JFK: The Book of the Film

by Oliver Stone

A book version of the screenplay of the Oliver Stone film. The book is complete with historical annotation, with 340 research notes and 97 reactions and commentaries by Norman Mailer, Tom Wicker, Gerald R. Ford, and many others.

Genres: Film, History, Politics, Nonfiction

672 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

Oliver Stone is the multiple Oscar-winning writer and director of Platoon, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killer, Midnight Express, and many other films.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

SYRIA, JFK AND THINKING ABOUT THINKING

The BBC tells me :

Syrian opposition activists, rescue workers and medics say more than 40 people were killed on 7 April in a suspected chemical attack on Douma, which was the last rebel-held town in the Eastern Ghouta region.

Syrian government and Russian spokesmen have dismissed this. They say there was no chemical attack at all, the footage was faked to provide a pretext for an unprovoked missile attack by the western Allies on 14 April.

The same accusations followed by flat denials happened after the Salisbury nerve agent attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal on 4th March. According to Theresa May it was Putin; according to Putin it was MI6 trying to frame him.

We flounder in a blizzard of fake news, but some of the news is true. How are we, the ordinary people, we who have no security clearance, we who know nobody who is anybody, how do we figure out what’s going on? When everything is disputed, how do we begin?

The JFK assassination is one of the great examples of disputed history. 55 years later there is no agreement about one of the most public of events. How could this be? I found myself being drawn into the JFK whirlpool. I had discovered the big kahuna, Vincent Bugliosi’s 1600 page Reclaiming History, which is the massive restatement of the official position, that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and acted alone. I knew that maybe 80% of the American people don’t believe that. 80% of the American population is 260 million people – so where do they get their JFK information from?

The biggest, most popular pro-conspiracy statement is Oliver Stone’s 3 hour long movie JFK. So it was time to watch the movie and reread the book of the movie.



The movie is brilliant (6 Oscar nominations and 2 wins for cinematography and editing – absolutely right, both are fantastic.) If you don’t believe in the conspiracy, of course, this makes JFK the most successful lying propaganda film of all time and a terrible disservice to the American public. Don’t mean to be insulting but if you think LHO killed JFK by himself, then that’s what it is.

Vincent Bugliosi says this :

Not even God can change the past. However, if we define history in the broader sense of that which succeeding generations believe and accept as the truth, then Stone, more than any other single American, is responsible for 75% of Americans currently believing that a dark and wide-ranging conspiracy involving the higher reaches of our government was responsible for the death of President Kennedy.

(Vince takes 90 pages in his big ole book to demolish the movie in detail. Vince does everything in detail.)

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SAY THAT YOU BELIEVE THERE WAS A CONSPIRACY?

The one proposed by the movie, as explained in two giant speeches, was perpetrated by the dark forces of the “military-industrial complex”. There were meetings involving those at the “very highest level”. Kennedy’s Vietnam policy was the problem. He wanted to pull out. Contracts worth billions would vanish in smoke if that happened. So a decision was arrived at – he had to go. Three shooters were organised, the motorcade route was fixed so Kennedy’s car would slow down to ten mph at one point, creating a “kill zone”. Normal security surrounding the presidential visit was “stood down” on the day. A patsy was secured to take the rap. It was all arranged.
These were the men really in charge of America in 1963, men who would do that. Principles? None. Democracy and the rule of law? Don’t make us laugh. Does this make America in 1963 like any tin pot dictatorship where you get elections with only one candidate, fictitious voters lists and stuffed ballot boxes, where the military have only contempt for the people? Yes, although a lot more complicated than those countries. Was America really governed by a crypto-fascist warmongering elite? So the conspiracy says (the one put forward in the movie).

Vincent Bugliosi 15 years after the film put the matter like this :

Even if we imagine the unimaginable, that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and leaders of American industry were crazy enough to be willing to murder kennedy would they be so crazy as not to at least first try to beat him at the ballot box by putting all their money, power and influence behind his opponent when he came up for election in just one year?

Next question: was this elite, the elite which (literally) called the shots, ever got rid of, or has it been in charge of the USA since the 1960s?

Leading to the next question: is the USA a democracy at all? Or is all the voting just smoke & mirrors, the distractions used by the stage magician? Come on, sheeple, wake up!

I think the 260 million Americans are not really thinking that. But the implications of the belief in a conspiracy tend inexorably towards the rewriting of what up to now has been an accepted historical American reality, that it is a (more or less) democratic country of the people (more or less) by the people (more or less) and for the people (more or less - and eventually, once you have redefined the non white population as “people” – that took some time. LBJ, the beneficiary of this conspiracy, tried his best to make that happen).

