JFK (film)

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JFK
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Oliver Stone
Produced by	A. Kitman Ho Oliver Stone
Written by	Jim Marrs (book Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy) Jim Garrison (book On the Trail of the Assassins) Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar (screenplay)
Starring	Kevin Costner Kevin Bacon Tommy Lee Jones Laurie Metcalf Gary Oldman Michael Rooker Jay O. Sanders Joe Pesci Sissy Spacek Walter Matthau John Candy Jack Lemmon Donald Sutherland Edward Asner Vincent D'Onofrio
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Robert Richardson
Editing by	Joe Hutshing Pietro Scalia
Distributed by	Warner Brothers
Release date(s)	December 20, 1991
Running time	189 min. / 206 min. (director's cut)
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$40,000,000
Gross revenue	$205,400,000 (Worldwide)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. The film was released on December 20, 1991. The film examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner.) Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) for his alleged participation in a conspiracy to assassinate the President. The film was adapted by Stone and Zachary Sklar from the books On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs.

Stone's film became embroiled in controversy even before it was finished filming when Washington Post national security correspondent George Lardner showed up on the set and wrote a scathing article attacking the film based on the first draft of the screenplay. Upon JFK's theatrical release many of the major newspapers in the United States of America ran editorials criticizing what they perceived as liberties that Stone took with historical facts, including the film's implications of President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of a coup d'etat to kill Kennedy. Initially, Stone's film performed slowly at the box office but it gradually picked up momentum, earning over USD $205 million in worldwide gross; Garrison's estate subsequently sued Warner Bros. for their share of the film's profits, alleging Hollywood accounting.^[1] JFK went on to win two Academy Awards and was nominated for eight in total, including Best Picture.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 Screenplay 3.2 Principal photography 4 Soundtrack 5 Reaction 5.1 Box office 5.2 Awards 5.3 Cultural impact 6 Historical inaccuracies 7 DVD 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

[edit] Synopsis

The film opens first with newsreel footage including the farewell address in 1961 of outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower warning about the buildup of the "military-industrial complex" and then with a summary of John F. Kennedy's years as President — emphasizing the events that, in Stone's thesis, would lead to his assassination — which finally builds to a reconstruction of the assassination on November 22, 1963. The film then switches to following New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison as he learns about the assassination, and of potential links between the assassination and New Orleans. Attempting to help the government's investigation, Garrison and his team investigate the New Orleans links and bring in several potential accomplices, including private pilot David Ferrie (Joe Pesci), before being forced to let them go, as their investigation is publicly rebuked by the federal government. As suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) is himself assassinated by Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle Murray) before he can go to trial, Garrison closes the investigation, but he still remains uneasy about what has happened.

The investigation is later reopened in 1967 after Garrison is encouraged to read through the Warren Report and notices what he feels to be multiple inaccuracies. He and other members of the staff interrogate several witnesses of the Kennedy assassination and others involved with Oswald, Ruby, and Ferrie at some point or another. Their first witness is Willie O'Keefe (Kevin Bacon), a gay, Fascist male prostitute inmate serving five years in prison for soliciting, who reveals he witnessed Ferrie discussing a coup d'etat. As well as briefly meeting Oswald, O'Keefe was romantically involved with an enigmatic man called "Clay Bertrand." Another important person is teacher Jean Hill (Ellen McElduff) who witnessed some shots fired at Kennedy coming from the Grassy knoll, and she states that upon giving her story, the Secret Service threatened her into saying only three shots came from the book depository and nothing else. She proves this by revealing the changes to her testimony made by the Warren Commission during their "investigation" into the case. The D.A staff tests the Single bullet theory by trying to aim an empty rifle from the same alleged window where Oswald shot JFK, but they also realize that Oswald was a poor marksman, indicating that the shots were fired by someone else.

Garrison secretly meets a shadowy high-level figure in Washington D.C. who identifies himself only as X (Donald Sutherland) and who suggests a conspiracy at the highest levels of government, implicating members of the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, Secret Service, FBI, and Kennedy's vice-president Lyndon Baines Johnson as co-conspirators with motives for Kennedy's assassination and/or the cover-up afterwards. X explains that the President was killed because he wanted to pull out of the Vietnam War and destroy the CIA. X encourages Garrison to keep digging and prosecute New Orleans based international businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) for his alleged involvement in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy. Upon interrogating Shaw, the businessman denies any knowledge of meeting Ferrie, O'Keefe or Oswald at all, but he is soon charged with conspiring to murder the President.

