Finally: A New, Non-Oliver Stone Film About The JFK Assassination

[James DiEugenio]

Yes that was me and Oliver he had lunch with.

See, the problem is that this is now a package.  Which means it has everything in place for it to get sold.

When you get that many big names--even though some are past their prime like Travolta and Pacino--it is very hard to derail that because everyone smells the money.  This includes the agents and managers.

I could write Mamet, since he gave me his home address.  But I do not think he will reply.

And anyway, they would just replace him.

Edited May 16, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Joe Bauer]

On 5/15/2023 at 8:30 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Yes that was me and Oliver he had lunch with.

See, the problem is that this is now a package.  Which means it has everything in place for it to get sold.

When you get that many big names--even though some are past their prime like Travolta and Pacino--it is very hard to derail that because everyone smells the money.  This includes the agents and managers.

I could write Mamet, since he gave me his home address.  But I do not think he will reply.

And anyway, they would just replace him.

Mamet's older project "Blackbird" would have made a more compelling JFKA fiction story imo.

And Kate Blanchett a more compelling female lead cast member than Courtney Love.

I find it odd that Mamet would have lunch with you and Oliver Stone ( and one assumes express at least "some" shared common belief interest in your "JFK Revisited" ? ) and then go off and all in on a film that will probably make money due to it's all-star cast and high budget marketing but will only dilute the JFKA truth ( a tragic consequence imo ) in the minds of younger generations of Americans.

Did Mamet even mention this film project to you and OS at that lunch?

The money people are always the big force behind greenlighted "A list" films.

Who the heck is "308 Enterprises?"

Where does their big bucks money come from?

Tom Hanks co-produced and financed the biggest JFKA bomb movie of all time..."Parkland."

It's all-star cast consisted of Hank's son Colin, Zac Efron, Tom Welling, Paul Giamatti, Marcia Gay Harding and Billy Bob Thornton...but those veteran actors could not draw in more than one or two paying audience viewers a show.

Closed here in Monterey, Ca after two days!

My wife went with me to see the film only because I begged her.

The only other audience member was a black bearded "Bluto" look-alike character with a big hairy belly protruding out from under a dirty sweat-stained T-shirt and who fell asleep twenty minutes into the film and snored so loud we couldn't hear the dialogue!

My wife left minutes after suffering through the flat script and Bluto's snoring.

This new JFKA film cast is top of the line and with marketing it will probably make it's budget. But what a shame imo that Mamet's great talent is going into such a project.

Jim Di...if someone offered you a million bucks upfront...could you be tempted to be involved in a film such as this?

If it would make your retired life more secure monetarily I certainly wouldn't judge you for making that decision. Life in this country is rough when you barely make it financially.

Maybe you are not in that position but my family is on the edge trying to make the monthly rent here in insane rentsville Calif.

I would be tempted I admit.

It's only a film...right?

I still think my JFKA related film idea ( a multi- episode television one ) on the Oswald killing ( "He's Been Shot-He's Been Shot ...Lee Oswald Has Been Shot!" ) would do alright in the audience rating game on that level. A true mystery of impossibly improbable Dallas PD negligence that changed the world and America's perceptions of governmental trust.

And it's too late now for a Dorothy Kilgallen film. But I always felt that her life and death story was one of the most illogically ignored ones ever.

Highest society glamor and fame, highest creds in writing and investigating and national TV star...all ended at a relatively young age under the most ominous circumstances after involving herself in the Jack Ruby murder case.

Hated by the Mob, Frank Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover himself. 

Now THERE's a great film story! Meryl Streep would have made a great older Dorothy Kilgallen to boot.

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Charles Blackmon]

I did not realize there was a post about this film project a year ago. Go ahead and delete this one then.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Charles Blackmon

[Mark Ulrik]

10 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Mark,

      I shouldn't pass judgement without seeing the film, especially since David Mamet is writing the screenplay, but I'm picturing a guy walking out of the theater saying, "Gee, honey, I always thought Oswald and the Russkis killed Kennedy, but now I know it was an Italian job!" 🤥

No judgment intended. A lot of cinema goers also thought Stone's movie was accurate.

[Michael Griffith]

One, if we look at how other government-backed assassinations were done/attempted, the idea that the Mafia was involved is plausible and logical. On several occasions, government operatives hired Mafia guys to do their dirty work. 

