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 real life, differences, real and/or life:
“The genuine artist is never “true to life.” He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Generally there is no consistent evidence of significant differences in school achievement between children of working and nonworking mothers, but differences that do appear are often related to maternal satisfaction with her chosen role, and the quality of substitute care.”
—Ruth E. Zambrana, U.S. researcher, M. Hurst, and R.L. Hite. “The Working Mother in Contemporary Perspectives: A Review of Literature,” Pediatrics (December 1979)
““As for your world of art and your world of reality,” she replied, “you have to separate the two, because you can’t bear to know what you are.... The world of art is only the truth about the real world.””
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The touchstone for family life is still the legendary “and so they were married and lived happily ever after.” It is no wonder that any family falls short of this ideal.”
—Salvador Minuchin (20th century)