Hello fellow ONTDers, and welcome to my lecture on the many inaccuracies, falsehoods, and straight-up bad filmmaking decisions on display in Aaron Sorkin's disastrous new film, Being the Ricardos. I suffered through this cinematic trainwreck as no one has ever suffered before, and no one likely will suffer again. Emerging from the wreckage of the experience, I had 30 pages of notes on Sorkin's flawed movie, and have now condensed them for the benefit of you, my ONTD brethren.
Originally intended as a prestige biopic and clear Oscar bait, Aaron Sorkin has churned out a quip-filled, disrespectful mess of a movie that employs SVU-style "Ripped from the headlines" "facts" throughout a cluttered, bloated, yet excruciatingly dull script destined to insult the intelligence and sensibilities of I Love Lucy fans around the world. But whether you're a diehard Lucy devotee, a casual viewer, or you're new to the Lucy phenomenon (much like Sorkin himself), I can promise you this: you'll find something to hate in this movie!
Please note that MANY spoilers for Being the Ricardos will be in this deep-dive.
We've got a lot of ground to cover in Part 1 of today's lecture, so get out your notepads and dive into my many gripes and fact-checks below.
Part 1: The Historical Timeline
The premise of this movie is "one dramatic week on the I Love Lucy set nearly destroys the show and the lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz." The entire premise of this movie also just happens to be fictional.
The main historical events highlighted by Sorkin in this movie - Lucille accused of being a communist, Lucille being pregnant, and Desi's cheating scandals - all did happen, but not in the same week. In fact, they didn't even happen in the same SEASON of I Love Lucy.
(NOTE: In addition to fucking up the I Love Lucy timeline beyond repair, Sorkin also makes innumerable errors and changes to Old Hollywood in general, ignoring facts like when Lucille Ball started doing radio, when she began a contract with MGM, and even when films like The Big Street came out. We unfortunately do not have time to cover all of these thoroughly, since it would take me another seven hours, but use the comments to add your own righteous fury about Old Hollywood facts to the conversation.)
Let's look at the real I Love Lucy timeline and how it compares to Sorkin's shitshow interpretation:
While Sorkin drops this plot right in the middle of his Hell Week, it's actually the first of the three events to happen in real life. This is also the only major event that Sorkin placed in the correct season of I Love Lucy.
In Season 2 of I Love Lucy in 1952, Lucy Ricardo became the first pregnant character on television, and Lucille Ball became the first woman who did not have to hide a pregnancy on tv.
According to Jess Oppenheimer’s book, the crew of I Love Lucy learned of the pregnancy at the very end of filming the first season, during which the show had become a huge phenomenon.
The break between seasons have the team time to strategize and convince the network, as well as plan ahead for when filming would have to pause later in Lucille’s pregnancy. Work on the second season started earlier than usual to knock out some non-pregnancy-related episodes before Lucille started showing. The second season would also use five episodes that had originally been filmed during season one, and utilize “flashback episodes” with new opening scenes to pad out the season while Lucille was on maternity leave.
This carefully planned strategy bears almost no resemblance to Aaron Sorkin’s frenzied interpretation of this event, where Desi tells the writers to throw out what they’re working on and put together a pregnancy plotline starting five episodes later, before the network or sponsors even approve the idea.
Also according to Jess Oppenheimer’s book, as soon as Desi told him about the pregnancy, Oppenheimer immediately began to strategize about convincing the network - a far cry from the doom and gloom of the writer’s team that Sorkin presents. In fact, Oppenheimer states that Desi was the one who didn’t believe the network would ever allow it, and was convinced by Oppenheimer, something Sorkin reverses just to amp up the dick-measuring contest he’s written for these two men who - while they did have occasional disagreements and tensions over Desi’s controlling ways - ultimately respected and admired each other's talents.
Getting the pregnancy plot did happen with the guidance and blessing of religious leaders who consulted on how to portray a pregnancy on tv without offending American viewers. This was, again, Jess Oppenheimer’s idea - Sorkin gives a lot of his big moments of success to Desi and seems intent on emasculating him at every turn.
