I didn't like it either. My beef was with the dubious veracity of absolutely every fact in the movie. It's almost a character assassination of Walter, both in the script and in Waltz's extremely frantic portrayal. Before the movie I did some basic Wikipedia-centric research on the story, but prior to that I was completely unfamiliar with the paintings and controversy. Margaret's account, which Burton and his screenwriters adopt wholeheartedly, has been severely questioned by Walter's family. Of course that's not surprising, but I feel they are probably telling the truth. He didn't paint the waifs, but he had more of an "ideas" involvement with them, they say. The movie portrays him as wholly without talent, as a scheming, lying, violent madman and an aggressive fraud. I'm sure that the reality wasn't near like this, and I feel sorry for his family that their loved one is being represented this way. Without question he misrepresented things, otherwise people would have known that Margaret painted the waifs, when that was only made public a couple decades ago.
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statuskuo
9 years ago
Character assassination? They credit him with being on the ground floor of mass art. Posters became more famous than the paintings themselves. Do you recall in the movie, the stroke of genius it was to sell those? That was all Walter. It implied, without him, Margaret would've been an obscure kitsch painter.
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MaxRenn2
9 years ago
Yes, I've read that about the posters, but that's hardly "talent," and his family seems to be saying that he was artistically talented in some way (something I read said he had a toy line with big-eyed dolls). I guess my problem with the film was that we don't really know where many of the "facts" came from, considering that this was not based on a biography or memoir. Did the screenwriters interview Margaret? Did they use court transcripts? Did they just use internet details and make the rest up? They may have spoken about this; I don't know. Walter is depicted as a terrible person and even a tad violent. The latter may have been accurate; I'd just like to know where this is coming from. If it's made up or exaggerated, one would have to feel for his family that their loved one is now being shown as a violent person all in the name of "dramatic license."
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statuskuo
9 years ago
Yeah, I just listened to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with the screenwriters of this movie. It's really entertaining if you can find it on iTunes. They also wrote "Problem Child" & "Ed Wood." They got some flack for Bela Lugosi too. I felt they painted him to be charming, eccentric and silly. I didn't think it was too ugly depiction.
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Wombstar
9 years ago
They got some flack for Bela Lugosi too
Lugosi's son was quite happy with it.
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statuskuo
9 years ago
Flack meaning, Lugosi didn't swear as much as depicted by Landau.
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