No stone unturned Oliver Stone’s JFK documentary revisits America’s darkest day and demands answers
By HELEN BARLOW
[Editor’s note: For an alternative take on the assassination of JFK, see “The Real Deal JFK SPECIAL (18 November 2021)”, for comparison and contrast.]
Oliver Stone has always been politically outspoken and at 75 he shows no signs of quietening down. During publicity for his latest project in Cannes earlier this year, the iconoclast director – and Oscar winner several times over – trained his ire on revered figures of both liberal and conservative persuasion, declining to moderate his scathing language even for a dead former Supreme Court justice.
Of course, he has always been anti-establishment. Although what is meant by “establishment” seems to be ever-shifting. After his first Oscar for the prison drama Midnight Express, early directing glories featured Willem Dafoe starring as a Christ-like figure in the best picture Oscar winner Platoon, for which Stone also won for best director; Tom Cruise as a beleaguered Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July where Stone again won the best director Oscar, and Tommy Lee Jones in Heaven and Earth, the third in Stone’s Vietnam trilogy based on his experiences in Vietnam.
Then he moved on to examine another war in Salvador, eviscerated the financial sector in Wall Street where Michael Douglas delivered his Oscar-winning role as Gordon Gekko, wrought an exceptional performance from Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in The Doors, and dealt with criticism for the ultra-violent Natural Born Killers, heavily revising Quentin Tarantino’s script much to Tarantino’s chagrin. Stone’s greatest controversy though – at least until recently, where his defence of Russia and sympathy for Donald Trump have raised eyebrows (he told The Times the former president had been “picked on from day one”) – revolved around his 1991 movie JFK.
The epic political thriller, which was nominated for eight Oscars, examined the events leading up to president Kennedy’s assassination as viewed through the eyes of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, played by Kevin Costner. Based in part on Garrison’s co-authored book On the Trail of the Assassins, the film in part reframed public perceptions of the assassination and kicked off another trilogy of films from Stone focusing on American Presidents. Anthony Hopkins left his indelible mark on Nixon, while Josh Brolin was exceptional as George W. Bush in W. But if JFK was decried by a critic as “the greatest lie Hollywood ever told”, with his new documentary series, JFK: Destiny Betrayed, Stone is doubling down.
With the growing appeal of superhero comic book cinema, Hollywood became less conducive to funding Stone’s decidedly adult and potentially inflammatory films. He’s turned increasingly to documentaries, most prominently delivering an astounding 2016 portrait of the exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden, and even interviewed Vladimir Putin over two years for a four-part 2017 series. He’d also made documentaries about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and Cuban president Fidel Castro. Now in the four-part series JFK: Destiny Betrayed, written by Jim DiEugenio, Stone has returned to re-examine the murder of president Kennedy. The series, which has its world premiere in Australia on November 22 – the 58th anniversary of Kennedy’s death – goes into extensive detail regarding information that has been unearthed as some – though, significantly not all – documents have been declassified and subsequently scrutinised in a raft of recent books.
It’s worth noting that these document dumps — first in the 1990s and then more recently in 2017 — have been attributed to the outcry that accompanied Stone’s original film. Moreover, it has been regular citizens who have trawled the papers, and painstakingly re-traced events to unearth new “findings” – the strong conclusion it all draws is that there were indeed two “shooters” when the 46-year-old president was assassinated while his limousine drove in that fateful parade in Dallas in 1963 and Lee Harvey Oswald took the fall.
At the Cannes Film Festival, Stone presented the material as a feature-length film, an edit of the series. He is now happy that we will see the material as a series as it provides more depth about Kennedy, the man. Stone narrates with the help of Whoopi Goldberg and Donald Sutherland, who appeared in the original JFK film. The series starts as images of Kennedy’s funeral unfurl with Stone giving an introduction as he stands at Dealey Plaza where the assassination took place. He explains how his 1991 film “tried to explore the mysteries that enshrouded this place that day; we also tried to explore the reasons why president Kennedy was killed.
At the end of our film we alerted the public that almost 30 years after Kennedy’s assassination, tens of thousands of documents were still being kept secret (at the House Select Committee on Assassinations) about his murder and his policies. “JFK created a year-long sensation in the media. Some quarters praised the film, others attacked it.
