How do you reconcile that I have never personally been in a situation as a DM where I had to choose between only the options of fudge or suck?
I feel no need to 'reconcile' un-verifiable anecdotes from annonymous posters on the internet. Possibility include that you're just on a random-distribution tail, that you & your players prefer a style in which the game having results far outside those representative of the range of herioc fantasy genres is not only acceptable, but desirable, and, of course, obviously, that you feel safe in saying that from behind the shield of anonymity knowing that it can't be confirmed nor denied.
What actors do and saying a die roll mattered when it didn't are not even remotely the same thing
They are, in fact, exactly the same thing: drama. Evoking a feeling in the audience that is a reaction to something that is well-portrayed, but not literally true.
you know, since everyone watching the movie knows, and is even clearly told by the credits, that they are watching Daniel Craig aTct as a character named James Bond rather than watching a documentary about a guy named James Bond.
And everyone knows that RPGs are, as the G suggest, just games, and not real, either. And, if you've read the Basic Set description of how the game is played, you know that D&D is not a game that's played by rules in the traditional sense, since the DM can change, ignore, and over-rule the nominal rules as he sees fit.
That reads as deliberately missing the point.
Maybe you missed the point of it. You're playing D&D, the D&D describes a corridor as being dusty and having a door on the left. The module he has hidden behind the screen describes it as dank with doors on the left & right. He's decided that a dank corridor in a desert makes no sense, and that the portion of the dungeon to the right would be a waste given the time allotted to the sessions. He's not lying, he's just running a game. The same is true if he decides to roll on a wandering monster table, not ignore certain results, or whatever.
Claiming that you can meet a player's preference through lying to them is absolute nonsense.
Again, not lying, just not sharing the details of the resolution method going on behind the screen. ;P
I think what it really comes down to for me is that there is one side of this discussion which relies upon the players not finding out what the DM is actually up to - and I can't fathom how a person can't recognize that if you are doing something and feel that it is okay so long as no one finds out, that you are doing something that is not okay.
The point of the game is to have fun. I can deliver a better experience to my 5e players by using a DM screen and exercising liberal judgement in exactly how things are resolved. If you run 5e as if it were LIFE, and just lay a map out on the table and follow the Dice Gods, you might still have some fun, but there's a lot of the game's potential you're not exploring.
Ultimately, how much you keep behind the screen is just a matter of style. 5e, IMHO&X, like the classic editions, runs very well with a great deal kept behind the screen. Fudging is only one of the legitimate DM techniques that enables, that 5e mechanics benefit from, and that 5e DM Empowerment meshes very well with, indeed.
I consider that a selling point of 5e.