Hacker Cinema
JFK
1991 · Film · 189 min
Directed by Oliver Stone
Follows the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy led by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.
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36 comments on Hacker News
I somehow hadn’t realized until last year that JP (and JFK) were both before Wayne Knight took on the role of Newman. I had the distinct impression when watching the films that I already knew him.
Like the fact that up to 50% of the State Department was actually CIA, as noted by Arthur Schlesinger Jr and only declassified this year, 63 years later, as part of the recent trove of JFK files releases.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/2025-03-19/cia-covert-ops-kennedy-assassination-records-lift-veil-secrecy
(Even this much was the result of decades of sustained political support for disclosure since Oliver Stone’s landmark 1991 film.)
Key takeaway is that if the unaccountable minders thumping national security don’t want something released - ever - it won’t be releases.
If there is any truth to the events pictured in the JFK movie with Kevin Costner that is certainly very true.
FWIW, Gates McFadden was in an episode of ST:TNG called "The Wounded" along with Bob Gunton, who was in JFK (along with Kevin Bacon).
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0708825/
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/
Oh, and I guess I forgot about the Oracle of Bacon... they have a variety of ways using only movies to get her down to 2.
https://oracleofbacon.org/movielinks.php
Like that scene from the JFK movie where Donald Sutherland's character is going through a long check list of all the things the secret service would have done.
Like, snipers on roof tops, planning the route so there's no slow downs, etc.
I seem to recall the bullet on the gurney story to figure fairly prominently in the latest JFK documentary by Oliver Stone. Am I mistaken? When I read this accounting it didn’t strike me as totally new but rather a vindication of a story that had been relegated to being a conspiracy?
I find it fascinating that the conclusions of the "Warren Commission" (10 months after the assassination) are somehow the gold standard.
However I can understand the inclination to do so: (1) highest degree of authority (2) finds a lone person guilty (coherence) and (3) quickly restores the trust in government. The alternative would be to sift all the "conspiracy theories" (including the Warren Report itself) with the prospect of an indefinite delay of gratification: a paranoid mind.
But a lot of things had happened since then. Most notably the Church Committee (1975) and the JFK Records Act (1992) as a reaction to the popularity of Stone's movie JFK (1991). Considering the current status of the latter "JFK files" one can read the following (on the NYT)[0]:
>Of roughly 320,000 documents reviewed since the law passed, 99 percent have been disclosed, according to the National Archives and Records Administration. But 2,140 documents remain fully or partially withheld as a result of Mr. Biden’s action, officials said, while another 2,502 remain withheld for reasons outside the president’s purview, like court-ordered seals, grand jury secrecy rules, tax privacy limits or restrictions imposed by people who donated papers, and 42 for a mix of both.
A vast majority of excluded documents have actually been released but with certain parts redacted, officials said, including names of people still living, addresses, telephone or Social Security numbers, or locations of intelligence facilities. Officials said they were confident that none of the withheld information would change the essential understanding of the assassination.
On both side of spectrum "lone gunman" or "CIA plot" the sentiment is the same: just release all the files.
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/us/politics/biden-jfk-assassination-papers.html
I think JFK is a great movie with a few flaws.
Things that are covered well and faithful to the evidence:
* Basically all the parts of the movie which are set in Dealey Plaza (reconstructed like no other film has done before or since)
* Oswald's background and enigmatic lifestyle
* The activities at the Carousel Club
* Dean Andrews
* Sylvia Odio and the Mexico City incident
* Guy Banister, Jack Martin, and the 544 Camp Street leaflets
* Vernon Bundy
* The voter registration witnesses
* The apparent Oswald impersonations
* George de Mohrenschildt
* The autopsy
Things that aren't covered so well:
* Claw Shaw (some of the evidence against him is just fabricated in the film, which is very frustrating)
* David Ferrie (some parts good, others not)
* Jim Garrison's personal life (eg incorrectly depicting the Shaw interview as happening on Easter Sunday to win personal favor - nauseating)
* "Janet and Bill Williams", obviously the Paines
* "Mr. X", while an accurate portrayal of Fletcher Prouty, it gives an inaccurate impression of the timeline of the case
Many people object to the composite character by Kevin Bacon, but this doesn't bother me. I think it's about as good as you can do with those characters without making the film another hour longer to tell each of their backgrounds.