But at the end of that unprecedented controversy, a new agent of government was formed. It was called the Assassination Records Review Board. The board went to work declassifying this immense amount of material, yet the public has not been made aware of what in fact constitutes a new factual record of who Kennedy was and the real circumstances. In this series, you will be informed for the first time what was in many of the most important of these files.
“We have to keep doing this because democracy and our freedom from fear dies when there is no longer trust between the people and their government.” So why should people watch it? I ask Stone at Cannes. “I think it’s very important,” he responds. “America plays a dominant position in the world and has a controlling interest. I think the question, how did America get to where it is now? is answered in this movie. It’s up to people if they are interested in history or not. Some people will say, ‘What difference does it make? They killed him. I accept that. And you know, we’re into this new world and we have other leaders.’ But I’m interested in history and how this happened.”
Does the film prove that the CIA orchestrated Kennedy’s murder? “I think it’s implicit, but it’s not proven. It’s just, how do you do this? How do you move all these pieces around the board? You can see the extent of the planning in the documentary. You ask yourself who can bring in units, call off security or change parade routes? It’s a big deal to pull off an assassination. It’s a Black Op, it’s been done. And they did it. They did it abroad, they had training to do it. But they didn’t do such a great job. In many ways it was sloppy. There were a lot of mistakes.”
The Warren Commission, which was set up to investigate the assassination, he says was corrupt and covered over the cracks. The FBI was the main investigatory agency for the commission, and J Edgar Hoover “fed them what he wanted them to hear”. “The evidence was so corrupt, we’re talking about ballistics, the trajectories, the rifle itself, the bullets, the fingerprints and the autopsy was a disgusting, disgusting mess. They were allowed to get away with that. They’ve gotten away with it for so long in so many other forms. Today that wouldn’t happen. We have too much information. The only thing they understood back then was to make it as confusing as possible.
Researchers are still fighting with each other, which is distracting.” Of course today everyone would be filming on their mobile phones. Back then the only visual evidence of the killing came from a Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder filming on a Super 8 camera. “The Zapruder film, no one will agree on that one. Was it altered? Or was it not altered? That goes on forever,” he sighs. As the result of the declassifications there’s new evidence regarding Oswald. “We now know for sure that Oswald was not on the sixth floor and that he was involved with the CIA as an asset from 1958 till 1963 and that what he said was accurate. ‘I’m a patsy’. His behaviour after the assassination was so amazingly clear. I mean, anybody who assassinates a president for political reasons takes credit for it and is proud of what he did.”
After the release of the 1991 film, which Stone insists was based on “the facts as we knew them at that time” the circumstances around Kennedy’s death captured the public’s imagination. “I was as surprised as everybody. I didn’t know that he was so loved. And I’m glad that we hit a nerve. But above all, it’s the evil of these government organisations that we hit. Boy, and they brought the attention, because by attacking me and the film, they brought more attention to the case.” Stone insists that the idea that the CIA orchestrated Kennedy’s death is not just another conspiracy theory. “That’s what they say. That’s CIA terminology. You know, that’s what they said from the early 1950s, that when we get attacked, we will say that the people attacking us are conspiracy theorists and make fun of them.”
One might imagine that Stone has been obsessed with Kennedy’s death. “No, Jim DiEugenio is obsessed. He’s the series’ writer and he’s a real researcher. He reads every document. He runs a website, he defends it and he attacks. He writes books and criticisms and I would call him obsessed. You have to be kind of an autodidact and he’s very good at that. His memory is very good. He remembers details. I’m just a passer-by, I’m a tourist.” Unsurprisingly, the series was financed out of the UK. “If you’re attacking the American military, foreign policy, strategy and the CIA, you’re in trouble.” Stone made Snowden in Germany. “We didn’t feel comfortable working in the US and we were financed by France and Germany essentially. The US did add some money at the end, but it was a small company.”
