I never disputed the "based on," but I do dispute the idea that this is some kind of documentary or other true-to-life portrayal. I think it would be an insult to her to say that she had won an academy award for just acting like her own little nutty self. That's not to say that she's not quirky. She is. But it's still a narrative feature, and even movies that are biopics smooth out details and contradictions in order to tell a single, coherent story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

I understand from a friend who recently watched one of her more recent movies (I don't recall which one, I'm not actually a big fan of the movies she's done lately) that she has a line in that film about collecting a particular kind of pottery. Which she does in real life. And she has probably the second largest collection of this pottery in the country. So does that mean that the rest of the film is true to life?