A Thread about the film JFK

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.