Herman Boone wasn't the peachy, groundbreaking coach Denzel Washington portrays in Disney's Remember the Titans. At least not according to Greg Paspatis, a kicker on Boone's 1977 team. In a recent article published by Deadspin, Paspatis said that the real-life Boone was a jerk, tyrant and not-that-great-of-a-coach, despite the 1971 championship season at Alexandria, Va.'s T.C. Williams High School, made famous by the movie.
If you've watched Remember the Titans, you probably had a warm feeling at the end. Too bad the story — outside of the main characters, the location of the school and the fact the Titans won a championship that year — was made up.
I encourage you to read the Deadspin article to notice all the falsehoods presented in the movie.
So often, Hollywood oversteps its creative license to create these feel-good stories, hiding behind a "based on a true story" tag line. Too often, there are too many inconsistencies that just don't add up. Remember the Titans appears to fall into that category. Friday Night Lights, based on a book written by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, also falls in line with plenty of areas where it oversteps those bounds — such as the movie pitting Permian against Dallas Carter in the championship game as opposed to the semifinals. Even so, just read the Deadspin story. Almost everything around Remember the Titans isn't true.
And that's a problem that occurs too often in Hollywood. I get it that the truth can often ruin a good story, but in this case no one wants to hear about a juggernaut team led by a jerk winning championships (unless you're a Patriots fan) over a team breaking color barriers and winning against the odds, even if that isn't what truly happened at T.C. Williams in 1971.
But if Hollywood feels that it must make a movie like that can make up its own story and not take the truth and mangle it beyond recognition. Especially considering that people take what they see in TV and movies as 100% canon truth and hardly do any research of their own.