Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone is a filmmaker whose politically charged films own got often provoked controversy. However, Stone’s 1991 cinema JFK, a docudrama centered upon New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation during 1967–1969 into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is undoubtedly the most controversial of Stone’s works. In fact, no other cinema inwards U.S. painting palace history has attracted quite the same even out of critical scandalize as well as scrutiny equally JFK did before, during, as well as after its theatrical run.

Given the negative media coverage of Garrison’s failed elbow grease during the like shooting fish in a barrel 1960s to convict New Orleans adult man of affairs Clay Shaw of conspiracy inwards the murder of President Kennedy, it is non surprising that a cinema that recasts that same lawsuit inwards a means much to a greater extent than favorable to Garrison, as well as farther accuses most of the governmental apparatus of the U.S.A. of murdering its ain president, would create yet about other media tumult.

Stone’s early on life inwards many ways had prepared him for such world combat. He was born on 15 September 1946 inwards New York City to a Jewish stockbroker begetter as well as a French Catholic woman parent whose matrimony ended inwards divorce.


Stone entered Yale inwards 1965 but dropped out after 1 yr as well as moved to Vietnam as well as so Mexico. In 1967, Stone joined the regular army as well as returned to Vietnam equally a solider. He served 15 months inwards the 25th Infantry Division, where he was wounded twice. Upon his render to the U.S.A. inwards 1968, he entered New York University Film School.

His subsequent cinema career included screen-writing credit for Midnight Express (1978) as well as Scarface (1983) as well as directorial credit for The Hand (1981), Salvador (1985), Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987), Talk Radio (1988), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), as well as The Doors (1991).

During this productive period, Stone read Jim Garrison’s 1988 book, entitled On the Trail of the Assassins, almost the investigation as well as trial of Clay Shaw. Stone believed that Garrison’s narrative could shape the footing of a powerful film.

Inspired past times the book, Stone began his ain investigation into the intellectual netherworld of JFK conspiracy theories to augment Garrison’s story. Stone purchased the rights to Jim Marr’s bulk Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (1991) as well as hired a Yale graduate named Jane Rusconi to get together a squad of researchers as well as interviewers. Stone as well as his squad hence joined the ranks of those who had long sought to found the existence of a conspiracy to murder the thirty-fifth president.

Almost since the instant the president was killed inwards Dallas, conflicting eyewitness accounts suggested that shots were directed at the presidential motorcade from to a greater extent than than 1 direction (most infamously, from the grassy knoll inwards forepart of the president’s limousine).

The 1964 Warren Commission, formed to investigate the truth behind the shooting, produced a twenty-six-volume written report that named Lee Harvey Oswald equally the sole assassinator of the president but at in 1 lawsuit generated intense criticism of its conclusions from early on assassination researchers such equally Mark Lane, Josiah Thompson, Sylvia Meager, as well as Harold Weisberg.

The untimely deaths of many participants or witnesses to the events fostered a climate of mystery as well as paranoia that entirely aggravated researchers’ feeling that something sinister was afoot.

In the years next the assassination, earth followed the early on skeptics’ Pb as well as a bulk increasingly came to believe that a conspiracy, non simply a lone gunman, had killed President Kennedy. Even the U.S.A. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations inwards 1979 concluded that Kennedy “was in all likelihood assassinated equally the termination of a conspiracy.”

Stone as well as co-writer Zachary Sklar so began incorporating all of these disparate elements into a lengthy screenplay (first draft of 190 pages), which inwards its concluding shape is a distillation of most of the varied conspiracy theories advocated past times assassination researchers over the years.

Beginning inwards 1990, Stone also met alongside a quondam colonel as well as Pentagon main of exceptional operations named Fletcher Prouty, whose career as well as theories almost the motives behind the assassination provided the inspiration for 1 of the film’s most of import informants. Securing studio backing from Warner Brothers inwards 1989, Stone proceeded to active production, filming, as well as post-production during 1990 as well as 1991.

JFK inwards its concluding shape is primarily a murder mystery based inwards component on Garrison’s memoirs of the investigation as well as trial of Clay Shaw as well as farther incorporating diverse aspects of Stone’s ain enquiry into the presidential assassination. As the cinematic narrative unfolds, authentic footage is ofttimes as well as rapidly intercut into the film’s re-creation of historical events to give the pic its startling verisimilitude.

As Chris Salewicz observes, the cinema also interweaves at to the lowest degree iv dissever storylines inwards an impressionistic, almost stream-of-consciousness manner, influenced heavily past times the multiple perspectives inwards Akira Kurosawa’s famous 1950 cinema Rashomon as well as the 1969 Constantin Costa-Gavras political cinema Z (Salewicz, 81). JFK begins alongside a prologue depicting the election, presi- dency, as well as assassination of President Kennedy.

