Executive Action

[Peter McGuire]

Executive Action has more truth in it, as hokey as it may seem at times, than the Governments version by far.

Edited June 14, 2012 by Peter McGuire

[Peter McGuire]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWmItgPs-4&feature=g-vrec

[Peter McGuire]

When Kennedy says " This treaty is not the millenium, what does he mean?

[Michael Hogan]

When Kennedy says " This treaty is not the millenium, what does he mean?

One definition of millenium: A hoped-for period of joy, serenity, prosperity, and justice

.

http://www.answers.c...opic/millennium

This was the speech: http://www.jfklibrar...ly-26-1963.aspx

[David Andrews]

I never before noticed this drollery: Grimm's (Banister's) office at the corner of LaFollette and Karp streets...lol. (c. 2:24 in the clip above.)

With the right haircut, Will Geer might have played a swell Allen Dulles.

Edited June 15, 2012 by David Andrews

[Peter McGuire]

_{I never before noticed this drollery: Grimm's (Banister's) office at the corner of LaFollette and Karp streets...lol. (c. 2:24 in the clip above.)}

_{With the right haircut, Will Geer might have played a swell Allen Dulles.}

_{I believe you have the right guy in Allen Dulles.}

_{Thank you Michael and David for the help with vocabulary. I do understand the way this movie comes across David, but still maintain that it lays out the assassination}

_{that not only made sense at the time, but has stood the test of time. That it is more accurate that the Warren Commission, is not saying much, I know, and there is}

_{some artistic license since it is a movie, not a documentary, but I hope you know that its writers knew the exact street names in New Orleans but chose to change them.}

_{I have owned several of these tapes before and either gave them away or sold them on EBay - I believe it is now available on DVD as well.}

_{It has probably been 5 years since i viewed this film and it should be interesting to see it from this new perspective}

[David Andrews]

I do understand the way this movie comes across David, but still maintain that it lays out the assassination.

I didn't slam the movie, Peter, and I never will. I enjoyed it as a teenager, and it's still the only important non-documentary film other than JFK that directly addresses the assassination.* Dalton Trumbo wrote it, he exposed Mark Lane's and Donald Freed's work to a mass audience in thriller format, and the research of Penn Jones and David Lifton (among others) helped shape it. What's not to like?

I'll go so far as to say (alright, I've said as much before, elsewhere) that you can't make a picture like this anymore in the American political climate. Nobody but us wants one. On this forum alone, there are tons of material for Kennedy-related thrillers, not to mention in books written by members or otherwise discussed here. But you'd waste a year writing such a script, and another year trying to produce it - nobody in American filmmaking would buy it. We'd better call the Russians.

I'm impressed that, starting with the still photos used under the opening credits, the plot's origin is taken away from intelligence agencies and placed with industry, the stock market, and private wealth. This gives both the plotters and Oswald a certain autonomy (as in the film's Oswald going to Mexico City for his own political reasons). We have to ask ourselves the extent to which that autonomy is more accurate than is generally considered.

I wouldn't call the picture "hokey." The makers had to cram a lot of information into a thriller format, using a limited number of shooting days and limited sets and locations to keep star salaries and other costs low enough to preserve creative control.

Notice that the missing code book on the Pacific-bound cabinet plane, recently discussed on EdForum, made it into the film. And there's a Rambler in the knoll parking lot.

* Other good assassination-related films, like The Parallax View and 'Z,' unfortunately aren't admissible under this strict rubric.

Edited June 17, 2012 by David Andrews

[Ron Ecker]

you'd waste a year writing such a script, and another year trying to produce it - nobody in American filmmaking would buy it.

I did waste a year, and more, writing such a script and trying to find some interest in it. I don't know why, maybe the death of Jack Valenti gave me false hope. But I thought the script was so good that I decided to rewrite it, taking JFK out of it completely. Now it's just a romantic comedy.

[David Andrews]

There's an assassination-related screen adaptation that I want to write so much, but I'd have to option the book and interview the author and sign him to an advisor credit - and nobody would buy that script, though I could throw my whole soul and checkbook into that story.

BTW, I call Executive Action a thriller because all dramatic film treatments of assassinations tend to drift in that direction. If you're aiming for something higher in that format. you're on to something. And that's Executive Action.

Edited June 17, 2012 by David Andrews

[Peter McGuire]

• 
  There's an assassination-related screen adaptation that I want to write so much, but I'd have to option the book and interview the author and sign him to an advisor credit - and nobody would buy that script, though I could throw my whole soul and checkbook into that story.
  BTW, I call Executive Action a thriller because all dramatic film treatments of assassinations tend to drift in that direction. If you're aiming for something higher in that format. you're on to something. And that's Executive Action.
  

Thanks Dave:

Interesting report from Morely Safer in the early days of the Vietnam War ( 1965 )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ObiGtw7m3s