As Garrison gets closer to his court date and case against Shaw, some of his staff begin to doubt his motives and leave the investigation when they start to disagree with his methods. Garrison's marriage begins to show signs of strain when his wife Liz (Sissy Spacek) complains that he is spending more time on the case then with his own family. Even his oldest son is convinced that his father does not keep his promises at family engagements. After a sinister phone call is made endangering the life of their daughter, Liz accuses him of being selfish and attacking Shaw only because of his homosexuality. In addition, the media launch several broadcasts on television and articles in newspapers attacking Garrison's character and criticizing the way his office is spending the taxpayers' money on their investigation. Some key witnesses become scared and refuse to testify while others are killed, such as Ferrie, under suspicious circumstances. Before his death, a panicked Ferrie tells Garrison that "they" are after him and reveals there was a conspiracy around Kennedy's death, but he dies of an apparent suicidal overdose.

In March 1969, a jury acquitted Shaw of the charges after less than an hour of deliberation. The film reflects that members of that jury stated publicly that they believed there was a conspiracy behind the assassination but not enough evidence to link Shaw to that conspiracy. Shaw died of lung cancer in 1974 but five years later in 1979, Richard Helms testified under oath that Clay Shaw had been a part-time contact of the Domestic Contacts Division of the CIA. Although it states that such documents will not be shown until 2029, the FBI files about Kennedy's assassination will be released in 2017.

[edit] Cast

Kevin Costner stars as Jim Garrison, New Orleans District Attorney who initially attempted to help the government's investigation of the New Orleans links and the JFK assassination and New Orleans. For the role of Garrison, Stone sent the copies of the script to Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, and Harrison Ford.^[2] Initially, Costner turned Stone down. However, the actor's agent, Michael Ovitz, was a big fan of the project and helped the director convince the actor to take the role.^[2]

Before accepting the role, Costner conducted extensive research on Garrison including meeting the man, his friends and enemies. Two months after finally signing on to play Garrison in January 1991; his film Dances with Wolves won seven Academy Awards and so his presence greatly enhanced JFK's bankability in the studio's eyes.^[2] Costner was only the beginning of a star-studded cast that Stone envisioned for his film:

“	Darryl Zanuck's The Longest Day was one of my favorite films as a kid. It was realistic, but it had a lot of stars...the supporting cast provides a map of the American psyche: familiar, comfortable faces that walk you through a winding path in the dark woods.[2]	„

• Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw/Clay Bertrand: He was a successful businessman in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is notable as the only person ever to be tried for conspiracy in relation to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
• Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald: According to two United States government investigations, he was the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. A former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and later returned, Oswald was arrested on suspicion of killing the president and Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. Oswald denied any responsibility for the murders. Two days later, before he could be brought to trial for the crimes, while being transferred under police custody from the police station to jail, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby on live television.
• Joe Pesci as David Ferrie: A private investigator and pilot who was alleged by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to have been involved in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
• Donald Sutherland as X: A colonel in the United States Air Force, author, banker, and critic of U.S. foreign policy, especially as regarded the activities of the CIA.
• Kevin Bacon as Willie O'Keefe: A composite of several people Garrison interviewed for his case against Shaw.
• Dan Fleury as Darrin Jackson: A loyal special agent to Garrison who offers a resignation ultimatum to Garrison only to return in time for Clay Shaw's trial.
• Michael Rooker as Bill Broussard: A researcher for Garrison who ends up betraying his boss when pressured by outside influences.
• Jack Lemmon as Jack Martin
• Laurie Metcalf as Susie Cox: A composite of several female researchers who worked for Garrison.
• Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison: Jim Garrison's wife who threatens to leave him during his investigation of the JFK assassination because she feels he is neglecting her and their family.
• John Candy as Dean Andrews
• Pruitt Taylor Vince as Lee Bowers: A key witness to the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963. At the moment of the assassination he was operating the Union Terminal Company's two-story interlocking tower, overlooking the parking lot just north of the grassy knoll and west of the Texas School Book Depository.
• Jay O. Sanders as Lou Ivon
• Walter Matthau as Senator Russell B. Long: An American politician who served in the United States Senate as a Democrat from Louisiana from 1948 until 1987.
• Sally Kirkland as Rose Cheramie
• Edward Asner as Guy Banister: A private investigator alleged to have been involved in the assassination.

