A Thread about the film JFK

And the Rooker! How can you forget Michael Rooker?

...

I seriously need to stop raving about all this before I stain my pants.

Never stopped Stone!

And Stone was up front (eventually, maybe? I don't remember if he said this all along) about the history being fucked; "it's a myth, yeah, but it's a myth to counter the equally-false one we've been handed by the gov't," sentiments to that effect. Hell, I'd like to see more intentionally-fucked history in movies, without it being played for laughs; there could be a lot of material there.

As for the ensemble cast thing: anything else about the movie aside, has the "huge cast of famous people" thing been done better than in this? Altman's good with that, but I don't know if he ever did it quite this well, especially if you don't count Short Cuts.

(Okay, I forgot about that one. I'd have to see it again, though.)

sadly this important historical revelation is nowhere reflected in stone's film

"the parallax effect" and "three days of the condor" are two pretty good 70s 12-ft-lizard movies abt assassination politics

JFK is *made* by that mr. x/sutherland sequence,but yep those techniques of multi-film stock/editing craziness etc seemed brilliant/insane/eye-popping in '92. nobody else had done anything like that.
in fact 'nbk' was just re-hashing most of them shot for shot and
no-one noticed as they hadn't seen jfk in the 1st place. it was a seriously under-watched film at the time, but at 2 hrs 20 minutes
even in it's original non-director's cut that isn't surprising.

stone never ever ever said anything about it being the whole truth.
it was well known that x was based on prouty, although
obviously the waters are yet more muddied around the conspiracy by the fact that he goes too far the other way in trying to convince us of his version, but hey it asked a lot of questions, and it made people ask more questions etc etc.
empire magazine gave it some kind of weird 'inspiration' award about 5 years ago for some reason and stone showed up, gave a speech looking genuinely touched, moved etc.

there was an *astonishing* episode of DISPATCHES (channel 4, uk)
which i had seen early 90's ('91 ?) not long before seeing the movie,
and that was all facts no theory, it definitely helped to see something like that beforehand.

sutherland's fave bit of all his 80's/90's work he says.
3 months prep for 1 days' acting by all accnts. one day !

" does that sound like a bunch of coincidences to you mr garrison ? ...not for one moment"

Of course, Alexander will be when he stops blaming the gays and ethnics for everything that's wrong with the world. Naturally. I should really see Salvador. It's got James Woods and it's not a revisionist take on American history. Whew.

Yes, Sutherland was great. Though I really wish they'd given John Candy more scenes.

That documentary "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" and the follow up are also worth watching if you are interested in the Kennedy assassination. I think Stone nicked more from it than he would want to admit.

still a really good movie!

That's what I always say, too.

This pitch is copyright, btw.

(I must have time on my hands)

(posner quotes ballistics expert donahue to refute criticism of the "magic bullet" theory but gets his name wrong)

(ps my friend adair's decisive refutation of posner's book: "Jesus, look at that man's HAIR OIL!!") (this shd also have been in stone's film)

it claims the secret servicemen surrounding him DID know, but covered it up as it was an accident and oswald had already shot jfk fatally and why introduce irrelevancies which wd damage an innocent if clumsy colleague's career needlessly blah blah

the witnesses on the verge etc were anyway notoriously all over the place as to where the various shots came from in terms of puffs of smoke, drifts of smoke and sounds of shots complete w.echoes, plus already looking all directions away from the cars bcz oswald had already fired twice (missed car altogether first time, hit kennedy AND connaly second time)

hickey WAS armed with this gun: that's historically attested to, and visible in some of the photos, esp.the later ones where the motorcade is speeding to the hospital and he's holding it pointed upwards

plus also there's photographic studies of what direction a pumpkin wrapped in masking tape will lurch if you fire a gun into it

Blimey Mark. Full-on shit there. Er, I'll go with it, but LHO managed a fatal shot? Or maybe he *would* have if CIA guy hadn't? I'm well outta my depth, my Dad was mad into it and I was all yeah yeah: classic conspiracy scene: Annie Hall.

The motorcade sped on...

i think oswald did it end-of-story, but if you want a good conspiracy, menninger's is my favourite on aesthetix-of-slapstick grounds

Or just read Posner's book.

Quite honestly though the most despicable thing about JFK the film is that it names and implicates Clay Shaw as being involved in the killing, when in reality he was just a businessman with an extremely tenuous connection to the CIA. Garrison was a scumbag, really. Tried to indict a guy from Cali in the JFK plot, because he once wrote him the prez a threatening letter.

I have a friend who always gets pretty mad at historical inaccuracies in movies (esp regarding world war II movies).

obviously JFK complete and utter bunk as history, though of course donald sutherland makes the craziness seem almost plausible for a split second. one GOOD thing the movie did do was inspire the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act that got out a lot of previously classified documents and historical information about the era.

and i agree with gear the movie is hilarious.

people like that shouldn't watch movies!

"oh go back to sleep, Jim"

"Dammit Liz, I been sleepin for three ye-ahs"

who could forget the scene where bacon, jones, and pesci are parading about painted in gold watching homoerotic silent 1920's sports footage!

"oh...no..."

***shot of sinister clock***

"h-how bad?"

"there's no woid yet, but they think it's in the he-ahd"

"You're way out there, boss, taking a crap in the wind, and I for one am not going along on this ride!"

i assume this poster was made for a country where Joe Pesci is more popular than Kevin Costner.

"Is this off the record Daddy-O? Good. In that case, let me sum it up for you real quick. If I answer that question you keep asking, if I give you the name of the big enchilada, you know ... then it's bon voyage Dino. I mean like permanent. I mean like a bullet in my head, you dig? You're a mouse fighting a gorilla. Kennedy is dead as that crab meat. The government's still breathing and you wanna line up with a dead man?"

x-post YO!

JIM
I don't know what to tell them. How 'bout the
truth - I'm doing my job to make sure they can
grow up in a country where justice won't be an
arcane, vanished idea they read about in history
books, like the dinosaurs or the lost continent
of Atlantis.

LIZ
That sounds dandy, but it doesn't replace a
father and a husband on Easter Day.

JIM
(angry, turns away)
It's going to get worse, honey.

Quote from Pesci about JFK: "[I was happy to see the Supporting Actor nomination go to Tommy Lee Jones.] When I see that I say, I helped. He worked with me and I helped him be good."

You know, I wonder if there's any behind-the-scenes footage in some vault of the filming of the party scene (where Pesci helped Jones be good).

LIZ
(groggily)
Huh?

JIM
(strangled)
He won ... and they killed Robert Kennedy. They
shot him down.

LIZ
(realizing, with terror)
Oh no! No! I can't believe it. I can't
believe it. Both of them, both brothers, oh my
God!

She clings to him, horrified. He caresses her hair. They look in each
other's eyes.

LIZ (CONT'D)
You're right, it hasn't ended, has it?

He kisses her gently - They start to make love, numbed, needing each
other, needing their love in an increasingly terrifying world.

Here's a question, who should have been the Criswell figure for this film, reading out that stuff as a narrator?

We see the four men in drag, smiling for the flash camera, champagne
bottles in hand. Ferrie sniffs some poppers, then shoves a popper in
Shaw's face.

FERRIE
(to Shaw)
You're mine, Mary. Go get the fucking tools
out, bitch. Now! I want some ass.

Ferrie forces more poppers on Shaw. The camera movies to Shaw's
bedroom, where Ferrie scatters a drawer full of leather tools.

FERRIE (CONT'D)
(to Shaw)
Come here, bitch.
(Ferrie grabs Shaw by the hair)
You want this? The only way you get this is do
what I say.
(Ferrie whacks Shaw)
I'm the man. Don't ever forget it.
(Shaw begs and whines)
You want it? You want it?
(Ferrie spits on Shaw)
Fuck you and your rich friends. You're nothing
but a rich whore! You're my woman! Get the
cat!
(to young man)
Strip! Now, woman. I want to see skin.

They all stop, look.

SUSIE: Who?

BILL: Grab your socks and pull ... Clay Bertrand is Clay Shaw ...

SUSIE(stunned): No! ... Shaw! Director of The Trade Mart? This is incredible.

NUMA: Pillar of the community by day, gay bars at night.

Liz Garrison is the most shaken, as she pours a fresh pot of coffee.

"Dallas was a slow town back then. You chewed toothpicks, played dominos, spit and dated policemen."

"He said, "Beverly, this is my friend Lee ..." and [INSERT LAUGH THAT SPIKES THE MIC LEVELS HERE] I didn't catch the other guy's name. He was a weird-looking guy with those funny little eyebrows."

"When I saw him tow weeks later on the television, I screamed, "Oh, my God - that's him! That's Jack's friend!"

"If they can kill the President, do you think they're gonna think twice about a two-bit showgirl like me?"

JIM
No one's trying to buy you, Willie. It's
important to know why you're telling us this.

O'KEEFE
(pauses)
You wanna know why? 'Cause that mother fucker
Kennedy stole that fuckin' election, that's why!
Nixon was gonna be one of the great Presidents
'til Kennedy wrecked this fuckin' country. Got
niggers all over the fuckin' place asking for
their rights, where do you think we got all this
fuckin' crime now, 'cause Kennedy promised 'em
too damned much. Revolution comin'. Fascism's
coming back. I tell ya this - the day that
Communist sumbitch died was a great day for this
country. I jes' hate to think they're blaming
it on some silly fuckin' Oswald who didn't know
shit anyway. People should know why that
sumbitch was killed. 'Cause he was a Communist.
Put me on the stand, go ahead, I'll tell the
same goddamn story, I'm proud of it, don't
matter fuck all to me, things don't change.

As he talks, Jim shares a sickened look with Bill. Whatever truth he
may be telling is necessarily compromised by an attitude that could be
destroyed in court.

I wonder if the shooting script for Year Of The Dragon is available.

JIM: Where you off to, son?

BARNES: Vietnam, suh! To fight for a grand cawse.

JIM (eyes moistening, voice choking): You--you be careful there, you hear me?

BARNES (giggles): Don't worry 'bout me, you jus' worry about Charlie!

Jim nods sadly, turns, and walks into history.

X steps into frame and turns to the camera.

X: And that was the day Vietnam started.

"Women! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

(we need gear)

MARTIN
Chief, maybe you had a little too much to drink.

BANISTER
Bullshit!
(yells across the room)
Bartender, another round ...
(finishes drink)
Here's to the New Frontier. Camelot in
smithereens. I'll drink to that.

He bows his head, holding it in his hands, and his wig starts to come
off in his hands.

Why did Tommy Lee Jones get the nomination and not Sutherland?

Also, maybe I'm blind, but what is up with the shape of the red and blue in the one sheet?

http://perso.orange.fr/pinpin.online/media/jfk.jpg

X (V.O.) (CONT'D)
Now this is significant, because it is standard
operating procedure, especially in a known
hostile city like Dallas, to supplement the
Secret Service. Even if we had not allowed the
bubbletop to be removed from the limousine,
we'd've put at least 100 to 200 agents on the
sidewalks, without question! There'd already
been several attempts on de Gaulle's life in
France. Only a month before in Dallas UN
Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been spit on and
hit.

Sutherland's the real Good Shepard.

He kisses her gently - They start to make love, numbed, needing each
other, needing their] love in an increasingly terrifying world.

This thread makes me laugh harder than any in ILX history.

