March 1 - JFK

Today’s movie is a political courtroom drama with a scene that happens on March 1. Watch it tonight and enjoy.

JFK         

Retiring President Eisenhower warns of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. President Kennedy thought he was lied to by the CIA about the Bay of Pigs. Right-wingers thought Kennedy was a coward for not starting a full-scale nuclear war at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy planned to withdraw all US forces from Vietnam. Then Kennedy is assassinated. Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for the crime, and then is shot by Jack Ruby. Jim Garrison, district attorney brings in David Ferrie, who sources say knew Oswald but the FBI lets him go, saying he never knew Oswald. Three years later Garrison starts to wonder if the official story about the assai nation as put forth in the Warren Commission Report is true. Oswald’s address in New Orleans was in the same building as that of Guy Bannister, an ex-FBI and Naval intelligence officer. Bannister’s former partner Jack Martin says Bannister knew Ferrie and Oswald. Martin says Oswald knew a Clay Bertrand.  Garrison meets an imprisoned Willie O'Keefe who says Bertrand knew Oswald and Ferrie and they threatened the president. Garrison brings to light many suspicious aspects about Oswald’s defection to and return from the USSR. George de Mohrenschildt, a suspected CIA agent steered Oswald to his job at the Texas Schoolbook depository.  Garrison finds many witnesses who saw shots fired from the grassy knoll and that Oswald did know Jack Ruby before the assassination. Garrison proves it was impossible for Oswald to have made the shots that killed the president. Garrison interviews Clay Shaw who has been identified as Clay Bertrand. Shaw denies everything. The time spent on the investigation is causing Garrison family conflict. Ferrie talks to Garrison and is then found dead in suspicious circumstances. Garrison finds his office has been bugged.  He meets with L. Fletcher Prouty, a former military security officer, who reveals that the plot to kill Kennedy was hatched because Kennedy’s foreign policy would have reduced the power and influence of the military-industrial complex. The mob is also angry with Kennedy because after helping him win in 1960 they didn’t get back their Cuban interests and Robert Kennedy kept investigating them. Prouty says presidential security was deliberately slackened on the trip to Dallas.  Clay Shaw is arrested. Pressure and media attacks are directed at Garrison. Garrison avoids an assassination attempt. He is shocked by Robert Kennedy’s murder. Garrison had predicted it and this leads to reconciliation with his wife who now realizes the importance of the case. At the trial the Judge makes an unprecedented ruling that Clay Shaw’s admission while being booked that he had been known as Clay Bertrand could not be admitted into evidence, allowing Shaw to testify on the stand that he was never known as Bertrand. Garrison effectively demolishes the ‘magic bullet theory’ at trial and that there had to be more than one shooter, thus mandating a conspiracy. However on March 1, 1969 [3:16:24 to 3:18:45] Clay Shaw is acquitted. Garrison vows to continue his investigation.

An interesting political docudrama. Stone and Garrison may not have gotten the whole story, but there is definitely something fishy about the Kennedy assassination. This movie veers more into being more propaganda than entertaining, but you should see this movie at least once.

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Date given in film at 3:16:56 and in The Assassination Chronicles by Edmund J. Epstein (Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York, 1992) at page 290

Producers - Oliver Stone, Arnon Milchan and A. Kitman Ho

Director - Oliver Stone

Awards – This movie won the Best  Cinematography and Best Sound Editing Oscars. It was also nominated for  the Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Jones), Best Director, Best Original Score,  Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 64^th Academy Awards.

Screenplay - Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar

Runtime - 3 hours 8 minutes

Released – December 20, 1991

Starring -     

Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison

Kevin Bacon as Willie O'Keefe

Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw / Clay Bertrand

Joe Pesci as David Ferrie

Laurie Metcalf as New Orleans Assistant District Attorney Susie Cox

Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald

Michael Rooker as New Orleans Assistant District Attorney Bill Broussard

Jay O. Sanders as Lou Ivon

Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison, Jim Garrison's wife.

Beata Poźniak as Marina Oswald

Jack Lemmon as Jack Martin

Walter Matthau as Senator Russell B. Long

Donald Sutherland as L. Fletcher Prouty

Edward Asner as Guy Banister.

Brian Doyle-Murray as Jack Ruby

John Candy as Dean Andrews Jr.

Sally Kirkland as Rose Cheramie, a Dallas prostitute

Wayne Knight as Numa Bertel

Vincent D'Onofrio as Bill Newman, an eyewitness

Copyright by Ivan Walters in 2015