3. The Last King Of Scotland Is Totally Made Up
Fox Searchlight PicturesJames McAvoy began his path away from floppy-haired costume drama fop and towards serious actor with Kevin MacDonald's adaptation of Giles Foden's novel, which sees a Scottish doctor striking up an unlikely friendship with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, played with manic brilliance by Forest Whitaker from Bloodsport. And other things, we guess, but mainly Bloodsport. Dr Nicholas Garrigan becomes Amin's personal physician, slowly entering the dictator's inner circle of trusted friends and confidants, being asked not just for medical advice but also suggestions on state matters. Eventually Garrigan realises his mate is a genocidal maniac and gets smuggled out of the country to tell the world about all the bad stuff going down in Uganda.
What really happened: Apart from the estimated 300,000 Ugandans who died under Amin's regime, his assertion that he was the "Last King Of Scotland" and the postscript about his own demise whilst exiled in Saudi Arabia years later, The Last King Of Scotland is totally made up! Foden's book explicitly weaved together fact and fiction, but that was kept quiet for the film version, with many praising not only Whitaker's amazing turn as Amin but also the crazy story of Dr Garrigan. Thing is, McAvoy's character never existed, and for most of his life the dictator's personal physician was a fellow Ugandan by the name of Paul D'Arbela. Garrigan was instead sort of based on "Major" Bob Astles, a British soldier who became matey with Idi Amin and was either a calming or malignant influence on him, the people of Uganda giving him the not complimentary nickname of "The White Rat". It wasn't Astles who impregnated one of Amin's wives, as Garrigan did in the film, however. That actually happened to another doctor, Mbalu Mukasa, who accidentally killed said wife during a botched abortion. Then he killed himself. Which is closer to the brutality of the regime Amin had the country under. Actually, we say that the pre-credits postscript to the story was one of the only accurate parts of The Last King Of Scotland, but we were kinda lying ourselves. The coda claims that three hostages died during Operation Entebbe, an attempt to free Israeli civilians who had been taken hostage in a Ugandan airport. In fact there was a fourth death, that of 75-year-old Dora Bloch, killed by Ugandan Army officers at a nearby hospital. Yeah, we dunno why that got left out, but when you're totally inventing people and covering up other monstrosities, why not eh.