I watched about 2/3 of it last night, 9/17/16 on tv. I switched it off after X reveals all to Garrison and Clay Shaw was arrested. It was almost midnight and I knew how the plot resolved.
I was reading the Wiki and googling various real life characters. There is a site that lists known errors or inconsistencies in the film.
I’m curious how you view this as a entertainment film? Was it entertaining? Did it keep you interested?
Finally, did it change or influence your views on the JFK assassination?
It’s obviously an important film, Nominated for 8 Academy Awards and won 2. Oliver Stone won a Golden Globe award for best director
I enjoyed the movie as entertainment. I think it is one of Costner’s best roles/performances. I think it is well-written (from an entertainment POV), well-directed, well-shot, etc.
I didn’t alter my views on the JFK assassination at all.
Edit: In fact, now that you bring the movie up I kind of feel like watching it again.
Garrison clearly ran across members of a fringe anti Castro group based in New Orleans. Oswald had brief contact with them. Handing out leaflets.
Imho this group probably did hate JFK for the massive US betrayal of CIA trained forces at the Bay of Pigs. But had no role in the assassination. They just weren’t that well funded or sophisticated. Imho
It is an entertaining story. Great cast of well known actors. It helps a lot to google the historical characters for additional background information.
Garrison did get access to the Zapruder Film and it was surreptitiously released to the public domain. We owe him a lot for that.
Oliver Stone took dramatic license by inventing that scene with X. Wiki claims Garrison didn’t meet X until several years after the Clay Shaw trial.
X is allegedly based on Leroy Fletcher Prouty. He served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. Had a distinguished career. But made very controversial statements later in life. Big critic of the CIA.
More on Prouty. This dude really went around the bend later in life. I guess conspiracy buffs would say he’s been deliberately targeted and discredited.
Be sure to click the link in the article for Prouty’s views on other topics besides JFK.
Btw, this was the link that claims Garrison didn’t meet X before the Clay Shaw trial.
This is the best synopsis I had ever read on the JFK conspiracy theories. I think it is written by the same fellow who runs jfk-online.com. Even if you’re not a JFK CTer, this is well worth reading just because it is done so well.
It was “entertaining” is the sense of laughing at all the stupidity throughout it.
I am still amazed that most people who saw it thought it was … real and some of the stuff in it has entered society as things “everybody knows” is true about the JFK assassination.
Garrison was a vile, immoral person. He needed to be portrayed as the exact opposite.
I just finished re-watching “JFK”. Definitely a good entertaining conspiracy film. It is like a magic act. I love watching a magic act and going “Well, there you have it, magic is real.” So like this I watch and go “Well, there you have it, there was a conspiracy to kill JFK.” All while of course knowing, magic isn’t real/there was no conspiracy.
I saw it in the theater the day it came out and enjoyed it a lot. At the time I was of a mind, as I had been all my life, that the official story made no sense, so it fit into that nicely. Nowadays I see that it happened mostly the way the Warren Commission said. Like all conspiracy theories it just collapses under its own weight. The biggest thing that changed my mind was a couple of PBS documentaries that gave extremely good and accurate explanations for how the so-called ‘magic bullet’ was nothing of the kind.
I saw it in the theater, then went back and watched it again two days later. I’ve seen it several times since, but not in years and years.
I think it’s an extraordinarily well-made movie. The directing, the editing, the sound, some of the performances (esp. Tommy Lee Jones), and probably some other elements I’m not thinking of right now were astonishing. Every film student should watch it, several times.
I know it’s stupidly long, but I never felt that it dragged, and my attention never wandered.
It did absolutely nothing to affect what I think about the assassination. But it’s a brilliant motion picture.
Yeah, Oliver Stone really really smoothed over Garrison’s rough edges. There was a scene shot recreating his Tonight Show appearance (with John Larroquette playing Carson) which was cut from the final film. I’m not sure how accurate it was, but I’ve read descriptions of his actual interview and he comes off as pretty crazy. He obsesses over the significance of digits in various people’s phone numbers matching the sums of various people’s addresses, or something like that…