Biggest historical inaccuracy in the film: watching the NBC special report discrediting his investigation, Garrison ruefully jokes "I guess my reputation is alright with the people watching 'Laugh-In.'"

"Sonabitch, there he goes again, he's got his hands on the chicken switch."

"Vee got to cohn-troll the een-telligence from Say-gon."

Also, poor Sissy Spacek.

"You're ruining Shaw's reputation because he's a homosexual. Did you ever stop to consider for once what he was feeling?"

I want her on my side.

"This is Louisiana, chief! How the hell do you know who your Daddy is? Because your Momma told you so."

JIM
Who are you, Mr. Miller?
(no answer - just the sound of the
overhead fan)
You see that helmet over there?
(the Nazi helmet with a bullet hole
on his desk)
I picked that up at the Dachau concentration
camp when we liberated it in 1945. It was the
most horrifying sight I've ever seen, Mr.
Miller. Pyramids of decaying, stinking bones
and skin one on top of the other. I don't enjoy
looking at that swastika every day, Mr. Miller,
but I keep it there to remind me of what can
happen when a country turns from free democratic
principles to Fascism, when a few madmen turn
human beings into digits and millions sit in
silence and do nothing about it.

Miller waits. Bill waits. Jim comes forward with his reply.

JIM (CONT'D)
Mr. Miller, you and I have met under a great
misunderstanding. I haven't the remotest
interest in becoming a Federal Judge. And
nothing is going to keep me from going ahead
with my investigation of John Kennedy's murder.

Miller's entire demeanor tightens into a corkscrew of anger and danger

That's one hell of a corkscrew.

I wonder if it's the same corkscrew Joe Pesci used on Tommy Lee Jones in the orgy sequende.

That might of just been a corkscrew of anger. It's been a while so I don't remember for sure.

i was 5 feet away from tommy lee jones today ina hotel lobby. i saw him greet javier bardem.

After Three Burials Of Meliquades Estrada I have more love for Tommy Lee Jones than ever.

I thought, "Yup, he barely survived after directing the script penned by the shithead who made 21 Grams and Babel."

is that winky-at-lbj photo real?

scott mcclellans crazy dad wrote a book about that wink!

NUMA: Pillar of the community by day, gay bars at night.

Liz Garrison is the most shaken, as she pours a fresh pot of coffee.

"more champagne!"

is that winky-at-lbj photo real?

-- pisces, Tuesday, 11 September 2007 00:04 (6 months ago

no really IS it??

FLASHBACK TO Ruby's jail cell in 1964. Ruby talks to men with their backs to us. Lawyers and police clutter the cell, making Ruby hyper-nervous. The chief official's white hair and avuncular voice are all we see and hear of him; his back is to us.

RUBY
Then do you understand that I cannot
tell the truth here? In Dallas.
That there are people here who do
not want me to tell the truth...
who do not want me to have a retrial?

OFFICIAL
Mr. Ruby, I really can't see why you
can't tell us now.

Ruby catches the stern face of Sheriff Bill Decker from the corner of his eye, the Assistant D.A. next to him.

RUBY
When are you going back to Washington,
sir?

OFFICIAL
(looks at watch)
I am going back very shortly after
we finish this hearing - I am going
to have some lunch.

RUBY
Can I make a statement? If you
request me to go back to Washington
with you right now, that is if you
want to hear further testimony from
me, can you do that? Can you take
me with you?

OFFICIAL
No, that could not be done, Mr. Ruby.
There are a good many things involved
in that.

RUBY
What are they?

OFFICIAL
Well, the public attention it would
attract. And we have no place for
you there to be safe, we're not law
enforcement officials, and many things
are at stake in this affair, Mr.
Ruby.

RUBY
But if I am eliminated there won't
be any way of knowing. Consequently
a whole new form of government is
going to take over this country, and
I know I won't live to see you another
time. My life is in danger here.
Do I sound screwy?

OFFICIAL
Well I don't know what can be done,
Mr. Ruby, because I don't know what
you anticipate we will encounter.

RUBY
Then you don't stand a chance, Mr.
Chief Justice, you have a lost cause.
All I want is a lie detector test,
and you refuse to give it to me.
Because as it stands now - and the
truth serum - how do you pronounce
it - Pentothal - whatever it is.
They will not give it to me, because
I want to tell the truth... And then
I want to leave this world.

The camera pauses on Ruby's face. The men rise and leave in the shadows.

CUT TO:

PARKLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL - (1967)

Jack Ruby is wheeled out of the infirmary on a gurnee, dead of cancer.

JIM (V.O.)
Perhaps a few more details about the evening
will refresh your memory. Mr. O'Keefe told us
dinner was served by a uniformed waiter - a
colored man. He particularly remembers that you
sat at one end and he at the other - which he
found rather unusual because the table was so
long. Does that bring back memories of Willie
O'Keefe?

SHAW
(in present)
Not at all. But on the other hand, I do have a
lovely Chippendale dining table and I often have
a friend over sitting at one end while I sit at
the other. That is precisely the point of a
long dining table. The splendor of the meal
adds to the enjoyment of it.

JIM
I would imagine a uniformed waiter helps.

SHAW
It adds a taste of elegance for which I must
confess a weakness for now and then. I call him
Smedley. His real name is Frankie Jenkins - but
I could hardly imagine anything more uncouth
during dinner than my turning toward the kitchen
and hollering "Frankie!" ... Where is this
leading to, Mr. Garrison?

great scene

tommy lee jones going 'frankieee!' = :D :D :D

http://www.jfk-online.com/jones.jpg

man, i still haven't rewatched this. i really need to.

Remember, fundamentally people are suckers for the truth, and the truth is on your side, 'bubba. I hope you get a break...

You got the right ta-ta, but the wrong ho-ho

what does this even mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCkw8zWmQD8

He bows his head, holding it in his hands, and his wig starts to come
off in his hands.

I watch Sutherland's monologue on youtube sometimes, its the kind of thing I use to cheer me up donchaknow!

The truth is on your side, bubba!

Coincidentally on TV at midnight last night - not sure what the schedulers were trying to say with that timeslot...

i got back to the motel drunk with a bag of mcdonalds after a wedding in a smalltown last year and i turned on the tv and don-suth's monologue had just started and i was so happy

<3

has there ever been a better (non-Nazi) film with a wronger and more dishonest central intent?

little miss sunshine

good point well made

im here to help

hang on i've just realised i said "better"

i like how your sentence kind of implies all nazi films are so much better that it's unfair to even consider them

triumph of the will is "better" than JFK but yeah my logical syntax is all over the place

got sucked into this again yesterday. about twenty minutes in i went and got a notebook and just started writing down lines.

it's one thing to engage in badinage with all these youngsters, but this sort of thing could be so easily misunderstood.

sonabitch's got his hands on the chicken switch

Why don't we drop this thread? It's one thing to engage in badinage with these youngsters, but this sort of thing can be so easily misunderstood.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, November 22, 2006 7:51 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
more champagne!

― gear (gear), Wednesday, November 22, 2006 7:57 PM (5 years ago)

ctrl-fing for "homosexual underworld" before i deploy the next one

ah fuck

Both brothers?!?

This thread is a whole nother kettle of fish.

i just can't believe a man as intelligent as earl warren never looked into this.

stone really needs to do the LBJ story

haha presumably if he did the whole middle bit would be lbj plotting the jfk assassination

one of the quieter lols in the caro series is in book 1, wayyyyyyyyyyyyy back like in 1930 or something, when caro's on one of his lyrical tears about how ambitious and calculating johnson is, and says something like "it was clear he would do anything for power (short of assassination, of course)." glad we cleared that up early.

how about the bit where RFK gets shot on TV and Costner's so disturbed/turned on that he goes upstairs and weeps and fucks Sissy Spacek.

― gear (gear), Sunday, October 23, 2005 7:38 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jasper

The other night you didn't even notice Jasper.

There's nothing wrong with feeling a little scared, Jasper.
Telling the truth can be a scary thing sometimes.
It scared President Kennedy, and he was a brave man.
But if you let yourself be too scared...
...then you let the bad guys take over the country.
Then everybody gets scared.

You never talked to me this way before, Jim.

Jasper played by Stone's son!

I picture Stone having a good laugh at the scenes where Garrison himself plays Earl Warren... then slapping everyone else and being all "ain't that a corker?"

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, October 23, 2005 11:48 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pillar of the community by day, gay bars at night.

― gear (gear), Monday, October 24, 2005 12:10 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ILX in a nutshell.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, October 24, 2005

how was your mousse?

You know your Shakespeare, Bill?

It's as old as the crucifixion

that's not all that's disappeared, i think -- along with it, the concept of justice.

it's been exhausting. i shall go home and cook some etouffee.

http://imageshack.us/a/img836/6451/lbjop.jpg

sonabitch's got his hands on the chicken switch

― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 17 October 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That whole scene with military dudes in smoke filled rooms plotting compliments the monologue so well:

Every time he goes over to Saigon on some fuckin' fact-finding mission, he comes back and just scares the shit out of the President! Now I want Max Taylor on him night and day, like a fly on shit. Now you control McNamara, and you control Kennedy.

It's as old as the crucifixion

― omar little, Friday, 19 October 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The next sentencce:

A military firing squad; five bullets, one blank, no one's guilty.

Must have been having the time of their lives writing this...makes me wish I was a scriptwriter on this film.

It was a Texas live oak, chief. It sheds its leaves in March.

Little ass-wipe closed down the camps! Took our C-4!
Took 10,000 rounds! 3,000 pounds of gunpowder!
All our weapons!
You want to free Cuba? Whack out the fucking beard!
They got new stuff!
I could show you dozens of poisons! Put it in his food, he'd die in three days.
No trace!
Put something in his beard, make it fall out. He'd look ridiculous....

poetry

what's the deal with the supposed subliminal images that elvis telecom linked to an article about (but the link doesn't work)

joe pesci in a powdered wig whipping a gold painted tommy lee jones while kevin bacon masturbates in the background?

wait that wasn't subliminal. i think there were skulls inserted at certain points maybe? i don't remember.

xp good point, i remember the movie being sort of "manifest" rather than latent. yes, what i gleaned from elsewhere that OS is revealing a masonic plot through subliminal insertions. one site lists a string of times where there are supposedly different kinds of images inserted...just wondering if that's for real

like a cockroach on a white rug

i cant remember if i've posted about this before or not, but i spent the spring break of my sophomore year of high school as an extra on the set of Kevin Costner's The Postman. some scenes were shot in a pit mine not far from where i lived, and i was the only one of my dozen friends who auditioned that ended up getting casted. the majority of the week was spent sitting around in the sun waiting for things to happen, but on my final day of employment i was scheduled to do a night scene, which was shot late in to the evening. the scene revolved around a bunch of us post-apocalyptic soldiers watching a film screening and i ended up getting positioned next to a woman who surely must have been one of the biggest Kevin Costner fans alive. during the hours of waiting between shots she told me everything i needed to know about our star/director and gave me the details on every encounter she had had with him or a member of his family or entourage while on set that week. then, like it was destined to happen, the camera was set up for the next shot right in front of us, and Mr. Costner had to come and personally direct us on what he needed us to do. the action he wanted involved the woman i had been talking to cuddling with a man sitting on her side opposite me. being the dutiful director he was, Costner came up and took the place of this man and cuddled this woman while the camera crew set up, showing the rest of us extras what he wanted in this shot. this went on for several minutes, this woman just absolutely melting the whole time as gradually, Costner's conversation slipped from directions and in to general chit-chat, his arm still draped over her shoulder. eventually it was time to do the shot and the male extra was put back in place to do the job of cuddling he had just watched Costner demonstrate. just before taking his place in the director's chair, Costner turned and gave us a final word of advice on how to behave while so close to the camera. he told us its hard not to look in to the lens of the camera, but when making movies you really can't ever do that because it will ruin the shot, as well as the integrity of the movie-watching expierience. then he paused for a second and added this exception: "except in very rare circumstances, like towards the end of JFK, when i say 'nothing as long as you live will ever be more important' then i look directly in to the camera and say 'it's up to you.'" the woman next to me was still awestruck as Kevin Costner yelled "action!"

now imagine reciting that in the voice of Donald Sutherland.

the scene starts at 24:49 here, and the shot in question is at 25:59 (i am sadly just out of frame).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENRuWNS1h9s

lol alfred

http://www.sbnation.com/2012/11/15/3648036/chipper-jones-jfk-tweets

I was watching it too on REELZ the other night. They fucking faded it out right in the middle of X's revelations to go to commercial, in mid-sentence.