Overall, I think that JFK does a good job of presenting the most important evidence that Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy (something I assert is very likely), and does so in a way which is likely to prompt viewers to do additional research.
It's not as hard on every fact as I wish it were, but it's still way above the mean for a historical film.
Stone has also published a 600 page book in response to the hullaballo surrounding the film, inviting and platforming his strongest critics (and responses to them), along with a painstaking bibliography of essentially every fact asserted in the film. [0] I think that deserves commendation; commitment to this degree of dialogue is very rare for a Hollywood film.
0: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/430224.JFK
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
Okay but then it would be the Soviets who had detailed information on JFK murdering her, and that was being actively used as leverage against JFK. Then it would make more logical sense for the US government/CIA to remove JFK. The movie script here needs to get updated to make it a bit more plausible. Make it so that the USSR was blackmailing him to pull out Vietnam or something.
I'm not any kind of expert, but at the end of the JFK movie (1991) it says the House Select Committee on Assassinations files are locked until 2029. I think that is the result of the Warren commission...
What’s the big deal with the film? JFK is a bigger deal because he didn’t survive. Otherwise his assassination is one amongst many. Whether or not there is this conspiracy going on, how much different would things be if the opposite really happened?
I don’t think much would be diff. Very important assassinations like MLK and Malcolm X would still happen. Capitalism being the primary “thing” in all American’s lives would still be a thing. Liberalism would still make the government a tool for private capital/capitalism as it is now.
Whether or not the US government is captured by Organized Crime seems unimportant. The deepest rabbit hole one could find these days in why the world sucks would be investigating capitalism, neoliberalism, and imperialism.
In general you can sometimes get insight from the "Talk" section for these kinds of questions.
In this case, there was a "historical inaccuracies" section which was removed due to sourcing concerns. Not sure how well it holds up to what is (/was was the time) up on the German one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:JFK_(film)/Archive_1#Questionable_Good_Article
Sometimes it can be up to chance or culture, sometimes editorial differences.
EDIT: Come to think of it, in this case maybe the German Wikipedia just has misproportionate coverage and activity for its speaker-base (this would certainly fit with my preconception)? I recall reacting to pages on topics from other countries where I'd be surprised to find it covered in German and not the native language,
A bit of topic. Does anyone know, why the english Wikipedia site about the JFK movie does not talk about what was fiction, what was true in the movie and what is unknow? On the german page about the movie, they have a lot about it.
I understand there are differences in languages. But in this case, in english, the most important information is missing. So it's just a movie, all fiction?!?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)
I've heard his JFK documentary is good too. /s
As a young boy I was convinced this was a conspiracy. Until I saw the PBS documentary and a 90s website debunking the JFK movie (which I really enjoyed). Helped set me on my journey of learning and appreciating critical thinking skills.
Appreciate your thoughts as well! Without getting into the weeds too much on it, I would draw a contrast between a few perspectives:
a.) "The intelligence community are the good guys and mostly do the right thing, minus one or two foibles here and there." In this category you've got your Marvel movies, your James Bonds, your Tom Clancys, etc
b.) "The IC is fighting the good fight, but sometimes has to do morally questionable things to get it done." This is stuff like Zero Dark Thirty and encompasses most of what you might call "serious" cinema that depicts the CIA.
c.) "The IC is deeply morally flawed, serving the interests of an elite few at the expense of the vast majority both at home & abroad, and often undertakes actions where this must be clear to anyone involved who has a conscience." This is very rare. There are a few paranoid conspiracy films from the 70s, there's American Made, there's Kill the Messenger, there's JFK, but I'm already struggling to come up with more names.