I think the 260 million Americans more or less sort of shrug and say well, you know, it looks so fishy, one nutty guy who happens to be a great marksman, three shots, including a magic bullet which zig zagged, then some other lone gunman conveniently knocks off the patsy before he can start to spill the beans, must have been something going on. And some of them have seen the movie and think yes, I sort of thought as much. Damn, it should be shown in every school!

ANOTHER STRANGE THING

But if the conspiracy could rise to the massive crime of killing the president, you might have thought they could have put Oliver Stone in a body bag before his movie came out and blew the lid off. After all, we know about how all those annoying witnesses ended up dead. Come to that, why aren’t all the major conspiracy theorists dead too?

JUST A PERSONAL TENDENCY

I find it a lot easier to believe in the lone gunman theory. Actually, just to be clear, I believe in it because I think it’s true! Every other week in America lone gunmen decide to shoot some people. We are all very familiar with this aspect of society. Quite a number of these types have had a go at the President. It’s not that unusual.

But I confess a psychological tendency towards disbelief in any conspiracy. It wasn’t Mossad or the Bush government who attacked the World Trade Center; they did land on the moon; the MRI vaccine does not cause autism; the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fake, and Sandy Hook was real.

THE BOOK OF THE FILM : A STRANGE BEAST

The first third of this book is the screenplay, but :

It is not the final film. Certain scenes in this screenplay have been cut and some have been transposed to other places in the film.

So an already complicated and possibly confusing film which intersperses actual documentary footage with staged footage with made up scenes (“speculations on what might have happened” Stone writes) is made that much more complicated by this odd decision to use an early draft.
The rest of the book is a whole bundle of articles about the movie and to Stone’s credit all the ferocious attacks are included. Except for that launched by Vincent Bugliosi 15 years later of course.

For anyone wishing to begin their slide down the biggest rabbithole in US history, the movie and this book is a great place to start. That’s why it gets 5 stars from me.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Watch the Stone film here

AND/OR more importantly, IMHO:

Christopher Hitchens vs JFK (the movie) and others...

[Mmmjay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am fortunate enough to have a signed copy (by Oliver Stone) of this book. Highly recommeded reading.

[Steven H · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE SCREENPLAY OF THE FILM, DIVERSE REVIEWS OF IT, PLUS HISTORICAL DOCS

Filmmaker Oliver Stone explained in his introduction to the screenplay which is included in this 1992 book, “The following film is based on the investigation of District Attorney Jim Garrison of New Orleans into the mystery of President Kennedy’s murder. It includes information gathered from public sources and from the private investigations of the JFK research community. Deep thanks go to them for their unceasing public-minded efforts. Most of the characters are real; a few are composites based on real people. Certain events are speculations on what might have happened. In some cases the names have bene changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty. The screenplay is the original source from which the filmmakers worked. It is not the final film. Certain scenes in this screenplay have been cut and some have been transposed to other places in the film.”

Of the famous scene with ‘X’ (Donald Sutherland in the film), Stone explains, “‘X’ is loosely based on Col. L. Fletcher Prouty USAF (Ret.) who served as Chief of Special Operations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy years. While the authors met with Prouty, Jim Garrison did not meet him until several years after the Clay Shaw trial. However, over the course of his investigation Garrison came to believe that the root causes of the assassination loomed much larger than the plot in New Orleans.” (Pg. 105)

Frank Mankiewicz said of the film, “Within a few years, an overwhelming majority of Americans had put on the record their strong disbelief in the preposterous Warren Commission verdict… that the lone gunman Oswald had killed President Kennedy (for no discernible motive)… the American preoccupation with the murder of our President remained unsatisfied… WHY was he killed? How could the famous ‘single bullet’ have performed so many changes of course and erratic deviations and even a one-second pause in its flight through the bodies and limbs of President Kennedy and Governor Connally?... Those who maintained these were unimportant questions that need not be answered were the true distorters of history, and the American public, by an overwhelming majority, knew it all the time.” (Pg. 188)

Jon Margolis said of the movie, “Stone is one of those who sees conspiracies everywhere. ‘We have a fascist security state running this country,’ he told a Los Angeles Times interviewer. ‘Orwell did happen. But it’s so subtle that no one noticed.’ How fortunate is he to be so much more observant than everyone else, to see this reality hidden from us mere mortals. But then, we’re all pretty fortunate, living in the world’s first fascist security state that freely allows dissent of its war policies throughout a war.” (Pg. 190)

