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JFK
- 348 statements
- 67 feature instances
- 26 referencing feature instances
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JFK is a 1991 film directed and co-written by Oliver Stone about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its aftermath, based around the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner). After reading the Warren Report and finding it unsatisfactory, Garrison decides to launch an investigation on his own. After reviewing witness reports and interviewing some people on his own, Garrison becomes convinced Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, and that all of the suspicious events seem to be circling a Louisiana businessman named Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), who goes by the alias Clay Bertrand. Shaw has connections to Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman), the CIA, the FBI, and others.After his case gains publicity, Garrison is invited to Washington, D.C. for a confidential meeting. The man (Donald Sutherland), who goes only by the name "X", says that Garrison is closer to the truth than he thinks, and gives him background information regarding his suspicions that JFK was killed by a conspiracy involving the CIA, the military, and business interests (the "Military-Industrial Complex") in order to, among other things, stop him from bringing The Vietnam War and the Cold War to an end for unknown goals.Invigorated by this new information, Garrison arrests Shaw for conspiracy and puts him on trial, detailing his entire theory about the assassination and the various inconsistencies with the "official story", most famously the theory of the "magic bullet". Despite his passionate push at the trial (and, as was later revealed, the belief by jury members that there was a conspiracy) Shaw is acquitted of all charges.The film was and still is intensely controversial for its liberal use of Artistic License in depicting the events of both the Kennedy Assassination and Garrison's investigation. In response, Stone claimed the movie is not meant to be the definitive investigation into Kennedy's death, but a “counter-myth� to the official account and an allegory of the general public's frustration with not knowing the actual truth. On the other hand, Stone asserted the film’s accuracy by releasing an annotated screenplay with all of his references and still reiterates many of the same themes and theses in interviews and in his non-allegorical 2021 documentary JFK: Through the Looking Glass.The movie was a major critical and box office success, winning two Academy Awards (for editing and cinematography), and was nominated for six more, losing Best Picture to The Silence of the Lambs.Based on the books On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire by Jim Marrs.Not to be confused with Killing Kennedy, the docudrama about JFK and Oswald which has Oswald as the lone gunman. | |
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Breaking the Fourth Wall | |
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Breaking the Fourth Wall: The final line of Garrison's closing statement at the trial of Clay Shaw ("It's up to you") is delivered directly to the camera. | |
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Who Shot JFK? | |
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Who Shot JFK?: The Movie. Ultimately, the film leaves the answer up to the viewer, other than "It was totally a conspiracy, we swear". | |
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Aborted Arc | |
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Aborted Arc: Garrison’s first clue is David Ferrie’s Blatant Lies about his activities in Texas during the assassination, heavily implying he was involved. However, the film never delves any deeper into this even during Ferrie’s later (fictional) confession, nor does Garrison ever speculate any actual role for Ferrie in the assassination. The film initially paints the assassination as a far-right False Flag Operation for an invasion of Cuba, but since such an invasion obviously never happened despite the conspiracy’s ostensible success, the film switches midstream in favor of a more nebulous conspiracy to escalate the Vietnam War. | |
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Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds | |
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Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: The film spins simple mistaken impressions and miscommunication into allegations that this trope was used to hide that JFK was shot from multiple directions. In actuality, the doctors at Parkland never saw JFK’s back wound so they just assumed the bullet entered his throat before immediately widening the wound into an emergency tracheotomy. Consequently, when the pathologists at Bethesda discovered the back wound they didn’t recognize the throat wound, assumed there was no exit, and opted to X-ray for the bullet rather than completely dissect the president’s neck.note They initially tried probing the wound, but were obstructed by muscles that’d closed back into the wound, which some conspiracists (including this film) claim as evidence that the back wound was shallow. The pathologists cleared all this up the next day by phoning the Parkland doctors before writing up their final report. | |
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Anachronism Stew | |
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Anachronism Stew: Several witnesses and pieces of evidence investigated or presented by Garrison at the 1969 Shaw trial didn’t emerge until the 1970s. Immediately after the assassination, Guy Bannister proposes a toast to “Camelot in smithereens," even though "Camelot" as a term for the Kennedy presidency stems from a post-assassination Life Magazine interview with Jackie Kennedy in which she referred to JFK’s love for the musical Camelot and compared their time in the White House to the lyrics, "Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot." The film presents Lee Bowers’ statements from Mark Lane’s 1966 book Rush to Judgement as if they were his testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964. In their first meeting, Garrison confronts Shaw with an Italian newspaper accusing him of involvement in a CIA front for political espionage tied to an assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle.note The film obscures that this paper was Paese Sera, a sensationalist tabloid tied to the Italian Communist Party which offered no credible evidence for its claims. This meeting is framed by footage of Mardi Gras (February 1967) but says it’s Easter Sunday (March 26, 1967) when in fact Garrison first interviewed Shaw just before Christmas on December 23, 1966 and indicted him on March 1, 1967, three days before that article was published. | |
