true story?




Was this film based on a specifically true story? I know that most of it is historical, but is this a biopic of sorts? We are watching it in my sociology class, and the teacher won't tell us anything.

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Yes, it's true! I don't know if the Patrick Dempsey character was based on a real person(s) but the rest - meeting Lucy Burns in England, picketing the White House, force-fed in jail, the beautiful Inez Millholland on horseback, dying at age 30 - is very accurate.

I'm so glad to hear someone is showing it in school. I wish women's history was a required part of the curriculum.

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True story and for the most part the events depicted, as well as the speeches are the real thing.

Check out the Congress Library for pics and profiles on most of the protagonists

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/profiles9.html

For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco

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It is more-less true, but not quite.

The love interest - Patrick Dempsey - was made up, from what I gather. Also, there was no way in hell man with such modern attitudes towards women would live in that place and that time. He is completely lifted from modernity and transported back to give audience hungry for romance something to lust for.

Also: things were even more brutal than portrayed, I am afraid :) But Alice Paul was a wonderful strategist and politician, which, I think is sort-of showed, but still not quite.

Don't explain with malice what you can explain with stupidity

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I think most of Dempsey's character was based off of Max Eastman, who actually had been a journalist and did work for women's suffrage.

It would have been better if they did show an actual guy lobbying for women's suffrage--instead of making one up.

But the film shows that there were men aware of the issues.

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They took some license but most of it is factual. The senator's wife was made up but the other women are real. Ben says not to worry about Doris in jail.., she will write a book about it. That's true. Doris wrote a book about that night of terror in jail. The movie used the book for reference.

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