Parkland Movie

[James DiEugenio]

In my book, I devote a chapter to this issue.  (Chapter 7, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today) . 

I focused there on how Bugliosi attacked the film and his use of, let us say, rather questionable sources, instead of primary documents and interviews.  If you can believe it, Bugliosi used people like Harry Connick, and James Kirkwood.  Which, in light of the ARRB documents is like using a crank up Model T Ford on the freeway.  The ARRB did some fine work on the New Orleans scene. But the problem is 1.) Hardly anyone read the documents, and 2.) The MSM cannot afford to publicize them since it makes them look like con artists.

Example, the NY Times started attacking Stone's film over seven weeks  before it was released.  From then until its debut, they published 34 stories, all over the paper, in many sections on it.  Newsweek hired extra writers to prepare its front cover attack.  George Lardner, as we know, reviewed the film six months in advance based upon a purloined early draft of the script.

Now, did anyone think these same people who were so busy attacking a film almost no one had seen yet, were going to report on all the things in those ARRB documents that proved the film was correct? Yeah, when Hades freezes over.

Bugliosi was one of the worst in all this.  And then Tom Hanks propped up his body and put him on CNN at the fiftieth to broadcast his propaganda. As I show in my book, Bugliosi deliberately ignored the new documents so he could recycle the 1960's baloney about New Orleans e.g. Ferrie likely did not know Oswald, as updated by Patricia Lambert.  He even tried to say that Shaw was not Bertrand. 

😉 Uh huh, sure Vince.  Now go back to your room.

Another example, Patricia Orr, an HSCA investigator said they went to Clinton/Jackson and they found 15 witnesses who saw Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald there. Well, Bugliosi, like Jean Davison before him, tries to deny that fact.  Which you can only do, if you don't go there, which neither writer did.  In fact, what Bugliosi did here might be the worst part of his book--which is saying something considering what he did with the autopsy and Ruby's polygraph.

The idea today, which Bugliosi also tried to question, that JFK was not withdrawing from Vietnam at the time of his death is simply batty.  When the ARRB released those documents back in 1997, even the NY Times had to admit that such a plan existed.  And there has been even more evidence adduced since. Including McNamara's debriefs where he says that he and Kennedy had agreed that they were not going beyond an advisement role in Indochina.  If the ARVN could not win the war, America was not going to fight it for them. John Newman talked about this in a speech he gave at UT, in a book called Vietnam: The Early Decisions edited by Lloyd Gardner.  

In other words, on all of these major points the film is correct.  In my book I compared the first third of the film, scene by scene, with what we know today. For anyone to smear the film, as Bugliosi does, or Posner does, without comparing it to the record as I did, that is just   playing to the crowd in the cheapest way. Its really something today how well the story has held up structurally in light of the new record.  The problem is, none of the critics of the film have done any research on New Orleans, or even gone there. Which means they are involved in nothing but a clown show.

Unless one reads and uses the ARRB docs,  all one is indulging themself in is flim flammery.

Edited July 19, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

34 articles in 7 weeks by the NTY means 5 a week, a sustained frontal attack.  In this case frontal means before it was released.  A failure on "their" part!  How did JFK the movie not only survive this and much more (Posner plus) but succeed to the point of creating the ARRB?  IMO all the opposition created a stir regarding the subject.  One the public didn't believe the official conclusion on and still doesn't.  Man I wish he'd do a sequel. 

[Joe Bauer]

 

Toronto: David Mamet's Cate Blanchett Thriller 'Blackbird' to Shoot in ...

CREDIT: COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES

Cate Blanchett will star in helmer-scribe David Mamet’s “Blackbird,” a present-day Hitchcockian nailbiter turning on a secret explanation for the 1963 assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

Blanchett plays Janet, who travels to Los Angeles for the funeral of her grandfather, a Hollywood visual effects artist who moonlighted for U.S. special ops agencies. Her grandfather’s well-kept secrets become a threat to her, forcing Janet to discover the truth about a man who dedicated his life to making illusion reality.

“Blackbird” is produced by Said Ben Said’s Paris-based SBS Prods., which established a reputation from its 2010 launch for producing films by heavyweight directors aimed at adult audiences: Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” Brian De Palma’s “Passion,” and David Cronenberg’s upcoming “Maps to the Stars,” starring Julianne Moore, John Cusack and Robert Pattinson, which Ben Said is co-producing with Prospero Pictures’ Martin Katz.

 

 

SBS is handling worldwide sales. It will shoot in Sydney, part financed by Australian tax breaks, Ben Said said.

 

[James DiEugenio]

The film managed to make it through that barrage. But abroad, without the barrage, it was a really big hit.

The film did about 75 million domestic and about 200 million overseas.  On a budget of 40 million.