George Lardner Jr. observes in his film review, “Since this is Oliver Stone, the ‘why’ of the assassination should come as no surprise. It’s Vietnam, of course… DA Costner assails the murder as ‘a coup d’état’… ordered up by ‘a shadow government consisting of corrupt men at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the intelligence establishment and the giant multinational corporations…’ The screenplay ends … with … Johnson meeting with his Vietnam advisors… and tells them: ‘Gentlemen, I want you to know I’m personally committed to Vietnam. I’m not going to take one soldier out of there till they know we mean business in Asia.’ This is nonsense. In a memo L.B.J. signed after that Sunday meeting, he explicitly stated that the 1,000 troop withdrawal would be carried out. And it was. There was no abrupt change in Vietnam policy after J.F.K.’s death.” (Pg. 197)

Stone himself explains, “The movie… does use the Garrison investigation as the vehicle to explore the various credible assassination theories, and incorporates everything that has been discovered in the 20 years since Garrison’s effort… What I hope this film will do… is remind people… to ask anew what might have happened and why.” (Pg. 199)

Robert Sam Anson states, “The one Stoen heard out most intently was a former Air Force colonel L. Fletcher Prouty. An aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy years, Prouty since his retirement had become a quirky critic of the CIA, sometimes in books… more often in the pages of Gallery, one of the raunchier porno magazines. It was the colonel’s theorizing about the assassination, however, that made him indispensable to Stone. According to Prouty, Kennedy had been the victim of a military-industrial-complex plot triggered by his plan to withdraw from Vietnam… Delighted to discover a beribboned source with views he’d come to only by instinct, [Stone] signed Prouty on as a technical adviser and rejiggered the script to include a Prouty-like character (Mr. X) who reveals to Garrison the full dimensions of the conspiracy.” (Pg. 218-219)

Roger Ebert observes, “Stoen is Hollywood’s angriest director, a man who … seems to be saying that he was lied to back in the 1960s, and now he wants to set the record straight.” (Pg. 251)

Former President Gerald Ford (who was a member of the Warren Commission) and David W. Belin say of Stone’s film and the A&E ‘The Men Who Killed Kennedy’ series, “Nowhere does the A&E telecast … show the vivid testimony of the single most important witness to the assassination---Howard Brennan, who actually saw the gunman fire from the southeast corner window… the window where cartridge cases were found, and ballistically were shown to have come from Oswald’s rifles… Nowhere do the viewers learn that the most probable time span of Oswald’s three shots was around ten seconds… Instead, Garrison speaks only of three shots being fired within 5.6 seconds, when most likely the 5.6-second time span was between the two shots that struck the president… Nowhere … does the viewer ever learn that six eye-witnesses … saw Oswald at the Tippet murder scene or running away … with gun in hand, and positively identified Oswald as the gunman… and ballistic evidence proved that this was the Tippet murder weapon.” (Pg. 256) (Stone refers to Ford and Belin as “the last of a dying breed: Warren Commission apologists… The 1976-1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations … concluded that the CIA, the FBI, and military intelligence withheld information from the Warren Commission, and these agencies and the commission never thoroughly investigated even the possibility of conspiracy.” (Pg. 257)

The December 23, 1991 issue of Newsweek pointed out, “Some findings of the Warren Commission that do not appear in the movie: [Oswald] was the owner of the … rifle found on the sixth floor of the Depository building. Ballistics tests show that the bullets that struck Kennedy and Connally came from that rifle. *The morning of the assassination, Oswald carried to work a long, thin paper parcel---‘curtain rods,’ he said. Paper wrapping consistent with that … was found on the sixth floor… *The autopsy on Kennedy’s body produced the unanimous medical finding that all the shots stat struck him came from the rear… The committee determined that the rearward movement of the hear could have come from nerve damage…” (Pg. 291)

In an interview, Stone says of the Zapruder film, “it shows … the fatal head shot coming from the front, from the fence… it shows the time frame of the shots, which makes it very difficult to believe Oswald fires three shots in 5.6 seconds. And of course it raises the whole question of how Kennedy and Connally were shot by the same bullet.” (Pg. 300)

Kenneth Klein notes that the Zapruder film “shows Kennedy’s head moving backward after being hit. Of course, there are no other motion pictures of people being shot that could have been used for comparison purposes. Instead, the committee consulted an expert on gunshot wounds who determined that nerve damage from a bullet… could have caused his back muscles to tighten, which … could have caused his head to move toward the rear…” (Pg. 310)