And it’s also true that there was early opposition from the network and advertisers at Phillip Morris, and that the show couldn’t use the word “pregnant." The pregnancy reveal episode was called "Lucy Is Enceinte," and throughout the plot arc, characters mostly refer to her as "expecting" or call the pregnancy "her condition."
Why I hated Sorkin's version: He misses the mark by dropping this story in the middle of so many other high-drama plot points, downplaying how significant this historical moment was for television - and for Lucy and Desi themselves. Sorkin uses the pregnancy as a cheap plot device to emphasize the couple's marital troubles and struggles for dominance at the network. And Oppenheimer, who was absolutely instrumental in getting this plot allowed on the air, has his successes taken away by Sorkin, and is instead turned into a bumbling, jealous moron with no faith in Desi.
The Dumbest Inaccuracy: You know what really drove me to the brink of insanity about this plot??? It's the fact that Aaron Sorkin can't use fucking google. Despite this being the only major event that takes place in the correct season of I Love Lucy, Sorkin still fumbles something that would've been so easy to fact-check.
When Desi is pitching incorporating Lucille's pregnancy into the show, he tells the writers to clear whatever stories they have for later in the season and make episode 9 an episode about Lucy Ricardo being pregnant.
The pregnancy episode, "Lucy is Enceinte," was actually Season 2, Episode TEN. Jesus Christ, Sorkin, you couldn't double-check the episode number?? Maybe you thought no one would notice, but guess what - I NOTICED. I noticed and I hate you for it.
One More Minor Gripe:
Sorkin has Desi tell executives that the Ricardos will be pushing together their separate twin beds, to a resounding, horrified chorus of "Oh no no no no no."
While the Ricardos famously slept in separate twin beds throughout the series, many people forget that in Season One, the Ricardo's beds WERE already pushed together, and then were separated sometime early in Season Two. While I can't find an exact source for this, I believe that separating the beds was one of the concessions made to make audiences more comfortable with the pregnancy plotline to avoid people thinking about "how she got pregnant."
Lucille Ball is Accused of Being a Communist: 1953
This is clearly the plot Sorkin actually cared about, and he should've stuck to it instead of shoehorning in a bunch of other plots for maximum drama. This movie gets the Communist scandal half right - but boy, does it LEAN IN to what it gets wrong.
In September 1953, shortly before Season 3 of I Love Lucy would begin filming, Lucille Ball voluntarily met with the HUAC (The House Committee on Un-American Activities) to testify about how she had registered as a Communist in 1936 to please her grandfather Fred, who had helped raise her. According to Lucille, her grandfather, who had suffered a stroke, wanted to run for City Council and asked his family to register as Communists so they could vote for him. While Lucille did register to avoid upsetting him, she never voted Communist.
Following the secret testimony, Lucille was cleared.
Not mentioned in the movie is the fact that Lucille had also voluntarily spoken with the FBI in 1952 pre-emptively, fearing that her previous Communist registration could land her on the blacklist. The FBI found no wrongdoing during this meeting, either.
On September 6th, radio personality Walter Winchell dropped a big ol' blind item on his show declaring that a top redheaded television comedian was suspected of being a Communist. According to Lucille, she was home listening to the radio, and first thought the blind item must refer to actress Imogene Coca (a fact briefly referenced in Sorkin's movie). Unlike in Being the Ricardos, however, Lucille and Desi were not having angry sex when the blind item dropped - Desi called Lucille to say he was bringing a team to the house to discuss what they should do about the situation, saying "Honey, you're in trouble."
One of the first reporters to get a quote from Lucille and Desi was gossip columnist and friend, Hedda Hopper, who was famously anti-Communist and helped report suspected celebrities to the HUAC herself.
On September 11, filming of Season 3 would begin with the episode "The Girls Go Into Business." Just before that, the Los Angeles Herald-Express ran the headline, "Lucille Ball Was Red in 1936." Other papers began to pick it up as well, casting serious doubt over whether the I Love Lucy filming would carry on that evening.