That is a pretty big hit and it does not include ancillary rights, which means sales of DVD's and videos, sale to cable, and network and syndication.  Both home and abroad.

But Stone's career did suffer for it.  There was never in film history a preemptive strike like that, and I am sure Joe McBride, who is a film historian, will agree with me.  No career could not be damaged by a tsunami like that one.  But it did manage to get the ARRB.  And, as I said, all the discoveries that back up what the film was saying have been more or less ignored. That is the kind of schizoid culture we live in.

 

Edited July 18, 2019 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Cross]

13 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

 

Toronto: David Mamet's Cate Blanchett Thriller 'Blackbird' to Shoot in ...

CREDIT: COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES

Cate Blanchett will star in helmer-scribe David Mamet’s “Blackbird,” a present-day Hitchcockian nailbiter turning on a secret explanation for the 1963 assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy.

Blanchett plays Janet, who travels to Los Angeles for the funeral of her grandfather, a Hollywood visual effects artist who moonlighted for U.S. special ops agencies. Her grandfather’s well-kept secrets become a threat to her, forcing Janet to discover the truth about a man who dedicated his life to making illusion reality.

“Blackbird” is produced by Said Ben Said’s Paris-based SBS Prods., which established a reputation from its 2010 launch for producing films by heavyweight directors aimed at adult audiences: Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” Brian De Palma’s “Passion,” and David Cronenberg’s upcoming “Maps to the Stars,” starring Julianne Moore, John Cusack and Robert Pattinson, which Ben Said is co-producing with Prospero Pictures’ Martin Katz.

 

 

SBS is handling worldwide sales. It will shoot in Sydney, part financed by Australian tax breaks, Ben Said said.

 

Looks like that was never filmed?

[Joe Bauer]

12 hours ago, Michael Cross said:

Looks like that was never filmed?

No it wasn't filmed.

I would've loved to have seen such a JFK mystery thriller especially with someone as talented as Blanchette as the lead character and Mamet writing.

Wonder what studio heads axed it and why?

Jack Valenti wasn't around so can't blame him.

Edited July 19, 2019 by Joe Bauer

[Rick McTague]

On 7/14/2019 at 8:41 PM, Michaleen Kilroy said:

I'm not sure so I'll let the Dan the Man tell his story:  

 

at 4:00, he says "it's a nice myth, so why don't we just live with the myth.  If you're a news organization, you should try hard not to live with a myth, but that never happened".

Truer words were never spoken about the JFKA.

Thanks

[James DiEugenio]

If only he would apply that to this case instead of an irrelevant tale about the purchase of the Z film.

[W. Niederhut]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

If only he would apply that to this case instead of an irrelevant tale about the purchase of the Z film.

And he should apply it to the case of the free fall demolition of WTC7 on 9/11-- a 47 floor steel skyscraper that was never hit by a plane.

The last time I checked there was still a video on You Tube of Dan Rather's live coverage of the free fall collapse of WTC7, in which he correctly observed that it looked just like a professionally planned explosive building demolition.

 

[Ken Rheberg]

On 7/15/2019 at 6:12 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Rather saw the film during the afternoon of November 25 (Monday) at the law office of Passman & Jones in Dallas. This viewing was for those interested in the rights for the film in motion as opposed to the rights for still images of the film, which were sold to LIFE two days earlier. Rather, along with the others in attendance, signed a confidentiality agreement that he would not discuss the contents other than to inform the bidding decisions and, then immediately ran to the local CBS affiliate to go on the air and describe what he saw.

 

Jeff,

Thanks for your response.

By the way, I've noticed that Jim DiEugenio has now placed the "irrelevant" tag on Dan Rather in one of his posts.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Before I reply to him, however, I wanted to get back to you first.

It appears that Dan really viewed the Zapruder film in the KRLD projection room on the Monday after the assassination, not in an attorney's office.  According to KRLD's Bob Huffaker, after bringing a copy of the film in a few days following the shooting and viewing it with Bob over and over for about an hour, all the while taking notes, Dan typed up his notes and reported his observations from those notes on the CBS Television Network the same day.  That would be Monday.  The record shows that Dan made one radio report and three televised reports that day.  You can see Dan constantly looking down to his notes during those televised reports. How else could he remember all that?  There were no other reports regarding his Zapruder film viewing made on any other days that I'm aware of.  This version flies in the face of the story Dan has told over the years.  I interviewed the late Bob Huffaker extensively back in 2001, reviewed some things with him in 2007, and I trust what he had to say about everything he told me.  The story about Bob and Dan is also in his book, "When the News Went Live."

That story is hardly "irrelevant."

Then, if you backtrack to Friday, the day of the assassination, and follow Dan's movements and activities and recorded words, what really happened in Dealey Plaza finally begins to take shape.

