The Beanie Bubble: Separating Fact From Fiction

What's the truth behind the characters in the movie?

In my previous post, which can be found here, I briefly stated that while The Beanie Bubble is loosely based upon the life of Ty Warner, the directors (Damian Koulash and Kristen Gore) have admitted that the screenplay was largely fictionalised. With this in mind, where does the fiction end and the factual begin? It’s hard to tell, but let’s try to get to the bottom of it together. 

Right from the off, the very opening if the movie is based upon real events. The scene depicts a truck crash which resulted in thousands of Beanie Babies being spewed across a highway. Kristen Gore told MovieWebb “It's a real incident that happened, and it felt like a perfect metaphor for the entire movie, for everything we're trying to say with it.”

The Truth About Ty Warner

Damian Koulash, who directed The Beanie Bubble alongside Kristen Gore, has admitted that the team behind the movie didn’t really bother to research the real Ty Warner before they created the movie. In an interview with MovieWebb, he stated "We should be clear that we didn't research Ty, and these are not the actual women. This is a composite story that we learned from that book, and we're careful to say in the beginning, we made up a bunch of this, but that's mostly because we don't particularly care about these stuffed animals. We don't particularly care that the first consumer website was created by a 19-year-old. That's an amazing factoid, but most of these things, it's the idea that what looks so absurd on the outside, like a mistake none of us could make, is the mistake we're all making at the same time."

In truth, there are many who have described the real Ty Warner as similarly narcissistic but Galifianakas, who plays the plushie mogul in the movie, was careful with his words when he told Marie Clare "It's a fictionalized version of this man, it's important that I say that because I would never say, 'I studied him, and this is how he talked and walked and all that.' I didn't have those tools." So what is the truth behind the man who brought us Ty Beanie Babies? 

Well, it’s hard to say. The real Ty Warner was reclusive and eluded much attention from the public eye. Other than what you can currently read about him on his Wikipedia page, not much is known of how he was or how he acted. Galifianakis failed to find any footage or interviews of his character, so he was left to heavily fictionalise his portrayal based upon what we do know. 

One thing we know for sure is that Ty Warner really was accused of massive amounts of tax evasion when he hid millions of dollars from tax officials. He was spared jail, but ordered to undertake 500 hours of community service and was on probation for two years. He’s still the CEO and sole founder of Ty Inc, as well as owner of the Four Seasons hotel in New York city. Reportedly, he is worth around $2.3 billion dollars.

According to Damian Koulash, who not only directed the movie but authored the book upon which it is based (The Great Beanie Baby Bubble), Ty really did date the same woman as his father on several occasions. Though I’m unsure how much Koulash is to be believed, considering he’s already admitted that he put no research into Ty for the movie. So I guess you’ll just have to make your own mind up on that one. 

You can read more about Ty Warner here.

Was Robbie Drawn From Reality?

The short answer to this is ‘not really’. Through research, it’s clear that Robbie was based off of the former girlfriend of Warner, Patricia Roche, who did indeed help to found Ty Inc. and went on to run the UK division, making a lot of money in the process. However, Elizabeth Banks (the actress who plays Robbie in The Beanie Bubble) has admitted to feeling freed by the fact that they were dramatising so much of the story, leaving her to use Patricia Roche as more of a “jumping off point”. 

Is Sheila Real?

Again… Not really. Sheila is claimed to have been based on Ty Warners long-time girlfriend, Faith McGowan. In reality, she helped to run the business alongside Ty. The true part is that she did end up moving into his home with her two daughters, though it’s unknown if the real Ty did to her what the fictionalised Ty did to Sheila. 

According to Faith McGowans daughter Jenna Boldeduck, who is presumably the inspiration behind Ava’s character in The Beanie Bubble, the creation of Beanie Babies was a group effort between Ty, her mother and the two sisters. During the time they spent living with Ty, “the prototypes were all over the house”. While she did draw the original inspiration for Spooky’s image, Ty had expressed interest in creating a ghost Beanie Baby and he really did credit her for his creation. It only took two months before the new iteration without her name went into stores, though when Warner and McGowan split (over this or not, I’m not sure) she was awarded $6 million dollars.

McGowan really did punch Ty Warner after she found him in bed with his ex, Patricia Roche, during the Christmas party.

What About Maya?

Well, while Maya may never have existed, she was definitely based upon Lina Trivedi. Trivedi was a designer for Ty Inc and she really did come up with the idea for all Beanie Babies to have their own birthday and the poems inside their tags were also her idea, writing the first 136 herself. As well as this, she really did design the website with the help of her brother, who was still in Highschool at the time. As well as all of this, Trivedi really is credited with being the first person to build a business to consumer website and creating the first internet sensation. 

She wasn’t studying to be a Surgeon, though. She was actually studying Sociology. She now lives in Wisconsin with child, who has a disability, and has used her experience at Ty Inc to become a published author. As far as I can tell, she is now helping people to write through a project intended to aid in content creation.

As you can see, The Beanie Bubble is not based very heavily at all in reality, though it takes inspiration from actual events. However, I don’t think this impairs the impact of the movie in any way, as long as you take it into account before watching and know that you are not watching a documentary on the life of Ty Warner. While he may have been a narcissist, I am left wondering how he feels about the fictional depiction of himself.