Phillip Morris chairman Alfred Lyons offered Lucille a 30 minute television spot to speak directly to American viewers and explain the situation. According to Lucille, "I burst into tears and thanked him. I would’ve spoken to America except at six o’clock that evening, representative Donald L. Jackson, chairman of the House on Un-American Activities Committee called a press conference in his Hollywood hotel room and cleared me completely.”
With Lucille cleared, the challenge remained of making sure the audience - and reporters - at the live taping were supportive of Lucille following the controversy.
Instead of warming up the crowd with his usual jokes and songs, Desi Arnaz instead made a very famous speech about how much he and Lucille loved America, and how Lucille was not and never had been a Communist. The audience applauded for nearly a minute. Desi then brought Lucille onto the stage, saying " “Now I want you to meet my favorite wife, my favorite redhead. In fact, that’s the only thing red about her. And even that’s not legitimate, Lucile Ball.” The audience's support was overwhelming for Lucille, who cried when she left the stage.
The following day, Lucille and Desi held a press conference at their home to discuss the situation further with reporters. When asked if she feared this scandal would damage her career, Lucille responded, "“I have more faith in the American people than that. I think any time you give the American people the truth they’re with you.”
And in December 1953, the cast of I Love Lucy was invited to the White House by Eisenhower, further proving to the public that Lucille was innocent.
Why I Hated Sorkin's Version: Sorkin doesn't give a shit about how beloved Lucille Ball was, nor does he understand the love audiences had for this show and its stars. This much is clear in how he wraps up the communist plotline: replacing Desi's passionate speech about his wife's innocence with a surprise - entirely FICTIONAL - phone call from J Edgar Hoover, who reassures the audience that Lucy is not a communist.
Instead of using this moment to show how beloved Lucy is to the audience, and showing how much Desi loves Lucy in defending her, Sorkin thinks it's cooler and more dramatic to let J Edgar Hoover himself pop in to exonerate her. It's absolute buffoonery to witness, but Sorkin really thinks he's doing something big here. The big emotional turn here could've been Lucille realizing that the audience has always been on her side, that she's loved - but no, the moment is reduced to a made-up cameo set against the backdrop of the THIRD major event in the movie, and the most hamfisted one of all.
The Dumbest Inaccuracy:
Sorkin replaces the third season episode "The Girls Go Into Business" with a season one episode, "Fred and Ethel Fight." And YEAH, it's called "FRED and Ethel Fight," NOT "Ethel and Fred Fight," which is what this dumbass put in the movie.
Considering "Fred and Ethel Fight" isn't one of Lucy's most popular episodes, and doesn't even take place in the correct apartment set that Sorkin features, I don't see why he couldn't have used the real episode. But whatever, I'm not the Oscar-nominated screenwriter here!
In January 1955, which puts us in the middle of Season 4 (the Hollywood season), an issue of Confidential came out with the story “Does Desi Really Love Lucy?” Aside from the timeline, Aaron Sorkin got that basic fact right. He also got Desi's defense - "they're just hookers" - right, though he probably didn’t say that exact line to Lucille moments before filming an episode.
The original Confidential article is available to read here.
While Sorkin gets the basic facts right here, including some direct quotes from the article, his insistence on fucking with the timeline and rehashing repetitive dramatic beats turns an interesting plot point into a melodramatic, emotionally flat mess that dilutes every other plotline it intersects with (including the pregnancy plotline, which becomes unnecessarily sadder when tainted by this particular scandal).
I don't believe Sorkin bothered to read much about Lucy and Desi from before their I Love Lucy days. If he had, he'd have known that the couple had their fair share of scandals and infidelities LONG before the Confidential article in 1955. They'd fought, broken up, cheated, and in fact, in the 40s, the couple very nearly divorced, with Lucille famously even going to court over it to make a point to Desi. This fact is even referenced in the Confidential article itself.