Many actors were willing to waive their normal fees because of the nature of the project and to lend their support.^[2] Martin Sheen provided the opening narration. The real Jim Garrison, a severe critic of the Warren Commission, ironically played Supreme Court Chief Justice, Earl Warren himself, during the scene in which he questions Jack Ruby in prison about his retrial. Supposed assassination witness Beverly Oliver, who claimed to be the Babushka lady, also appeared in a cameo role. Sean Stone, Oliver Stone's son, plays a secondary role as Garrison's oldest son Jasper.

[edit] Production

Zachary Sklar, a journalist and a professor of journalism at the Columbia School of Journalism, met Jim Garrison in 1987 and helped him rewrite a manuscript about the Kennedy assassination. He essentially changed it from a scholarly book in the third person to "a detective story — a whydunit" in the first person.^[3] Sklar edited the book and it was published in 1988. While attending the Latin American Film Festival in Havana, Cuba, Stone met Sheridan Square Press publisher Ellen Ray on an elevator. She had published Jim Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins. Ray had gone to New Orleans and worked with Garrison in 1967. She gave Stone a copy of Garrison's book and told him to read it. He did and quickly bought the film rights with his own money.

The Kennedy Assassination had always had a profound effect on his life as he said, "The Kennedy murder was one of the signal events of the postwar generation, my generation."^[2] The filmmaker eventually met Garrison and grilled him with a variety of questions for three hours. The man stood up to Stone's questioning and then got up and left. His hubris impressed the director. Stone's impressions from their meeting were that Garrison "made many mistakes. He trusted a lot of weirdoes and followed a lot of fake leads. But he went out on a limb, way out. And he kept going, even when he knew he was facing long odds."^[2]

Stone wasn’t interested in making a film about Garrison's life but rather the story behind the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. To this end, he also bought the film rights to Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. One of the filmmaker's primary goals with JFK was to provide an antidote to the Warren Commission Report that he believed was "a great myth. And in order to fight a myth, maybe you have to create another one, a countermyth."^[2] Even though Marrs’ book collected many theories, Stone was hungry for more and hired Jane Rusconi, a recent Yale University graduate, to head up a team of researchers and assemble as much information about the assassination as possible while finishing Born on the Fourth of July. Stone read two dozen books on the JFK assassination while Rusconi read upwards of 100-200 books on the subject.^[4]

By December 1989, Stone began approaching studios to back his film. He met with three executives at Warner Brothers while in pre-production on The Doors who wanted him to make a film about Howard Hughes. However, Warren Beatty owned the rights and so Stone pitched JFK. Studio president and Chief Operating Officer Terry Semel liked the idea. He had a reputation for making political and controversial films with All the President's Men, The Parallax View and The Killing Fields. Stone made a handshake deal with Warner Bros. and the studio would get all the rights to the film and put up 20 million dollars for the budget. The director did this so that the screenplay would not be widely read and bid on, and he also knew that the material was potentially dangerous and wanted only one studio to finance it. Finally, Stone liked Semel's track record.^[2]

[edit] Screenplay

When Stone set out to write the screenplay, he asked Sklar (who edited Marrs’ book) to co-write it with him and distill the Garrison book, the Marrs book and Rusconi's research into a script that would resemble what he called "a great detective movie."^[2] Stone told Sklar his vision of the movie: "I see the models as Z and Rashomon, I see the event in Dealey Plaza taking place in the first reel, and again in the eighth reel, and again later, and each time we're going to see it differently and with more illumination."^[3]

Sklar worked on the Garrison side of the story while Stone added the Oswald story, the events at Dealey Plaza and the "Mr. X" character. Sklar spent a year researching and writing a 550 triple-spaced page screenplay. Stone rewrote it and condensed it closer to normal screenplay length. To tell as much of the story as they could, Stone and Sklar used composite characters, a technique that would be criticized in the press, most notably the "Mr. X" character played by Donald Sutherland. He was a mix of several witnesses and retired Air Force colonel Fletcher Prouty, another adviser for the film. However, unlike "Mr. X", Prouty had no connection to Presidential security at the time of the assassination. Prouty was a former Colonel in the Air Force, and military liaison between the CIA and the Pentagon. He wrote the 1975 book The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, (republished in 1992). According to Stone, "I feel this was in the spirit of the truth because Garrison also met a deep throat type named Richard Case Nagell, who claimed to be a CIA agent and made Jim aware of a much larger scenario than the microcosm of New Orleans."^[2]