Two, the Mafia was definitely involved in the cover-up, i.e., Ruby's silencing of Oswald.

Three, David Ferrie and Guy Bannister had Mafia ties. 

Four, the Mafia obviously had a powerful motive for wanting JFK dead, and for wanting Castro overthrown. 

Five, there is evidence that Mafia bosses Carlos Marcello and Sam Giancana were involved in the plot at some level.

So what is with all the summary dismissals of the Mafia's involvement in the plot?

 

[Michael Griffith]

From the linked article:

          David Mamet will direct 2 Days/1963, a drama scripted by Nicholas Celozzi that purports to tell how his great uncle, the notorious Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, arranged the assassination of President John F Kennedy as revenge for trying to bring down organized crime after the mob helped put JFK in the White House. Mamet, the twice Oscar-nominated scribe and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, will do a rewrite on Celozzi’s script. The film will be produced by Celozzi through his Monaco Films, with VP Michael Sportelli also producing. Bonnie Giancana, daughter of the late mobster, will be a consultant and executive producer.

What exactly is the problem with this? The Mafia angle of the assassination plot is one place where we actually have some decent evidence that identifies credible suspects who had clear and compelling motives for wanting JFK dead (Giancana and Marcello).

While I believe that the Mafia played a subordinate role in the plot, I see nothing wrong with exploring and focusing on the Mafia angle, partly because doing so bolsters the case for conspiracy. 

Let's remember that the Mafia clearly played a role in the cover-up by having Ruby silence Oswald. Ruby's numerous phone calls to Mafia contacts in the weeks leading up to the assassination likewise indicate a Mafia role. 

Let's also remember that Ferrie and Banister had Mafia ties. 

 

      

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

The very first book I read about the assassination was Jim Garrison's "On The Trail Of The Assassins."

Stone kept close to Garrison's tome throughout the film.

New Orleans in the 50's and early sixties - seedier, weirder and more sinfully corrupt than one could imagine or make up.

More crazy exaggerated larger than life characters in one place than any other American city of that size, by far.

Ferry

Clay Bertrand

Dean Andrews

Guy Bannister

Jack Martin

Oswald

Orest Pena

Carlos Bringuier

Warren De Brueys

Carlos Marcello

Alton Oschner

Dr. Mary Sherman

Judyth Vary Baker

Voodoo, jazz, jambalaya, female and male prostitutes, strippers, hot headed Cubans all running around in frantic circles of intrigue and sin.

The ghost of privateer Jean Lafitte wafting up in steamy apparitions on the Bayous from time to time.

How did Jim Garrison choose such a nutty place to practice law and politics?

 

 

 

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Jonathan Cohen]

4 hours ago, Mark Ulrik said:

No judgment intended. A lot of cinema goers also thought Stone's movie was accurate.

Unfortunately, they did! And unfortunately, it isn't!

[James DiEugenio]

I would like to ask Mark and Jonathan when they became authorities on New Orleans?  And where your work is on that subject?

Also where is their analysis of the script for JFK with the declassified record of the ARRB?

Because if you do not do that, then you are simply up in the grandstand next to the likes of Hugh Aynseworth and Edward Epstein.

The people on this board are supposed to be a cut above that.

I await their replies.

Edited May 16, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Jonathan Cohen]

32 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I would like to ask Mark and Jonathan when they became authorities on New Orleans?  And where your work is on that subject?

Also where is their analysis of the script for JFK with the declassified record of the ARRB?

Because if you do not do that, then you are simply up in the grandstand next to the likes of Hugh Aynseworth and Edward Epstein.

The people on this board are supposed to be a cut above that.

I await their replies.

Did I ever say I was an authority on New Orleans? Did I even mention the subject in my posts? Rather, I said that there are inaccuracies and misrepresentations in both JFK and JFK Revisited, many of which have been discussed at length on this forum.

[James DiEugenio]

Yeah, I know Jonathan, people like Von Pein and Parnell.

I know New Orleans, and I went through the director's cut of the film JFK  in light of the disclosures of the ARRB.

You can find it on pp. 190 -193 of my book The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today. 

I went through the first 16 scenes of the film in detail.  In the interest of time and space and attention span, on pgs. 193-194, I went through the rest of the film.