Much of their relationship was characterized by extreme jealousies, with Desi often commenting that the pair spent a fortune making long distance calls to argue when they were apart. These jealousies and fights led to Desi and Lucille realizing their marriage could only survive if they worked together longterm.
The real-life Confidential scandal was humiliating for Lucille - something that Sorkin barely touches on while mining the event for melodrama. Lucille and Desi had become so beloved to audiences that the public essentially viewed them as Ricky and Lucy in real-life, and that love was enough to make audiences forget about any previous scandals. The Confidential article risked shattering that illusion for the public and casting a shadow over the happy marriage portrayed on the show.
Why I Hated Sorkin's Version: By 1955, Lucille was well aware of their ongoing marital issues, and she certainly knew that Desi hadn't always been faithful. But Sorkin includes no mention of any of that, and people unfamiliar with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz will come out of this movie thinking that the Confidential scandal was the first betrayal and crack in an otherwise wonderful love story.
The movie grinds to a halt over and over - including right at the end of the film - with Lucille continually asking Desi if the story from Confidential is true. In real life, Lucille read the story on set, said "Oh, hell, I could tell them worse than that," and got on with rehearsals. Lucille wasn't an idiot - her first inkling of marital problems didn't come from a magazine.
Sorkin, on the other hand, paints Lucille as practically obsessed with learning the truth as reported in Confidential. By the third time the issue is forced awkwardly into a dramatic scene, Sorkin's version of Lucille seems naive at best and dumb at worst.
It's true that Lucille DID see I Love Lucy as a way of saving her marriage. It's also true that they started the show as a way to spend less time apart, something that had caused enormous problems throughout their marriage. Lucille even suggested that playing a happy couple on tv gave the two a reprieve every week from their own problems. And she did very much love Desi and want to have a happy home and family with him. That all rings true.
But Sorkin's insistence on bringing all of Lucille's worries back to wondering if she's been cheated on - something the real Lucille knew all too well by this point! - feels lightly misogynistic to me in ways I can't quite explain.
Sorkin didn't find Lucille's trailblazing for women in comedy interesting enough, didn't find the radical feminism of allowing a woman to be pregnant on television interesting enough, didn't even find the actual messy details - messier than anything portrayed in this movie! - of the Ball-Arnaz marriage interesting enough without also throwing in extra helpings of a scorned, sad woman's yearnings that outweigh anything else happening in her life.
The Dumbest Inaccuracy: Sorkin placing this scandal so early into the show's run does a huge disservice to everything else Lucille and Desi accomplished together, the happy times they did share, all the other struggles and scandals they had already faced by that time, and how beloved they were when the scandal broke.
Are we supposed to believe that, in Sorkin’s fictional timeline, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo’s controversial baby plotline would’ve been embraced so fully by American audiences if it came hot on the heels of Desi Arnaz fucking sex workers publicly?
Think about your choices for two seconds, Aaron Sorkin.
Final Thoughts on Sorkin's Timeline: Mixing and matching historical events that were spread out across 3 years of I Love Lucy resulted in a barely coherent, crowded script with no room to do even one of these events justice.
Honestly, Sorkin would've been better off writing a fictionalized, "inspired by Lucille Ricardo" Hollywood story that borrows elements from the behind-the-scenes drama he cared so much about - but then he'd miss out on that biopic Oscar bait, so what's the point?
Next in my lecture, we'll address the inaccuracies of Sorkin's I Love Lucy re-enactments.
You might think I'm running out of steam here, but no. I'm thriving in my hatred. Let's discuss how Aaron Sorkin majorly fucked up his recreations of I Love Lucy, and what those decisions say about this movie.
Who the Fuck is Director Donald Glass?
Firstly, let's address the fact that Donald Glass - supposed director of this I Love Lucy episode and enemy of Lucille Ball, DOESN'T EXIST.
If he IS a real television director, I have not been able to find him, but he CERTAINLY didn't direct any episodes of I Love Lucy. All of I Love Lucy's episodes were directed by the same three rotating directors, William Asher, James V. Kern, and Marc Daniels (who directed the real "Fred and Ethel Fight").
