I remember when "Birdman" came out. My friend and I were fascinated with the movie and the story. We felt so bad for him. Years later I read that the guards who worked with him said he was mean and abusive and a stone cold sociopath who liked birds and nothing/no-one else. They were very resentful of his sympathetic portrayal in the film.
Hey, I just checked Wikipedia and found this:
According to those who knew him while he was in prison, the mild-mannered characterization of Stroud, as presented in Gaddis' book and the subsequent film, was largely fiction. Former inmate Glenn Williams went so far as to say that Stroud "was not a sweetheart; he was a vicious killer. I think Burt Lancaster owes us all an apology."[4] He and another former convict, Jim Quillan, described the real Stroud as a "jerk", "a guy that liked chaos and turmoil and upheaval... Always at somebody else's expense." They regarded the film as a "comedy... an excellent comedy."
And the site says that when he was allowed to keep birds in Kansas his cell was filthy and he was as well as he never caged them or cleaned up after them. He raised and sold hundreds of canaries, apparently.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx
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