Each episode of Narcos opens with a disclaimer that "Any similarity to name, character, history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional". Why do they have this disclaimer, when the show is explicitly about real events, and in fact occasionally uses historical footage?
2 Answers
The MGM movie Rasputin and the Empress implied that the real person Princess Irina Yusupov, as represented by Princess Natasha in the film, was raped by Rasputin. She sued for defamation, the jury agreed, and MGM paid out plus edited the scene out of the film. Subsequently, the "everybody is made up" disclaimer has been standard albeit not universal, especially when events are similar to reality. Star Trek is clearly not intended to be real, so "false claims" would not be defamation. But when a movie could reasonably be taken to be a representation of facts, it becomes important to make clear that it is not a representation of facts. Otherwise, a false claim that Mr. X did something bad could be the basis for a defamation lawsuit. It is not bulletproof protection against a lawsuit. The movie The Idolmaker was apparently too realistic, and Fabian Forte filed a big lawsuit, and settled out of court (so we don't know if the disclaimer would have been deemed by the court to be legally empty).
answered Sep 18, 2020 at 15:47
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1I'm still not sure how they could argue that their character Pablo Escobar is "entirely coincidentally and unintentionally" related to the real Pablo Escobar. I would understand it if the disclaimer said something like "this is based on a real story, but some events have been changed for dramatic purposes" Commented Sep 18, 2020 at 17:28
Narcos is not a documentary. They take inspiration from real life, but they did twist the characters of people and changed the names of others. They spin a story that is similar to what happened but it is not what had happened. Heck, they even killed off and replaced a character (Colonel Carrillo was replaced with Pinzon) who is modeled after Colonel Hugo Martinez - who is still alive today!
To shield themselves from liabilities stemming from inaccuracies or changes, they add such a disclaimer since the mid 1930s. It's not a perfect defense, but it is a good protection against a lot of stuff thrown at the film company. That such a disclaimer is not good always could be seen in the 1980s, when The Idolmaker was sued by Fabian (Fabiano Anthony Forte) because they had an advisor from his own staff in making the film and it was too close to the reality.
Narcos strives for a 50-50-mix, which is about where you can still claim the these characters are not the real people, but they have the actual agents that hunted Escobar on the staff - and indeed they were accused of inaccuracies en masse.
Showrunner Eric Newman told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that Narcos is "50-50 when it comes to fiction and nonfiction," but that they stick to an accurate timeline of events.
Escobar's son, Sebastian Marroquin — who wrote a tell-all book about his father, Pablo Escobar: My Father, in 2014 — shared a lengthy Facebook post in 2016 calling the series "insulting" and detailing 28 supposed inaccuracies. The post is in Spanish, but according to The Telegraph, they range "from trivial matters of which local sports team Escobar supported in Medellín, to more substantial ones, including denying that Escobar attacked rival drug lord Gilberto Rodriquez's daughter at her wedding" or any of the Rodriguezes at the time.[1]
Indeed, the storytelling is intentionally biased to paint people in a specific light, which means that there might be larger alterations to the reality for the purpose of storytelling, things might be embellished or cut for that reason. For example the number of children was changed in one case, the place where said family was during some events, and so on. In the end, the picture was more important than the accuracy to the details.
"The only stipulation Javier and I have is: Whoever we do this with cannot in any way glorify Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel," Murphy recalls telling showrunner Eric Newman during a dinner in Washington, D.C. "We just hit it off. Eric has lived up to his word 100 percent."[2]
Sidenote as a historian
Any Film that starts with "The events of this are true" that is not a documentary is false to the bone (on a historical level). The claim is Hollywood speak for "we took inspiration and threw it through the hot laundry and pressed it, mangled it and re-invented it to our liking but it sells better if we claim authenticity."
Addendum
Narcos was sued for copyright infringement by an author of a Pablo Escobar memoir. The result? It was dismissed as facts are not copyrightable.
