{"id":3922,"date":"2024-03-21T17:54:06","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T17:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nyadfactcheck.com\/annex\/?p=3922"},"modified":"2024-11-20T18:24:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T18:24:23","slug":"aquatic-cons-emerald-isle-zombie-nom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nyadfactcheck.com\/annex\/aquatic-cons-emerald-isle-zombie-nom\/","title":{"rendered":"Aquatic Con’s Emerald Isle Zombie Nom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2024<\/a>
Image via IFTA awards page<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Annette Bening has another chance to make Diana proud. The Irish Film and TV Academy (IFTA) nominated Bening for its Best International Actress award. She’ll face three of her Oscar foes \u2014 Lily Gladstone, Carey Mulligan, and Emma Stone \u2014 along with two actresses many critics thought the Oscars snubbed: Margot Robbie for Barbie<\/em> and Greta Lee for Past Lives<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The IFTA will announce the winners in Dublin on April 20. Go n-\u00e9ir\u00ed leat<\/em><\/a>, Annette!
\n<\/p>\n

“Ethical Nonfiction Backgrounds”<\/h5>\n

According to The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, Diana Nyad and Bonnie Stoll were “shown the [Nyad<\/em>] script throughout the revision process until it was closed for feedback.”<\/p>\n

The article doesn’t clarify why the filmmakers stopped showing them the script. Co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi didn’t help when she said they needed to “protect” the story, the writer, and the movie, “but then it\u2019s also about respecting the process of your actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real reason? The filmmakers probably got tired of Nyad pestering them to make her less of a jerk.<\/p>\n

Steven Munatones also received access to early versions of the screenplay. Munatones is the guy who, among other things<\/a>, illegitimately “ratified” Nyad’s crossing, created a fake organization to help that happen, and lied about his Tsugaru and Catalina crossings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“They allowed me to read it,” Steven said in a webinar<\/a> the day after Nyad<\/em> opened in theaters. “And you know, as a marathon swimmer and someone who actually saw the failed attempts, I mentioned different things” (clip<\/a>).<\/p>\n

(He also said in the webinar, “I can explain the rules that she went under.” He never did. See also his statement a week after Nyad’s crossing<\/a> that he’d distribute copies of the rules. Over ten years later, we’re still waiting.)<\/p>\n

So, the only experienced marathon swimmers who looked at the script were the three people least likely to point out inaccuracies and lies. I wonder if that’s what Vasarhelyi meant when she said of the controversy roiling around Nyad:<\/p>\n

We brought our most clear-eyed, stringent, ethical nonfiction backgrounds to look at it, and it really seemed irrelevant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another Angle<\/h5>\n

A quick DNFC shout-out to Vulture’s<\/em> Rachel Handler.<\/p>\n

In her article, “‘I Thought Oppenheimer Was Mediocre’: What I saw, overheard, and swallowed behind the scenes at the 2024 Oscars,”<\/a> she includes Diana and Bonnie with high-exposure celebrities like Emma Stone and John Cena. Handler writes,<\/p>\n

Diana Nyad and Bonnie Stoll stop to chat with a group of fans. Diana is raving about Bradley Cooper and stressing about the camera angle that might hit her if she\u2019s sitting in the balcony.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In case readers hadn’t seen Nyad<\/em>, Handler links to Vulture <\/i>colleague Allison Willmore’s review, “To Its Credit, Nyad<\/em> Makes Its Subject Look Like a Real Asshole.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Handler ends with the one A-list attendee for whom camera angles and Academy awards mean nothing.\u00a0 “The lobby empties,” writes Handler, “but Messi the dog wanders in. It\u2019s his time now.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This year’s Cannes Palm Dog Award winner, Messi. He played Snoop in Anatomy of A Fall. Image by Laura Martin Contini<\/a>\u00a0(Messi\u2019s Trainer) via celebritypets.net<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Nyad<\/em> (The Movie) Proves That Nyad (The Swimmer) Is A Master Con Artist<\/h5>\n

Diana Nyad has convinced almost everyone that she’s a well-meaning and generally honest person who, decades ago, stretched the truth a little and now wishes she hadn’t. However, she’s actually a compulsive liar who desperately wants people to think she’s the best at everything \u2014 except for the one thing at which she excels.<\/p>\n

The film doesn’t begin to show the depth of her fraud. She and her representatives bamboozled Netflix, Mad Chance, and Black Bear Pictures into coughing up tens of millions of dollars to adapt her fabrication-filled memoir, Find a Way<\/em>, into a feature-length fairy tale.<\/p>\n

Then they pawned it off as genuine.<\/p>\n

According to the Netflix Media Center<\/a>, “NYAD tells the remarkable true story of athlete Diana Nyad.” Or, as co-director Vasarhelyi told Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

We don’t say, \u2018It\u2019s based on a true story,\u2019 we don’t say, \u2018It is a true story\u2019\u2014but it is a true story. It\u2019s about this idea of truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the truth (and not just the idea of truth): The film is based on a remarkable lie Nyad has been telling since she stumbled onto Key West’s Smathers Beach in September 2013.<\/p>\n

What Vaserhelyi’s statement means is anyone’s guess. But we don’t have to guess about the film; she and her husband, Jimmy Chin, made a movie that lies for Diana.<\/p>\n

Their film contained two kinds of inaccuracies. First, variations that serve mainly to streamline the story. For instance:<\/p>\n