Early drafts of the screenplay suggested a four and a half-hour film with a potential budget of $40 million – double what Stone had agreed to with Warner Bros.^[2] The director knew film mogul Arnon Milchan and met with him to help finance the film. Milchan was eager to work on the project and launch his new company, Regency Films, with a high profile film like JFK.^[2] Milchan made a deal with Warner Bros. to put up the money for the film. Stone managed to pare down the script from 190 page first draft to a 156 page shooting script.^[2]

[edit] Principal photography

Cinematographer Robert Richardson was a week and a half into shooting City of Hope for John Sayles when he got word that Stone was thinking about making JFK. By the time principal photography wrapped on City of Hope, he was ready to make his movie. To prepare, Richardson read up on various JFK assassination books starting with On the Trail of the Assassins and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy.^[5]

The original idea was to film the opening sequence in 1.33:1 aspect ratio in order to simulate the TV screens that were available at the time of the assassination, then transition to 1.85:1 when Garrison began his investigation, and finally switch to 2.35:1 for scenes occurring in 1968 and later. However, because of time constraints and logistics, Richardson was forced to abandon this approach.^[5]

Stone ambitiously wanted to recreate the Kennedy Assassination in Dealey Plaza and his producers had to pay the Dallas City Council a substantial amount of money to hire police to reroute traffic and close streets for three weeks.^[2] He only had ten days to shoot all of the footage he needed and so he used a total of seven cameras (two 35 mm and five 16 mm) and 14 film stocks.^[5] Getting permission to shoot in the Texas School Book Depository was more difficult. They had to pay fifty thousand dollars to put someone in the window that Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have shot Kennedy from.^[2] They were allowed to film in that location only between certain hours with only five people on the floor at one time: the camera crew, an actor, and Stone. Co-producer Clayton Townsend has said that the hardest part was getting the permission to restore the building to the way it looked back in 1963. It took five months of negotiation.^[2]

The production spent four million to restore Dealey Plaza back to 1963 conditions. In addition to the challenging subject matter, the filmmaker utilized a variety of film stocks as Richardson said, "It depends whether you want to shoot in 35 or 16 or Super 8. In many cases the lighting has to be different. For some shots, you could have multiple crews shooting at once, five cameras at the same time in different formats."^[2] Richardson said of Stone's style of direction, "Oliver disdains convention, he tries to force you into things that are not classic. There's this constant need to stretch, which forces your lighting into very diverse positions. Rarely do you resort to classic lighting modes."^[5]

Stone employed extensive use of flashbacks within flashbacks for a specific effect. As he commented in an interview, "I wanted to do the film on two or three levels - sound and picture would take us back, and we'd go from one flashback to another, and then that flashback would go inside another flashback...I wanted multiple layers because reading the Warren Commission Report is like drowning."^[4]

Among the many advisers for the film were Gerald Hemming, a former Marine who claimed involvement in various CIA activities, Robert Groden, a photographic expert and longtime JFK assassination researcher and author, and actual assassination witness Jean Hill.^[6]

[edit] Soundtrack

[edit] Reaction

Filming was going smoothly until several attacks on the film and Stone began to surface in the mainstream media. On May 14, 1991, Jon Margolis in the Chicago Tribune wrote that JFK was "an insult to the intelligence."^[7] This article was published while the film was only in its first weeks of shooting. Five days later, the Washington Post ran a scathing article by national security correspondent George Lardner entitled, "On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland" that used the first draft of the JFK screenplay to blast it for "the absurdities and palpable untruths in Garrison's book and Stone's rendition of it."^[8] The article pointed out that Garrison lost his case against Clay Shaw and claimed that he inflated his case by trying to use Shaw's homosexual relationships to prove guilt by association.^[8] Stone responded to Lardner's article by hiring a public relations firm that specialized in political issues. Other attacks in the media soon followed. Anthony Lewis in the New York Times claimed that the film "tells us that our government cannot be trusted to give an honest account of a Presidential assassination."^[7] Washington Post columnist George Will attacked Stone, calling him, "a man of technical skill, scant education and negligible conscience."^[7]

Time magazine took Stone to task for doing this and then ran their own critique of the film-in-progress on June 10, 1991. They also claimed that Stone was trying to suppress a rival JFK assassination film based on Don DeLillo's 1988 novel Libra. Stone refuted these claims in a letter to the magazine. The filmmaker ended up splitting his time between making his film and responding to attacks from the press. However, the Lardner Post piece stung the most because he had stolen a copy of the script. Stone recalls, "He had the first draft, and I went through probably six or seven drafts."^[2]