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Bury Your Gays | |
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Bury Your Gays: David Ferrie is hunted down and forcibly overdosed on drugs by agents of the conspiracy. In real life, he died of an aneurysm after years of poor health. | |
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Bondage Is Bad | |
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The real Jim Garrison tried to railroad an innocent man, Shaw, after his investigation came up empty. The trial was a fiasco and many of his theory's particulars (namely, that Oswald, Shaw and Ferrie were not only co-conspirators but a sadomasochistic homosexual thrill-killing love triangle) were by all accounts preposterous, leading many to accuse Garrison of homophobia. The movie makes a passing mention to Garrison's later indictment on bribery and corruption charges, but passes them off as a smear concocted by the Government Conspiracy to discredit him (which, to be fair, the real Garrison insisted as well). Indeed, even many conspiracists protested the Shaw Trial and Garrison’s well-attested character flaws as tarnishing any genuine grounds for criticism of the official report. | |
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Frame-Up | |
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Garrison’s conspiracy case against Shaw relies almost exclusively on connecting Shaw to Oswald, yet his assertions of conspiracy are heavily predicated on absolving Oswald of the shooting. In this effort, Garrison portrays Oswald as the victim of a Frame-Up yet maintains he was killed because He Knows Too Much, ideas that are not only incongruent with each other but also with Garrison’s assertion that Shaw was part of the conspiracy because he then reached out to assist Oswald in finding a lawyer using a Paper-Thin Disguise. | |
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False Flag Operation | |
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The film initially paints the assassination as a far-right False Flag Operation for an invasion of Cuba, but since such an invasion obviously never happened despite the conspiracy’s ostensible success, the film switches midstream in favor of a more nebulous conspiracy to escalate the Vietnam War. | |
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Off on a Technicality | |
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Off on a Technicality: Garrison’s primary evidence that Clay Shaw used the alias “Clay Bertrand� is thrown out because Shaw’s lawyer wasn’t present at his booking.note In fact, Shaw’s lawyer was in the police station but was involved with other officials while Shaw was at the booking desk. The movie implies this wasn’t legally sound and may have been part of the Government Conspiracy to keep Shaw from being convicted. In real life, the judge took over questioning and determined there was substantial evidence that the booking officer had badly violated procedure by transferring the attributed alias from the arrest sheet to a pre-signed fingerprint formnote It being impractical for Shaw to sign afterward with fingerprint ink on his hands. without confirming it with Shaw, adding that under the circumstances even if the booking officer had asked Shaw about the alias it would’ve violated Shaw’s Miranda rights. | |
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Properly Paranoid | |
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Properly Paranoid: Jim Garrison starts feeling paranoid about what he's getting into even before he finds bugs planted in his offices.note For the record, his office was never bugged in real life. Possibly David Ferrie, too. | |
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Historical Figures in Archival Media | |
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Historical Figures in Archival Media: The film uses footage and photographs taken of Kennedy on the day of the assassination. | |
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| JFK / int_3b7ba342 | type |
Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy | |
| JFK / int_3b7ba342 | comment |
Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy: Both Garrison's hypothesis for the assassination, and Mr. X's unconfirmed suspicions, involve a vast plot to assassinate JFK, conceived and undertaken by a number of high-ranking officials and members of the military industrial complex as well as criminals, mercenaries and black ops soldiers. | |
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| JFK / int_3e8c87a3 | type |
Dated History | |
| JFK / int_3e8c87a3 | comment |
Dated History: Less than a week after the film hit theaters, the Soviet Union collapsed, ushering in an easing of Cold War secretiveness that allowed scholars unprecedented access to both American and Soviet sources that directly contradict many of the films suppositions about things like the inner workings of the Kennedy Administration, what Oswald actually did in Russia, and the KGB’s disinformation efforts to feed conspiracy theories. | |
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| JFK / int_3e8d9cd3 | type |
Historical Hero Upgrade | |
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Historical Hero Upgrade: The real Jim Garrison tried to railroad an innocent man, Shaw, after his investigation came up empty. The trial was a fiasco and many of his theory's particulars (namely, that Oswald, Shaw and Ferrie were not only co-conspirators but a sadomasochistic homosexual thrill-killing love triangle) were by all accounts preposterous, leading many to accuse Garrison of homophobia. The movie makes a passing mention to Garrison's later indictment on bribery and corruption charges, but passes them off as a smear concocted by the Government Conspiracy to discredit him (which, to be fair, the real Garrison insisted as well). Indeed, even many conspiracists protested the Shaw Trial and Garrison’s well-attested character flaws as tarnishing any genuine grounds for criticism of the official report. JFK himself is portrayed as a radical progressive and peacemaker while the real Kennedy was, for the most part, a typical Cold War liberal who campaigned on being tougher on the Soviets than Eisenhower and took a hard line on Cuba and Vietnam. The snippet of JFK telling Walter Cronkite that “in the last analysis, it’s [South Vietnam’s] war� is taken out of context from a longer interview where he also said that withdrawing American troops would be a mistake. While he did tell his advisers that he “hoped� he could withdraw troops from Vietnam in the future, JFK also said he couldn’t risk it until after the 1964 election because Republicans would turn it into a campaign issue, and by the time he was assassinated he had de facto committed the US to South Vietnam and the US-backed coup that killed Ngo Dinh Diem and left South Vietnam in chaos and dependent on US troops had already happened (though Kennedy regretted it almost immediately). The American University speech is taken out of context and presented as absolute proof that JFK was desperate to get along with the Soviets and end the Cold War, ignoring his brinksmanship over Cuba (which is blamed, naturally, on the CIA "lying" to him) and Berlin (where he challenged the Soviets on the world stage and said, “To those who think we can work with the Soviets, let them come to Berlin,� just weeks after his American University speech) and excusing the increases in military spending and armaments production that occurred during his administration. The opening narration also stresses Kennedy's support for the Civil Rights Movement, which was largely lukewarm until the last months of his presidency (the speech sampled in the film came in June 1963, just five months before his death) since he was very reluctant to alienate Southern Democrats, whom he was actively conciliating when he was shot. Conversely, there’s no acknowledgment of Lyndon Johnson’s work in actually passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (ironically by politicizing JFK as an Inspirational Martyr). Instead, the film defines LBJ entirely through his actions in Vietnam as a manipulative super-villain who rams the Tonkin Gulf Resolution through Congress to get elected. Jack Lemmon's character, Jack Martin, is portrayed as twitchy and evasive but basically honest. In real life, he had, prior to the events of the movie, worked as an abortion provider, and bragged about beating a murder rap when one of his unfortunate "patients" died. His claims about the assassination were also much less credible. "Mr. X" is based on L. Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and conspiracy theorist who served as an adviser to the film. The movie not only exaggerates his military role (he was not involved with Presidential security as "X" claims, nor was his role on the Joint Chiefs of Staff as important as the movie suggests) but ignores his less savory beliefs. Prouty was also an all-purpose conspiracy theorist who, among other claims, believed that the Jonestown Massacre was a government hoax, that Princess Diana was murdered by the CIA, and associated with the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying Liberty Lobby. More within the realms of standard Hollywood History, he didn't meet Garrison until years after Clay Shaw's trial. The real David Ferrie wasn’t just gay, he preferred teenage boys. | |
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Adaptational Heroism | |
| JFK / int_3f45f1e6 | comment |
The film is firmly rooted in the “Camelot� myth of the Kennedy Administration as an avaunt-garde champion of civil rights, Soviet rapprochement, and pacifism (see Adaptational Heroism), with any contradictions either ignored or excused as political necessity or the result of other’s lies. The film’s villains all fall into at least one of the three antithetical categories: racists, fascists, and the military-industrial complex. Moreover, the ultimate implication is that all the subsequent horrors of racial strife and the Vietnam War not only stem directly from Kennedy’s death, but do so because they were the desired outcome of JFK’s deep-state assassins. | |
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A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma | |
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A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: David Ferrie refers to the Kennedy assassination as "a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma" when trying to convince Jim Garrison to drop his investigation during a paranoia-fueled rant. | |
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Blatant Lies | |
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Garrison’s first clue is David Ferrie’s Blatant Lies about his activities in Texas during the assassination, heavily implying he was involved. However, the film never delves any deeper into this even during Ferrie’s later (fictional) confession, nor does Garrison ever speculate any actual role for Ferrie in the assassination. | |
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Leaning on the Fourth Wall | |
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Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Near the end of his monologue, Mr. X says "Don't take my word for it—don't believe me. Do your own work, your own thinking." Garrison looks directly into the camera when he says, “It’s up to you,â€� at the end of his summation. | |
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Tabloid Melodrama | |
| JFK / int_5094d45e | comment |
In their first meeting, Garrison confronts Shaw with an Italian newspaper accusing him of involvement in a CIA front for political espionage tied to an assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle.note The film obscures that this paper was Paese Sera, a sensationalist tabloid tied to the Italian Communist Party which offered no credible evidence for its claims. This meeting is framed by footage of Mardi Gras (February 1967) but says it’s Easter Sunday (March 26, 1967) when in fact Garrison first interviewed Shaw just before Christmas on December 23, 1966 and indicted him on March 1, 1967, three days before that article was published. | |
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Narrator | |
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Narrator: Martin Sheen narrates the opening montage. | |
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Artistic License – History | |
