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).

But, as a covert operator in my book, he is wide open for blackmail because of his h o m osexuality.

Hell, $20 each time, and it aint no secret

Really?

What part?

don't you think this has something to do with that? can't you see?

I suppose I could use a pot of hot coffee and a few packs of Luckys.

Sad thing is the way it's screwin' up this country, all these hippies runnin' around on drugs, the way young people look you can't tell a boy from a goil anymore!

I said Wilkes Booth must have flipped. Just went ahead and did this crazy thing before anyone could stop him, right?

Am I right Jack?

(sighs)
Mama warned me this would happen if I married such a serious man!

You as crazy as your Mama! Goes to show its in the genes

We have to control the intelligence from Saigon.

I'm going. I've got to get home, Chief.

- Edmund “Jack” Spangler

They sent it to the FBI, Bill. The FBI didn’t find a god damn thing.

Why the hell didn’t RFK Jr prosecute it as Secretary of Health and Human Services? He was his nephew for Christ’s sake.

- Dean Andrews III

How the Fuck (_Earle_Warren) all those people could keep a secret like that, I don't know.

It was Oswald!

He Fuck(ed) (_Earle_Warren) us in Laos and now he's going to Fuck (_Earle_Warren) us in got damn Vietnam

The commission will be headed by chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, Earle Warren (_an_honorable_man)

You are so naive.

a YouTube comment:

Donald Sutherland said in an interview that he spent 3 months working on this scene. He and his wife would walk around a park while he recited the monologue, and she'd purposely interrupt him with questions to throw him off and test him. Eventually nothing she did could phase him or rattle his memory, and he knew he was ready. When it came time to shoot this scene, they knocked it out in a single afternoon.

awesome if true

Maximalist cinema at its best. Seeing it in 35mm a few months ago gave me frisson

That scene is Donald Sutherland's Trout Mask Replica

A comment on a 21 year old JFK thread which incorporates Trout Mask Replica is through the looking glass, people. Well done!

we're thru the lookin' glass, people!

Hey are we still doing this or did we decide Oswald did actually do it?

Apparently Earl Warren helped to arrange the desegregation of schools due to the outcome of Brown v. Board of Education, which is cool but fuck that guy

I heard an interview with the late Clint Hill yesterday, recorded 2022... he was still absolutely haunted by what he considered his failure to protect them, that he wishes he had taken the bullet instead of the President. I hope he's at peace now.

Fuck yeah!

Another witness dies…when will people realize what’s really going on here?

The truth is on your side, bubba!

I just hope i get a break

I just stood there watching.

The driver had stopped.

I don't know what was wrong with h-i-e-m.

It's not just about you - and your well-being and your two cars and your kitchen and your TV and "I'm jes fine honey." While our kids grow up into a shithole of lies! Well, I'm not "fine" about that. My life is fucked, Liz! And yours is too!

see, if i'm eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing ANY bit of truth pertaining to my situation! and consequently, a whole new form of government is gonna take over this country-- yeah!! and i know that i won't live to see you some other time.

Jacobin interviewed Oliver Stone.

The world's least appealing three-word clause.

xxp was re-watching this yesterday and I was really feeling that Jack Ruby quote.

There are lots of different clues out there, they’re in different places. It takes a computer or a Sherlock Holmes to bring all those facts into one space. If that were done, by a language model for a gigantic computer to put all this together, then people could understand.

Certainly its eloquence comes out of nowhere and is fascinating coming from this source.

My trick has the flu. Should I watch it tonight or

6:30 pm on a Friday night? Not exactly fresh blood we're sniffing.

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

― difficult listening hour, Friday, May 17, 2019 1:25 PM

underrated line

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.

You got an hour to solve the case while I get the kids in bed. Then you're mine. Mr. Kennedy will have to wait til mawnin'.

but then they didn't have sex til RFK got shot.

watched this over a couple nights with the kid, who is now old enough to handle it (though he covered his face during the Zapruder film and autopsy scene, i've seen it enough times to know when to warn him.) have to admit the Garrison closing argument hit a little harder in the current context, ambushed by unexpected emotion etc.

it's up to you!

The truth is on your side, bubba!

Do you have the balls enough to tell your son that Oswald was probably the lone shooter?

Do I have to spell it out for you?

Lee Oswald was no ordinary soldier.

He was in military intelligence, that's why he was trained in Russian.

It was no accident he was in Russia.

when it smells like it, feels like it, and looks like it, you call it what it is: fascism

i find it kinda interesting, maybe an edit flaw, that Clay Shaw's name was mentioned before they tied him to Clay Bertrand, when talking about who introduced former General Charles Cabell when he came to New Orleans. One scene before Broussard meets his confusingly Clay Shaw clone mob pal Joe, played by J.J. Johnston.