Once the film was released in theaters, it polarized critics. The New York Times ran an article by Bernard Weinraub entitled, "Hollywood Wonders If Warner Brothers let JFK Go Too Far." In it, he called for studio censorship and wrote, "At what point does a studio exercise its leverage and blunt the highly charged message of a film maker like Oliver Stone?"^[7] The newspaper also ran a review of the film by Vincent Canby who wrote, "Mr. Stone's hyperbolic style of film making is familiar: lots of short, often hysterical scenes tumbling one after another, backed by a soundtrack that is layered, strudel-like, with noises, dialogue, music, more noises, more dialogue."^[9] Veteran movie critic for The Washingtonian, Pat Dowell had her 34-word capsule review for the January issue rejected by her editor John Limpert on the grounds that he didn't want a positive review for a movie he felt was "preposterous" associated with the magazine.^[7] Dowell resigned in protest.^[7]

The Miami Herald said, "the focus on the trivialities of personality conveniently prevents us from having to confront the tough questions his film raises."^[2] However, Roger Ebert praised the film in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, saying, "The achievement of the film is not that it answers the mystery of the Kennedy assassination, because it does not, or even that it vindicates Garrison, who is seen here as a man often whistling in the dark. Its achievement is that it tries to marshal the anger which ever since 1963 has been gnawing away on some dark shelf of the national psyche."^[10] Rita Kempley in the Washington Post wrote, "Quoting everyone from Shakespeare to Hitler to bolster their arguments, Stone and Sklar present a gripping alternative to the Warren Commission's conclusion. A marvelously paranoid thriller featuring a closetful of spies, moles, pro-commies and Cuban freedom-fighters, the whole thing might have been thought up by Robert Ludlum."^[11]

On Christmas Day, the Los Angeles Times ran an article entitled, "Suppression of the Facts Grants Stone a Broad Brush" attacking the film. New York Newsday followed suit the next day with two articles — "The Blurred Vision of JFK" and "The Many Theories of a Jolly Green Giant." A few days later, the Chicago Sun-Times ran an article entitled, "Stone's Film Trashes Facts, Dishonors J.F.K." Stone even received death threats as he recalled in an interview, "I can't even remember all the threats, there were so many of them."^[2] Roger Ebert went on to name Stone's movie as the best film of the year and one of the top ten films of the decade.^[12] It currently has a rating of 82% on Rotten Tomatoes (increasing to 86% for their "Cream of the Crop" designation).

Years after its release, Stone said of the film that it "was the beginning of a new era for me in terms of filmmaking because it's not just about a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy. It's also about the way we look at our recent history...It shifts from black and white to color, and then back again, and views people from offbeat angles."^[13]

[edit] Box office

JFK was released in theaters on December 20, 1991. The box office for the film started slow but picked up momentum and by the first week in January 1992, it had grossed over USD $50 million worldwide. Stone started to get support for his film. Warner Brothers executives pointed out that because of the film's long running time, it had fewer screenings.^[2]

On its first week of release, JFK tied Beauty and the Beast for fifth place in the U.S. box office and its critics began to say it was a failure.^[2] However, JFK eventually earned over US $205 million during its initial run.^[14]

[edit] Awards

JFK was nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tommy Lee Jones), Best Director (Oliver Stone), Best Original Score (John Williams), Best Sound, Best Cinematography (Robert Richardson), Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay (Stone and Zachary Sklar). It won two awards for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing.^[15]

[edit] Cultural impact

The popularity of JFK led to the passage of The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (also known as the JFK Act) and the formation of the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board. The Act was signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in late October 1992.^[16] The ARRB worked until 1998. Witnesses were interviewed (some for the first time), the U.S. government purchased the Zapruder film, and previously-classified documents relating to the assassination were finally made available to public scrutiny. By ARRB law, all existing assassination-related documents will be made public by 2017.^[17] Vincent Bugliosi, in his book Reclaiming History, contends that this law is largely superfluous, as virtually all documents relating to the Warren Commission have long been available to the public.

See also: JFK Assassination, Kennedy assassination theories, and Trial of Clay Shaw

[edit] Historical inaccuracies

Stone responds to such criticisms and acknowledges some inaccuracies in his DVD audio commentary. Two principal criticisms of the film were the depiction of Jim Garrison as not historically accurate, and Stone's combination of simulated documentary footage with actual historical footage. Stone answered his critics by releasing a 593-page book, JFK — The Book of the Film with Sklar, which included the complete annotated screenplay, 97 commentaries by supporters and detractors and 340 research notes.

