Irritating

I haven't seen ''The Stranger Besdide Me'' but I have seen ''Ted Bundy'', and it's pretty much the same deal with that one. There are a lot of inaccuracies, again with the car and Carol DaRonch's escape, among other things. It annoys me too. It doesn't seem too hard to fix, but then again maybe those filmmakers haven't read the books.

I haven't seen "Ted Bundy" but I thought "Deliberate Stranger" with Mark Harmon was really good. Mark has always been a "good guy" so it was interesting to watch him portray one of the most reprehensible people in the history of crime. I can't remember (it's been quite a while since I saw it) but I don't think there's any mention of the young Florida girl's kidnapping and murder (this one shows him disposing of the body but then nothing more is said about it) which is what really earned him the death penalty. IIRC she was a 12 yo middle-schooler.

I think movie makers are aversive of portraing things exactally as they were.

First, because no matter how they try, they can't learn every details, and will be always criticized for each small one they miss. And also there are a lot of details which are simply unknown and they'll need to guess.

And also, I think they wanna add their touch to the story, which ultimately is being told by them. They don't want real facts to rule them. They wanna add something new, creative.

It's like when photograph was created. Before that, painters had a lot of effort trying to do paintings as close to reality as possible. Then photograph started to do that much better than them. So they just started to paint things very differently from reality, adding their style and POV on it.

So, movie makers just start changing things in ways they think would look better, or would be more thrilling if had happened that way.

Then they start making small, simpler and more noticiable things, like the color of the car. The "best" changes are only noticiable by people who know very well the story. Then, so that people don't start blaming them, demanding these changes were mistakes, they start doing these simpler changes, to make it clear that they are changing the story because they want, and not because they made mistakes.

Inaccuracies bug me too. I should state that I love Ann Rule's book but I've only seen one scene of the film. It was during Ted's trial when he proposes to his girlfriend and she accepts, resulting in the two of them being legally married. Ann is shown in the courtroom. The truth is Ann wasn't at his trial. After Ted's legal troubles really started, Ann no longer saw him. From that point on there was only occasional correspondence between them by mail. But I understand why this was changed. It was based on her book, and the filmmakers wanted her to remain an active, main character in the story.
Another thing that kind of bothers me in these depictions of true stories is casting. They hardly ever cast actors who physically resemble the real-life people they're portraying. I know this is not always possible; but it seems like if the real-life person is physically unattractive, filmmakers almost always cast actors who are much better looking than the people they're portraying. Ann Rule, amazing woman that she was, was frankly, not an attractive woman. But they cast the gorgeous Barbara Hershey as Ann. I guess producers would rather go with an attractive, recognizable star than a more accurate-looking character actor.
I'd still like to see this film in its entirety, despite the liberties it takes with the truth. Bundy was a monster almost beyond belief, and this story fascinates me.

"Smash everything! Smash everything! Smash everything!"