A Thread about the film JFK

^^^ 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.