The scene where David Ferrie admits to Jim Garrison and his team that there was indeed a conspiracy against the president was entirely fictional. In reality, Ferrie never confessed that he was involved in a conspiracy, nor did he confirm that an underground effort was ever organized against Kennedy.^[18]

Stone's claims of a telephone "blackout" in Washington, D.C., prior to the assassination have been proven false. There was no telephone "blackout" at the time, but instead a rolling brownout caused by the massive volume of calls. Similar overloads happened in Boston and Chicago.^[19]

The famous "Magic Bullet" scene has also been proven to be untrue. The scene indicates that Governor Connally was directly in front of the president, sitting straight, and seated at the same height when he was actually six inches closer to the middle while shifted in his seat more to the left and seated three inches lower than the president, making the bullet's path through both men straighter and completely plausible.^[20]

According to John McAdams, a Political Science professor at Marquette University, and a researcher on the Kennedy assassination, the film is rife with inaccuracies and misrepresentations.^[21] Researcher Dave Reitzes has identified a hundred instances of what he considers an inaccuracy or misrepresentation in the film.^[22] The History Channel's documentary, Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy also notes many of the inconsistencies of the film,.

"The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it" is not a Hitler quotation, as is stated by Garrison in the film, but a quotation from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Nevertheless, Hitler thoroughly explains this same theory in high detail in his book Mein Kampf, chapter X "Why the Second Reich Collapsed."

Lee Harvey Oswald qualified as a "sharpshooter" at Marine Marksmanship School. This is in contrast with the film's claims that Oswald was a below average marksman.

In one scene of the grassy knoll on the day of the assassination, there is a shot of several parked cars, includind a Ford Mustang. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963; Ford Mustangs were first sold in 1964.

[edit] DVD

To date, there have been three separate releases of Stone's film on DVD. The first edition was released in 2000 on a single disc with the movie split over both sides. It was a director's cut that added 17 minutes to the film. Due to an error on the packaging, this version states it features an anamorphic widescreen transfer. However, the DVD itself contains a non-anamorphic widescreen print, further compounded by a rather poor transfer.^[23]

In 2001, the "Director's Cut" was released again, this time part of the Oliver Stone Collection box set with the movie on one disc and supplemental material on the second. Stone contributed several extras to this edition, including an audio commentary, two multi-media essays, and 54 minutes worth of deleted or expanded scenes with optional commentary by Stone.^[24] Finally, in 2003, a two-DVD "Special Edition" was released with all of the extras on the 2001 edition in addition to a 90-minute documentary entitled, Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy.^[25]

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Mark C. Carnes. "Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies", Cineaste, Fall 1996. 
• Gary Crowdus. "Clarifying the Conspiracy: An Interview with Oliver Stone", Cineaste, May 1992. 
• Eric Hamburg (September 2002). JFK, Nixon, Oliver Stone and Me: An Idealist's Journey from Capitol Hill to Hollywood Hell. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1586480294. 
• James Riordan (September 1996). Stone: A Biography of Oliver Stone. Aurum Press. ISBN 1854104446. 
• Oliver Stone (February 2000). JFK: The Book of the Film. Applause Books. ISBN 1557831270. 

Robert Brent Toplin (1996). History by Hollywood "JFK: Fact, Fiction, and Supposition",pp.45-78. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252065360

[edit] External links

• JFK at the Internet Movie Database
• JFK at Allmovie
• JFK at Rotten Tomatoes
• JFK (motion picture): A Selective Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library
• The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK, by Dave Reitzes
• The Assassination Goes Hollywood! (concise overview of frequent criticisms)
• JFK: How the Media Assassinated the Real Story, by Robert Hennelly & Jerry Policoff
• "Why they hate Oliver Stone", Sam Smith, Progressive Review, February 1992
• Oliver Stone vs. the Historical Establishment
• " Oliver Stone Answers Audience Questions about JFK

v • d • e Films directed by Oliver Stone Feature films Seizure (1974) • The Hand (1981) • Salvador (1986) • Platoon (1986) • Wall Street (1987) • Talk Radio (1988) • Born on the Fourth of July (1989) • The Doors (1991) • JFK (1991) • Heaven & Earth (1993) • Natural Born Killers (1994) • Nixon (1995) • U Turn (1997) • Any Given Sunday (1999) • Alexander (2004) • World Trade Center (2006) • W. (2008) Documentaries Persona Non Grata (TV 2003) • Comandante (2003) • Looking for Fidel (2004)