Ice House: Fill & Download for Free

In answering this question, it is important to understand that as far as I can tell, the movie isn’t trying to be historically accurate. It is said to be based on irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly. What this means is that real interviews with the real people involved were conducted—the screenwriter (Steven Rogers) and director (Craig Gillespie) didn’t just make stuff up. The movie presents the perspectives of Harding and Gillooly (and to a lesser extent a few others) as conveyed in those interviews. But there is no guarantee that the real people were telling the truth in those interviews. In fact, since the interviews contradict one another, we can say for sure that someone at least was lying at least some of the time. In cases where two people remember events in a different way, the movie presents both versions without trying to adjudicate who is telling the truth.The movie is primarily based on the reflections of five people—Tonya Harding, Jeff Gillooly, and to a lesser extent Tonya’s mother, Tonya’s coach, and a Hard Copy reporter—looking back on the events from the perspective of 2017. What is worth noting here is that Shawn Eckhardt’s character is handled a bit differently from the others. Shawn died in 2007 so it wouldn’t make sense for his character to give his perspective from 2017. Instead Shawn’s perspective is given through purportedly old video footage from the 1994–1998 time period. This is important because it allows Tonya and Jeff to—without necessarily completely denying their own roles—to pin the greater blame on Shawn. Being dead, Shawn isn’t available—either in the movie or in real life—to give his own account of things, so he is an easy scapegoat. Whether that is historically accurate, though, is debatable.Also important to realize is that while the perspectives of a number of people are included, Nancy Kerrigan is not one of those people, so we don’t get Nancy’s perspective. Certain aspects of Nancy’s role are not controversial. No one, AFAIK, disputes that Nancy was whacked in the knee just before the figure skating Nationals back in 1994. It is a serious crime but no one disputes that it happened. But there are other aspects of Nancy’s role, as portrayed in this movie, which I believe Nancy does dispute and I’ll get to shortly.So here are some things that I know didn’t historically happen quite the way they are portrayed in the movie. Towards the end of the movie Tonya has a confrontation with a judge (the kind of judge that is found in a courtroom, although she also has multiple confrontations with the kind of judge that is found in a figure skating arena). This is described as a trial, and the judge imposes a lifetime ban on Tonya from figure skating. Tonya acts surprised by this decision and tearfully pleads, unsuccessfully, to go to prison for awhile rather than be banned from figure skating.In real life it happened a bit differently. It was a plea bargain, not a trial. The judge did not ban her for life and did not have the authority to do so. Tonya did agree as a probation condition to withdraw from the USFSA and the world championships. The lifetime ban, though, was not imposed by the court but rather by USFSA in a separate disciplinary action a few months later. Tonya accepted the plea bargain, and no judge would approve a plea bargain agreement in a case where the defendant clearly wants to go to trial. Moreover, in her book The Tonya Tapes, Tonya describes going to jail for just a few days as one of the most hellish experiences of her life. The jail time was for a later brush with the law not connected to the Nancy incident. Given this, it is unlikely that Tonya would so easily volunteer to serve 18 months in jail, and it is clear that in real life she definitely didn’t do so.The physical attack also happened a bit differently than shown in the movie. The movie shows Derrick Smith dropping off Shane Stant at Cobo Arena where the attack happened. After foolishly drawing attention to himself by ogling a female skater (not Nancy or Tonya), Shane only identifies Nancy by asking someone to point her out just in time. Nancy is already leaving the ice and Shane only has a few moments after learning who she is in which to act.In real life it happened a bit differently. Derrick and Shane both entered Cobo Arena as spectators and sat at opposite ends of the arena. They watched Nancy skate and so had more time to identify her. When Shane knew that Nancy’s practice time was ending he made a pre-arranged signal to Derrick—standing up and back down—and Derrick went to get the getaway car. Shane then carried out the attack.In the movie Jeff claims to be innocent of any plotting to physically hurt Nancy, although he does admit to planning a death threat. As noted earlier, he blames Shawn for escalating the attack without permission. In real life the four men involved—Jeff, Shawn, Derrick, and Shane but not including Tonya—met at Shawn’s parents’ house in advance to discuss the attack. It is difficult to believe that any of the guys didn’t know all the details of the attack in advance. The movie’s Jeff gets away with claiming this, though, because it just shows Jeff’s perspective and omits Shawn due to Shawn being dead.In most cases the movie notes when there is an important difference in the accounts of Jeff and Tonya. Therefore it is an important omission when the movie fails to do so when it comes to Tonya’s possible role in the attack. Jeff (in real life) claims that Tonya approved the attack. Tonya claims that she did not do so. It is impossible to know who is telling the truth, but the movie doesn’t acknowledge this difference in their accounts even while it does acknowledge differences in the accounts of Jeff and Tonya in many other circumstances. The movie makes it look like Tonya never approved the attack, and no one disputes this. She may or may not have approved the attack, but in real life this point is definitely disputed.Finally, the movie makes it look like Nancy and Tonya were BFF’s before “the incident”. This is disputed by Nancy, who says that they were on speaking terms before “the incident” but weren’t especially close friends. Moreover, the movie doesn’t properly develop how they might have come to be close friends if indeed they ever were. Tonya is shown as being encouraged to view other skaters as enemies not friends, and as she grows up she seems to take this perspective to heart. If she made an exception for Nancy, the movie needs to better explore how that came to be when, in general, Tonya clearly wasn’t friendly with other skaters. In one interview about four years ago, Tonya describes Nancy as “the crybaby who didn’t get the gold”. Tonya may or may not be guilty of planning the attack back in the day, but she is clearly guilty of badmouthing Nancy 20 years later. None of this is consistent with a view that they were once very close friends, so if the movie wants to advance that position as credible, it needs to do more to show how such a purported friendship developed. Without doing so, I’m inclined to think that that part is not historically accurate.