Producers settle with IRA infiltrator who inspired spy drama
Last Updated: Tuesday, September 9, 2008 | 7:38 PM ET
The Canadian Press
Jim Sturgess, left, and Ben Kingsley in a scene from the film Fifty Dead Men Walking. (Jonathan Freeman)The creators of Fifty Dead Men Walking reached a settlement over the accuracy of the film in a dispute that had threatened to disrupt its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this week.
Former IRA infiltrator Martin McGartland and the makers of the Canadian-U.K. co-production agreed to a settlement worth $37,500, the film's director, Kari Skogland, said Tuesday in an interview with the Canadian Press.
The settlement also includes changes to the film, Skogland said.
McGartland had complained that the movie is not an accurate portrayal of his life.
"He's a scrapper, and he wanted to make sure that we knew what he was concerned with. So we listened, and we heard, and we came to a settlement," Skogland said.
The film — starring Jim Sturgess, Ben Kingsley, Rose McGowan and Canadian Kevin Zegers — has its gala premiere Wednesday night.
McGartland, who was given a new identity after being discovered as a mole, had initially threatened to come out of hiding to protest the premiere and confront the filmmakers while they walked the red carpet.
He had issues with several scenes in the film, claiming they were either completely made up or strayed from the truth.
The film is inspired by McGartland's 1997 book of the same name. Sturgess, known for his roles in Across the Universe and 21, plays the British spy.
Skogland said she reworked some scenes of the film in response to McGartland's complaints and that he was happy with the new version.
"They were small, and they were throughout," she said of the changes.
"He saw the final picture and decided that we had addressed his concerns."
Some of the changes include minor edits to key sequences, including a moment where McGartland takes an IRA member to a location where the man then plants a bomb, said Skogland.
In the re-edited version, McGartland doesn't see where the bomb is planted.
Another scene shows the McGartland character participating in torturing and killing an IRA informant. The real McGartland insists this never actually happened. Skogland defended the sequence, saying she took creative licence to tell her story.
"For my [McGartland] character, it was important to see and to understand what the stakes were for him. Those are the kinds of things that just happen out of moviemaking," she said.
The latest version also includes disclaimers stating that some of the scenes and characters have been changed from the real incidents.
"The story was inspired by a true story and based on a true story, but at the end of the day, there were many other characters," Skogland said.
"I had to fictionalize a whole bunch of it, because I was talking about real people."
The settlement comes after months of fiery accusations and intense negotiations between the one-time informant and London-based production house HandMade Films, which co-financed the movie.
McGartland first began voicing his concern over the movie in May during the Cannes film festival as Fifty Dead Men Walking was being shopped around to distributors.
With threat of litigation in the air, many international buyers were reluctant to pick up the rights to the project.
Last month, the film was scheduled to be screened for the media in Toronto before it was pulled at the last minute because of a "print problem," the same day that McGartland issued a statement saying he was considering legal action against the movie.
Fifty Dead Men Walking is the latest in a series of films that have run into disputes over the accuracy of what was initially claimed to be a true story.
A Beautiful Mind met with criticism in 2001 for distorting the life of Nobel Prize winner John Nash, played by Russell Crowe.
The Disney film Remember the Titans was accused of sanitizing racism on a mixed-race football team in Virginia during the early 1970s.
And both Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington faced criticism last year for American Gangster. The one-time Harlem drug dealer Frank Lucas claimed that director Ridley Scott intentionally made his character less sympathetic.
Fifty Dead Men Walking is to be released by TVA Films in Canada. No date has been set.
