Gold sounds like a pretty good story. Found gold. People invested. Turns out the gold wasn't there. Huge stock crashes after finding out there is no gold. But like the stockholders in real life, the film audience is being sold a bad story.
The Matthew McConaughey film takes place in Reno, Nevada. The actual Bre-X scandal took place in Calgary. The fake story is set in the late 1980s; the real story in the mid-1990s. The fake story combines 2 people into one, so instead of 3 major real characters, we get 2 characters. The 2 real-life people: the Indonesian geologist fell or was pushed from a helicopter and the Dutch prospector escaped to the Canary Islands. In the fake story, the combination is a South American geologist.
In 1996, Bre-X claimed a massive gold find in Borneo, an Indonesia island. Gold also chases gold on the same island.
McConaughey plays Kenny Wells, who is based on David Walsh, the Bre-X leader. In an non-Hollywood move, the film portrays Wells as balding and pot-bellied, neither of which applied to Walsh.
Kenny Wells has a vision of something shiny and he flies to Indonesia. Common sense will tell you that David Walsh had a more structured path. There are a lot of real-life interesting mysteries in the Bre-X scandal but based on reviews of the film, those aren't in the screenplay.
'Argo' gives filmgoers diminished taste of Canadian history in Iran
The takeover of the real-life Argo story is that the film made more exciting the story of the American hostages in the Canadian Embassy in Teheran. I still remember hiding my eyes with embarrassment in the theatre with the chase scene near the end of the film. A truly fake, truly Hollywood ending.
There was a Canadian TV-movie from 1981 called Escape from Iran: The Canadian Caper, with Gordon Pinsent as Ken Taylor.
Gold suffers from the opposite problem. They took an interesting story that really happened and made it more simple and boring.
According to CBC's Eli Glasner, Canadian screenwriters and producers tried to get funding (gold, perhaps) to make a film that was more true to the real story.
Glasner suggests the story could be told as a miniseries. The CBC certainly loves dramas carried over 6 episodes.
Whether the story is made into a film or a miniseries, future producers have a few advantages. The real story hasn't really been covered. Whether Gold does well or bombs wouldn't affect a Canadian version of the real story.
The presentation of Gold reminds me more of Hollywood North, a film devoted to how the Canadian film industry used to be. If you've seen that film, McConaughey is the American star that shifts the focus of the film to where it's unrecognizable from the original Canadian book.
If you want to find out more about the real Bre-X story in Calgary, you can click here for the CBC archives.
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
A Dog's Purpose was shot in Winnipeg in 2015. But video from the set showed what looks like animal cruelty, and the Hollywood and Canadian premieres were cancelled. The film was scheduled to premiere.
The end of the credits will usually have something along the lines of "No animals were harmed in the making of this film."
There was an animal safety worker from the American Humane Association on set; that individual was suspended after the video surfaced. The video is a bit disturbing: you can find a link here if you need to watch the video.
While the film was shot in Winnipeg, there doesn't appear to be a significant Canadian connection. Then again, why isn't there a Canadian Humane Association? And if filmmakers are filming in Canada, don't Canadian authorities have an interest in making sure Canadian laws aren't being broken?
video credit: YouTube/Zero Media
Comments