They fucking faded it out right

o shit

back and to the left

think we need a crosspost of NYT Mag's Stone profile of last week

“JFK” was based on “On the Trail of the Assassins,” by Jim Garrison, a former Orleans Parish district attorney who, in 1969, unsuccessfully prosecuted Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, for conspiring to kill the president. Kevin Costner played Garrison as an Atticus Finch type fighting an ingrained power structure, though Garrison is dismissed by many mainstream historians as a con man. In researching “JFK,” Stone also relied on L. Fletcher Prouty, a former Air Force colonel who, before becoming disillusioned with government, was chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy administration. Prouty never actually met Garrison except in Stone’s film, where he is Donald Sutherland’s Colonel X, who lays it all out for the D.A. in the shadow of the Washington Monument — how the military deliberately underprotected the president in Dallas, how defense contractors, big oil and bankers conspired with the military to make sure the president died because he didn’t intend to go to war in Vietnam. Costner is a kind of stand-in for Stone, soberly shaking his head as X says: “Does that sound like a bunch of coincidences to you, Mr. Garrison? Not for one moment.”

In advance of the film’s release, Stone pronounced “JFK” “a history lesson.” Prouty, however, who died in 2001, turned out to be extremely problematic. He had many theories in addition to his theories on Kennedy, including that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had foreknowledge of the Jonestown Massacre and that greedy oil barons invented the fiction that oil is made of decomposed fossils. And it was Prouty, Stone said, who turned him on to “The Report From Iron Mountain,” a 1967 document ostensibly written by a secret panel of military planners. The document is a favorite among conspiracy theorists, who, like Prouty, seem unaware that in 1972 the satirist Leonard Lewin admitted he wrote it. “I’ve acknowledged when I’ve made mistakes,” Stone said of the movie now. “There were a few mistakes, but nothing that changes the big story.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/oliver-stone-rewrites-history-again.html

JFK getting out of Vietnam is cock.

just saw/loled hard at gr80's post in a library

jeez I never read that

funny how all of ollie's research failed to turn up any of the 500 speeches where JFK comes off as a pretty typical cold war liberal, including all the times -- both public and private -- when he said 'we can't lose in vietnam.'

unfortunately the transcriber never included the part where jfk paused and then said "sike"

in that omission

FREEEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

lay the vietnam war.

no one on the thread has topped croup's synopsis

otm, one of the few paragraphs from early ilx i'm not embarrassed by

you had the right ta-ta

I'm amazed Ollie somehow didn't include Oswald's aggressively defensive mom in his circus, who as chewed to pieces by Jacki Weaver is one of the few assets of Parkland.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/parkland

this movie captures the joy of learning about new things better than any other movie

you heard ECHOES.

ECHOES.

rehashing

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-revisiting-oliver-stones-jfk

WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/tommy-lee-jones-joins-kevin-720743

I didn't get 15 minutes into The Iceman so I'm less than excited BUT STILL

actually i claimed nonchalance before i read the plot I am SO excited to watch Tommy Lee Jones play a neuroscientist

that sounds pretty dumb, but then "supersoldier with amnesia goes on a tear" sounded pretty dumb too

Not that I expected Parkland to be great or anything, but I figured there'd be something in there worth the 90 minutes. Pretty bad--especially Paul Giamatti as Abraham Zapruder.

lousy

whatzername as Oswald's mom was best

the trailer looked bloody awful.

I happened to rewatch Stone's film a few weeks ago, and I found that the dopey piety of Costner really got in the way of all the things I like. But after watching Parkland, which was so ugly to look at, and so dreary, I again appreciated JFK's razzle-dazzle.

The best JFK assassination movie: Executive Action
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Finally saw it today... so dull

:(

Little ass-wipe closed down the camps! Took our C-4!
Took 10,000 rounds! 3,000 pounds of gunpowder!
All our weapons!
You want to free Cuba? Whack out the fucking beard!
They got new stuff!
I could show you dozens of poisons! Put it in his food, he'd die in three days.
No trace!
Put something in his beard, make it fall out. He'd look ridiculous...

Allen Ginsburg poem

That is so Celine-like!

when we finally get a court order to examine kennedy's brain, in the hopes of finding from which direction the bullet came, we're told by your government that the president's brain has disappeared! that's not all that's disappeared. with it, the concept of justice.

Ask the question, ask the question.

"Honey, it's incredible. The whole thing. A Lt. Colonel testifies that...Oswald had a Russian language exam as part of his Marine training...only a few months before he defects to the Soviet Union. A Russian exam."

"It's 4:30 in the morning! I have five kids who'll wake up in an hour."

goddamn, Liz, I've been asleep for three years!

Amazing how much of Libra shows up in the movie, down to the detail about FBI files containing photos of Oswald's pubic hay-ah!

this is the only film i can think of that was actually directly responsible for getting a federal law passed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_John_F._Kennedy_Assassination_Records_Collection_Act_of_1992

i think what i actually enjoy most about this movie is the whole black ops/shadowy politics/vietnam/cuba shit, independent of the assassination stuff. it's pretty compelling.

very very few people know about this, ok

now i knew allen dulles very well; i briefed him many a time in his house.

Dulles, by the way, was General Y's benefactor.
I got out in '64.
Resigned my commission.

Kennedy's directives weren't implemented because of...

...bureaucratic resistance.

But one of the results was...

...the Cuban operation was turned over to my department...

...as Operation Mongoose.

Mongoose was pure Black Ops.

poetry

this is just to say

Kennedy's directives weren't implemented because of
bureaucratic resistance.
But one of the results was

the Cuban operation was turned over to my department
as Operation Mongoose.

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
those Black Ops were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

September '63.

the literally single flaw for me (presumably inserted so as not to offend god): "i can't tell you the shockwaves this sent along the corridors of power in washington". a long cliche with a stubby and redundant tail.

there's a circa '03 dance track where the sampled hook is "black ops...assassinations...coup d'etat...rigging elections..." and i wish i could remember what it was called because i would crank that shit right now.

now i knew allen dulles very well; i briefed him many a time in his house.

― le Histoire du Edgy Miley (difficult listening hour),

the way Sutherland throws this line away = master acting class

there's a circa '03 dance track where the sampled hook is "black ops...assassinations...coup d'etat...rigging elections..." and i wish i could remember what it was called because i would crank that shit right now.

― a basset hound (strongo hulkington's ghost dad),

We were good. Very good.

They Didn't Save Kennedy's Brain

never would have allowed all those wide-open empty windows overlooking dealy. never!

every time he goes to saigon on some fuckin fact-findin mission he comes back and just scares the shit outta the president.

A month before, in Dallas, UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was spit on and hit.

http://lastangryfan.com/wp-content/uploads/k-man1.gif

never would've allowed that man to open an umbrella!

The generals in the smoky room is like Patriarchy's finest minute!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYmyMJ0H6DQ

I saw that a few months ago, I think. Is Sorensen in it?

hitchens and cockburn (still buddies at the time) both loathed jfk: cockburn went on to write some very funny stuff abt how all the conspiracy theories are garbage (and also how conspiracy theory is an intrinsically reactionary mindset), plus an excellent description of the type of comrade oswald actually was, a type anyone wd recognise from the marxist* subculture (a "trotskyite dweeb" who made an obsessive pest of himself in meetings, causing them to overrun and everyone secretly hating him; then suddenly there he was on TV and they were all frantically burning their address books and pretending they'd never met him)

*actually most cultures which require AGM's have someone like this, tho they don't always go on to shoot someone

Well Hitchens talks about how conspiracy theorists are a kind of democrat in this.

Is Sorensen in it?

No. Salinger (former press sec) is.

Hitchens' ability to make people completely lose it on TV is in full show here. Salinger just wanted to smash his face in.

democrat or Democrat?

democrat as in a supporter of democracy (nothing to do w/the Democratic party)

wait, is he pro the film or just trolling?

Hitchens argues his way around conspiracy theory as a viable erm activity, just doesn't like the film - mainly because it tries to show Kennedy as a white knight (and thinks the actual conspiracy depicted in jfk is bollocks)

btw I gotta say James Wolcott is so wrong on Mr.X scene. Its the best thing in the film and not too long at all.

idk enough about the Garrison summation, kinda lose interest by the time the trial starts.

ah ok -- yes actually i vaguely remember him taking a less sharp line on CT in general come to think of it, viz that it was some kind of dissident counter to Very Serious Peoplethink, which is probably the start of his slippery slope tbh

(bcz cockburn was correct on this point)

james wolcott is wrong about everything, it's his thing

also he's the worst writer in america

now i knew allen dulles very well; i briefed him many a time in his house.

― le Histoire du Edgy Miley (difficult listening hour),

the way Sutherland throws this line away = master acting class

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 15, 2016 3:03 AM (eleven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm btw

and I gotta read Harlot's Ghost. ffs.

xp = I found it...sorta convincing - as, well, CT as a kind of hyper-cynicism that could fucntion as keeping instituions in check. I wouldn't blame ppl for more than questioning the Warren Commission.

The problem is the people who get into it are almost always...not about being a democrat and its pretty destructive in the way it operates and poisons. xxp

the whole movie despite being a ridiculous fiction has a very sinister and creepy edge, it crescendos with this scene and Sutherland really elevates it (compounded by the music and editing.)

i shd watch it in the cinema, my line on stone used to be the world's most brilliant film-maker who's also an idiot, but i liked W (and for neither of those reasons)

no one shd shut up more *talking* abt his films tho

(cockburn noted that gary oldman didn't know how to play oswald, which iirc is true and a good point)

Oswald is the movie's least flashy and most convincing performance -- Oldman plays him as a cipher.

Yeah, the whole mood of thing up to Mr. X is so well done - as for those 20 mins...just when you think the monologue could be losing puff (not that it even threatens to) the scenes around the Pentagon are just marvellous.