Then the cinema shifts to Garrison’s investigation of a New Orleans connectedness to supposed assassinator Lee Harvey Oswald—a connectedness that ultimately implicates private detective as well as ex-FBI agent Guy Banister, homosexual quondam Eastern Airlines airplane pilot David Ferrie, as well as Clay Shaw.

Garrison gradually becomes convinced that these men are component of a larger, rightwing conspiracy directed against President Kennedy as well as comprising a devil’s brew of anti-Castro exiles, Mafia gangsters, the CIA, military machine intelligence, as well as fifty-fifty the Lyndon B. Johnson White House. Garrison concludes that Oswald, slain inwards Dallas inwards 1963 past times gangster Jack Ruby, was a patsy, laid upward to expression guilty past times the larger forces behind the president’s shooting.

As Garrison retraces the Warren Commission investigation as well as tries to construct a instance against David Ferrie as well as Clay Shaw, Garrison is continually stymied past times staff defections, governmental interference, media scorn, as well as fifty-fifty the mysterious deaths of key figures such equally David Ferrie.

Only Clay Shaw survives to live arrested as well as tried for the murder of the president. However, given the insurmountable obstacles arrayed against Garrison, the trial’s number is a foregone conclusion. Shaw is acquitted, but Garrison vows to move along the crusade to convey Kennedy’s killers to justice.

Garrison, portrayed past times Kevin Costner equally a relatively elementary seeker after the truth, evidently believes inwards the merits of his case, fifty-fifty if few others do. Since the cinema is portrayed from Garrison’s signal of take in as well as those of the people he interviews, his conclusions may look to live presented equally absolute fact to the undiscriminating viewer.

But the cinema is ultimately to a greater extent than complex than it seems, equally Susan Mackey-Kallis observes, because it searches “for the ‘truth’ alongside the realization that at that spot is no single, ultimately knowable truth almost the Kennedy assassination” (Mackey-Kallis, 38).

Indeed, JFK raises to a greater extent than questions than it solves. The cinema considers several possible conspiracies inwards the assassination but in conclusion suggests that President Kennedy was killed inwards a coup d’état organized past times a shadowy U.S. cabal of governmental as well as industrial concerns.

In a covert coming together inwards Washington, D.C., a authorities informant based on Fletcher Prouty (“Colonel X”) tells Garrison that this cabal’s primary agenda was to turn a profit from an escalation of state of war inwards Vietnam.

Through X, the cinema postulates that Kennedy’s refusal to back upward the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Republic of Cuba inwards 1963, as well as his intention to abolish the Central Intelligence Agency as well as diminish the ability of the military-industrial complex past times withdrawing advisors as well as troops from Vietnam during a 2d term of office, resulted inwards his murder past times those committed to wartime militarism. Yet careful attending to the cinema reveals that no affair how persuasively argued or visualized, the theories proposed past times X or fifty-fifty Garrison rest conjecture, non absolute fact.

Stone himself claims that JFK is deliberately designed equally a “counter-myth” to provoke scrutiny of the official “myth” of the Warren Commission’s determination that Lee Harvey Oswald acted lonely inwards shooting President Kennedy from the 6th flooring of the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

In this destination of reopening a national dialogue almost a possible conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination, Stone succeeded beyond all expectations. His success also placed him at the middle of a media as well as political firestorm.

Stone was denounced as well as vilified past times numerous high-profile media as well as governmental critics fifty-fifty earlier JFK’s world premiere. After an early on draft of the screenplay was leaked, Washington Post author George Lardner, Jr., as well as Chicago Tribune author Jon Margolis began attacking JFK inwards May 1991, earlier the film’s wintertime release. Other negative articles appeared during the film’s post-production phase.

As the cinema opened, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Weekly, the Chicago Dominicus Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Wall Street Journal, the L.A. Times, as well as Time as well as Newsweek magazines all weighed inwards repeatedly alongside decidedly negative appraisals of Stone’s film, inwards essence labeling it demagoguery. For example, Newsweek ran a comprehend story headlined, “Why Oliver Stone’s New Movie Can’t Be Trusted.”

The New York Times inwards item devoted much column as well as editorial infinite to the assail on the movie. Noted journalists, commentators, media figures, as well as politicians joined forces to barbarous non entirely the film’s conspiracy theories but seemingly the managing director himself.

Writers Alexander Cockburn, Tom Wicker, as well as George Will; cinema critic Leonard Maltin; managing director Nora Ephron; president of the Motion Picture Association of America Jack Valenti; quondam U.S. President as well as Warren Commission fellow member Gerald Ford—all went on the tape equally strongly, almost viscerally, opposed to Stone as well as his project.

These as well as other critics insisted that Stone heavyhandedly distorted history, invented characters that never existed as well as slandered others that did, mixed speculation as well as fact to an irresponsible degree, as well as unfairly influenced younger audience members whose exposure to history presumably came entirely from the simplistic exaggerations of goggle box as well as film.