But Jim DiEugenio does not want to do this.  Like a little child kicking and screaming on his way to the dentist, he just would rather not go there, no pun intended. And others on this forum apparently don't want to go there either.  Some, quite possibly, even on this very thread.

And, as I've said before, I'm confident that Dan knew nothing about the assassination beforehand.  He simply found himself in an unexpected right place at the right time.  His retelling of history and avoidance of what really happened to him on that Friday is the story of a lifetime which Jim DiEugenio, and many others, have chosen not to pursue.

Maybe Oliver Stone will one day.  JFK 2.

Ken
 

 

Edited July 19, 2019 by Ken Rheberg

[David Andrews]

On 7/18/2019 at 12:32 PM, Michael Cross said:

Looks like that was never filmed?

http://scriptshadow.net/screenplay-review-blackbird/

See link to review of script re: JFK.  I'd love if someone could alert me if they find a copy of the David Mamet Blackbird script online.  I'm not sure it's in line with our POV on film alteration, though I'm a Mamet fan.

Perhaps his comments in the article below are the reason Blackbird wasn't made:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/americas-cassandra-david-mamet-speaks-on-the-lies-of-obama-and-war

 

Edited July 19, 2019 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

David Mamet as our greatest playwright? 

At the time that article was penned, Sam Shephard was still alive. He was not exactly chopped liver.

But Mamet today sounds like the late Charles Krauthammer. Obamacare was a Trojan Horse for Leninism?  The last thing in the world Obama was was a socialist.  Just look up his membership in the  Hamilton Project at Brookings.. In retrospect, there was never any fear that Obama was going to launch his own New Deal when he came into office.  That was just smoke and mirrors, a diversion by the GOP.  In reality, Obama was the Democratic answer to Colin Powell.  Which is why Biden and Kerry liked him so much.  It was their way of neutralizing the forces that had rallied behind Jessie Jackson e,g; Bernie Sanders. 

In fact, the almost crazy attempt to turn him into some kind of radical is part of the successful ploy by the right to foreshorten the political spectrum. To eliminate any kind of real left.

[Rick McTague]

2 hours ago, Ken Rheberg said:

By the way, I've noticed that Jim DiEugenio has now placed the "irrelevant" tag on Dan Rather in one of his posts.
 

 

Ken,

Rather made the "myth" quote about a side note he mentions that someone said he should just hit Zapruder and take the film and run, that was the "irrelevant" tale Jim mentions.

Thanks

[Paul Bacon]

3 hours ago, Ken Rheberg said:

It appears that Dan really viewed the Zapruder film in the KRLD projection room on the Monday after the assassination, not in an attorney's office.  According to KRLD's Bob Huffaker, after bringing a copy of the film in a few days following the shooting and viewing it with Bob over and over for about an hour, all the while taking notes, Dan typed up his notes and reported his observations from those notes on the CBS Television Network the same day.  That would be Monday.  The record shows that Dan made one radio report and three televised reports that day.  You can see Dan constantly looking down to his notes during those televised reports. How else could he remember all that?  There were no other reports regarding his Zapruder film viewing made on any other days that I'm aware of.  This version flies in the face of the story Dan has told over the years.  I interviewed the late Bob Huffaker extensively back in 2001, reviewed some things with him in 2007, and I trust what he had to say about everything he told me.  The story about Bob and Dan is also in his book, "When the News Went Live."

How did Dan Rather get a copy of the film for extended viewing?  Do you suppose the new and improved version was fed to him by authorities?

[Jeff Carter]

8 hours ago, Ken Rheberg said:

 

It appears that Dan really viewed the Zapruder film in the KRLD projection room on the Monday after the assassination, not in an attorney's office.  According to KRLD's Bob Huffaker, after bringing a copy of the film in a few days following the shooting and viewing it with Bob over and over for about an hour, all the while taking notes, Dan typed up his notes and reported his observations from those notes on the CBS Television Network the same day.  That would be Monday.  The record shows that Dan made one radio report and three televised reports that day.  You can see Dan constantly looking down to his notes during those televised reports. How else could he remember all that?  There were no other reports regarding his Zapruder film viewing made on any other days that I'm aware of.  This version flies in the face of the story Dan has told over the years.  I interviewed the late Bob Huffaker extensively back in 2001, reviewed some things with him in 2007, and I trust what he had to say about everything he told me.  The story about Bob and Dan is also in his book, "When the News Went Live."

 

 

I wonder if that's a tall tale. My source re: the law office comes from Alexandra Zapruder's book which, despite its bias against "conspiracy theorists", does attempt to present as factual a record as possible. The law office meeting is cited from an interview conducted in 1994 with Sam Passman, and corresponding legal documentation from the office. There is no accounting for another print which got into Rather's hands for his own private screening.