None of the commentators -- apart from maybe Wolcott -- really talk about it as a film. Everyone has their own different agenda.

xp to nomar

they don't talk abt it as a film bcz stone had been charging around the place announcing it was a new way of recounting history (bcz he's an idiot)

Oldman plays him as a cipher

this sounds bad not good

not necessarily! I'm not sure how else you would direct an actor play him. In Libra he's got modest abilities but no will, and that's how Oldman plays the part.

as for the Sutherland-DC section: most of that account of post-WWII dirty tricks is true! Young me reading about the CIA and Guatemala would hear the PEEEOWWW and Sutherland's voice as I learned about Arbenz, the Dalai Lama, the attack on Adlai Stevenson, etc.

Best use of those John Williams orchestral swells too; they sound like manipulated street traffic (JFK motorcade echoes?).

no will

this seems a weird read on who and what he was tbh: the entire story of him becoming a soviet citizen and then de-defecting suggest someone p wilful

also libra isn't very good (bcz delillo): the mailer book is much better, gives a much better sense of what a weirdo quite-smart crank-loser he was (and cockburn's "trotsykite dweeb" wd also be an interesting and historically plausible way to play him)

modest abilities

he decided to assassinate the president of america BY HIMSELF and did so

I prefer Mailer's book too.

tbh it's hard for me to think Kennedy was actually killed. He was shot, there were people around him, pillbox hat, LBJ, PWWWOMMMM the Vietnam War.

I think that's one reason the Sutherland/black ops stuff is so effective; fundamentally people are suckers for the truth. And the truth was (at least there) on Stone's side, Bubba.

garrison was the louise mensch of black ops

(not that this affects the film)

"Let's cast Garrison as Earl Warren then!"

james wolcott is wrong about everything, it's his thing

also he's the worst writer in america

― mark s, Thursday, 11 May 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lmao there is a piece by him in the LRB today!

(btw if I see a screening I'll let you know - I've never seen this in the cinema)

haven't seen the ollie stone film since i was a teenager but the alex cockburn line on conspiracies cited above by mark s itself seems lazy and reactionary to me, ignoring all of the actual reasons ppl doubt the warren commission version of the kennedy assassination. i.e., oswald's murder by mob-connected jack ruby (ppl always say "i think oswald acted alone" as if that settled it when what they actually ought to say is the clunkier and actually-this-sounds-kinda-shady-doesn't-it line "i think oswald acted alone and i think ruby also acted alone), oswald's complete lack of a plausible motive and insistence to his dying breath that I DID NOT DO IT I AM A PATSY, which makes little sense coming from any assassin let alone a guy who supposedly did it to be famous or did it for a cause, oswald's very peculiar career involving a "defection" that may have been part of a cia operation, the endless unsolveable debates over who shot from what direction, and the HSCA's conclusion that jfk had been killed by a conspiracy. the warren commission was also basically run from behind the scenes by allen dulles, prob one of the worst americans of the 20th century. so as silly or unpersuasive as most of the conspiracy theories are it's not like there's definitely nothing there.

also cockburn's line about conspiracies seems especially lame to me given that he was a fuckin' *climate-change denialist*, literally the most dangerous type of conspiracy theorist in the world, a hundred times worse worse than every bonehead 9/11 truther put together.

lol, clearly i felt so worked up about that i felt the need to throw in an extra "worse" for good measure

"I extend to you, and your families, my best wishes for a happy Easter."

You said a Sunday, Jim, not EAST-AH Sunday!"

<3

"Come hunt for Easter eggs."

"That's the kids' job. You know I don't like these tribal rituals, anyway."

That is precisely the point of a long dining table. The splendor of the meal adds to the enjoyment of it.

... Where is this leading to, Mr. Garrison?

After dinner, you paid him to have sex.

in my dream Oscars TLJ would've taken the Oscar away from Donald Sutherlandd.

*Sutherland

the single-d explanation

The splendor of the meal adds to its enjoyment.

Everybody likes to make themselves out to be something more than they are. 'Specially in the homosexual underworld.

^^^ some days my absolute favorite

SHAW: "Never having met Mr. O'Keefe, I couldn't have met Mr. Ferrie."

(Flashback to gold paint-covered Clay Shaw being slapped around by David Ferrie)

FERRIE: "You're mine, Mary."

I know that this is for ILX what Sweet Smell of Success is for me--the most quotable movie ever--but after once putting it on a decade-end Top 10, it gets worse and worse every time I go back to it. (Most recently prompted by a reading of Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis's Dallas 1963). The biggest problem, as I mentioned somewhere above, is Costner (not just him, but what he has to say)--he's like this wide-eyed simpleton, and you want him throttle him every time he opens his mouth. But this time, with the book as a backdrop, I started to think that Stone doesn't even capture half of the craziness that that had been building since Kennedy's election--I found the H.L. Hunt and General Walker and Ted Dealy of the book much more compelling than what Stone conjures up. In fairness, I guess, the movie's set in New Orleans, not Dallas.

Reading this piece by Seymour Hersh in Mr."X" voice. Try it sometime!

well you're the policeman; you work it out

may I go

you really have me consorting with a sordid cast of characters, don't you!

Son of a bitch there he goes again he's got his hands on the chicken switch

Twenty-six years before Ladybird, Laurie Metcalf already deserved an Oscar for her Antoine's monologue.

^^^ as much a hinge as the x scene

really psychedelic

I asked for the CIA files on Oswald that were part of the Warren Report. About 1,200 documents. Can't get one of them. All classified as secret on the grounds of national security. Gave me his grammar school records. It's a study of his pubic hairs.

hay-ahs

"Jim, where are you going? It's me, Samuel."

well, i wanted to make sure that she was the same girl i sent away!

we don't need no gates out there with that swamp! plenty of em gone in there; ain't none of em come out.

I can't believe a man as intelligent as Earl Warren ever read what's in those volumes.

well, uh, in that sense castro is, uh, an experimenter-- marinochka!

now this has to be the most remarkable example of police intuition since the reichstag fire

SHAW: "Never having met Mr. O'Keefe, I couldn't have met Mr. Ferrie."

(Flashback to gold paint-covered Clay Shaw being slapped around by David Ferrie)

FERRIE: "You're mine, Mary."

― omar little, Sunday, April 1, 2018 9:52 PM

underrated imo

always love it when a party ends and finally I can spend hours getting into my 18th century royalty outfit and elaborate makeup and paint a buddy gold and smack him around and watch vintage sports films.

one part i love that i always forget about is Ferrie's nervous explanation of his Nov 22 ice-skating/goose-hunting trip to Houston and Galveston.

But the boys told they didn't get any *Harrison scowls over pipe*

Garrison obv

really? ...which part?

They were a wise bunch of birds!

well you're the policeman; you work it out

Dave, may I ask why the urge to go ice skating in Texas happened to strike you during one of the most violent thunderstorms in recent memory?

Oh.....it was just a spur of the moment thing. The storm wasn't that bad!

I can imagine Stone being as excited about including the fact of the violent thunderstorm as he was about the bit later about the Texas live oak shedding its leaves in March.

I don't believe I ever mentioned this (maybe to dlh in private): watching JFK in high school with me, my buddy gasped when Silvia Odio's name was mentioned. "She's an old friend of my mom's."

You take this Carcano, world's worst shoulder weapon, and try to hit a moving target at 88 yards through heavy foliage.

No way.

did he confirm whether or not she had "bad eyesight"?

(maybe to dlh in private)

ha i think about this conversation a lot actually. "these people have no reason to lie."

and now of course I google her, realize that her last name isn't that common, and she's the sister of Miami's former (indicted) city manager. His youngest son is an acquaintance of mine.

we don't need no gates out there with that swamp! plenty of em gone in there; ain't none of em come out.

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, February 2, 2019 11:08 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my sleeper fave tbh. your consciousness' choices: prison, or an unnavigable swamp

i love that dude's grin after he says it

and wink!

Willie really seems to have found his happy place in that prison tbh

fuck yeah!

and i'd just hate to think! that they blame it on some silly fuckin AHHHS-wald, didn't know shit anyway

Bacon is marvelous (I hope he gave his dialogue coach a bonus). He still mentions JFK as the film that made him a character actor.

there's a subtle shift in the way he presents his character during the flashbacks and the present, kind of a nervous kid in '63 and a hard case a few years later.

def

callowly flexing his ornamental muscles at the other end of the long table

Frankie the butler closing the door on him.

Kevin Bacon playing gay was really exciting to me circa '92.

Even though even back then I knew poppers didn't make you suddenly roar like a lion.

how's your mousse

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/HiddenTartDwarfrabbit-size_restricted.gif

You don't know shit 'cause you ain't never bin fucked in da ass!

I love the shots of horse's ass behind O'Keefe and Mistah Garrison

when i first saw the director's cut i didn't quite get that the bathroom scene at the airport was a failed attempt at setting up and framing Garrison in a Larry Craig-type sting. this is such a crazy movie.

dallas was a slow-pokin town back then! i mean, you chewed toothpicks, played dominoes, spit, and dated policemen.

the quarter is filled with vivid imaginations, my dear mr. garrison: grimy young hoodlums who will say and do anything, as you well know

very few people know about this, all right

clay bertrand is clay shaw??? [skeleton runs up, giggles, runs away]

"What's the mystery? Everybody down here knows him."

"Then why does he call himself Bertrand?"

"Who gives a shit what he calls himself? (pause) Will you give us a little help on that grand jury thing? I hope so. We could use it..."

Guy's a fag.

lee, tell me, what are you shooting at-- rabbits or fascists?

i, uh, i hunt.

you hunt. hillbillies!

Everything I'll say is classified top secret.

I was a soldier, Mr. Garrison. Two wars.

A secret Pentagon guy, supplying the hardware:

Planes, bullets, rifles...

...for what we call "Black Operations."

Black Ops. Assassinations. Coups d'état...

...rigging elections, propaganda, psych warfare.

In World War Il, I was in Rumania, Greece, Yugoslavia.

I helped evacuate part of Nazi intelligence at the end of the war.

And we used those guys against the Communists.

In ltaly, '48, we stole the elections.

France '49, we broke the strikes.

Overthrew Quirino in the Philippines, Arbenz in Guatemala...

...Mossadegh in Iran. We were in Vietnam in '54...

...Indonesia, '58, Tibet, '59.

Got the Dalai Lama out. We were good.

Very good.

Then we got into the Cuban thing. Not so good.

i dreamt last night that the cause of jfk's assassination was bob-a-job week

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, October 15, 2003 5:52 PM (fifteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still the only good theory imo

Fun and games, man, fun and games!

i didn't talk to nobody after the assassination. i was on drugs at the hospital. like i told the fbi, that call was a figment of my imagination!

The cat's stewing you, I told him.
You got the right ta-ta, but the wrong ho-ho.
Bertrand is not Shaw, scout's honor. And you can tell him I said so.

He produced credentials showing him to be Secret Service.
I accepted that and let him go.
I regretted it. He looked like a mechanic.
He had on a sports shirt and pants, but he had dirty fingernails.
Afterward, it didn't ring true. But at the time...we were so pressed for time.

yes. well, no! no, because there were others. there were others: there were admirals.

A lot of people were deciding what was private...none of the American people's business.
The chief pathologist, Commander Humes...by his own admission, voluntarily burned his autopsy notes.
President Johnson orders the blood-soaked limousine, filled with bullet holes and clues, to be washed and rebuilt.
He sends Connally's bloody suit to the cleaners.
The Justice Department denied this office access to the autopsy photos.
When we finally get a court order to examine Kennedy's brain, in the hopes of finding from which direction the bullet came...we're told, by your government that,
the President's brain has disappeared.

