Differences From Real Life
According to Guthrie (commenting in the DVD's audio commentary section) although the film used the names of real people, the screenplay took numerous liberties with actual events. Most notably, the film has Guthrie being forced to leave a Montana town after "creating a disturbance" – i.e., several town residents object to Guthrie's long hair, and gang up to throw him through a plate glass window. This never happened, and Guthrie expresses regrets that Montana got a "bad rap" in the film.
The characters of Shelley and Ruth were created for the film, and had no real-life counterparts.
Other more minor differences exist, including the fact that in real life the red VW microbus actually belonged to Ray, not Arlo; Ray and Alice lived by themselves in the church, not as part of a commune as seen in the film; and the real-life 1965 Thanksgiving dinner was only attended by a handful of people (not the dozens shown in the film). The song portrays these events with more accuracy than the film.
Read more about this topic: Alice's Restaurant (film)
Famous quotes containing the words differences, real and/or life:
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The spring is here, young and beautiful as ever, and absolutely shocking in its display of reckless maternity; but the Judas tree will bloom for you on the Bosphorus if you get there in time. No one ever loved the dog-wood and Judas tree as I have done, and it is my one crown of life to be sure that I am going to take them with me to heaven to enjoy real happiness with the Virgin and them.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)