This is something that no one else did.  

Under the microscope, and allowing for the times a character says, let us speculate, or when Garrison is theorizing--as in what happened to Ferrie--the film is  more, not less, accurate than most allegedly historical films.  Take, for example, Mamet's own script for The Untouchables. In that film, almost none of the most dramatic, major scenes happened.

1.  Malone was not a  beat cop

2. Malone was not assassinated by Nitti

3. None of the 3 partners of Ness were real characters and none of them joined up as depicted.

4. The scene where Ness resolved to get Capone, the store bombing with the little girl--where and when did that occur?

5. Ness and Capone never met until the trial.  So the scene in the hotel where Ness confronts Capone with a gun and is held back by Malone?

6. The high point in the film: the shootout at Union station, when did that happen?

7. The second climax, the rooftop chase between Nitti and Ness, again, that did not happen.

I could go on and on, but I think I made my point.  Comparatively speaking, which is what matters, Stone's film is much more accurate.  And it looks even better with the ARRB declassifications.

The people who savagely attacked the film, like Epstein, had an agenda.  And I exposed Epstein's work on Kennedys and King.

 

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Jonathan Cohen]

25 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I could go on and on, but I think I made my point.  Comparatively speaking, which is what matters, Stone's film is much more accurate.  And it looks even better with the ARRB declassifications.

Jim, it's not a contest, and I don't know why you insist that the two films have to be compared to one another. They should rise or fall on their own merits. It's all well and good to parse precisely when a JFK character is meant to be "speculating," but how does that work in the case of, say, the "Mr. X" / Prouty character? "His" pronouncements are conveyed in a way that is surely intended to be definitive, not speculative, and in reality the actual Prouty's claims on the subject are certainly up for dispute. Considering Mamet's movie was just announced and won't be released for some time, why not withhold judgement until you see the final product?

[Paul Cummings]

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

One, if we look at how other government-backed assassinations were done/attempted, the idea that the Mafia was involved is plausible and logical. On several occasions, government operatives hired Mafia guys to do their dirty work. 

Two, the Mafia was definitely involved in the cover-up, i.e., Ruby's silencing of Oswald.

Three, David Ferrie and Guy Bannister had Mafia ties. 

Four, the Mafia obviously had a powerful motive for wanting JFK dead, and for wanting Castro overthrown. 

Five, there is evidence that Mafia bosses Carlos Marcello and Sam Giancana were involved in the plot at some level.

So what is with all the summary dismissals of the Mafia's involvement in the plot?

 

Nothing was done without Trafficante's (Cuba) approval and he outlived the other bosses.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Paul Cummings

[James DiEugenio]

Jonathan:

What part of the Vietnam angle was wrong in Stone's film?

I don't know if you know this but I do.

John Newman sketched out those scenes for Oliver and Zach Sklar.

At that time, no one knew more about that material, probably not even Prouty.

If the ARRB was better on certain angles than others, it was good on Vietnam.  I mean even the NY Times and Philadelphia Inquirer admitted this when they printed stories about how the declassified record stated that Kennedy had a plan to get out of Vietnam when he died. (There was no apology issued to Stone.)

One can object to the use of dramatic license here since the two did not exchange letters until after.  But Prouty knew everything in that scene and wrote about it, I think in 1986. 

What I am saying is that what Oliver did in that film was savagely attacked 7 months before the film came out.  They were determined to decapiitate the film before it was out of the womb.

This was I think for 3 reasons:

1. The film attacked the Warren Report as being completely false.

2. The film connected the death of Kennedy to the escalation of the Vietnam War.

3.  It posed the question: were the two events  connected and, if so, how did the MSM miss that connection so completely?

In my view, Stone was correct on all three.  And the ARRB has backed him up even more. The MSM did not like being exposed as having no clothes on.  So they rose up like a dragon screaming "No prisoners, no prisoners!"  There was simply no logic, reason, and little truth in the following year long debate.  Which is captured well in the accompanying volume, The Book of the Film.  If anything showed us how irrational the MSM is on the JFK case that did it.  According to Roger Feinman, the NY Times printed 34 stories on the case BEFORE the film debuted.

I would be willing to wager they did not print that many stories on the case in the prior decade.

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Charles Blackmon]

Fascinating stuff. Keep laying it out there Jim .