That's not all that's disappeared.
With it, the concept of justice.

yes. well, no! no, because there were others. there were others: there were admirals.

― difficult listening hour,

great line and delivery

We know Oswald didn't pull that trigger. Castro did.
If it comes out, there'll be a war. Millions of people will die.
That's more important than Jim Garrison.
Look at me when I talk to you! You're too selfish!
Shut up! If you got a brain in your thick skull,
listen to me. Listen real hard.

Get in the car.

that dog don't hunt

You're a goddamn liberal, Mr. Garrison, you don't know shit, cause you never been fucked in the ass.

this film is bonkers. watched it for the first time on saturday night and still reeling from the gay panic conspiracy fever dream.

part of the scenery, right?

Just get me elected.

I'll give you your damn war.

rewatched recently and noticed that the film is essentially structured around a series of breathless monologues delivered by compelling actors - each one gets a turn, and then the film moves on to the next one. The reason the final courtroom scene feels draggy and sorta lame is because instead of getting some fun scenery chewing from the likes of Pesci, Sutherland, Bacon, or Jones, we're stuck with Costner.

DO NOT. FORGET. YOUR DYING KING.

"Stuck with Costner" explains 95% of what's not good about this film, and unfortunately he's everywhere. The rest is fine.

I suppose this is no defense, but consider: Stone needed a box office star dense and impervious to irony enough to play his conception of straight arrow Jim (the real Garrison was closer to Dean Andrews in wiles).

costner's first line in the film - reacting to hearing the president has been shot: "oh no!" - had my gf and i almost in tears.

At the time, for sure; Costner was right up there with Cruise for box-office, I think.

costner's camp atticus finch routine is exactly what this movie about a square tripping needs

Theoretically...but you still have to watch him.

Costner's super-stardom/box office draw seems like such a bizarre aberration.

Costner is the straight guy to all the madness around him, really works. After that the courtroom stuff is just not as fun, there is a drop off.

The recreation of the assassination and Oswald's post-assassination desperation is first-rate!

too much rhyming in that sentence

My Costner impression: "Wait a minute--are you saying that Costner is the straight guy to all the madness around him?"

lol

now say it in a bad southern accent

Sorry can only tell a bad Brit accent!

john candy's accent in this is hilarious. get the guy with the thick ontario accent to try to sound like he's from louisiana, also have him say "daddio" and the like. genius

cashew piece?

^^^ the match cut on this line is a thrill

Good-bye, you sorry bastard! Die!
Shut the fuck up!

God I'm ashamed to be an American today.

I've a class in three minutes and my students are wondering why I'm laughing my ass off

at least your reputation's all right with the ones in math class

I always felt that Costner's monologue, especially his reconstruction of the events of the day, was a breathless high point--it does that thing where it moves too fast for you to say "wait, what?" and all you can do is submit--but then again I've always found Costner sorta weirdly charismatic?

all the bad wigs and worse accents give this the most ‘Max Fischer Players’ vibe of any major Hollywood picture I think I’ve ever seen

I fail to see how any of the above 25 posts or so is a bad thing.

one of my most favorite threads, every revive is a delight

thx everyone itt

you are all diseased

You're as crazy as your mama.
It's in the genes.
Do you know what you're getting into?
The government will jump all over
your head and go cock-a-doodle-doo.
Good day to you, sir.

lmao @ "cashew piece"

how's your mousse

hope you like squab

omar, omar, always one hairbrained scheme after another!

https://i.imgur.com/UY1zqYj.gif?noredirect

triumph on the will on the tv during that scene is a nice touch

Very, very few people know about this, okay

i want the scale model of dealey plaza from the trial scene, w all the painstakingly painted+labeled miniatures-- tiny umbrella man, tiny abraham zapruder holding tiny camera, tiny jackie in tiny pink pillbox hat. more like jf40k

That's some bullet.

Virginia, you're a lucky little girl.
Your daddy's entered you
in a beauty contest. Like to be in one?

^^love that this creepy caller sounds exactly like Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life.

love that this creepy thread suggests you all watch this every week

better that than still defending fking fight club in 2019

i'm so fuckin exhausted i can't see straight

too much rhyming in that sentence

post-assassination desperation, that’s my major aspiration

It went unstated in this thread but I assume this revive was inspired by the Chapo episode on the subject? And tbh their read seemed pretty correct to me: tons of scenery-chewing performances from an all-star cast, compulsively watchable, successfully points out a lot about what was weird about the circumstances of the assassination, while also being totally compromised by hysterical homophobia and an absurdly idealized conception of JFK and his intentions re: Vietnam

Lol this thread does not need a podcast discussion for a revive.

my read of this movie these days is essentially apolitical: above all it's about piercing the veil. the disorienting (yet also, and more dreadfully, reorienting) rush of images and juxtapositions that pours thru the hole in kennedy's head and never stops physically roiling thru the movie is both form and subject. hardly the first movie to absorb editing techniques from channel-surfing but surely one of the few to have such a good reason to. i'm allergic to boomer mythology but this movie's positing of the traumatic dawn of a new way of seeing (technologically, politically... even spiritually) gets me every time. there's a moment when garrison is poring over witness testimony in the warren report when we see a few frames of what, much later, will be contextualized for us as the scene of the witness' mysterious death, which hasn't "happened" "yet". i like taking this as a vision garrison has received but not interpreted. time is already slipping. he has ingested something dangerous.

this is why i don't care anymore that the theory the movie's usually taken to propose is bullshit: i no longer take scenes like the poppers party as literal reality. (nb stone probably means me to.) they are fevered images from the swamp garrison's mind has been freed into and from which ain't none of em come out. except it's really stone's mind, which is why it is full of outrageous macho paranoia. as this couldn't possibly have failed to seem at least a little ridiculous even at the time i actually find stone's gonzo commitment to it kinda brave, as it tells on himself so thoroughly. (for calibration, i also like norman mailer.)

unlike the similar editing techniques in NBK (which intentionally starts at maximum and stays there) and nixon (which feels totally disorganized) the stream of images in JFK waxes and wanes-- the movie is essentially coming up until the sutherland monologue, which is the closest we come to comprehending the thing-in-itself (to knowing the "general Y")-- but the thing sutherland describes turns out to be ungraspable, "in the air", nonexistent "except at the most secret point". (the look in sutherland's eyes when costner stammers lamely about how he can't believe this reminds me of when ahab says that "the dead blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last".) after this the movie grows chillier and the fizz of cuts begins to slow. from this perspective of course the trial monologue is unsatisfying and garrison's final theory unconvincing: it is a morning-after attempt at casting a shadow of something only half-glimpsed. in my experience this is indeed more or less what it feels like doing any looking into the jfk assassination.

if the movie is about a person undergoing a psychedelic experience that's reflecting/reflected in a traumatic transformation of his country, then the multiple hamlet references aren't as silly as the chapos took them to be. and one of the plain-sight secrets of hamlet is that there's no way hamlet sr. was as good a king as hamlet says. so that's okay too imo.

Amazing post that finally gets at what's so compelling about this movie still.

I need to watch it again but I had a half-assed idea that Nixon was the Macbeth to JFK's Hamlet.

The performances in jfk have always made it borderline unwatchable for me, so bad they make me feel squirmy and embarrassed for the actors, like I’m watching something private that wasnt meant to be seen by the public.

Ironically though I feel the opposite about Nixon, which has all the same problems - atrocious acting & directing, homophobia, garbage history, generally dumb as rocks, but enjoyable if I pretend it’s a roger corman/vincent price Poe film.

it’s a roger corman/vincent price Poe film.

haha from the moment it dollies in on the white house as lightning crackles it's definitely going for this aesthetic. (just like macbeth.)

the look in sutherland's eyes when costner stammers lamely about how he can't believe this reminds me of when ahab says that "the dead blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last".)

Yeah, Stone lets the camera linger on Sutherland after the "The truth is on your side, bubba," as if he stared into Costner's soul and realized he wasn't up for the challenge, hence reaffirming the instinct to call him "bubba."

my read of this movie these days is essentially apolitical: above all it's about piercing the veil.

It's a Pynchon adaptation.

It went unstated in this thread but I assume this revive was inspired by the Chapo episode on the subject?

lol I didn't know anyone here listened to Chapo?

wow dlh that was a good post

Fucking Fight Club sounds great! and probly would to most of the JFK characters

https://media.giphy.com/media/1ZyKIJcJy3Xhe/giphy.gif

I don't mean to imply that they're gay or that they have conspired to commit any capital offense. Just that they are more than well-versed in classics and history and seem to be having a very good time indeed.

― forksdippedmayo (how's life), Wednesday, June 22, 2016 7:01 PM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe they were just doing a read-through of an early draft of "The Favourite" there

dlh's post gets at a lot of it, i think though the film was deadly serious business for a lot of people at the time, since the theory was put forth with such boldness on the visual surface (which painted over the dialogue asides indicating it was all theoretical, cf "let's just for a moment speculate..." etc) that it seemed to be as good an explanation as any as to how JFK was killed and why.

i think it rang true for a lot of folks because the black ops stuff was and is an undeniable part of American history, w/so much of the CIA activities (being used as smoke to indicate the conspiracy theory fire) having been true to a large extent. the image of the noble mission of America being ripped away to reveal something darker beneath, and by 1991 the darkness was something people were readily willing to believe.

i also seem to remember it just being one of many JFK assassination artifacts floating around the popular culture at the time but i'm struggling to remember what the others were. it felt like a partic pulpy contribution to a larger conversation

the commentary track, as you or someone noted years ago, is rife with examples of Stone's verbal shrugging ("Well, this wasn't true, but it's nice to think so...).

there were a pair of vv high profile books published around that time, Mark Lane's Plausible Denial and of course Jim Marrs' Crossfire, which Stone used as a source for the screenplay.

It went unstated in this thread but I assume this revive was inspired by the Chapo episode on the subject? And tbh their read seemed pretty correct to me: tons of scenery-chewing performances from an all-star cast, compulsively watchable, successfully points out a lot about what was weird about the circumstances of the assassination, while also being totally compromised by hysterical homophobia and an absurdly idealized conception of JFK and his intentions re: Vietnam

― Simon H., Tuesday, September 10, 2019 12:49 AM (eight hours ago)

my gf was listening to the chapo ep on saturday while getting ready for work and we decided to watch it that night so yeah

i think it rang true for a lot of folks because the black ops stuff was and is an undeniable part of American history, w/so much of the CIA activities (being used as smoke to indicate the conspiracy theory fire) having been true to a large extent. the image of the noble mission of America being ripped away to reveal something darker beneath, and by 1991 the darkness was something people were readily willing to believe.

― omar little, Tuesday, September 10, 2019 3:49 PM (three hours ago)

i think one of the unintended effects of the oliver stone movie is that it made this subject basically a joke to most ppl in a way that it wasn't before. like if you go back and read old book reviews, associated press stories, etc., from the 1970s and 1980s, oswald is generally referred to as the "accused assassin" and there's a general acknowledgement that the whole thing feels pretty fishy even if no one really wants to commit to a specific scenario. iirc the ny times even gave a more or less positive review to jim garrison's book. post-"jfk" there's a major backlash which culminates in the widespread praise for gerald posner's "case closed" (not a very good book imo) for supposedly clearing up the whole business. this sorta explains to me why the coverage of trump's "i'm gonna release the files!" stunt a while back was so confused, with most ppl torn between the impulse to make fun of it and the inescapable suspicion that something crazy might turn up after all.

