The Messenger

[Big Magilla]

Film called 'true story' is riddled with falsehoods

By Patrick Gavin and Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

An independent short film detailing a curious incident at the end of World War II contains so many errors and fabrications that its executive producer says he has pulled it from a scheduled premiere.

Billed as the true story of how a 16-year-old messenger boy held up the end of the war by stopping for breakfast, The Messenger was scheduled to be shown at this weekend's Philadelphia Film Festival. But producer Pat Croce on March 27 scuttled the debut after receiving word from the film's 25-year-old director, Quincy Perkins, that the filmmaker had fabricated parts of the story, including the death of its subject.

"I feel like I got kicked in the stomach," Croce said in an interview. He had invested about $100,000 in the project. A onetime part owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, he financed the film as a favor to Perkins, the son of a friend.

As depicted in The Messenger, featured in a story March 14 in USA TODAY, Thomas E. Jones was charged with delivering a cable to President Harry Truman at the White House in August 1945, confirming Japan's World War II surrender. In the 16-minute film, Jones is portrayed as being unaware of the envelope's blockbuster contents and delaying the end of the war, first by having pancakes at a diner where he flirts with girls and then by being pulled over by a policeman in Washington, D.C., for an illegal U-turn.

DVD press materials for the film show a man purported to be the real Jones recalling a police escort to the White House, where he meets "Harry Truman himself," who takes the letter from him.

"He took it and shook my hand and thanked me, and then they went back into their office or somewhere," he says to an off-camera interviewer.

Turns out that Perkins made up the escort, the encounter with Truman, the trip to the White House and the pancakes — he even hired an actor to play an elderly Jones for documentary-style footage, according to Croce.

In The Messenger, the actor delivers the tale from his San Francisco hospital "deathbed." In the closing credits, Perkins dedicates the film to Jones, who, he says, died in 2005.

Turns out that Jones is alive and quite well, a retired phone company technician, silver-haired and happily living with his wife, Nancy, in a small suburban cottage in Rockville, Md., north of Washington, D.C.

"I have had a lot of health problems because I'm 77, and I've had a heart bypass," the father of six says. "But I'm feeling better now."

He says Perkins never contacted him.

The first he heard of the pancakes, the deathbed and the rest? Two weeks ago, after a niece who was listening to the radio caught a reference to the film after USA TODAY wrote about it. His kids Googled it and learned of coverage by other newspapers. Then they tracked down the filmmaker, who confessed to Croce last week.

Jones says the kernel of the story is true: A D.C. policeman pulled over the car that a companion was driving that fateful day — they'd made an illegal U-turn on Connecticut Avenue, a few blocks from the White House. The driver initially thought they were headed there, but their destination was actually the Swiss Legation (embassy), in the other direction. Thus the U-turn.

Though the top-secret message inside the envelope was encoded, Jones says, they both knew what it said.

And perhaps most significant: There were no pancakes.

"We delivered the message at four o'clock in the afternoon," he says. "And we knew at the office that it had to do with the Japanese surrender. There wasn't any lollygagging around. It was, 'Take this and go.' "

And he never met Truman.

Sitting in their dining room amid a small stack of yellowed clippings, Jones and his wife say they won't take legal action against the filmmaker — "We'll let it sit by itself," he says.

His wife adds, "Frankly, the kids are more incensed about it than he and I are."

Victoria Jones, Thomas' daughter, says, "The thing that is surprising to us is my father would have been very easy to find."

In a statement e-mailed Friday, Perkins apologizes to the Jones family "for any pain that this film or the recent articles have caused them."

He adds that he "did not mean to declare as fact that the real life Thomas ate pancakes nor that Thomas would have knowingly jeopardized the lives of hundreds of thousands to stop and eat them."

Perkins says he "made substantial efforts to locate and secure an on-camera interview with the real life Thomas E. Jones," but eventually was "led to believe by examination of credible documentation that he was likely deceased."

He adds, "While this film is premised upon a true historical event, it is not a documentary and is not a dramatization. As with all films premised upon historical events, the filmmaker's creative interpretation is imparted to hopefully create an interesting piece of art."

He also apologizes to Croce "for anything that I may have done or said that may have mislead (sic) him to believe that the actor depicting Mr. Jones was the actual individual," but press materials say Perkins "managed to track down a surprised Jones via telephone, residing in Allentown, Pa." He says Jones told him he was "waiting 50 years for someone to call."