Richard M. Mosk of the Los Angeles Times notes, “over the years 19 doctors examined the Kennedy autopsy photographs and x-rays and concluded that all the shots struck President Kennedy from the rear… Scientific evidence (including neutron-activation analysis, which ‘JFK’ dismisses as ‘mere physics’) had repeatedly established the single bullet conclusion---that… one shot struck Kennedy’s neck, exited the front without hitting any bones and hit Gov. Connally causing all his wounds. To inflict those wounds, the bullet did not have to be deformed or change course, as sarcastically suggested in ‘JFK.’ … a congressional committee in the 1970s supported the single bullet theory, but at the last moment found the acoustics evidence suggested the likelihood of a second gunman. Subsequently, a ballistics acoustics group of the National Research Council determined that the committee’s acoustics was wrong. The Justice Department … also concluded that there was no acoustical evidence of a second gunman shooting from the front.” (Pg. 334)

Stone wrote in a letter to the New York Times, “Nowhere in the Warren Commission materials is there an explanation of the backward movement of the President’s head. Moreover, a Federal Bureau of Investigation ‘printing error’ of crucial Zapruder film frames in the commission volumes gave the impression that the President fell FORWARD---exactly the opposite of what the running film shows. The autopsy photos and x-rays show no damage to the major nerve centers of Kennedy’s brain, making such a neuromuscular reaction impossible.” (Pg. 390)

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. points out, “the more enduring residue of ‘JFK’ will be the questions the film raises about the adequacy of the Warren Commission inquiry. These questions are legitimate… We now know that the CIA and the FBI withheld vital information from the commission. I think these agencies withheld the information for reasons of bureaucratic self-protection; but… the result was an inadequate investigation… A powerful case can be made against the theory that the same bullet struck both President Kennedy and Gov. John Connally. This argues for a second gunman. [The movie] both makes that case an impairs it… I find it difficult to exclude the conspiracy theory---or to accept it. Were the bumblers of the Dallas Police Department in the great conspiracy? The hospital’s medical staff? The Secret Service” How far did the conspiracy extend? The wider the conspiracy, the more likely … that some survivor on the conspiracy’s fringe would sell his memoirs to People magazine for $10 million. Nothing like this has yet happened.” (Pg. 395)

The New York Times did an editorial which stated, “Oliver Stone… is right to call for release of assassination documents that have been sealed for decades and are scheduled to remain so for decades more… It now makes sense to release as much of the underlying evidence as possible. The easiest disclosure would be the release of overclassified documents in files generated by the House committee… Congress and the executive branch would serve the public by maximizing disclosure of the facts surrounding that fateful day in Dallas.” (Pg. 408-409)

William Manchester states, “I needed no authority to assess Oswald’s marksmanship. As a World War II Marine, I had qualified as an expert rifleman… Oswald, a former Marine, had also qualified. In Dallas he was equipped with a … rifle and four-power telescopic sight. His target… was only 88 yards away from his sniper’s nest. At that distance, a trained marksman could scarcely miss.” (Pg. 451-452)

David Belin notes, Dr. Alfred Oliver explained, “a head wound such as that sustained by President Kennedy produces an ‘explosion’ of tissue at the area where the bullet exits from the head, causing a ‘jet effect’ which almost instantly moves the head back in the direction from which the bullet came.” (Pg. 461)

This book gives ‘all sides’ of the controversies, and will be “must reading” for anyone interested in Stone’s film, or JFK ‘conspiracy’ theories.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

JFK by Oliver Stone, creator of Platoon http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/02/p... and more fabulous films

8 out of 10





In some ways this is the perfect motion picture, with a brilliant (if often excessive, in awe of dictators) director, fantastic cast, captivating story, alert rhythm, enticing propositions, a mix with everything in it, and yet, what it sells you is a lie, which is not on the scale of the ‘stolen elections’ scenario, but nevertheless, the story that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by the CIA, Cubans, the Mafia or a combination of these is absurd.



Not absurd, it is wrong to put it that way, maybe just because it makes some ‘sense’, we are able to watch this long movie, and even get excited by it – my favorite discovery of these past years is Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis, I have read about twenty five of his masterpieces and have been elated, one of them is The King’s English http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/07/t...

The glorious author looks at a number of words and how they have changed, lost their significance – take infamous, which comes from infamy, but had arrived at the stage where it is used for ‘famous’, and therefore, Sir Kingsley Amis says it is no longer recommended – and he mentions exciting, which because of advertising and media was used at such a frantic pace that everything was exciting, soap, toothpaste, shows…



JFK was a flawed man, I think I have read somewhere that he said ‘he must be with a woman (sleep) every other day or so’ and he did not mean Jackie (she was present in a documentary about Maria Callas, aired last night, and I have a feeling that she was not such a saintly figure either, and then what was all that fuss about her being gorgeous, she does not appeal to me in the least, as if this matters)

Notwithstanding that, he may have had the making of a great leader of the world (think of the Orange buffoon that may get elected, again god damn it, next year…compare him with JFK) and we could only refer to the Cuban Crisis, when humanity could have been terminated – what would Trump do in a major crisis, never mind that he creates them, he wants to bomb…Mexico, but how will we be doing when a self-obsessed ‘big brain and very stable genius’ self-proclaimed will be faced with Armageddon?



