Michael Tolkinis a New York screenwriter whose signature is unmistakable, with a string of harsh ’90s films to his credit, such as “The Rapture,” “Deep Cover” and “The Player,” not to mention the blockbuster “Deep Impact.”

Now Tolkin is back as the main creator of the new Paramount+ series“The Offer,”about the making of“The Godfather.”

Tolkin either wrote or co-wrote all 10 episodes of “The Offer,” and the story it tells is remarkable. It’s oftensoremarkable that anyone watching can’t help but wonder: Did this really happen? So when I found out Tolkin was available for interviews, I jumped at the chance to ask him what in the series was fact and what was just showbiz.

To be clear, the show is at least grounded in fact. Tolkin was initially approached by Paramount to adapt the story of “Godfather” producer Albert S. Ruddy (played by Miles Teller), who turned 92 in March.

“I’d never met Al,” Tolkin told me, “so I spent about two or three weeks interviewing him at his house in Beverly Hills. The more anecdotes he told me, the more excited I got. There’s a way of telling a Hollywood story that I’d never seen before, a gangster story that I’d never seen before, and it became an obsession to get it right.”

There’s an episode in which the mobster, Crazy Joe Gallo (Joseph Russo), is shaking down Ruddy for money he has earmarked to finance the production’s Sicily shoot. Ruddy goes so far as to cancel filming, but then — in a stroke of good luck — Gallo is assassinated in Little Italy, freeing up the money again.

But here’s the thing: In real life, Gallo was killed a few weeksafter“The Godfather” had already been released. So, did Gallo really shake down the production for money? And if he did, how on earth did they ever get rid of him?

“这是一个总是一个很难的问题swer,” Tolkin said. “You start with a set of facts and a set of memories, and then you find that, in order to make the drama work, you have to shift things around. And then you forget what’s real and what’s not, and that’s when you’re really flying. Once you forget that, then you just write.”

OK, but how about the character of Barry Lapidus, a suit at Gulf and Western, the parent company of Paramount. Played by Colin Hanks, he becomes Ruddy’s constant foe. Was Lapidus a real person?

“He’s an amalgam,” Tolkin said.

I had a feeling. He had a certain amalgam quality about him.

But how about this other thing: At one point, in agony over his estrangement from his wife, Paramount boss Robert Evans (Matthew Goode) disappears for weeks. That means that Evans isn’t available to stick up forFrancis Ford Coppola’scut of the film, to the point that it looks as though the dreaded (and amalgamated) Mr. Lapidus might cut it himself. But Evans never really vaporized like that, did he?

“He had a lot of personal difficulties,” Tolkin said, “and the order of the sequence is something I can’t speak to anymore.”

Hmm, OK. Well, here’s something else I thought was interesting. When Ruddy allows himself to get photographed with gangster Joe Columbo, it’s a public relations disaster that turns out to be providential. It sends Paramount’s stock plummeting, preventing Gulf and Western from selling the studio. But didthatactually happen?

“I think it’s too early to start teasing apart what’s a footnote to what’s real, what’s a supposition,” Tolkin said, “because it takes the audience out of the emotional experience of watching a show. If there’s a green light that appears in the corner of the screen — and it’s red light/green light — and the red light is they’re making it up, and the green light is ‘You can’t believe it, but it’s true’ … you don’t want to do that, particularly in the beginning. You just want to say, ‘This is the show, this is the story we’re telling, and let us tell the story.’ ”

We went around like this for three more questions, before I ended the interview early. He didn’t want to talk about what I wanted to talk about—what’s real vs. what’s dramatized—and I didn’t want to talk about anything else.

I went into the interview as a fan of “The Offer,” then realized that every moment I found exciting about it was based on the idea that it was factually true, close to being true, or some version of some truth I hadn’t heard about. It didn’t occur to me that it was all made up.

This goes to a larger issue: If a movie or TV show is supposedly based on true events, how factual does it need to be?

Studios of the 1940s and ’50s regularly made biopics that had nothing to do with the historical person’s actual life. That seems ridiculous now, but everyone has their own standard for how true a narrative needs to be. Here’s mine: If the whole point of watching something is to find out whatreallyhappened — if the story you’re telling derives its importance solely from its being true — then stick to the facts. Or at least try.

I imagine Tolkin might feel differently, but that’s why he’s one of my favorite screenwriters: He’s a master at making stuff up. Just don’t watch “The Offer” if you want to know what actually happened.

“The Offer”(TV-MA) is available to stream on Paramount+. Subsequent episodes premiere Thursdays through June 16.