A Thread about the film JFK

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.