Intelligence work is so compartmentalized that I believe it's possible for the vast majority of those who work in it to believe they are fighting a good (or at least neutral) fight without allowing for too much cognitive dissonance at all. I don't think this is true of, say, the FBI agents who buried the allegations against the Epstein & Franklin pedophile rings, or the CIA agents who ran drugs into Mena airport to supply funds to child murdering contras in Nicaragua. These are the characters which tend to be assiduously avoided in Western media.
> This has to run so deep though, if it is a cover-up.
This reminds of the film JFK, from 1991, that retells the story around the JFK assassination. It is a phenomenal, phenomenal film that really, really hit me hard. It's 3 hours and 9 minutes long but I watched it all the way through in one sitting.
It follows the true, real story of a district attorney who looks into details around the event shortly after it happened and gets the exact same feeling as you, where he looks around wonders whether he's taking crazy pills or if everyone else is taking crazy pills. So he goes deeper and tries to find out which is the case...
Highly recommend this film. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138/
I think it's just a throwaway reference to "back and to the left", a frequently parodied line from the movie JFK.
> The movie JFK is basically a documentary
Goodness me, no. Have you read the sources Oliver Stone borrowed from when cooking it up? To say they are fantasies would be giving a disservice to the word.
The movie JFK is basically a documentary (with many wrong details) and is the reason for the law that lead to these files being released.
You know how people say it would be impossible to cover up something so big? It would have to leak?
Well, it did. The CIA/Mafia/Cuban assassination connection is firmly established fact now. Among many other important facts use to be "conspiracy theories."
Motivations tl;dr https://i.imgur.com/WEjm2ig.jpg
When I was young and loved the movie JFK I thought it was a huge conspiracy. Then I went to Daley plaza, its so much smaller than it seems on tv, that window is really close. I think any reasonably trained shooter could have got him.
<never have been Oswald. It convinced me.
If you ever go to Dallas visit the Sixth Floor (jfk.org). A 30min - 2 hour visit. Stand near where oswald stood. Talk to employee/volunteers about jfk the movie and other theories.
It's moving and if you were alive in '63 a place you recognize
> There is at least one eyewitness that saw Oswald in the window from the ground below.
This kind of statement is what makes the "lone nut" theory seem shaky to me. People say this over and over again, as if to make it true, and it relies on the audience not really knowing the facts very tightly.
Here's the reality: lots of people reporting seeing someone in the window. Only one, Howard Brennan, provided a description that matched Oswald's profile (which, after all, was just white male near the median height).
He said he saw Oswald there minutes before the shooting, when Oswald was seen by several people on the first-floor.
Brennan's account was also quite strange: he said that the shooter was standing and that he was able to see the shooter's pants, both of which are obviously impossible. He claimed that he heard the first shot and then looked over at the TSBD, seeing the rifleman, but the Zapruder film clearly shows him doing what everyone else did: looking over at the grassy knoll at the sound of the first shot (be reminded that the vast majority of witnesses claimed that the shots came from that direction).
He failed to pick Oswald out of a lineup.
Here's a great summary of the Oswald / Dealy Plaza eyewitness evidence:
http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-assassination-grassy-knoll-witnesses
> Firing on the motorcade where he did was an easier shot -- the car was moving away from him and at an angle that made his necessary movement much less than if the motorcade was coming at him.
I just... I want to understand this position, but it's just absolutely crazy to me. It's like saying that position 4 on a skeet range is easier than position 1. Have you ever played JFK Reloaded? Does that not show you how much easier the shot on Houston is?
> The two black gentlemen sitting in the window just below oswald testified over and over that they heard the shells hitting the floor just above them.
It's certainly possible that somebody fired a weapon from the 6th floor. I don't think there's particularly strong evidence that it was Oswald. I also think that it's likely that it was a talented, trained, experienced long-range specialist, capable of setting up and firing in under 5 seconds.
