Artistic Liberties

[The Burgomaster]

I took some artistic liberty with your post:

Yes, I have watched many movies and TV shows that were based on books, plays and real life, but never follow the original stories exactly.  Now I can understand editing out certain parts of the story to fit the time limit, but changing plot and dialogue is simply WRONG!  This is something called Artistic Liberty.

I see absolutely nothing artistic about it.  Its nothing more than eviscerating the story.  Artistic Liberty in films should be banned.  It is just plain wrong.  I know some authors don't mind it, but others like Peter Benchley(author of Jaws) don't like it at all.

If I wrote and published a story and some movie company wanted to make a film of it, I would call an attorney and make them swear by contract that absolutely no artistic liberty is applied to any part of the story though they are free to edit out certain parts to make the story fit the time limit.

To me, artistic liberty is just plain evil.