JFK
Released 1991 by Warner Bros. for a budget of $80 million and gross of $205 million, color 35 mm negative with 2.35:1 screen ratio, Dolby stereo sound, 189 mins., Laserdisc Director's Cut of 206 mins. released 1992, DVD Special Edition of 206 mins. released 1997.
Production:
- Directed by Oliver Stone
- Screenplay by Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, based on the books On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs
- Produced by Oliver Stone, A. Kitman Ho
- Original music by John Williams
- Cinematography by Robert Richardson
Cast:
- Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison
- Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison
- Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw
- Joe Pesci as David Ferrie
- Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald
- Beata Pozniak as Marina Oswald
- Edward Asner as Guy Bannister
- Jack Lemmon as Jack Martin
- Vincent D'Onofrio as Bill Newman
- Brian Doyle-Murray as Jack Ruby
- Donald Sutherland as X
- Jim Garrison as Earl Warren
- Ray LePere as Abraham Zapruder
- Walter Matthau as Senator Long
- Raul Aranas as Angelo
- John Candy as Dean Andrews
- Kevin Bacon as Willie O'Keefe
Notes:
This fabrication by Oliver Stone purports to explain Kennedy's assassination as a right-wing military plot. Like all conspiracy theories, it is based on what is not known rather than what is. Stone's film ignores the facts that Lee Oswald (the media later added his middle name) fired 3 shots in 8 seconds from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, the first shot deflected by a tree branch but causing Gov. John Connally to look over his right shoulder, the second shot hitting Kennedy in the neck and Connally's right side, and the third shot hitting Kennedy's head. Oswald used the same Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that he had used in the attempted assassination of Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963. He had Marina take a picture of him with this rifle in his backyard in March 1963. Oswald was a dedicated Marxist who opposed America's Cold War policies, especially those policies directed against Castro. But Oswald was a loner who had been rejected by the Cubans in Mexico City and by the Russians in Moscow (verified by defector Yuri Nosenko in 1964 and a 4-part series on Oswald published in 1992 by Izvestia). The Warren Commission's 888-page report published in September 1964 blamed Oswald but not his motives. Richard Helms, Allen Dulles, John McCloy, Robert Kennedy withheld secret information from the Committee about CIA murder operations and Operation Mongoose against Castro. The gaps in the Warren report caused the conspiracy theories of Mark Lane and Jim Garrison and Edward Jay Epstein. These secrets were later revealed in the 1975 Church Committee hearings, and the 1976 House Select Committee re-investigating the Kennedy assassination. They provide the historical context and motives of Oswald's actions.
Links:
revised 4/25/01 by Schoenherr | Filmnotes
