.To me it beat the heck out of going to the library and "getting the facts straight".........

[Sparty]

Originally Posted by 340DUSTER

I enjoyed it,historically accurate or not.To me it beat the heck out of going to the library and "getting the facts straight".........

well, you're definitly an American

[SpartyScott]

I liked the part where Mel Gibson and his family ambushed that wagon, and Mel acted as slick and cool as he would in a Lethal Weapon movie, moving like a ninja and shooting with perfect accuracy.

Trevor, are you trying to say that didn't actually happen?

[Fred G. Sanford]

I can't believe I read the whole thing. I knew about a sentence in that it was going to be all kinds of , but I kept reading. Thank you. We are all now dorkier for having read this.

[ConQueso™]

Trevor, seriously...how many dork boards can you belong to...i mean, you've got this one and it's yours...so, you're clearly king of the dorks here...but i think you're taking it a bit far with the revolutionary war board...i didn't even think that was your time period...

[SpartyScott]

Trevor, how can I sign up and become a member of this Revolutionary War message board?

[Spartan Al]

Originally Posted by Townie

Trevor, seriously...how many dork boards can you belong to...i mean, you've got this one and it's yours...so, you're clearly king of the dorks here...but i think you're taking it a bit far with the revolutionary war board...i didn't even think that was your time period...

What about a fancy santa board? A board dedicated to wreaths?

[znerd]

Originally Posted by 340DUSTER

I didnt realize the movie was a documentary,i thought it was just an action packed movie.I enjoyed it,historically accurate or not.To me it beat the heck out of going to the library and "getting the facts straight".........

I liked the movie, as well, and I never thought the movie was supposed to be "accurate". i assume, as I do with all movies, that it's made up and all the innaccuracies are there to help sell the movies.

[AUAlum06]

Great info Trevor. Thanks.

[Trevor Barnes]

Originally Posted by Townie

Trevor, seriously...how many dork boards can you belong to...i mean, you've got this one and it's yours...so, you're clearly king of the dorks here...but i think you're taking it a bit far with the revolutionary war board...i didn't even think that was your time period...

It's not a board, it's a listserv. It's actually got at least 5X the amount of members that the RCMB does. Most are either history profs/teachers or reenactors.

[DantonIzzo]

Originally Posted by Sparty

well, you're definitly an American

[Trevor Barnes]

Originally Posted by znerd

I liked the movie, as well, and I never thought the movie was supposed to be "accurate". i assume, as I do with all movies, that it's made up and all the innaccuracies are there to help sell the movies.

I totally understand changes to the plot, etc. It is fiction afterall. But why not be historically accurate while doing it? Take Master & Commander for instance. The plot is obviously fiction but is probably one of the most historically accurate depictions of that era on film so far. They nailed it exactly. Last of the Mohicans is another good example (except for the Rambo scene where he goes running with a musket in each hand. )

[DantonIzzo]

Originally Posted by Trevor Barnes

It's not a board, it's a listserv.

Yeah.

Dummy.

[Wally Fairway]

Originally Posted by Trevor Barnes

It's not a board, it's a listserv. It's actually got at least 5X the amount of members that the RCMB does. Most are either history profs/teachers or reenactors.

How often does the board, err listserv. crash?
What are the annual donation/user fees?
Does the arcade work on that listserv. ?
Does the search function work?