"Fred and Ethel Fight"
As previously mentioned, Aaron Sorkin fucked up the name of this episode, calling it "Ethel and Fred Fight" because he can't and won't fact-check his own bullshit.
And of course you already know that this Season One episode is way out of place in the I Love Lucy timeline here and has been forced into the wrong apartment set.
But I want to discuss how Sorkin changes the physical comedy of this episode to prove his own idiotic point. Aaron Sorkin picked an episode that he clearly didn't like and didn't think fans would care that much about, either. And it's evident in how he tries to "fix" the comedy of the dinner scene.
In the real episode of Fred and Ethel Fight, the dinner scene's physical comedy comes from Fred and Ethel sitting on a small bench at dinner and elbowing each other while trying to cut their meat, until Fred elbows Ethel off the bench and onto the floor.
In Sorkin's version, the Mertzes elbow each other until they BOTH fall off the bench at the same time.
All in all, it's a minor change, and casual fans of I Love Lucy probably won't even notice the difference. Hell, this scene might even experience a Mandela Effect thanks to Sorkin.
But it's a completely UNNECESSARY change, and one that shows just how smug Sorkin is about his own cleverness, and his own disdain for I Love Lucy. The big "both Mertzes fall off the bench" gag becomes a central part of another side plot - Lucille's perfectionism about the show's comedy. So it's absolutely INSANE that Sorkin uses a comedic beat that HE HIMSELF INVENTED to highlight Lucille's natural comedic genius.
Furthermore, during the camera blocking rehearsal that leads to Lucille trying to fix these beats of physical comedy, the director (who, again, DOESN'T EXIST) places Fred and Ethel with their BACKS to the camera and audience. During Lucille's late-night rehearsal, Sorkin's Lucille brilliantly suggests having the piano bench positioned so the camera can see what Fred and Ethel are doing. Thank GOD Lucille Ball and Lucille Ball alone could think of the REVOLUTIONARY TELEVISION IDEA of facing the FUCKING CAMERA.
What I'm saying is - I hate Aaron Sorkin as much as he seems to hate this episode of I Love Lucy.
More will be discussed about this episode's set design and costumes in Part 2, when I will also share why Sorkin's alterations to this scene represent his own egotistical hubris.
Lucy's Italian Movie
This flash forward is clearly only thrown into the movie because Sorkin wants to get ONE iconic I Love Lucy clip to use in trailers.
The episode "Lucy's Italian Movie" is from much later in the series' run, during Season 5's European Outing plotline. In addition to it not making much sense for the writers to pitch it during season 2 as a standalone episode in Italy, Sorkin also uses this episode idea to - once again - take credit away from the writers and portray Lucille and Desi as the only people with good ideas.
But Sorkin makes a really bizarre choice when he again recreates an episode by including comedic beats that don't exist in the final product. In Sorkin's version of this episode, Lucy Ricardo loses an earring in the vat of grapes she's stomping in, resulting in her rolling around in the grapes to find the lost jewelry.
This plot WAS included in the original draft of this episode, but did not make it to the final version, as it was deemed unrealistic that Lucy would be able to find an earring again in the vat. So, again, it's a weird move to show off Lucille's comedic brilliance through something we don't see onscreen in I Love Lucy, and especially through something that was cut for not being good enough.
Join me for Part Two, when we'll discuss how these historical figures were portrayed, bad wigs, quippy dialogue, and other things I just plain didn't like.
Disclaimer: If I got anything factually wrong in this novel, leave me alone, I still did 400% more research than Aaron Sorkin did and I deserve an Oscar, an Emmy, four Golden Globes, and probably a Tony. And if I haven't addressed your own personal grievances against Sorkin, please sound off in the comments!
Happy holidays, ONTD!
Sources: Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television's Most Famous Couple
Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
Meet the Mertzes: The Life Stories of I Love Lucy's Other Couple
Laughs, Luck...and Lucy: How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time
Papermoon Loves Lucy
