Speaking of: Based on a True Story

I'm not one of those people who thinks a TV show or book or movie needs to be based on a true story to have value. A writer's imagination can be just as powerful as the truth if they use it right.

But God, it never ceases to amaze me how many true stories we have that are worth telling. And true stories do have a certain power to them that fiction ones don't have.

I just finished the Hulu miniseries Pistol chronicling the short-but-fiery career of the Sex Pistols, and while I don't know nearly enough about TV and film to properly critique a series, I throughly enjoyed every second of it and was blown away by how wild the story is. The manager betrayal. The chaos of Sid's final days. The side-plot about Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. I don't know why it took Hollywood this long to write a series around it because every piece of the plot and the drama was right there for the taking.

Scripted TV is the art form of our generation. Never before has there been a time where so much scripted TV has been produced, and I would bet there has never been a time where so much of it is being consumed by people. If you're an artist looking to have a cultural impact, scripted TV is the place to be right now.

For millennium, humans relayed stories from generation to generation orally through stories and folk tales, making sure the most important, defining moments of their culture far outlasted the folks who lived them. Then eventually books became more widely available, and the written word became the standard for preserving stories.

I think scripted TV is the new folk tale. Books might always be the go-to source for record keeping, but scripted TV has more cultural currency now. People care more about a good TV show than they do a good book. It's a fundamentally more engaging medium to consume through. And I really like the idea of using scripted television in a way that preserves and shares some of the most important or most interesting moments in our history. Just like we know about the Trojan horse through Homer's Iliad, kids in the future might learn about the Sex Pistols through Pistol, and there's something beautiful about saving and reliving history through something as engaging as a TV show.

So no, a story doesn't have to be true for it to have value. But true stories are what give us history and culture and tradition, and I hope scripted TV continues to be such a great medium where these true stories can live on.