A Thread about the film JFK

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!