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Artistic License – History: It would be easier to list what the film didn't get wrong, and that's just concerning information not tied to the JFK assassination. Even Oliver Stone has stated regret at not making the film's fictional status clearer. When Garrison outlines what he believed happened in Dallas, he describes the outcomes of six shots. Nearly everyone at the scene (~80%) described only three, while another 10% heard only two, and only around 10% claimed four or more. In pointing out the supposed superimposed photo of Oswald holding the rifle, the film does not include the facts that Marina Oswald herself said that she took the photo, nor that she took several such photos (only one of which is commonly cited as supposedly being doctored), nor that the photos bore 11 scratch imperfections unique to Oswald's own camera, nor that investigators have successfully recreated the photo as early as 1967. The film's ending scroll declares that "In 1979, Richard Helms, director of Covert Operations in 1963, admitted that Clay Shaw had worked for the CIA." What Helms actually said was that Shaw had been a contact of the Domestic Contact Service from Dec 1948 to May 1956. That basically means Shaw was sometimes interviewed by the CIA about his frequent travels abroad (the transcripts of which are now declassified in the National Archives); he "worked for" the CIA in the same way any witness to a crime might work for the local police department. The ending also states that the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Kennedy's death was the result of a "probable conspiracy". What it doesn't say is that the committee's conclusion essentially agrees with the Warren Commission except for the new evidence provided by an audio recording that they lacked the budget to investigate further but has since been largely disproved. | |
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Renaissance Man | |
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Clay Shaw was, in real life, a Renaissance Man whose achievements in architecture, business and theater (he wrote several plays, one of them at age 16) are nigh-legendary, and who openly supported and backed John F. Kennedy. This film's Clay Shaw is a Depraved Homosexual lunatic with ties to various far-right groups before the assassination. Shaw was admired as a philanthropist and patron of the arts (he was friends with Tennessee Williams). Also there's no firm evidence he'd ever even met David Ferrie or Lee Harvey Oswald. | |
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Government Conspiracy | |
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Government Conspiracy: "X" and (eventually) Garrison, believe this is part of what killed Kennedy. | |
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Conspiracy Kitchen Sink | |
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Conspiracy Kitchen Sink: The film is essentially Oliver Stone’s attempt to collate the conflicting theories of prominent conspiracists Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Fletcher Prouty, and Jim Marrs into a single narrative. | |
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Sanity Slippage | |
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Sanity Slippage: David Ferrie, in spades. | |
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Freeze-Frame Bonus | |
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"General Y" is clearly M/Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, the military head of the real Anti-Castro Operation Mongoose. A Freeze-Frame Bonus of Y’s desk even bears the partially obscured nameplate “M/Gen. E.G. [La]nsd[al]e�. A major flaw in this is that Y (Lansdale) could hardly have had X (Prouty) Reassigned to Antarctica “one week after the murder of Vietnamese President Diem in Saigon� since Lansdale resigned the day before the Diem Coup because he refused to participate in it.note The real Prouty was informed of this assignment “a month or two� earlier and viewed it as a paid vacation at the time. | |
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Gilligan Cut | |
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Gilligan Cut: Used frequently to undermine testimony the film wants viewers to disbelieve. For instance, we get to see Dean Andrews talking to Clay Bertrand immediately after he tells Garrison he never met him. | |
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Nominal Importance | |
| JFK / int_6e70b12b | comment |
Nominal Importance: The film accentuates certain testimony by naming the witnesses while obfuscating others either by complete omission or by grouping them together under vague terms like “other people�. Garrison cites Richard Carr and Roger Craig by name for their stories of Oswald and others leaving Dealey Plaza by car, but says only that “other people� say Oswald took a bus and then a cab. This obfuscates these witnesses, which include the bus driver Cecil McWatters, the cab driver William Whaley, and Oswald’s ex-landlady Mary E. Bledsoe who happened to be taking the bus home from the parade.note Oswald also still had a bus transfer endorsed by McWatters in his pocket upon his arrest. Garrison cites Domingo Benavides, Acquilla Clemens, and Frank Wright by name for their equivocal accounts of J.D. Tippit’s murder, but brushes off all other accounts as, “Not one credible witness could identify Oswald as Tippet’s killer.� Besides ignoring Helen Markham who saw and identified Oswald as the shooter, this relies on Exact Words to discount a dozen other witnesses who firmly identified Oswald as the man they saw confront Tippit and flee the scene holding and reloading a revolver.note This is especially dishonest to William Scoggins, who witnessed the whole scene but admitted Oswald was obscured by some foliage for the few seconds of the actual shooting. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_6e70b12b | |
| JFK / int_6ec4232f | type |
Casting Gag | |
| JFK / int_6ec4232f | comment |
Casting Gag: Jim Garrison himself makes a brief cameo as Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, the namesake of the commission investigating the Kennedy assassination and which ended with the official "Oswald acted alone" determination. One of the anti-Kennedy bar patrons at the beginning of the film is played by Perry Russo, on whom the character of Willie O’Keefe was partially based. | |
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1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_6ec4232f | |
| JFK / int_6fb07cc4 | type |
Science Is Wrong | |
| JFK / int_6fb07cc4 | comment |
Garrison disparages the “magic bullet� theory with, "but the government says they can prove it with some fancy physics and a nuclear laboratory" in a way that implies theoretical physics was used to handwave the bullet trajectory. What he’s actually referencing is the (anachronistic) House Select Committee’s neutron activation tests which matched bullet fragments from Kennedy’s head to fragments in the limo’s rug and front seat and fragments from Connally’s wrist to the Parkland Hospital bullet. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_6fb07cc4 | |
| JFK / int_71105dfc | type |
Everybody Smokes | |
| JFK / int_71105dfc | comment |