True, I answer my own rhetorical question and relax, for in really extreme situations, it may not matter, and we have brought ourselves on the brink collectively – I am reading a book on The Secret of Our Success, which argues that we ‘stand on the shoulders of hobbits, not giants, it is the wisdom of the crowds that took us where we are, so if it ends, it will not be the Confidence Man only, though he makes for a good paradigm



In the 1990s I was in the hospitality business – in short, I took part in the Revolution, and you will have a link at the end of this article, then met Michael Meyers from Newsweek, worked for the media and got a recommendation for the American Embassy and then offered them and the other entities, USAID, Peace Corps, American School, UK, Canada and other embassies tours – and met with a fellow, David Popp

His family came from Maramures, he had his father, no, I think it was the grandfather with him, and as he introduced himself as the client to go on the trip with me, after a couple of minutes he said ‘he is with the Secret Service’, which gave me a scare, for in our communist regime, that was associated with terror, oppression and all that, besides, Secret means secret, so how and why are you telling me that?



In the specialized motion pictures, you get that cliché ‘if we tell you, we have to shoot you’, but my client told me afterwards that the Secret Service is in fact the agency that offers protection to presidents and important officials (and curiously, it also deals with counterfeit currency, he would call me a few years later from Italy, where I think he was into that latter operation) and it is not really undercover, or not all that much

I asked David about JFK and the series of conspiracy theories surrounding the subject and he answered that it was Oswald Lee and there is nothing further to it, which is what I believe…if we do some psycho or just analysis, then it is true that with conspiracy theories all over the place, there is an allergy, bringing something to absolute exaggeration, hearing falsehoods ad nauseam, you refute even sensible theories



However, this is what the motion picture and Oliver Stone argue, making a solid case, as in they put together a puzzle that seems to fit, you start believing that all these Cubans (Joe Pesci in a flamboyant appearance) must have wanted JFK dead, and then the Mafia, which saw its dealings compromised, they thought they had access to Kennedy, there is another film that says they pushed women, or one in particular (it would not be Marilyn, do you think) and wanted to control the president through blackmail…

President Kennedy was in fact very sick, a documentary (actually, there must be more than one) explains how he was drugged to be able to stand the pain and basically function – if I remember this well, but he was horny as hell, though if we look at the depths to which the standards have plunged, with the Supreme Ghoul elected after he talked of ‘grabbing women by their pussy’, and with four years of bedlam, madness still a favorite to become the Republican nominee, with ninety one counts and four jurisdictions where he is on parole and say that JFK was Saint Augustine when compared with Satan himself, for those who believe in scriptures…that is exactly those who side evil these days alas



Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se



As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

[Christopher Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

The research and footnotes behind the movie which I thought has been quite underrated

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I have far more to say about this book than I could ever hope to pack into a one-paragraph review. So for now at least it will have to suffice to say that I immensely enjoyed the first part of this work, which was a reproduction of Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar’s screenplay for the famous (or perhaps infamous) movie about Jim Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination. The notes in particular were fascinating, supplying the kind of background information I was hoping for when I watched the DVD with the commentary track on. However, the screenplay takes up only the first third or so of the book. The rest is devoted primarily to critics, pundits and politicians – including a handful of guys from the Warren Commission and its staff – taking potshots at Stone, who more often than not fires back. Parts of it were interesting (especially to a student of journalism and the media like myself), but it became more than a little repetitive after awhile. Some selections were also in desperate need of better proofing. That notwithstanding, I found the overall work thought-provoking to say the least.

[yashar · Rating 4 out of 5]

فیلمنامه جان اف کندی. این فیلم به موضوع ترورمشکوک رییس جمهور آمریکا می پردازد . مصاحبه با شاهدان واقعا تکان دهنده هست . پیشنهاد می کنم حتما بخونید

[احسان · Rating 5 out of 5]

آنقدر فوق العاده بود که یک شب گرفتم دستم و تا تمام نشد از جا بلند نشدم

[Saman]

در صورت تمایل، جهت مشخصات فیلمی که بر اساس این کتاب ساخته شده‌ است؛ می‌توانید از لینک زیر استفاده بفرمایید
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102138

[Karen Lilley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really amazing book