OK, so somewhere in the job description for "Godblogger" it says that I have to post something here about the DaVinci Code movie. I wasn't going to, since I haven't read the book and don't plan on going to the movie -- no, not because I'm afraid of being challenged. It's not the kind of movie I really want to see. My wife might go see it, and if she does, I'm sure I'll hear all about it. I thought that my review of The DaVinci Codebreaker would count, but evidently not. So here goes.

The one comment I keep hearing is "What's the big deal? It's a fictional book! It's fiction! Enjoy it as a fictional story!" And I agree, in a way. I really do feel sorry for people who get their worldviews and their history from fiction. They probably thing The Patriot and Braveheart were both documentaries. People who are that gullible have more problems than The DaVinci Code anyway.

The problem is that to so many people, it's not fiction -- at least, the history involved isn't fiction. And one of those people is Dan Brown himself. Back in 2003, Brown was interviewed on the NPR program Weekend Edition and was asked about the fiction/fact issue:

LINDA WERTHEIMER: How long does it take you to research a book like this? I assume that, among other things, you would hear from the world if youÂ’ve got anything wrong. (why yes, Linda, he has. He just ignores us.)

Mr. BROWN: Certainly. And it takes me about two and a half years to entirely research and write a book like this. Before I even started writing a page, I’d spent a year in research, and a lot of the research for “Angels and Demons” that I did in Vatican City played into this book, as well as my art history training in Seville.

WERTHEIMER: YouÂ’re trying not to get too fictional with the facts here?

Mr. BROWN: Absolutely. The only thing fictional in “The Da Vinci Code” is the characters and the action that takes place. All of the locations, the paintings, the ancient history, the secret documents, the rituals, all of this is factual.

Posted by: Warren Kelly at 04:51 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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