Everybody Smokes: Cigarettes and smoke-filled rooms are everywhere, in keeping with the 1960s setting and Film Noir atmosphere. Garrison smokes a Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe while Clay Shaw sports a cigarette holder. Nervous witnesses frequently need a Cigarette of Anxiety. Ironically, the film ends by implying Shaw’s eventual death from lung cancer was actually foul play; the original script even calls it “supposed� lung cancer. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_71105dfc | |
| JFK / int_722b3319 | type |
Camp Gay | |
| JFK / int_722b3319 | comment |
Camp Gay: Clay Shaw. Mrs. Garrison even questions whether Jim is going after Shaw because he is gay at one point. He denies this. However, Shaw only behaves this way during the party. Otherwise, he's Straight Gay, if a little upper crust effete (naturally, as during the era he couldn't be open about it). | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_722b3319 | |
| JFK / int_7464705c | type |
Arc Words | |
| JFK / int_7464705c | comment |
Arc Words: "Operation Mongoose".note The real Operation Mongoose was the CIA's unsuccessful terror campaign to try and destabilize Castro's government, punctuated by occasional assassination attempts on Castro. | |
| JFK / int_7464705c | featureApplicability |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_7464705c | |
| JFK / int_772f4a4f | type |
"Be Quiet!" Nudge | |
| JFK / int_772f4a4f | comment |
"Be Quiet!" Nudge: More like a Groin Attack punch by Clay as David starts to describe how they could kill JFK. | |
| JFK / int_772f4a4f | featureApplicability |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_772f4a4f | |
| JFK / int_7ad2c23d | type |
ShoutOutToShakespeare | |
| JFK / int_7ad2c23d | comment |
Shout-Out to Shakespeare: "One may smile, and smile, and be a villain." "Like Caesar, he is surrounded by enemies …" | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_7ad2c23d | |
| JFK / int_7b50237d | type |
Distinction Without a Difference | |
| JFK / int_7b50237d | comment |
Distinction Without a Difference: During a debate after his arrest for brawling with anti-Castro Cuban militants in New Orleans, Oswald says, “I’m not a Communist, I’m a Marxist-Leninist.� There is actually a slight difference between the twonote Communism is a broad term for all sorts of far-left ideologies while Marxism-Leninism is effectively the model of single-party state autocracy practiced in the Soviet Union and Cuba., but it's mostly semantics since Marxist-Leninist is precisely what most people mean by “communist�. It’s also the opposite of the distinction Oswald actually made. He claimed to be a Marxist (an adherent of Marx’s actual ideas) rather than a mainstream Communist (i.e. Marxist-Leninist), in an attempt to distance himself from the negative connotations. | |
| JFK / int_7b50237d | featureApplicability |
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1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_7b50237d | |
| JFK / int_7bb1296b | type |
"Rashomon"-Style | |
| JFK / int_7bb1296b | comment |
"Rashomon"-Style: The film is told largely in flashback by unreliable narrators recounting various versions of events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. The role of Lee Harvey Oswald, in particular, is portrayed variously as lone assassin, innocent patsy, and part of a conspiracy, depending on the point of view of the person narrating that version of events. | |
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| JFK / int_7bb1296b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_7bb1296b | |
| JFK / int_7d791b62 | type |
Rewind, Replay, Repeat | |
| JFK / int_7d791b62 | comment |
Rewind, Replay, Repeat: One of the most famous examples during Garrison's closing statement, when he puts the footage of Kennedy being shot in the head on a loop to emphasize the direction: | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_7d791b62 | |
| JFK / int_7e74d66f | type |
Politically Correct History | |
| JFK / int_7e74d66f | comment |
Politically Correct History: The film adds a female investigator named Susie Cox to Jim Garrison’s historically all-male team. The film is firmly rooted in the “Camelot� myth of the Kennedy Administration as an avaunt-garde champion of civil rights, Soviet rapprochement, and pacifism (see Adaptational Heroism), with any contradictions either ignored or excused as political necessity or the result of other’s lies. The film’s villains all fall into at least one of the three antithetical categories: racists, fascists, and the military-industrial complex. Moreover, the ultimate implication is that all the subsequent horrors of racial strife and the Vietnam War not only stem directly from Kennedy’s death, but do so because they were the desired outcome of JFK’s deep-state assassins. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_7e74d66f | |
| JFK / int_823c6e3e | type |
Large Ham | |
| JFK / int_823c6e3e | comment |
Dean Andrews is presented as a sinister manipulator. The real Dean Andrews was described repeatedly as a Large Ham who wouldn't harm a fly. | |
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| JFK / int_823c6e3e | featureConfidence |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_823c6e3e | |
| JFK / int_83b44e80 | type |
Straight Gay | |
| JFK / int_83b44e80 | comment |
Straight Gay: David Ferrie. Willie O'Keefe. He swishes when walking up to meet Garrison, but becomes a stereotypical Southern racist railing against JFK at one point. Clay Shaw, according to O'Keefe, calling him a "butch john", saying that he wasn't a limp wrist, and wouldn't snap in a million years. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_83b44e80 | |
| JFK / int_85557b38 | type |
Reality Is Unrealistic | |
| JFK / int_85557b38 | comment |
Reality Is Unrealistic: Oliver Stone had to use a smoke machine to visualize a character seeing rifle smoke from the grassy knoll because modern rifles don't emit enough smoke, ironically disproving the same supposed evidence he was dramatizing. During a scene with Garrison and Lou Ivon in the Depository with a gun identical to Oswald's, Ivon quotes the supposed time for Oswald's shots stated by the Warren Report as 5.6 secondsnote The report actually gives Oswald closer to eight seconds. and then goes through the motions of firing three shots while Garrison times him. Garrison then announces his time as "Between six, seven seconds," but as numerous people who've timed the scene have reported, Ivon actually makes the shots in 5.6 seconds.note It took 2.3 seconds to work the bolt action for Oswald's rifle, so assuming he had the first round chambered in advance, he actually only needed 4.6 seconds. Moreover, actor Gary Oldman does it in closer to 5.1 seconds when dramatizing Oswald firing the shots during both Garrison’s talk with Senator Long and Garrison’s court