Eastwood should never have been able to get his hands on the movie rights. The book is completely true. I am from Savannah. Eastwood even changed some of the people completely, for example Mandy is actually nothing like Eastwood's daughter in the movie. The real Mandy, (whom I know personally), was involved with Joe Odom and never had a romance with John Berendt (Kelso in the movie). I think Eastwood wanted to give his daughter a movie role so he just cast her without even thinking or caring about the real story. He didn't correctly portray many of the people in the book. Almost the entire trial scene in the movie was untrue. Like I said, Eastwood should have never gotten his hands on the movie rights. If you want the true story, read the book and burn the movie. My rating of this film is a 0.