Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Having written …

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Having written several history books, I’m aware of the struggle to get things historically accurate. Having written historical fiction, I’m aware of the struggle to get the time period accurate. But having also written a graphic novel in which I played fast and loose with the factual Queen Victoria, I get how accuracy can be sacrificed for the sake of the story. One major difference here is that most the people being portrayed are still alive, still have a legacy that is important to them. I may have made up words and actions for Queen Victoria, but I didn’t denigrate her. So, the issue with Winning Time isn’t so much that the filmmakers deliberately avoided facts as if they were an STD, but that they replaced solid facts with flimsy cardboard fictions that don’t go deeper and offer no revealing insights.