summation. No one in the entire film takes more than 5.6 seconds to fire three shots. Senator Long’s insistence that “the first shot would always be the best,� sounds like common sense. However, not only are performance anxiety and target panic (a.k.a. “buck fever�) well-recognized factors adverse to first shots, but it’s irrelevant in this case since the final shot was objectively the best regardless of the number of shooters. Even Garrison’s own theory requires his proposed elite sniper on the grassy knoll to fire low the first time to account for JFK’s throat wound. Garrison’s idea that it would’ve been easier to shoot Kennedy on Houston Street than Elm Street doesn’t account for the facts that an approaching target exponentially increases the relative speed and angle whereas a retiring target decreases both, making the target appear to slow and stabilize. There’s also the obvious tactical and psychological advantage of shooting a well-guarded human being in the back. Garrison is incredulous that Oswald could make it from the sniper’s nest to the lunchroom for his encounter with Truly and Baker in a “maximum� of 90 seconds. This is based on two 1964 re-enactments with Truly and Baker in which they reached the rendezvous in 90 and 75 seconds. However, Truly and Baker both testified that this represented their minimum time, and even so a stand-in for Oswald beat them both times. Garrison also misstates the distance as five flights of stairs when it’s actually only four. Garrison twice brings up that the police didn’t test if Oswald’s rifle had been fired that day. There is no scientific test to determine how recently a gun has been fired, only whether or not it has been fired since its last cleaning. For all the fuss Mr. X and subsequently Garrison make about the laxity of presidential security, JFK is actually unusual (especially among US presidents) for being shot at from such distance and concealment; close-range pistol shots are far more common (e.g. Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, both Roosevelts, Ford, Reagan, not to mention Bobby Kennedy and even Oswald himself.) The film imputes shady pecuniary interests to the people Marina Oswald was staying with because their tax returns are classified… just like everybody else. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_85557b38 | |
| JFK / int_8b568cb7 | type |
Posthumous Character | |
| JFK / int_8b568cb7 | comment |
Posthumous Character: Oswald dies soon after the movie begins, but that doesn't prevent him from appearing in a large number of flashbacks and faux documentary footage. | |
| JFK / int_8b568cb7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_8b568cb7 | |
| JFK / int_8cb844c6 | type |
Mr. Exposition | |
| JFK / int_8cb844c6 | comment |
Mr. Exposition: "X" and Garrison. X's monologue lasts over 15 minutes, and Garrison's closing statement at the trial lasts over 20. And yet, thanks to Oliver Stone's direction, it never feels slow. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_8cb844c6 | |
| JFK / int_97926168 | type |
Rewatch Bonus | |
| JFK / int_97926168 | comment |
In the script, Mr. X asserts that “General Y� is present in the background of the “Three Tramps� photograph to signal to the supposed agents that they’ll be okay. This outlandish claim (actually made by Fletcher Prouty about Edward Lansdale) doesn’t explicitly make it into the film, but is still dramatized apropos of nothing in an earlier flashback while Garrison’s staff discuss the three tramps during their restaurant meeting. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_97926168 | |
| JFK / int_a5adbbe7 | type |
Unreliable Expositor | |
| JFK / int_a5adbbe7 | comment |
Unreliable Expositor: Whether he’s being hyperbolic or simply mistaken, Senator Long overstates the peculiarity of the single-bullet theory when he describes it as “that crazy bullet zig-zagging all over the place so it hits Kennedy and Connally seven times.� The theory actually asserts four hits causing seven wounds: four of entry, three of exit. Garrison asserts that, “They were refurbishing the floors in the Depository that week, which allowed unknown workmen in and out of the building.� That’s half true at best: the refurbishment had been going on much longer than a week and was being done by regular employees. The building superintendent even testified that, “If we had not been using some of our regular boys putting down this plywood, we would not have had any need for Lee Oswald at that time.� Garrison claims Connally holding onto his hat “which is impossible if his wrist has been shattered� is evidence he didn’t share a bullet with JFK. Not only is this claim medically dubious but there’s no evidence Connally ever dropped the hat and Nelly Connally vividly recalled her husband clutching it to his chest after he was shot even though she too believed he’d had been shot separately. Garrison disparages the “magic bullet� theory with, "but the government says they can prove it with some fancy physics and a nuclear laboratory" in a way that implies theoretical physics was used to handwave the bullet trajectory. What he’s actually referencing is the (anachronistic) House Select Committee’s neutron activation tests which matched bullet fragments from Kennedy’s head to fragments in the limo’s rug and front seat and fragments from Connally’s wrist to the Parkland Hospital bullet. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_a5adbbe7 | |
| JFK / int_aa42306e | type |
Totally Radical | |
| JFK / int_aa42306e | comment |
Totally Radical: Dean Andrews talks in a mishmash of slang, much of which dates to the '50s. This, at least, was Truth in Television; Andrews was known for being jocular to a fault. | |
| JFK / int_aa42306e | featureApplicability |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_aa42306e | |
| JFK / int_b0855ef3 | type |
No Historical Figures Were Harmed | |
| JFK / int_b0855ef3 | comment |