He concedes that the negative US response to the film weakened his ability to finance the JFK series. “I guess the American public doesn’t want to know. It’s like an ostrich, burying your head in the sand.” In many ways, Stone was attracted to Kennedy as a subject because of his own early life experiences. “I was a teenager in a boarding school in Pennsylvania when president Kennedy was killed – and, like all the other students, I did not believe what I saw on TV,” he recalls. “The world changed on that day. Who knew that my future would also involve Vietnam four years later?” During his military service, Stone was injured several times. “A bullet penetrated my neck and only a few inches separated me from death. But I am still here. Fate helped shape my personality.” Kennedy did too. Stone, having already made two anti-war Vietnam War films, eagerly immersed himself in mountains of research before making JFK. “Kennedy actually went after peace and he made it happen. But in doing that, he alienated so many people. He was the last American president who really struggled for peace in the world … He also, of course, was looking for a peace with Cuba, which was a big problem for the United States.”
Notwithstanding those latent sympathies for Trump, Stone voted for Biden. “I think he’s a cold warrior from way back. He brings us a sense of calmness to this bad political situation. I was tired of Trump, but I do think he shook up things up. Still, his nuclear talk was insane. It made me very worried about his marbles. I mean, he would drop a nuclear bomb if he could get elected. This guy will not lose. He can’t lose in his mind. He’s unable to accept that he lost so is a fascinating character that way.” Would he consider making a movie about Trump? “I think no,” he replies decisively. “I do think there will be somebody, you know the younger filmmakers. But it depends on what their take is. I hope it’s a mature one.
Trump’s funny. I used him in a movie; he was briefly in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. He is not as important to me as Bush. You understand why I made W? W is about a man who was really an idiot.” There’s that political outspokenness again. But Stone is just warming up, and eventually he reaches full speed. “Snowden was a patriot. He did good for the country … I think Assange’s work with diplomatic – cables to the United States when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state was amazing.” Back to Bush, who “destabilised the entire Middle East and made America the enemy of the world by saying, ‘You are either with us or against us’ ”. “He polarised the world and he started this campaign against Russia too or he let the people around him start it.”
Then he’s onto Al Gore, whose election defeat was “a great mistake, a great loss and tragedy, because I do think he won the election. And I think it was stolen. That’s another thing. Another crime of Bush, by the way. Scalia put him in the presidency. That’s right, Scalia,” he repeats, referring to Justice Antonin Scalia who served as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court. “Jesus, what a monster.” And now it’s Hillary Clinton’s turn: “In my opinion, she’s a monster.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Stone didn’t vote Republican or Democrat at the 2016 election, opting for Jill Stein, a peace candidate.
“A lot of people didn’t understand because they thought that you had to vote for Hillary because the Democrats had to be voted in. As secretary of state she did a lot of damage not only in invading Libya – and she gloated over that – but she started the whole conflict with Syria. “She also set off this whole four-year bullshit about Russia-gate. The whole thing was coming from her. She was a bad loser.” But all that’s in the past. What does Stone think is the biggest problem in the world at the moment? “Climate change, I think CO2. It’s more important than all this ideological conflict. We’re on a timetable where that is going to get worse and worse and worse.
Countries have political differences and cultural differences and people argue and they go back and forth. We have to get to a fact-based scientific conclusion.” Stone has been making the eco-documentary Starpower on the subject, together with scientists. “It includes all the methods of providing clean energy to the world. I’m not quite sure when it will come, out but we’re working very hard on it.” At Cannes, Stone expressed the hope that the remaining JFK files would be released. Back in October 2017, then president Trump released 2800 previously classified files, announcing that he was looking into the rest, but backed down in the final hours, citing national security reasons. He did grant an extension and the deadline expired earlier this year. It’s been said a group of private citizens are organising a lawsuit against the Biden administration to get the files released. Biden in turn said on October 22 that the remaining files “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until December 15 2022 – nearly 60 years after Kennedy’s assassination.
A statement from the President said the delay was “necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defence, intelligence operations, law enforcement or the conduct of foreign relations” and that this “outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure”. Despite all the travesties of justice he feels have taken place in the US, Stone says he remains a patriot. “I went to school there, I was educated there. I served in Vietnam and I love my country. I just want to see it reform itself. It could be such a force for peace and co-existence, if they wanted it to be.” The first episode of JFK: Destiny Betrayed world premieres on DocPlay on November 22 with further episodes screening on November 29, December 6 and December 13.
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