As a guy whose knowledge (and interest) in the assassination doesn't extend beyond this film, Libra, and Harlot's Ghost, was there any truth to the assertion that Oswald, Guy Bannister, and Clay Bertrand/Shaw were seen together in N'Awlins?

i keep meaning to get round to reading libra

alfred u should read the other mailer book oswald's tale

The premise of Libra is probably the closest to being the “truth”, IMO

Great read on the movie, DLH

It went unstated in this thread but I assume this revive was inspired by the Chapo episode on the subject? And tbh their read seemed pretty correct to me: tons of scenery-chewing performances from an all-star cast, compulsively watchable, successfully points out a lot about what was weird about the circumstances of the assassination, while also being totally compromised by hysterical homophobia and an absurdly idealized conception of JFK and his intentions re: Vietnam

― Simon H., Tuesday, September 10, 2019 12:49 AM (eight hours ago)

That ep was a total delight. The Dry Boys were really in their element.

will in partic was quoting with a promiscuity and joy worthy of this thread

As a guy whose knowledge (and interest) in the assassination doesn't extend beyond this film, Libra, and Harlot's Ghost, was there any truth to the assertion that Oswald, Guy Bannister, and Clay Bertrand/Shaw were seen together in N'Awlins?

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, September 10, 2019 7:30 PM (one hour ago)

iirc anthony summers' book "not in your lifetime" pretty much confirms it and some of the other stories -- oswald working for wacko right-winger guy banister, etc.

oh right, you mentioned banister in your post, duh

ooh Summers! He wrote one of the better Nixon bnios.

*bios

i think one of the unintended effects of the oliver stone movie is that it made this subject basically a joke to most ppl in a way that it wasn't before. like if you go back and read old book reviews, associated press stories, etc., from the 1970s and 1980s, oswald is generally referred to as the "accused assassin" and there's a general acknowledgement that the whole thing feels pretty fishy even if no one really wants to commit to a specific scenario. iirc the ny times even gave a more or less positive review to jim garrison's book. post-"jfk" there's a major backlash which culminates in the widespread praise for gerald posner's "case closed" (not a very good book imo) for supposedly clearing up the whole business. this sorta explains to me why the coverage of trump's "i'm gonna release the files!" stunt a while back was so confused, with most ppl torn between the impulse to make fun of it and the inescapable suspicion that something crazy might turn up after all.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 10 September 2019 19:27 (two hours ago) link

That is an interesting shift. It’s funny to say but JFK might be one of the last truly subversive films released by a major studio, just in terms of how much it riled up the media/political class. It was too bold and impeccably crafted to ignore, even if the quotably purple dialogue and Stone’s “feverish” (sniff sniff) earnestness made it ripe for parody.

Imagine any movie having that kind of impact now. I mean, we still have dumb pearl-clutching moral panics about studio product, but it’s all focused on the most inane manufactured micro-targeted culture war BS.

JFK’s version of events might be uh, “off”, but it got at something genuine that is becoming more apparent as time goes on. Whether it’s because of Russia or Epstein or just paying attention, *everybody* is a conspiracy theorist to some degree now.

def going to read that Summers’ Jfk - loved his “Arrogance of Power”

yep!

i tore through a bunch of jfk-related books a few years ago and summers' was probably the most balanced and convincing one. and yeah, nixon book is solid!

Vincent Bugliosi wrote a massive "Oswald acted alone" book that came out in 2007; never read it myself, plus suspect Bugliosi went a bit nutty in later years

I want to recommend the 2012 book A Cruel and Shocking Act by Philip Shenon. It’s an account of the inner workings of the Warren Commission based on interviews with some of the the surviving people involved. It’s a perspective I haven’t really seen chronicled in depth elsewhere.

It also goes into how the investigation was hampered by the CIA’s withholding of crucial information that later came to light, i.e. the thwarted attempts to assassinate Castro, and their knowledge of Oswald’s movements and associations.

Also good on that front is Jefferson Morley’s book The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, about the famously paranoid head of the CIA’s counter-intelligence division. Angleton started a special file on Oswald as soon he defected to the USSR and continued monitoring his associations and tracking his movements right up until November 22, 1963. Apparently access to the file was used as part of Angleton’s attempts to ferret out suspected moles within the agency.

There’s also a lot to suggest that during his time in Mexico City Oswald was used (probably unwittingly) as a pawn in some kind of spy game between the Cuban embassy and the CIA. If he was inspired or encouraged to assassinate JFK during this time (as Shenon believes he was, by pro-Castro Cubans) and the CIA knew and did nothing...well, you can see how explosive that information would be.

never read it myself, plus suspect Bugliosi went a bit nutty in later years

Bugliosi is mostly nuts throughout his entire life... Tom O'Neil's recent Manson book gets into the details.

There’s also a lot to suggest that during his time in Mexico City Oswald was used (probably unwittingly) as a pawn in some kind of spy game between the Cuban embassy and the CIA. If he was inspired or encouraged to assassinate JFK during this time (as Shenon believes he was, by pro-Castro Cubans) and the CIA knew and did nothing...well, you can see how explosive that information would be.

The Morley book is great - recommend reading it next if folks have already read one of the books name-checked on the thread. My interpretation is that when Oswald was in Mexico City, telling everyone who would bother to listen that he was going to kill JFK, the CIA's reaction was "huh. we don't care - you'll be doing us a favor. In fact, let's take a photo of some other guy going into the embassy and claim it's Oswald - just to f. things up."

They were a wise bunch of birds!

― omar little, Tuesday, April 30, 2019

the story about oswald being (supposedly) impersonated in mexico city before the assassination -- a photo of a guy who looked nothing like him, a recording of a different guy's voice -- is pretty wild.

According to his Marine buddies, he got Maggie's drawers. That means he wasn't any good.

Pipe the bimbo in red. Mm-mm.

If I answer that question you keep asking...if I give you the name of the big enchilada...then it's bon voyage, Deano. Like a bullet in my head, you dig? You're a mouse fighting a gorilla. Kennedy's as dead as that crabmeat. The government's still breathing. You want to line up with a dead man?

Stop eatin' that crab meat and listen!

i like the visual, comparing Kennedy to dead crab meat.

this movie was probably as much fun to make as Wet Hot American Summer (which could have been a working title based on the southern sweat in this)

I didn't pay two bits for a target, just to have someone else shoot it!

no honest working man can afford to buy a car in this goddam country anymore. maybe i'll have to go to RUSSIA. to buy a car.

really duuuum dye-log

Still unsure if Americans in the 20th Century ever used to say "two bits."

At the time of the shooting, there seemed to be some commotion. I'm just unable to describe...a flash of light or smoke or something, which caused me to feel that something out of the ordinary had occurred on the embankment.

GODDAMN

NO

oswald was no ordinary soldier! he was-- he was probably military intelligence, that's why he was trained in russian. it's no accident. he was IN RUSSIA.

go back to sleep!

Ah've been sleepin' for three years, Liz!

we should perform this as an ILX cast stage play.

i tore through a bunch of jfk-related books a few years ago and summers' was probably the most balanced and convincing one.

btw thanks j.d. (again), bought and read this in a gluttonous ~30hrs after this post. highly recommended, feels as comprehensive as anything i've read and yeah it is v carefully not trying to convince you of anything, which is probably why came out of it finally believing in a second shooter lol

had previously always been an "oswald acted alone and the govt covered up because a real investigation would have revealed too much about the intelligence services, both wrt oswald and more broadly" guy but have felt myself moving to "mobsters instigated a hit via a mafia architecture that in places had become indistinguishable from the intelligence services (and the govt covered up because etc)"

oswald really does act for a long time just like someone in something like cointelpro might act but i am still loath to reduce (inflate?) him to a conscious employee because i am infatuated w a read of him where he considers himself always the protagonist and always a step ahead of whomever he is telling whatever or doing whatever for. for me the beautiful idea is that I'M A PATSY is a moment of real-time realization not (or not just) that he has been set up by [santo trafficante/e howard hunt/fidel castro/allan dulles/lyndon johnson/marx's ghost] but more spookily that here on the other side of a finally achieved ambition to become an immortal mover of history he has suddenly realized he cannot stop also being something's agent. that this figurative existential discovery-- a standard part of life imo-- is naturally superimposed over what may have been a literal and v specific discovery-- "i'm in the cold war and i lost track of who's paying me"-- is why oswald/jfk remains the penultimate in "o no the hall of mirrors of the psyche" spy stories: above tinker, below hamlet.

I just got Summers' book from the library!

I just placed a hold on it at my library!

also just got JFK from the library since I hadn't seen it in several years (or should i say, "yee-ahhs")

haha what have i wrought?? (you're welcome guys)

i can see myself watching this every few years from now on

one edit i really love: Garrison's reading the Warren Commission report, going through the testimony of the shitkicker Dallas police sergeant, we see him on the stand talking about "tramps and ho-bos", the close up on his insignia, reflecting in the light to jump cut to 1963.

lil transitional things like that (my fave example is cutting from john candy saying "i never met the dude" to his meeting the dude while positioned exactly the same way in the frame, so that present john candy and past john candy collaborate on the motion of a single seamless drag from their cigarettes) impress me cuz they reveal the movie's style was not created in the editing room

haha what have i wrought??

not so much a recommendation as... an organic phenomenon. it grew. changed shape. developed... appetites.

the Candy scene is so good. again, of course:

"hell no -- like i told that Bertrand cat right off ("cashew piece?") this ain't my scene, man."

one likes friends that have friends.

i was watching the Clay Shaw interview scene and it's amazing how the actual interview is just denial after denial and finally Garrison loses his cool and based on nothing thinks he's nailed the guy (well, based on the editing of the film in which we see "the truth").

the actual interview is not incriminating, when Shaw says "you're reaching!" he's correct. Love it.

AM I?!

people like you don't have to, i guess.

may i go?

people like you just walk between the raindrops.

...may i go.

I ALWAYS LOCK MY FILES!

so what is precisely the point of the woman who accosts Garrison in the street to remind him that they sang together during his reelection party ("You're the Cream in My Co-ffeeeeee....")?

My favorite editing touches happen when Stone flash forwards within scenes with visuals (Jack Ruby talking while his body is wheeled out) or sound (Clay Shaw introducing himself to the Garrison crew while a doorbell tinkle announces the arrival of O'Keefe years earlier).

i thought that woman in the street was in there to show -- Jim Garrison, Man of the People

I thought so too but Stone is not a director of ancillary moments.

I don't believe I ever mentioned this (maybe to dlh in private): watching JFK in high school with me, my buddy gasped when Silvia Odio's name was mentioned. "She's an old friend of my mom's."

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, April 30, 2019

So I cheated and skipped head in the Summers book to read about the Odio episode. Apparently he found her and her sister's account credible.

i think there are a few throwaway moments throughout showing Highly Respected Jim Garrison, like immediately after he goes into that restaurant and he's greeted by the maitre'd who knows him personally and even leaves the adjoining table empty so they can have privacy. He's supposed to be Jimmy Stewart!

martini waiting for him!

i really love the bug-eyed FBI agent who accosts Bill Broussard outside Ferrie's apartment. one of those nicely cast tiny roles, they needed a guy who could plausibly intimidate Michael Rooker.

