As much as I've enjoyed David Thompson's cinema musings (his large tomes of criticism make GREAT bathroom reading! (t.m.i.??)), one must take his slam on fictional films with a huge grain of salt. He's, at heart, a total curmudgeon. Not unlike Robert McKee, in some ways. These guys, while great champions of the ART of movies, feel like they know it all and have seen it all.

Thompson's worst sin of taste? He regularly (though politely) derides the Coen Brothers' works. Because of that, it's tough for me to accept anything he says as close to any sort of truth, y'know?

"[E]verybody is exhausted by neat, shapely fictional stories we've had for so long, and a compelling situation from real life is much more interesting". That made my jaw drop. Don't even know where to start. Would Beowulf have been as scary with just a bear? Would Astaire have been as graceful had he relied only on steps he'd witnessed in real life? Sounds like high-falutin' talk to put lowest common denominator fare on a pedestal (and to minimize role of the artist). There are just so many self-chopped off limb stories to go around. (And thank goodness the first one ended up in Boyle's hands, he made real art of it.)

Hollywood has always harvested stories from real life events... "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Jim Thorpe Story," "Gettysburg," "The Lou Gerhig Story," "Glory Road," "Munich," "All The President's Men," "Walk the Line," "Ray," etc., and the industry will continue to do so.

That said, there's a distinction between real life and reality TV, which is a manufactured reality with non-actors.

Whether fiction or non-fiction, most movies are derived from real life.