Jump to content
The Education Forum

Leonardo DiCaprio takes on JFK film


Recommended Posts

[Moved]

Edited by Duke Lane
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 39
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

[Moved]

Edited by Duke Lane
Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.ctka.net/Dicaprio_Waldron.html

This new development is really distressing.

Can DiCaprio be as dumb as Tom Hanks?

Do the American people deserve these two fictional tales at the 50th?

Please read the notice and let us begin Project Educate Leo on JFK.

This IS distressing. I wish someone would turn JFK and the Unspeakable into a film. Add some Harvey and Lee.

So much has come out since JFK and the subject is ripe for another blokcbuster in the same vein as JFK. Instead Leo will convince people of more lies. If as Jim suggests he is open to being educated, I wonder if he could insist on revisions in the script. Or if the director would be open to a good dose of Jim Douglas.

Dawn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This IS distressing. I wish someone would turn JFK and the Unspeakable into a film.

As I said - The ultimate assassination film perhaps has to have JFK in it, played by an actor. And RFK, too - so we can see Kennedy's political-philosophical development in the midst of his enemies. So - that's Douglass's book right there.

I believe that Oliver Stone's interest in the Douglass book is not just on the academic level, and we may likely see a film of the book co-produced by Stone, if not directed by him. The Beverly Hills symposium may have been a water-testing for the project. At the very least, it suggests that Stone may be moving toward producing a documentary based on the book. I wish all involved well.

Edited by David Andrews
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Robert Morrow

There were two confrontations during the Cuban Missle Crisis. The mindset and the "advice" of the majority of his own Ex-Com advisers convinced JFK that they were a much larger threat to National Security than the Soviets, and that Kruschev was less insane an adversary than LeMay and Lovett. (Was Forrestal's last night at

Bethesda and the investigation of it, the results buried for 55 years, a dress rehearsal?)

Moat of JFK's Ex-Com group believed JFK backed down and negotiated away as good an opportunity as any for the unavoidable nuclear exchange with the Soviets, as their minds were made up to settle the question of military superiority, once and for all.

The Ex-Com hawks walked away from the Cuban crisis week fearing what JFK might do next to further weaken the U.S. posture, if not the actual U.S. military fundamentals. They also walked away perceiving JFK as weak enough

to make the prospect of assassinating him less daunting of an option to set into motion.

JFK commenced to go around them in earnest, motivated somewhat out of fear of their irrational conclusions of what level of provocation justified responding with preemptive nuclear strikes.

JFK correctly assessed the threat to U.S. security posed by men with irrational POV of Soviet intentions and levels of reluctance to engage the U.S. in a nuclear exchange. JFK seemed to make the fatal mistake of not taking an immediate and proactive role in significantly increasing the levels of his own physical security, as he was dealing with Ex-Com advisors and their allies who showed almost no hesitation to urge JFK to set a course that would have resulted in a nuclear exchange to settle the confrontation over Cuban missiles and, costing the lives of millions of Americans, in the process. The advice JFK received from these men in October, 1962 chilled him into action on the foreign and military policy fronts, but evidently not enough to take the steps required to save himself from them and their bias towards a strategy of nuclear offense instead of deterrent.

Yes, I would agree with all of the above of Tom Scully's post here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know a movie reaches a lot more people than a documentary, but in my view, a substantial doco(s), with all that has since been released, with the best experts, the actual documents, Authors like Armstrong, Newman, Douglass, the best researchers, would trump fiction any day.

Think a truthful, reasoned version of TMWKK. "The Civil War" for the Kennedy Assassination. This is what I want to see.

I have no power to make this happen, but surely someone with some pull could tackle this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know a movie reaches a lot more people than a documentary, but in my view, a substantial doco(s), with all that has since been released, with the best experts, the actual documents, Authors like Armstrong, Newman, Douglass, the best researchers, would trump fiction any day.

Think a truthful, reasoned version of TMWKK. "The Civil War" for the Kennedy Assassination. This is what I want to see.

I have no power to make this happen, but surely someone with some pull could tackle this.

A number of researchers have tried to promote the idea of producing a real documentary on the JFK assassination, including Tony Summers, but nobody seems to be interested.

Bugliosi, in the course of his negotiations with HBO and Hanks, insisited on being able to produce an accompaning "documentary" to go along with the cable tv serial, but of course, that will only reflect reality as he sees it, and not include anything of sustance, like that not included with all the words he managed to get into print in Reclaiming History.