No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Some historical figures were harmed (see Historical Villain Upgrade), but the names of several others are changed. It’s widely assumed Stone changed the names of Ruth and Michael Paine to “Janet and Bill Williams� to avoid potential legal action given the aspersions the film casts on them. The Jerry Johnson Show and its host are expies of Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show, on which Garrison was a guest on January 31, 1968. Nothing like Garrison being suppressed from showing the Allen photograph happened, however. Carson did politely interrupt Garrison for the first commercial break, but at that time they were calmly discussing the Zapruder film, and the interview resumed calmly after the break. "Mr. X" is based on L. Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and all-purpose conspiracy theorist who served as an adviser to the film. "General Y" is clearly M/Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, the military head of the real Anti-Castro Operation Mongoose. A Freeze-Frame Bonus of Y’s desk even bears the partially obscured nameplate “M/Gen. E.G. [La]nsd[al]e�. A major flaw in this is that Y (Lansdale) could hardly have had X (Prouty) Reassigned to Antarctica “one week after the murder of Vietnamese President Diem in Saigon� since Lansdale resigned the day before the Diem Coup because he refused to participate in it.note The real Prouty was informed of this assignment “a month or two� earlier and viewed it as a paid vacation at the time. Garrison’s staffer Bill Broussard is based on William C. Wood (a.k.a. Bill Boxley), an ex-CIA agent turned private investigator initially hired by Garrison to “understand the mentality of the Agency� but later fired ostensibly for his agency affiliation. | |
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JFK / int_b0855ef3 | |
| JFK / int_bb99411d | type |
It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans | |
| JFK / int_bb99411d | comment |
It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: One of Garrison's investigators interviews an informant during a Mardi Gras parade. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_bb99411d | |
| JFK / int_c0f87dda | type |
Humans Are Warriors | |
| JFK / int_c0f87dda | comment |
Humans Are Warriors: Befitting his background as a high-ranking intelligence agent, Mr. X believes that society and government as we know it exist because of war, and the state's ability to wage war translates to holding power over the people. He uses this to provide a possible outline of the conspiracy's motives, and how the then-ongoing Vietnam War ties into it. | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_c0f87dda | |
| JFK / int_c23525d4 | type |
Character Title | |
| JFK / int_c23525d4 | comment |
Character Title: Sort of. The movie is named after John F. Kennedy (specifically his initials) as his assassination serves as the gist of the story. | |
| JFK / int_c23525d4 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| JFK / int_c23525d4 | featureConfidence |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_c23525d4 | |
| JFK / int_c3ae004a | type |
Re-Cut | |
| JFK / int_c3ae004a | comment |
Re-Cut: Oliver Stone later released a Director's Cut that ran for 206 minutes. More details here http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=93992. | |
| JFK / int_c3ae004a | featureApplicability |
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| JFK / int_c3ae004a | featureConfidence |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_c3ae004a | |
| JFK / int_c3b7509c | type |
Doublethink | |
| JFK / int_c3b7509c | comment |
Double Think: Garrison decries the implausibility of a single bullet entering Connally’s back, shattering his rib, exiting his chest, turning right to shatter his wrist, then making a “dramatic u-turnâ€� to bury itself in Connally’s left thigh in “almost pristineâ€� condition.note The film ignores that photos of this bullet exist that show it looks exactly how a bullet that’s bounced through that much of a human body should. Yet in positing six shots Garrison himself claims two misses, three that hit Kennedy (throat, back, and head), and… one that hit Connally. Without being slowed and tumbled by first hitting JFK (a factor also absent from Garrison’s shattered test bullet exhibit) the “magic bulletâ€� is actually even more magical in Garrison’s theory, and requires two equally magical bullets that vanish without a trace after piercing Kennedy’s back and throat. Garrison asserts that an approaching target is clearly an easier shot than a departing one, therefore multiple shooters must’ve been waiting for a crossfire, yet his own theory positions two out of three shooters (TSBD & Daltex Building) behind their target. Mr. X convinces Garrison that JFK’s security was compromised by citing the open-topped car and recent assassination attempts on French President Charles de Gaulle. Shortly afterward, Garrison steps up his case against Shaw based in part on a conversation in which David Ferrie argued the exact opposite: “If it’s planned right, no problem. Look how close they got to de Gaulle; Eisenhower was always riding around in an open car.â€� Garrison’s conspiracy case against Shaw relies almost exclusively on connecting Shaw to Oswald, yet his assertions of conspiracy are heavily predicated on absolving Oswald of the shooting. In this effort, Garrison portrays Oswald as the victim of a Frame-Up yet maintains he was killed because He Knows Too Much, ideas that are not only incongruent with each other but also with Garrison’s assertion that Shaw was part of the conspiracy because he then reached out to assist Oswald in finding a lawyer using a Paper-Thin Disguise. Garrison relies almost exclusively on the credulity of witness testimony to make his case for a grassy knoll shooter, yet he disregards that many of those same witness said they heard three shots when he proposes that there were actually six shots and only two from the knoll. At some times Garrison asserts that the Zapruder film was “the proof they didn’t count onâ€� and deliberately suppressed; at other times he claims the Warren Commission falsified evidence specifically to match the film. The third option — that the Commission genuinely collated the film with other evidence to refine their case — is never considered. Garrison imputes connivance to the Dallas Police because no record was kept of Oswald’s interrogation, yet argues that incriminating photographs of Oswald were faked in part because Oswald is recorded as claiming so in his interrogation. Granted, no stenographic or audio record was made but the police did record the interviews via old-school affidavits, which are ironically substantiated by including rather than omitting such denials. Garrison argues that the speedy arrival of Patrolman Baker and the presence of Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles on the stairs preclude Oswald from being the shooter, but he doesn’t apply these same criteria to his own theoretical sniper team, who apparently escaped the same position totally unobserved.note The only alternative escape routes to the staircase were the service elevators parked on the fifth floor and the external fire escape, neither of which were used by anyone. | |
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| JFK / int_c3b7509c | featureConfidence |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_c3b7509c | |
| JFK / int_c75df49a | type |
