The public prefer an interesting lie to a dull truth
Former ad agency creative director Dave Trott is here with a friendly reminder that lying is fine – as long as you make it interesting.
The Amityville Horror is one of the most successful books and films of all time.
As a book it sold ten million copies, as a film it ran to fifteen sequels and spinoffs:
Amityville II (The Possession). The Amityville Curse. The Amityville Haunting. The Amityville Asylum. Amityville Death House. Amityville Dollhouse. The Amityville Playhouse. Amityville (The Evil Escapes). Amityville (It’s About Time). Amityville (A New Generation). Amityville (No Escape). Amityville (The Awakening). Amityville 3D.
The Amityville Horror 1979 film adaptation
So what is it that made The Amityville Horror unique?
Why was it so much more successful than any horror story before or since? The answer is, it was true.
A family living in a possessed house built on a native American burial ground.
Demons appeared to their children, blood seeped out of walls, voices screamed in the night, slime oozed through the floorboards.
The awful story of a house possessed by evil spirits.
But the truly terrifying difference was that this time everything was real.
As all the advertising said: “More hideously frightening than The Exorcist because IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED”. Except it didn’t.
The only part that was true was the initial crime that happened in the house before the family bought it.
Butch De Feo had been found guilty of shooting his parents, two brothers and two sisters while they slept.
Then another family, George and Kathy Lutz, had bought the house, cheaply.
That much was true, everything else was fiction.
De Feo’s lawyer, William Weber, was trying to find grounds for an appeal.
He was drinking wine with George and Kathy Lutz, when they asked what could make a man do such a thing.
One of them said, they hoped it wasn’t the house. Over the wine, Weber wondered if he could work that up into a defence.
As they began imagining possibilities a light went on in his head. He realised it wouldn’t work as a defence plea, but it could work as a book or film.
Between them they began to make up more and more fanciful stories about what could happen in a house like that.
Over the wine they let their imaginations run riot. And they each imagined a lucrative book and film deal.
The only problem was, none of them were writers.
After a while George and Cathy Lutz decided to get a proper writer involved. They recorded forty-five hours of tape for Jay Anson to write the book.
They excluded William Weber, the lawyer, from the deal. This resulted in a lawsuit between them.
In 1979, Judge Jack B. Weinstein found: “The book is a work of fiction, relying mainly on suggestions from Mr Weber”.
But by this time it didn’t matter. The public weren’t really listening, they wanted to believe it was true, it made the horror so much more deliciously scary.
Of course, an entire industry of ghost hunters, demonologists, paranormal experts, occult professionals, and supernatural documentary makers appeared.
And they found the evidence their livelihoods needed them to find. Because the story, if it was fiction, was uninteresting and poorly written.
But it had one huge point of difference, it was real. That was the only thing that made it interesting.
For us the lesson is, the public prefer an interesting lie to a dull truth.
Dave Trott is a consultant, author and former ad agency creative director. This article was first published on his blog.
This is very under-informed comment regarding the difference between actual truth and the truth of fiction. Drama ultimately and only, depends on the truth of fiction. Once upon a time… What if? If we frame it right, now matter how extreme the impetus is, human characters in a story will react in believable ways. Spiderman. The Black Panther. The 40 Year Old Virgin. When it works, to the audience, it feels like it could happen. And the framework of the story itself feels believable. Ridley Scott’s “Alien” is essentially a workplace drama with a theme of survival. It is also a horror story, science fiction, and above all a complete fantasy. It is very good. The set-up combines highly plausible behavioural elements with complete fantasy (deep sleep, no gravity problems on a space ship, sentient aliens, etc, etc.). We are not called upon to accept this as truth so much as accept that the actions and reactions of the characters ring true with what we know. How would we act on a spaceship in deep space under those circumstances? We’ll never know. Do we understand the drive to survive in the everyday sense – yes. Selling a fantasy as actual truth is silly and unnecessary, and not a position we actually need to take in drama or advertising in order to succeed.
Its the law of the rule of cool (see tv tropes). Basically the more interesting something is the further an audience is willing to push their suspension of disbelief.
Its harder to do that with real life events now than it was in 1970s.
Also its unethical.
But then you can make money doing a public apology for misleading people. Works as a one-time earner.