Read

If you call a movie Joy (2015) and tell the story of an entrepreneurial woman who invented a self-wringing mop, made waves at QVC and HSN, and turned her life around using her enterprising spirit, it sounds like you’re making a biopic about Joy Mangano, the woman who actually did stand as the film’s primary inspiration. But Joy isn’t just about Mangao — it’s a combination of her story mixed with the imagination of David O. Russell and his personal relationships with powerful and innovative women. This makes Joy something less than a biopic but more than a fabrication, a version of Mangano’s truth mixed with the exhaustive spirit of other successful figures.

David O. Russell reports to have spent 100 hours on the phone with Mangano, not meeting her in person until late in the filmmaking process. Through this approach, he was able to use facts and details from her life while creating his own image of her. He was able to build a fictional Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) who could convey something positive and inspirational using the details of Mangano’s success rather than a direct presentation of her personality. This approach is why Joy’s last name is never heard in the film, and her mop does not share a name with Mangano’s invention, the famous Miracle Mop. Russell has described the film as “an epic, unexpected story about the interior life of one woman’s soul, from the ages of 10 to 40.”

Inventive as a teenager, the true Mangano (like the fictional Joy) came up with a high-visibility flea collar for pets. She didn’t patent it, and a pet manufacturer released something similar, teaching her a lesson in business. Lawrence’s character in the film foregoes college for family reasons, while the real Mangano graduated from Pace University, but her post-college jobs mirror the film — she worked as a waitress and airline reservation specialist before her inventions took her down other paths.

Jennifer Lawrence in Joy

The real Joy met her husband during college; naturally, the details of that meeting differ in the film. Although the two eventually divorced, they remained business partners, and this is true also in the film — Joy’s husband continues to work for her even after the split. Likewise mirroring the film, the real Joy launched the Miracle Mop from within her father’s auto body shop, and it didn’t sell on QVC until she showed up to promote it herself, complete with a staged phone-in from her friend to boost sales. Some of the specifics from Mangano’s reality (the name of the friend, the initial sales numbers) are changed in the film, but the general events are true, including Mangano’s eventual sale of her company to HSN, where she remains employed.

Much of the supplemental material, characters, and events of Joy are fabricated by David O. Russell, including Joy’s envious half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm), the soap opera-obsessed personality of Joy’s mother (Virginia Madsen) and Bradley Cooper’s QVC executive. Each of these individuals are composites of people from Mangano’s life and Russell’s life, built to amplify Joy’s story and the emotional weight of her journey. An interesting reality is that the bulk of Joy’s fictional charaters, particularly her mother, father (Robert DeNiro), and half-sister, are tailor-made opponents to Joy’s success. These characters nearly break Joy’s spirit and ruin her path to success. While the real Joy’s family members weren’t so brazenly discouraging to her progress, it seems Russell felt it important to touch on the impact negative forces can have on someone’s ambition, and the value of staying true to one’s inner fight.

Jennifer Lawrence in Joy

But Joy was not first conceived as a hybrid of true story and imagination. Joy’s original script was penned by Annie Mumolo, the woman responsible for Bridesmaids (2011). She ended up receiving “story” credit on Joy after Russell, according to Fox executive Elizabeth Gabler, effectively tossed most of her script. Mumolo’s original film was a more straight-up biopic, which Russell claims he didn’t want to do, as it would narrow his interpretation of Mangano’s story as a grand, sweeping demonstration of a female tenacity bigger than any one person. Buzzfeed wrote about whether the film would have worked better as a straight-up biopic, arguing that Russell’s visionary idea for this film doesn’t hold the weight of his recent successes. Buzzfeed concludes that the film’s tone is off, and the imagined supporting characters don’t fit the film, implying that Mumolo’s script may have resulted in a better film.

As it is, Joy embellishes a true story for the sake of universal appeal. The real Joy Mangano has wildly endorsed the picture, stating there was “Not a doubt in my mind that [Russell] would just do everything right, and he did.” As TIME says, “Mangano’s approval of the final product is not an endorsement of its accuracy—never a goal of Russell’s—but of the inspirational message it conveys.” From her statements, it’s reasonable to say Mangano believes Russell’s version captures the most important part of her story — her essence and her spirit — and creates a positive narrative of an underestimated woman’s drive for success.