BK

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This new development is really distressing.

Can DiCaprio be as dumb as Tom Hanks?

Do the American people deserve these two fictional tales at the 50th?

Please read the notice and let us begin Project Educate Leo on JFK.

... So much has come out since JFK and the subject is ripe for another blokcbuster in the same vein as JFK. Instead Leo will convince people of more lies. If as Jim suggests he is open to being educated, I wonder if he could insist on revisions in the script. Or if the director would be open to a good dose of Jim Douglas.

Perhaps David can shed more light on the subject, but how much does an actor, however popular s/he may be, actually influence a screenplay? I can well imagine that nuances within its confines are well within their purview, but can - or would - an actor change the entire direction of a production?

"Open to being educated?" Probably, but I'd think only within the confines of the existing screenplay, and not to the extent of either re-writing the script or without "writing themselves out of" it ... that is, getting themselves fired and losing out on that income.

Call me a cynic ....

I know a movie reaches a lot more people than a documentary, but in my view, a substantial doco(s), with all that has since been released, with the best experts, the actual documents, Authors like Armstrong, Newman, Douglass, the best researchers, would trump fiction any day.

Think a truthful, reasoned version of TMWKK. "The Civil War" for the Kennedy Assassination. This is what I want to see.

I have no power to make this happen, but surely someone with some pull could tackle this.

A good suspicion is that such a thing will come to fruition ... in as many years after Kennedy's assassination as "The Civil War" followed the real thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, actors on top of their game have an awful lot of clout these days. They are really what attracts audiences to the theater or video store, and story is secondary - though bad story will undermine all acting and filmmaking talent, and disappoint that audience.

We are now not under the "studio system," but under the "talent agency system." When producers hire an actor, they are often hiring a package. That is, the talent agency (e.g., CAA) that represents the actor will seek to bundle the actor with a bankable director, co-stars and supporting actors, and even a screenwriter or two, all of whom it also represents.

An actor with a lot of clout - especially if he is in intellectual cahoots with the director - can often dictate extensive script changes on an "or else" basis. Whether this has ever, or ever could, translate to altering the political philosophy or historical slant of a film, has yet to be tested. On JFK, a trifecta was scored before the film began to attract adverse attention: it had a successful and provocative director (Stone), a liberal, conspiracy-friendly mega star (Costner - who tried to browbeat a "Who dunnit?" answer out of E. Howard Hunt within ten minutes of meeting him, causing Hunt to flee), and a foreign-born producer who had been involved with several lucrative dramatic hits directed by Stone (A. Kitman Ho).*

An assassination theory book like Ultimate Sacrifice was spurred to success with a sizable promotions budget and important media-film conglomerate connections: Oliver Stone may have boosted JFK and the Unspeakable on Bill Maher's otherwise politically risible pay-cable show, but Douglass wasn't on the show - nor has he been on the "big network" Today show like Lamar Waldron, who has gone on to appear in more than one conspiracy-limiting documentary production.

So, asking the press-annointed star of Legacy of Secrecy to consider the distortions of the material and push for script changes may be attempting to alter a media fait accompli. The star would have to have a great deal of clout with the producers and director, and carte blanche at his agency - at least up to the point where he might flop after being given his head. And Hollywood films can flop for many reasons, or concatenations of reasons. (The radical alternative for the star would be to flaunt the industry, break his contract, and produce his own film - and those ventures have been known to flop - for "concatenations of reasons.") Any successful "Education of Leo" countercoup would be dependent on a happy coincidence of values among those variables already in position - much as a political coup would be.

*To me, Ho's foreign birth is an important variable that helped insure the quality of the JFK script and production, as Ho perhaps felt less cultural pressure to accept the lone-nutter hypothesis. (Others may find my reasoning assumptive and vulgar, but I'm trying to be assumptive and vulgar on the side of the angels.) Ho's past successes with revelatory Stone films like Wall Street may also have influenced his willingness to give Stone control of the scripting. I notice, however, that after capping several Stone-directed critical and financial successes with JFK, Ho and Stone seem to have never worked together again after their Vietnam-experience film, Heaven and Earth.

Edited by David Andrews
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Max Von Sydow has aquired an enduring clout to where sometimes he merely does bit parts. One is Shutter Island with DiCaprio. If one looks at it with MKULTRA in mind it, while a potent film, has worrying undertones, imo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...