JFK on Hulu

[Ron Bulman]

11 hours ago, Derek Thibeault said:

Anyone ever see Executive Action, I assume most have? Early 70s version of the assassination with Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan. It's not bad but obviously not factually correct and slow compared to Stone's flair. Definitely an interesting early look. Shocked that it got made.

I wish I had a copy of the hand out they passed at the original showings of the film.  Just a copy of it would be nice to even just see on here.  With credits including Mark Lane.  Much more on this subject written on this site if it can be found.  Some in the last year or so.

[John Kozlowski]

On 3/2/2019 at 1:20 AM, James DiEugenio said:

One of the things I talked about on Len's show this week was how much more data we have on this case today due to this film.

Therefore, what one could do today because of that enormous amount of new information.

Its a disgrace in retrospect what happened to Oliver Stone.  I have always believed the main reason was the Vietnam angle of the film.  People just did not want to believe that without Kennedy's death there would not have been a Vietnam War.  But not only was the film correct back then, it is now backed up with so much data that it approaches a hundred per cent certainty.  And this is what I mean about the wages of secrecy.  And how it cripples democracy.

So to think that the other attack angle was through JAMA, my God.  The medical evidence today in this case is, again, stronger now that it was then.  Again, thanks to this film and the creation of the ARRB.

One of the hack writers who made it his agenda to knock Stone was Ed Epstein, Mr. "Hey isn't Jim Angleton brilliant? Philby was really a triple agent."  

Anyway, two idiot journals allowed him to vent his spleen on the film.  No one took him on so I did.Three times.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-abstract-reality-of-edward-epstein

Can you recommend a podcast app for Len's show? The two I use took it off within the last few months and I've been using YouTube.

[James DiEugenio]

This seems to work at his sight the MP 3

http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black928a.mp3

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks so much Gene and Joe.  That is what we try to do at Kennedys and King.  Like a beacon in the night.

WN,

That is pretty much correct about Oliver Stone.  If you go through his films with the specific intent of finding things that do not jibe with the factual record, then yes you can find them.  But my point has always been that the use of dramatic license by Oliver is 1.) Not as extensive as with other notable directors who do not get called on it, 2.) Is in most part justified by both character and information elsewhere.  Where with others its not.

So I have always felt he got singled out for who he was.  Whereas people like Eastwood and Spielberg get the benefit of the doubt since they are part of the club.  Here are two examples:

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/22/the-post-and-the-pentagon-papers/

https://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/30/clint-eastwoods-dishonest-j-edgar/

What Spielberg and Hanks did with the Pentagon Papers was really a disgrace I thought.  Making a film about the Pentagon Papers through the Post would be like making a film about Watergate through the Times. And to falsify what the Post did to help Johnson continue the war after JFK's assassination?  Barfbag please.

But this is the culture we live in.  Oliver tells the truth about Vietnam, he gets attacked by the everyone plus the kitchen sink.  Spielberg and Hanks make false heroes and heroines of Bradlee and Graham, and heck, almost no one raises a peep about it.  Except me.

BTW, when I talked to the Times lawyer, Jim Goodale, he told me that when Spielberg sent him the first script, Ellsberg was not even in it.  The only scene he was in, was the scene where Bagdikian went to his motel to get the papers.  Can you imagine doing something like that? Goodale raised some heck about it and it was corrected.  But that is Hollywood, outside of say Stone and 2-3 others.

Edited March 5, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[David Andrews]

I wonder who the hell put the idea to make a half-baked J. Edgar Hoover film into Eastwood's head, and who ever felt that a half-baked script like that would attract any notice or box office/rental fees/DVD sales.  Was Mnuchin involved?  I'm thinking back to my one dissatisfied viewing of the film, and imagining that manipulation of the tax laws was involved.

[Ron Bulman]

30 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

I wonder who the hell put the idea to make a half-baked J. Edgar Hoover film into Eastwood's head, and who ever felt that a half-baked script like that would attract any notice or box office/rental fees/DVD sales.  Was Mnuchin involved?  I'm thinking back to my one dissatisfied viewing of the film, and imagining that manipulation of the tax laws was involved.

Remember the empty chair speech?

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-inside-story-of-why-clint-eastwood-talked-to-an-empty-chair-at-the-gop-convention_us_56a289e2e4b0d8cc109a047b

[James DiEugenio]

From what I know, it was the guy who wrote the script who got it to Eastwood somehow.

But its a good question as to why he agreed to do it.

[David Andrews]

From IMDB on J. Edgar:  "Clint Eastwood is famous for shooting the screenplays he directs almost verbatim, not making changes. Dustin Lance Black has admitted he didn't like that, arguing he loves to discuss the screenplay with the director and improving it together with suggestions."

Dustin Lance Black also wrote Milk, the Harvey Milk biopic, which missed a few contraries about Milk's career, but featured better acting (Sean Penn, Josh Brolin).

Black's script seems to paint Hoover as a moral hypocrite because of the Original Sin of keeping his homosexuality secret, when Hoover was foremost a moral hypocrite, regardless of sexuality.  I'll have to watch J. Edgar again to see if Black skewered Hoover properly for his other Dantean sin, careerism. 

Probably I should check if Black or Eastwood made any intellectual connection between Hoover's personal secrecy, the collecting of others' secrets, and the prurient interest in others' moral failings.  One thinks of Willie Stark's immortal line in All The King's Men: "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."  As in, something to hold over someone's head.

EDIT: I had an interesting experience after the original post.  I downloaded J. Edgar by Eastwood, and also All The King's Men (2006), the Steve Zaillian remake, a greatly underrated effort.  A few minutes ago, watching J. Edgar late at night, I got mixed up and said to myself, "God, I thought Steve Zaillian was a better director than this."  Sometimes there's truths to be found in our stupidest moments.

Edited March 6, 2019 by David Andrews

[David G. Healy]

great thread, all!