
Fact Checking “The Founder” - gscott
http://rayandjoan.com/the-founder/
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acabal
I enjoyed the movie, and assumed much of it was dramatized.

For me, the most memorable moment in the movie was when (IIRC, it's been a
while) Kroc tightens his grip on the quality control at the restaurants, and
introduces disposable bags, plates, and utensils. There's a short scene of
people's initial stunned, disbelieving reaction to disposables: "You're just
supposed to throw it away?"

That small scene really stuck with me as kind of indictment of modern waste.
Today we don't think twice about throwing away a cup we drank out of for 20
seconds. In the past such waste was shocking and absurd.

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brownbat
> Today we don't think twice about throwing away a cup we drank out of for 20
> seconds. In the past such waste was shocking and absurd.

This reminded me of Hocking's analysis showing that the energy to make and
clean reusable dishes can often exceed the energy spent making the cheapest
disposables. Even though one answer may seem absurd, hidden energy costs can
make environmental cost/benefit calculations really unintuitive.

PDF:
[http://www.design4x.com/misc/bus183/handouts/Hocking.Springe...](http://www.design4x.com/misc/bus183/handouts/Hocking.SpringerVerlag.Energy%20Use%20of%205%20Different%20Cups.pdf)

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wrsh07
My takeaway from this is that the movie made reasonable changes to provide a
compelling narrative while retaining the fact and spirit of the most important
bits:

* Ray did marry Joan

* Harry did make McDonald's viable

* The brothers were bought out with a couple million

* Ray explains why he liked their name

Honestly, the movie feels worth watching just to hear Harry explain how to
make McDonald's work. (Also, you'll see some pretty good acting and nice
cinematography)

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tptacek
The movie is organized around the narrative of Ray Kroc taking advantage of
the McDonald brothers, and ends with Franchise Corporation screwing them out
of royalties that would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars by
reneging on a handshake deal.

But that deal apparently never happened! Not only that, but the McDonald
brothers demanded a lump sum payment and rejected an installment, the closest
thing in the real story to royalties.

~~~
wrsh07
I can't confirm that? Can you provide another source? Because I agree - that
would dramatically change the narrative of the movie. (Even still, I'm not
convinced that it would make Ray a particularly empathetic character)

Searching, the first three links I get are this (the op), a quora answer that
references this, and the below link:

[http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/founder/](http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/founder/)

> Did Ray Kroc renege on his handshake deal to pay the McDonald brothers a
> percentage of the revenue from the franchises? Yes. After the brothers
> refused to give Kroc the original restaurant, he supposedly cheated the
> brothers out of the 0.5 percent royalty agreement they had been getting,
> which would have been valued at $15 million a year by 1977 and as high as
> $305 million a year by 2012 (according to one estimate). In his book, Kroc
> wrote, "If they [the brothers] had played their cards right, that 0.5
> percent would have made them unbelievably wealthy." Relatives of Richard and
> Maurice McDonald say that Maurice (Mac) was so distraught that it attributed
> to his eventual death from heart failure a decade later. -Daily Mail Online

~~~
tptacek
That's the essential narrative Napoli is challenging, and in addition to the
fact that she's a reputable journalist reporting the story, there's the fact
that the counternarrative _doesn 't make sense_, since 0.5% was what the
McDonald brothers were getting _prior to the buyout_ ; if they were expected
to continue getting that money after the buyout, what, exactly, would Ray Kroc
have been buying?

~~~
adventured
In that fictional premise, Kroc was buying the legally clean & clear right to
do with the brand and inside of the restaurants as he saw fit, without having
to fight with the brothers over every detail. The movie portrayed that as a
key sticking point to Kroc being able to push his vision for McDonald's
forward. For example, the powder milkshake battle, or the ability to pursue
raising the fees on the franchisees at his own determining.

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legitster
I quite enjoyed the movie, and was taken aback afterwards when I found out
that much of the conflict was added in to create drama in the story.

I'm kind of conflicted because usually I prefer an accurate take over a
dramatic one, but without it the movie would have been one big advertisement
for McDonalds.

~~~
daodedickinson
I've never researched a "historical" film or "biopic" and not found out that
much of the conflict was added in to create drama in the story. Even many so-
called "documentaries" do the same thing, such as King of Kong. This duplicity
is taught in Hollywood as standard operating procedure. It is an industry wide
norm that they care about entertainment above all else.

~~~
mikeash
I’d say the industry norm is that they care about money above all else. It’s
the moviegoers who care about entertainment above all else.

In any case, the result is the same in the end....

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I’d say the industry norm is that they care about money above all else. It’s
> the moviegoers who care about entertainment above all else.

I'd say the moviegoers have been like that for long enough that the industry
norm really is "entertainment above all", not "whatever the audience wants,
and it might or might not be entertainment". If audiences suddenly shifted to
wanting historical accuracy, I think a lot of people currently in the industry
would fall out of it and get replaced by people with "historical accuracy"
values. I don't think current moviemakers would just seamlessly switch values.

~~~
mikeash
Interesting hypothetical. You may well be right.

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tptacek
The last fact-check bullet, about the 1% of future profits owed to the
McDonald brothers, is a doozy.

~~~
swrobel
Came to the comments looking for a tl;dr, saw your comment and "oooh,
bullets!"

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code4tee
Sadly this is true of many/most of these “based on a true story” movies. The
very high level concept is typically real (there was a restaurant named
McDonalds eventually taken over by a guy named Kroc), but beyond that the main
plot is mostly just all made up—often to the detriment of many real life
people who are made to look bad on the basis of a story or scene that’s
completely made up.

~~~
maxxxxx
Considering that a lot of people learn about history often through movies this
is pretty dangerous.

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hn2017
Um, this is definitely _not_ an objective source.

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tptacek
It's more objective than you'd think from the domain name, which refers to a
book and not to the estate of Ray and Joan Kroc. The author is a journalist,
and if she has an affinity to any of the characters in this story, it's to
Joan Kroc, who is central neither to the movie nor to the fact-checking on
this page.

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dgreensp
It was baffling to me why they changed the story in all these ways that didn’t
even make for a better story. The scene where Harry just happens to be
standing there when Ray is trying to get a loan, for example, felt sort of
odd. Screwing the brothers out of the handshake deal for royalties is another
odd thing to make up.

The movie was all plot, anyway, just sort of a timeline of facts in movie
form, so it’s not like altering the facts at random, in large and small ways,
made it more cohesive or something.

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mstade
> Not since musician Mark Knopfler immortalized the irascible CEO in his 2004
> song “Boom Like That” has the early beginnings of the company been depicted
> in popular culture.

Is Mark Knopfler post Dire Straits really considered pop culture? I am a fan,
and I love the song mentioned (in fact, the entire Shangri-La album is
amazing) but I’ve barely met anyone in the past 20 years or so who even knows
who the man is. Maybe I just hang out in the wrong circles.

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rdl
Curious why they screwed up some minor details in ways which made the movie
worse -- going from Early Times to Canadian Club. Product placement?

If there's ever a Southwest/Kelleher movie and they similarly replace Wild
Turkey with Blanton's or some shit, I will be incensed.

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daodedickinson
All biopics / "historical" films should be consumed from the starting point of
assuming them as pure fiction, other than, for an example using The Founder,
knowing that there is a company called McDonalds and maybe some people with
these names were involved with it.

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Dowwie
The world needs more Joans