Shout-Out | |
| JFK / int_c75df49a | comment |
Shout-Out: Sir Walter Scott: "Oh! what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!" Lee Harvey Oswald's capture at the theater is compared to Josef K's from The Trial.note The part where he drew a gun and opened fire on the cops is "conveniently" left out, as is the part that the police were arresting him for the murder of police officer J.D. Tippet, with the assassination charges coming only later. Alfred Lord Tennyson: "Authority forgets a dying king." | |
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| JFK / int_c75df49a | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_c75df49a | |
| JFK / int_d028ca10 | type |
Deliberately Monochrome | |
| JFK / int_d028ca10 | comment |
Deliberately Monochrome: A large number of the flashback sequences. | |
| JFK / int_d028ca10 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| JFK / int_d028ca10 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_d028ca10 | |
| JFK / int_d3422f70 | type |
Overt Rendezvous | |
| JFK / int_d3422f70 | comment |
Overt Rendezvous: Garrison and "X" meet in a public park in Washington D.C. | |
| JFK / int_d3422f70 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| JFK / int_d3422f70 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_d3422f70 | |
| JFK / int_d5d976dd | type |
I Have Many Names | |
| JFK / int_d5d976dd | comment |
I Have Many Names: Clay Shaw, alias Clay Bertrand. The film presents this as being common knowledge among New Orleans's gay community, but the real Shaw never used that name; it was a combination of Dean Andrews playing a prank on Jim Garrison and Garrison's own belief that when gay men use an alias, they only change their last names. Seriously. | |
| JFK / int_d5d976dd | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| JFK / int_d5d976dd | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_d5d976dd | |
| JFK / int_da1c8191 | type |
Writers Cannot Do Math | |
| JFK / int_da1c8191 | comment |
Writers Cannot Do Math: Garrison incorrectly states that Oswald had to rush down five flights of stairs to get from the sixth floor sniper’s nest to the second floor lunchroom. It’s actually only four. | |
| JFK / int_da1c8191 | featureApplicability |
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| JFK / int_da1c8191 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| JFK | hasFeature |
JFK / int_da1c8191 | |
| JFK / int_dc579c91 | type |
Contrived Coincidence | |
| JFK / int_dc579c91 | comment |
Contrived Coincidence: Mr X cites the multiple cases of agencies behaving against protocol and the unusual timing of him being sent to the South Pole on a mundane diplomatic excursion shortly prior to the assassination as reasons he suspects that Oswald being made a patsy for JFK's death was part of a coverup for a black-op. Lampshaded directly in the same scene:- | |
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| JFK | hasFeature |
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| JFK / int_e16217f8 | type |
Historical Villain Upgrade | |
| JFK / int_e16217f8 | comment |
Historical Villain Upgrade: Clay Shaw was, in real life, a Renaissance Man whose achievements in architecture, business and theater (he wrote several plays, one of them at age 16) are nigh-legendary, and who openly supported and backed John F. Kennedy. This film's Clay Shaw is a Depraved Homosexual lunatic with ties to various far-right groups before the assassination. Shaw was admired as a philanthropist and patron of the arts (he was friends with Tennessee Williams). Also there's no firm evidence he'd ever even met David Ferrie or Lee Harvey Oswald. Dean Andrews is presented as a sinister manipulator. The real Dean Andrews was described repeatedly as a Large Ham who wouldn't harm a fly. As mentioned above, Lyndon Baines Johnson gets this big time. | |
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| JFK / int_e409de66 | type |
Manipulative Editing | |
| JFK / int_e409de66 | comment |
Manipulative Editing: Garrison's breakdown of the Zapruder Film posits, "The third shot, Frame 232, hits Kennedy in the back pulling him downward and forward." Ignoring that the real Zapruder film shows Kennedy still clutching his throat until at least Frame 260, the film fabricates a corresponding forward lurch by interspersing one filmed by Stone in conscious imitation of the grainy Zapruder film with a slow-motion clip from the actual Zapruder film which at proper speed merely shows Kennedy gradually collapsing towards his wife with no hint of being struck between his initial neck wound and the fatal head-shot. | |
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Composite Character | |
| JFK / int_e4965307 | comment |
Composite Character: Several, including Willie, the male prostitute played by Kevin Bacon. (See here for details.) | |
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| JFK / int_e9e35e8f | type |
Exact Words | |
| JFK / int_e9e35e8f | comment |
Garrison cites Domingo Benavides, Acquilla Clemens, and Frank Wright by name for their equivocal accounts of J.D. Tippit’s murder, but brushes off all other accounts as, “Not one credible witness could identify Oswald as Tippet’s killer.� Besides ignoring Helen Markham who saw and identified Oswald as the shooter, this relies on Exact Words to discount a dozen other witnesses who firmly identified Oswald as the man they saw confront Tippit and flee the scene holding and reloading a revolver.note This is especially dishonest to William Scoggins, who witnessed the whole scene but admitted Oswald was obscured by some foliage for the few seconds of the actual shooting. | |
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| JFK / int_eb6ea560 | type |
Convenient Photograph | |
| JFK / int_eb6ea560 | comment |
Convenient Photograph: The film strongly implies that the famous photo of Oswald showing off his new rifle and revolver is so convenient it must be fake. In the script, Mr. X asserts that “General Y� is present in the background of the “Three Tramps� photograph to signal to the supposed agents that they’ll be okay. This outlandish claim (actually made by Fletcher Prouty about Edward Lansdale) doesn’t explicitly make it into the film, but is still dramatized apropos of nothing in an earlier flashback while Garrison’s staff discuss the three tramps during their restaurant meeting. | |
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Gay Conservative | |
| JFK / int_fa712e27 | comment |
Gay Conservative: Willie O'Keefe, who's in jail for gay prostitution, hates JFK for being soft on Communism and for helping civil rights. | |
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JFK |
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