> Connally's testimony, frankly, doesn't matter.
Brother / Sister: Don't you see how brashly you are casting aside evidence? This is the person who was literally closest to the murdered President. An experienced hunter. Former military man. How can you just brush off his testimony?
I mean, this is the crux of the case. Connally was not hit by the same bullet, and it's really, really clear. He said so. His wife said so. The motorcycle office right next to him said so. The video shows him almost a full second after the first shot, still holding his hat (with the hand that was shattered by a bullet (I believe a fraction of a second later)) and pretty clearly unwounded.
I just... it feels like you're ignoring all of the most important evidence. I mean, what say you about these things? Don't you think that Bugliosi does some pretty serious backflips to get around this stuff?
> The two black gentlemen sitting in the window just below oswald testified over and over that they heard the shells hitting the floor just above them.
I'm not sure what relevance their color or that they testified "over and over" has. OK, so it's completely possible that somebody was firing from the 6th floor. Indeed several witnesses said so.
But was it Oswald? Or was it somebody far more talented? Somebody with the proper training and experience to be able to set up and fire in 5 seconds, hitting a moving target at 80 yards?
Look: I can respect your position that there is no physical evidence that any person other than Oswald was involved. I even acknowledge that there is some inculpatory evidence against Oswald.
But I think it's a bridge too far to suggest that it's a certainly.
My assessment is that Oswald was not the shooter. If he had a fair trial today, I have to believe that he'd be acquitted.
It's not the same people?
If there was a conspiracy it would have been a small clique (most of whom would now be dead) not the whole government or even official channels thereof. In other words it would have been a crime.
These files were slated to be released as ordered by Congress after the JFK film.
BTW TIL Trump is trying to claim credit for what is a scheduled release.
Wow. I wouldn't unilaterally condemn all of Oliver Stone's movies. Salvador was amazing, as was JFK.
I think the first article falls for the easiest of traps: it's a movie, not a documentary.
Every single movie "based on real events" is pretty much made up. Pointing to the differences between the movie and real life is (IMHO) a pointless exercise. More so when it's used then to justify a political position.
Put another way: as good as JFK is, I wouldn't put anyone in jail because of it.
Or inventing a conspiracy theory around the JFK assassination?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)#Critical_reaction
Hollywood didn't do that to Amadeus; Peter Shaffer did. It was a very successful play (and even further from a historical document) before it became a period movie.
JFK is another odd example; the movie was notorious as a departure from the historical record, and cemented Stone's reputation as a conspiracy enthusiast. Very shortly after the film was released, that reputation became part of the marketing for the movie!
> When Hollywood mythologizes a real story that has captured the public imagination and is emblematic of our era, it's Hollywood at it's finest. It's Hollywood doing exactly what it ought to be doing but rarely does.
The problem is that Hollywood sometimes "mythologizes" a real story in the vernacular, non-academic sense of the quoted term: It adopts a false narrative, often in the form of a conspiracy theory, which then gets embedded in our collective cultural memory for a long time. (Examples: Amadeus; Zero Dark Thirty; Oliver Stone's JFK [0].)
Another version is when Hollywood creates a false narrative, or sub-narratives, in the name of "making a catchier story line" and with the excuse of "artistic license," which unjustly damage the reputations of real people. (Examples: Spotlight and All the President's Men. [1] [2].)
[0] http://www.livescience.com/27364-oscars-innacurate-historical-films.html
[1] http://news.wgbh.org/post/how-hollywood-distorts-reality-spotlight-example
[2] http://www.mhsmantra.com/2014/04/06/history-vs-hollywood-miracle/
No director is perfect. Oliver Stone had a few duds, but he also made some excellent movies: JFK, Any Given Sunday, Platoon, Talk Radio, Wall Street...
If you have to criticize him, you could say that his recent movies have not been up to the bar he set in the '90s -- but it definitely was a very high bar.