You listen. You listen real hard. Get in the car.

a doorbell tinkle announces the arrival of O'Keefe years earlier

this is terrific yeah, almost posted about it the other day-- the sound is triggered by garrison saying o'keefe's name, plays over a deadpan shot of shaw denying he's heard it while it literally rings a bell in his head, and immediately turns out to be a J-cut into answering the door.

afaict the cream in my coffee lady is there so u know garrison is cool w black people, it's kinda cringey. worse imo is the scene where an anonymous and unspeaking black father+son are tendentiously arranged near kennedy's graveside, presumably to be seen paying tribute to all jfk did for civil rights in contrast to his monstrous usurper

but omar otm that the former is also part of a set of little "this guy's a pillar of the community!" moments, which i don't mind in general. you have to establish that he begins as a comfortable square.

yes exactly garrison is a man of ALL the people

though it's wild that a film taking place in a city which in the '60s was probably 40% black has like three or four speaking roles for black actors (by speaking i mean like one or two lines) and barely more who even appear onscreen.

yup

altho i will go ahead and defend the part where thankless burn-hollywood-burn role "mattie" gets the line "i never did believe it", like she saw thru the veil w her magic black eyes all along, because it prob is worth making the point that many americans don't need as much convincing as jim garrison to decide something's rotten in the state

I also like the bit where Liz has her one moment of curiosity about the case: peering over Suzie's shoulder as she explains the fraudulent photo.

Liz was woke for the late '60s though, she accused her husband of waging a campaign against Shaw because he was gay.

lol Stone has no sympathy for Liz at all. "Some people don't understand that they are higher things" or, my favorite, after the big Liz-Jim fight, "I wrote this based on a fight with my ex-wife while I was on mushrooms...someone has to take our country back."

Reminds me of the charming New Yorker story I read in 1994 in which Stone admits to recently spiking a woman's drink to sleep with her.

Join the rest! They'll say I'm crazy. Plenty of people will tell you I'm crazy. You won't have any problems filling out divorce papers. But somebody's got to try, goddamn it! Somebody!

I finished Summers and uh the assassination remains an enigma trapped in a mystery trapped in Mailer fiction. I finished the book thinking Oliver Stone's allegations were more correct than not (realizing that he and co-writer Sklar borrowed so much from transcripts reassured and discomfited at once).

A couple sly bits I was reminded of on last night’s rewatch of the first half:

In the opening montage, JFK leaves Allen Dulles hanging on an attempted handshake (motive!!)

After the assassination, when LBJ is getting down to the business of Vietnam, inserted into the news footage are quick abstract shots of LBJ that must be filmed by Stone, it lends a sinister note which you’d never notice if you’re weren’t looking for them.

Like very quick shots of maybe a head turn or an arm or something. I didn’t go back to freeze frame.

realizing that he and co-writer Sklar borrowed so much from transcripts

yeah i had no idea either. an inspired act of god should happen, and put a texan in the white house!

Costner's voice breaking as he delivers his closing statement to the jury, sounding like he just discovered one of Liz's hairs in his mouth and is trying to talk through it before surreptitiously spitting it out.

Garrison's son coming into the courtroom just in time for dad to play the head shot on the Zapruder film over and over.

You never spoke like that to me before, Jim Garrison.

reading the Summers book, which is to put it mildly critical of Oliver Stone and this film, i was also surprised to see how much Stone did stick to facts and transcripts. The guy by the knoll flashing a Secret Service ID to the patrolman, but later it's discovered no secret service guys were in that area.

I'm surprised Oliver didn't run with the father and daughter who gave brief pursuit to a vehicle driven by a guy fleeing the scene from the knoll area.

the book doesn't even mention Clay Shaw afaict, and only mentions Garrison to demean the investigation as a disgrace and a farce.

The guy by the knoll flashing a Secret Service ID to the patrolman, but later it's discovered no secret service guys were in that area.

afterward, it didn't ring true

He looked like a mechanic.
He had on a sports shirt and pants,
but he had dirty fingernails.

^^i love that this is actually true!

Summer treats the evidence as if he were William Wyler attempting a solid craftsman's interpretation of the material, but the conclusions are not dissimilar.

he's also very hard on the Posner book, which i did find convincing at the time, and iirc it did seem to explain Oswald's behavior as being perfectly in line with someone who was mentally unbalanced, which is something i think oft overlooked by conspiracy-minded types trying to find cold logic in events that are the result of unpredictable and illogical human behavior. this book is intriguing thus far, though.

XA-XA-XA!

I never did believe it.

i can't believe you're saying this in the courtroom!

I saw a girl the other day, she was pregnant -- you could see her whole belly, and you know what she painted on it? "Love Child."

You're out of order, Jim Boy! Now sit down!

well, i wanted to make sure that she was the same girl i sent away!

― difficult listening hour, Sunday, January 27, 2019 12:55 AM bookmarkflaglink

assuming this is direct from a transcript too now. always reminds me of gravity's rainbow

dlh, you're pickin' gnat shit outta peppa!

That polecat Lyndon

https://film-grab.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/19%20(541).jpg?bwg=1547224275

been digging into that Summers book a bit more. That Silvia Odio story, which gets a mere passing mention in the film, practically has an entire chapter devoted to it in the book and actually seems a bit more sinister than Stone made it out to be. Alfred, you've got to track down your source aka your buddy from years ago.

shit, omar, I can't remember what I did last night, let alone three years ago!

yeah, putting aside my buddy's anecdote about the Odio incident, that's one of the tributaries with the ring of truth, and Summers doesn't disbelieve her.

the thing that rings true is the notion that Oswald was perhaps a government asset or agent, and if that was the case: while his behavior seems really unusual and odd and obvious, it only seems that way now once we're looking at it under a microscope and putting it into context and i don't doubt there were hundreds of other assets or agents who acted with similar oddness and inconsistency because they were working for a larger U.S. agenda. like it's the type of behavior that if Oswald had never become mixed up in the Kennedy assassination (either by actually perpetrating it or being part of a plot or simply in the orbit of those who did kill him) no one would have ever noticed these inconsistencies. much of it rose to the surface after the fact.

I don't get it, though. The guy defects to the USSR and then comes back and hands out pro-Cuba leaflets but is in fact anti-Castro on the down low.

This is a weird little scene- Oswald goes into a store of an anti-Castro guy and says he can help him and then gets into a fight with him and is arrested. At the police station Oswald requests an interview with the FBI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Bringuier

he next day, Oswald again visited the store and left his Guidebook for Marines f

"Oh! What have we here?!"

that’s precisely the point of both brothers, there’s more to this than you could dream

Another year he's dead.

They should've given him a medal for starting this thread!

Camelot in smithereens! *drip drip drip* I'll drink to that.

We've all become Hamlets in our country, children of a slain father-leader...whose killers still possess the throne.

Today 's a Friday too. We can relive it in real time.

whaddya mean you're gonna put it in a book

and all of this came under the control of General Y!

Dulles, by the way, was General Y's benefactor...

Very, very few people know about this, ok

November 22, a day that shall live in rapidly fading infamy.

X would do just tweet it today and everyone would ignore it after a week

@xCIA1964

Thread: Everything I'll say is classified top secret.
I was a soldier. Two wars. A secret Pentagon guy, supplying the hardware: Planes, bullets, rifles for what we call "Black Operations. " Black Ops. Assassinations. Coups d'etat, rigging elections, propaganda, psych warfare.

And I knew Allen Dulles very well. I briefed him many a time in his house. He was also General Y's benefactor. But for the life of me I still can't figure out why Dulles was appointed to investigate Kennedy's death. The man who had fired him.

just visited my folks in dallas and yesterday we went to the book depository museum and argued about the whole thing and before i knew it i was cribbing from this movie: “it was a turkey shoot” “they heard ECHOES!” “you would’ve felt an army presence on the streets that day!!” and finally “i won't have any more ultimatums put to me, mother”

Must've been a helluva weekend to visit the Sixth Floor.

Some cranberry sauce and stuffing spilling out and a torn-up turkey....perfect time for a jfk conversation.

you know i don't like these tribal rituals

having finished the Summers book awhile back, what i appreciated about it was how he simply lays out all the information he believes to be truthful or believable, and doesn't really buy into any one theory specifically. he leans hard on the mob/disgruntled Cuban exiles aspect, hinting at both possibilities linked to those groups: that Oswald was directly involved, or wound up trapped in a vise by others.

I love how much Scorsese is just straight up trollling in this scene. https://t.co/TApD2d822C

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) November 27, 2019

FUCK YEAH

- testify

- me

- testify

- lol no chance in hell

If they can kill the president of the United States, do you think they're gonna think twice about a two-bit showgirl like me?

I just rewatched last weekend. Everything everyone said is correct.

fuck yeah!

Ain't got no reason to LAH to ya, I'm already IN jail!

Pretty flowery for Dave Ferrie.

We're way overdue another crack at hitting this level of dreamy mania with a similarly stacked cast. My body is ready for QAnon.

i dreamt last night that the cause of jfk's assassination was bob-a-job week

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, October 15, 2003 5:52 PM (fifteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still the only good theory imo

― mark s, Friday, 17 May 2019 15:02 (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

don't make me tap the sign

Maybe Shaw is an agent. I don't know. But as a covert operator, he is wide open for blackmail because of his ho-mo-sex-u-ality.

been playing a lot of quarantine playstation and the other day both my controllers died and i was genuinely upset and whispered: "both of them, both brothers?"

ahahaha

nice

ECHOES

you heard ECHOES

Kennedy's as dead as that crab meat, the government's alive and breathing. You gonna line up with a dead man, Jimbo?

Willie O'Keefe : You don't know shit 'cause you've never been fucked in the ass!

And I knew Allen Dulles very well. I briefed him many a time in his house. He was also General Y's benefactor. But for the life of me I still can't figure out why Dulles was appointed to investigate Kennedy's death. The man who had fired him.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 22, 2019

Sutherland’s my new fave on todays rewatch

Wise bunch of birds…

Worth checking out the *alternate* versions of the Sutherland scene, originally it was two different sections of the film; the second half of his monolgue was the film's last scene and he (and Costner) were made-up to look older. Annoyingly the Stone commentary track is all over the version on YouTube but it's better than nowt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glfTYMH59lk

i'm watching this for the first time since it came out. since it was 3 hours and i would have been 8 or so at the time, this makes it a movie i would have went to with my dad, who was not really a movie guy. more of an action movies + braveheart kind of guy. anyway, makes me think he really wanted to see it, i guess.

joe pesci's southern accent is _killing me_

wise buncha birds

very very few people know about this alright

Thinking about Kevin Costner JFK anime glasses pic.twitter.com/XdEDPGsug2

— christian (@speederaserhead) November 27, 2020

is Karl still watching it

Love how this is being blamed for the bad things in the US.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/jfk-oliver-stone-conspiracy-theory-russian-disinformation-1260223/

paywalled for me :(

paywalled for you? or hidden from you deliberately by the fbi?

Oliver Stone once made brilliant movies like Platoon, which won Oscars for best picture and best director. These days, he’s a tinfoil-hatted fabricator. His new documentary — JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, premiering on Showtime on, you guessed it, Nov. 22 — is rooted in a big lie. It comes 30 years after the premiere of JFK, a film unrivaled in the annals of American cinematic propaganda. Both are based on the undying delusion that President Kennedy was murdered by the Deep State: The Central Intelligence Agency, backed by the military-industrial complex.

