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)
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