I'm much more worried about Gordon-Levitt playing Snowden, from the trailer he looks pretty bland.
It starts with a comparison between William Randolph Hearst and the film Citizen Hearst, saying "But he didn't call the movie Citizen Hearst. He called it Citizen Kane, and it's now regarded by many as the best film ever made." Whereas with the new Jobs film, "his entertaining work of fiction isn't labeled for what it is."
Wouldn't a better comparison be to Oliver Stone's JFK?
What makes this more odd is how the essay goes on to say:
> It would be as if you made a movie called JFK almost entirely focused on Kennedy's womanizing and political rivalries, and said nothing about civil rights and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Or, you know, a film with exactly that title but entirely focused on his assassination.
I just watched the movie last night for the 2nd time, thinking that I was in for a completely fictionalized story, because I had uncritically accepted sensational blog titles like the one you linked to.
Turns out, the movie is a rather good depiction of the struggles that Nash went through. He published a groundbreaking paper as a grad student, married Alicia, suffered from schizophrenia, and learned how to manage it, eventually going back to Princeton as a damaged but wiser man, and worthy of a Nobel prize in economics. All of these major points were covered in the movie.
Nash himself found the movie to be close to reality, except that it may have suggested that he went back on newer antipsychotics--see the interview he gave to a Nobel reporter 10 years ago[1]. In fact, the movie was much more fair to his point of view than he admitted in the interview.
Some details of his life were left out, but his reputation as the "Ghost of Fine Hall" was preserved. I see the film as a fair presentation of his life, especially compared to the Hollywood standard for "true stories"--see The Hurricane, American Gangster, JFK, etc.
[1] http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=429
Needs some work to improve both relevance and ranking algorithms. For example:
I'm watching the movie JFK, so I tried a search for Jack Ruby.
I found a teacher named Jack Ruby's videos, the Ruby Fortune online casino, the bar Ruby Tuesday, and a lot of other irrelevant results.
Nothing about the famous Jack Ruby in the first four pages.
I confirmed one of the claims in the movie JFK myself.
I'm always more interested in proof of a conspiracy, than in evidence of any particular parties guilt. This is usually easier to find, because the conspiracy itself leaves more evidence in harder to control situations than the crime does.
One good example of this is something I was able to confirm myself by direct examination.
In JFK there's a scene that really struck me, where Kevin Costner is getting filled in by Mr. X in Washington. He tells JFK that the papers in New Zealand have full write-ups of LHO that would be impossible without a pre-planted cover up story.
So, one day I found myself in New Zealand and went to a university library and looked up the papers on that day.
LHO was arrested approx. 1:40pm, Dallas time. Time Zone differences: NZ is UTC +12 hours, Dallas is UTC -6 hours. Thus LHO was arrested on November 23rd, at 7:40AM NZ Time.
Yet the morning papers on the 23rd, a Saturday, which came out between 8AM and 10AM (it varies by the edition) had a write up of LHO's dossier.
In the 1960s they did have telephones so the news could have easily reached NZ by then. However, printing tonnes of newspapers takes time, as does writing a story and distributing the papers.
The papers likely went to print in the middle of the night before-- which is before the assassination even happened.
I wanted proof, and I got it.
The people who don't believe are not interested in evidence and will take any rationalizations presented to them at face value. This is the reason that, every year or every 5 years, in November, we get these asinine "there was no conspiracy" stories like this one.
Check my account name, I won't be back (assuming I don't get hellbanned for the "crime" of disagreeing with the hive mind, like so many do.)
A good re-telling of the 'real' Bonnie & Clyde story, though I suspect some of the author's personal opinion on wider matters is revealed through excellent quotes like
"the legendary Penn movie that invented the New Bonnie and Clyde was such a ideological crock that it deserves placement in that list of other leftist crocks mistaken by gullible critics and film lovers as somehow great: Beatty’s own Reds, the appalling JFK, and the toxic oeuvre of Michael Moore and his tribe of screwball clones"