Do you believe that the CIA killed JFK? Millions of Americans suspect so. Let me ask you, then: Why do they believe it?

The tale can be traced to a Russian disinformation operation. It came from the same arsenal of political warfare that convinced half the world that the U.S. Army created AIDS. The one that monkey-wrenched the 2016 election for Donald Trump. The one now flooding the internet with deadly lies about the coronavirus and vaccines. The goals of these campaigns were one and the same: to divide Americans, to pour salt in our self-inflicted wounds, and ultimately to convince you that there is no truth. That crackpot fantasies are cold hard realities. That “conspiracy theories are now conspiracy facts,” as Stone proclaims in JFK Revisited.

Disinformation works best when it contains a kernel of truth. And, in truth, the Kennedy assassination is the black hole of American history. It has sucked better minds than Stone’s down into darkness. It has taught generations of Americans to be highly skeptical of the Official Government Version of events. It made the grassy knoll our town commons.

But what you believe about it boils down to this: Either Lee Harvey Oswald, trained by the United States Marines as a sharpshooter before he defected to the Soviet Union, got off a million-to-one shot in Dallas. He acted alone. Or he was an instrument of a conspiracy so immense that it staggers the mind.

As the new documentary opens, Stone paces down Dealey Plaza in Dallas, where President Kennedy was killed, the same place where QAnon crazies gathered recently to await the miraculous resurrection of JFK Jr. and the divine reinauguration of Trump. The director promises his audience that he is about to solve the murder mystery, to “piece together what really happened that day and discover the reasons why.”

Brace yourself: he doesn’t.

The dark beast of JFK Revisited is Allen Dulles, a founding father of the CIA and its director from February 1953 to November 1961. I know a fair amount about Dulles; my history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes, lays a multitude of sins at his feet. Dulles often grievously misled Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. He oversaw CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala which ushered in dictatorships. His top officers tried to kill Fidel Castro, enlisting the Mafia. He blithely convinced JFK to carry out the disastrous invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, which was his downfall as Director of Central Intelligence.

Stone pegs Dulles as a presiding genius of the plot against the president. To begin building this case, he tells us that Dulles and the CIA backed a failed military coup aimed at assassinating President Charles de Gaulle of France. That’s another lie spun by Moscow.

Like the cold-war CIA, the KGB paid editors and reporters around the world to print stories that could advance the Kremlin’s international agendas. In the late 1950’s, it created a directorate to undermine America. Department D — D as in dezinformatsiya — aimed to bend and shape public opinion, and above all to defame the United States. The Department of Disinformation was the world’s first industrial factory of fake news.

A KGB-scripted story about the CIA’s plot to kill De Gaulle first appeared in a daily newspaper, Paese Sera, published in Rome and backed by the Italian Communist Party, a few days after the Bay of Pigs. It was republished in Moscow by the Soviet party organ, Pravda; then in France, and finally across the globe. That was, and is, the M.O. of Russian disinformation operations: start a fire, fan the flames, and blow the smoke around the world.

Six years later, Paese Sera planted the seed that flowered into JFK. And therein lies a tale. (One first told in 2001 by the historian Max Holland in The Wilson Quarterly, a now-defunct political science journal.)

On March 1, 1967, the New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison, arrested Clay Shaw, the director of the city’s International Trade Mart and a somewhat-closeted gay man, and charged him with a central role in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. The D.A. told reporters that what happened in Dallas had been “a homosexual thrill-killing.” Three days later, Paese Sera named Shaw as a conduit for CIA funds for espionage and dirty tricks in Rome. The story, crafted by the KGB, ricocheted around the world, landing in New York on the front page of a New Left weekly, the National Guardian, on March 18.

Garrison seized upon it. He fed the falsehood to a friendly newspaper reporter in New Orleans and it landed on page one. He told the world that Shaw was a longtime CIA operative. (He wasn’t, though he had been a casual part-time contact on questions of commerce, one among some 150,000 Americans who volunteered information to the cold-war CIA.) The prosecutor then doubled down. He proclaimed that the CIA had plotted to kill Kennedy and then covered up the conspiracy, that Oswald had been under its control, that the agency was “infinitely more powerful than the Gestapo,” and that it had masterminded a coup d’etat in America in the name of anticommunism.

On Feb. 6, 1969, Garrison put Clay Shaw on trial. His witnesses were a parade of perjurers from the seamier quarters of New Orleans. He presented no evidence tying the CIA to his case. But in his summation, he asked the jurors to strike a righteous blow against the Deep State’s “murder of the truth.” They took 54 minutes to acquit.

Garrison’s tragicomedy had two lasting effects on the United States. The first was immediate: After he announced his charges, the number of Americans who believed that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy skyrocketed. A majority still believe it. The second took 20 years.

Garrison spent a decade turning his case into a book called On The Trail Of The Assassins: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy. The co-conspirators in this opus included the CIA, the FBI, the Dallas police department, the Warren Commission, the Secret Service, anti-Castro Cubans, the United States Army, and the Navy pathologists who autopsied JFK. Fifteen publishers rejected it until it was picked up by William Schaap and Ellen Ray at Sheridan Square Press in 1988. (The couple had worked with Phillip Agee, a CIA defector, publishing Covert Action Information Bulletin, a magazine devoted to exposing the Agency’s operations and officers. Agee received a strong assist from Russian intelligence, according to KGB records. No evidence whatsoever links Schaap and Ray, now both deceased, to the Russians.)

On The Trail Of The Assassins would prove to be a hit with the public. Shortly before its publication, as Schaap later recounted, “at a film festival in Havana, we ran into Oliver Stone. And Ellen said to him, ‘Have I got a property for you!’ Because we knew he was an assassination freak, we gave him an advance copy of the book…. Of course, Oliver Stone won’t admit to any of this!”

JFK and its new sequel are, with artistic embellishments, cinematic transcriptions of Jim Garrison’s delusions. The original movie convinced millions more Americans that the version of history wrought by Stone and Garrison was true. National surveys taken after JFK was released showed that three-quarters of those polled believed the CIA had murdered the President. And that, along with the end of the cold war, provoked Congress to begin declassifying millions of records relating to the assassination — a task that remains incomplete nearly three decades later. Both Trump and President Biden have delayed disclosures required under law, though a new set of documents is set to be unwrapped before Christmas.

I’ve spent half my life reporting, writing, and reading about the CIA and American intelligence. I remember the Kennedy assassination; I’ve studied the evidence. And I can’t tell you that there wasn’t a conspiracy. Maybe it was the Russians. Could have been the Cubans. Might have been the Mafia. Maybe there’s a mind-blowing bombshell in the still-classified archives of the government. But I seriously doubt it.

I can tell you for a fact that our democracy is suffocating under an avalanche of disinformation. Trump won the 2020 election! Covid vaccines are seeded with microchips! Democrats are blood-sucking pedophile communists! 9/11 was an inside job! Our body politic is being poisoned by lies. They stalk the land like brain-eating zombies. And we can’t seem to kill them.

We have a moral obligation to call bullshit when we see it. Especially when public figures promote lies for profit. Stone’s JFK films are fantasies. Conspiracy theories are not facts. They’re a kind of collective psychosis. And they’re driving our country down the road to hell.

In This Article: CIA, conspiracy theories, FBI, JFK, Oliver Stone

the whole thing I never understood is the whole thing seems to be that the CIA killed him because he was a threat to the military industrial complex and US foreign policy which I never got the sense he was in any real way?

fuck yeah!

xp I guess it depends on which Kennedy you focus on, the guy who gave speeches about ending colonialism and was pissed off about the Bay of Pigs, or the guy running to Nixon’s right on Cuba and missiles. The Cuba podcast Blowback definitely leans toward the former, but they provided an interesting contrast of Kennedy promoting peace and understanding post-Bay of Pigs, and at the same time delivering hard-line speeches about intolerance for Communism.

read the devil's chessboard! it's the best! it explains the theory more like a web of things that were going on, not just that a guy is a threat so let's murder him

Love how this is being blamed for the bad things in the US.

this is the funniest tweet of the week

Twitter allowed a hashtag pushing a conspiracy theory about the CIA and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to trend nationally. It appears that it was due to an account urging users to get the hashtag trending. pic.twitter.com/oRcdW9VRjN

— Alex Kaplan (@AlKapDC) November 22, 2021

harbl otm

how's your mousse

Honestly the ~only~ time I have any time for Oliver Stone is when he is feeding at the JFK trough.

Weiner sounds like he hates fun

um how soon we forget The Doors, the finest motion picture of our times

16 yo me agrees w you

but jfk is the only Stone movie i can watch

a little surprised jacobin of all places ran it, but this is a great interview w/ stone:

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/oliver-stone-talks-to-jacobin-about-jfks-killing

it’s been a while since i went on my jfk book reading spree, but basically everything he says here is solid as far as i can tell

However, this is, as we say, bullshit:

Now, you can argue that we don’t know what would have happened, but the man, Kennedy, we try to establish, was an anti-colonialist. He’d been involved in Algeria, he’d been involved in Vietnam as early as 1954. And he said repeatedly these Third World countries needed their independence, and he was against the concept of a Cold War, against communism being used as an excuse to suppress independence — in the Congo, in Vietnam, in Laos, in Algeria, all over the world. And in Latin America, especially, he was very strong with his Alliance for Progress.

It’s a unique spin on Boomer Camelot fetishism.

DO NOT. FORGET. YOUR DYING KING.

the whole thing I never understood is the whole thing seems to be that the CIA killed him because he was a threat to the military industrial complex and US foreign policy which I never got the sense he was in any real way?
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, November 24, 2021 12:13 AM (nineteen hours ago)

this is a fair criticism and it’s true that oliver stone does go overboard in sentimentalizing jfk himself. (though it’s nothing compared to what he did with jim garrison; the anti-conspiracy writers basically got that one right, as far as i can tell.)

but i saw a comment about this somewhere that I’ve never been able to get out of my head. roughly: “the important question isn’t whether noam chomsky thinks jfk was a threat to the foreign policy status quo, it’s whether *allen dulles* thought he was.”

Right, and Kennedy’s true foreign policy intentions may have been less of a concern than his level of anger with the CIA for making him look like an asshole.

A new piece from ILX vet Dorian L

https://unherd.com/2021/11/oliver-stones-seductive-conspiracies/

This is the real reason why they killed him pic.twitter.com/bvQR7zY1CQ

— ol’ stocky 🎄 (@oldstocky) December 5, 2021

i keep checking this thread thinking it's bumped because the white house have decided to release the secret jfk assassination records they won't release because of the pandemic

they have us waiting on the edge of our seats

has anyone watched the Stone doc

should i bother or no

only bother if it sticks with the one true theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Error

xp i watched it & dont regret it

theres some interesting stuff, never knew abt the potential assassination attmpts in chi and tampa and potential parallel patsies that wouldve taken the fall in each instance

https://64.media.tumblr.com/eb72537f4fe3ae7a0faa0c7e6b4df442/tumblr_p772c820j71we0p6lo1_640.gifv

I just found out I kept Oliver Stone waiting because the interview I did with Glenn Greenwald went long (Greenwald is supposed to meet Stone).

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 8, 2021

he'll look fuckin ridiculous without his beard!