Some critics insisted that the cinema was homophobic inwards its depiction of David Ferrie as well as Clay Shaw equally homosexual. Also troubling to many critics was the film’s flattening of the complex, tarnished grapheme of the real-life Jim Garrison.

Frank Beaver calls the cinematic Garrison a “representational icon rather than a human being—in the end, a symbolic instructor lecturing a class” (Beaver, 172). Most journalists reporting on the existent trial of Clay Shaw regarded the prosecution equally a ludicrous farce perpetrated past times a grandstanding, publicity-seeking, as well as quite maybe corrupt district attorney.

Allegations of underworld connections, illegal gambling, as well as witness tampering as well as bribery persistently dogged Garrison’s career equally district attorney and, later, elected judge. Even many conspiracy theorists believed that Garrison’s truthful agenda inwards the trial of Clay Shaw had been to divert attending away from a Mafia connectedness to the assassination.

Stone was non unaware of the negative take in almost Garrison (in fact had fifty-fifty confronted Garrison almost these charges early on inwards the procedure of researching JFK) but chose to disregard them, equally he was making a cinema almost the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, non a biography of Jim Garrison.

But to consider Garrison practically sainted past times Stone’s version of events as well as played equally a directly arrow past times Kevin Costner inwards the best Jimmy Stewart/Frank Capra tradition was probable to a greater extent than than about critics could bear.

Stone did own got his part of media supporters, such equally Garry Trudeau, Garry Wills, Norman Mailer, David Denby, as well as David Ansen, but at kickoff the negative press far outweighed the positive.

Stone defended himself inwards diverse world as well as media forums, as well as eventually his lonely motility began to pay off. Even equally the editorial elite pounded him, world take in shifted toward Stone. He began coming together alongside congressmen to advocate the release of sealed assassination files.

Also, inwards answer to the widespread accuse that Stone had distorted or fabricated fact for the movie, Stone as well as Zachary Sklar published JFK—The Book of the Film, inwards 1992. The bulk contained the annotated screenplay, extensive sources as well as references, as well as pro as well as con commentaries past times the film’s supporters as well as critics.

The cinema itself, after an initially dull box-office start, became a commercial success. It was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including best painting as well as best adapted screenplay, as well as won 2 inwards the categories of cinema editing as well as cinematography.

JFK personally garnered Stone a Golden Globe Award for best director, as well as Director’s Guild of America as well as Academy Award nominations for best director, equally good equally political as well as civic recognition such equally the Torch of Liberty Award from the Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Eventually, the film’s publicity resulted inwards the token release of a few formerly clandestine files as well as culminated inwards the congressional Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which released many of the previously classified authorities documents related to the assassination.

Although the released records provided no conclusive bear witness of an assassination conspiracy, plenty tantalizing clues emerged to furnish conspiracy researchers alongside to a greater extent than forage for their item theories. JFK hence joins the relatively rare ranks of films that own got inspired guide political action.

The film’s notoriety also revitalized the political conspiracy thriller genre. Throughout its history, U.S. painting palace had often trafficked inwards conspiratorial or fifty-fifty paranoid topics, often past times depicting dastardly external enemies such equally Communists or fifty-fifty inhuman ones such equally body-snatching infinite aliens.

However, inwards the political conspiracy genre entries of which JFK is the apotheosis, the fascistic threat is fifty-fifty to a greater extent than insidious, equally it originates from inside the real social institutions charged alongside protecting republic as well as the American people.

Even the president of the United States, JFK tells the audience, is a helpless (and disposable) pawn of such forces. This take in displaces the private as well as assigns ability to a decentralized, self-contained organization lethal to the form of humanistic values touted past times Kennedy inwards his academy address during the film’s prologue.

Stone’s sweeping indictment of what his cinematic alteration ego Garrison calls “the ascendency of invisible government” went much farther than whatever previous cinema had done. The world credence of JFK’s grim message illustrates dramatically simply how entrenched the mistrust of governmental institutions had move since the nifty disillusionments of the 1960s as well as 1970s.

Nevertheless, inwards the decade since JFK’s release, much of the assassination disceptation has subsided. (In the wake of the September 11 terrorist onslaught upon the United States, the film’s antimilitarism message may fifty-fifty seem momentarily out of favor.)

Norman Mailer’s fictional biography, Oswald (1995), faded apace from sight, as well as Gerald Posner’s bulk Case Closed (1993) seemed to satisfy most media observers, if non the public, that Oswald was indeed the lone assassin.

Meanwhile, Stone has weathered other controversies over his films Natural Born Killers (1994) as well as Nixon (1995). Both films ventured into about of the same thematic as well as stylistic territory equally JFK. Nixon created a tike outburst amidst many of the same political as well as editorial elite who had been outraged past times JFK.

Stone’s 2d presidential cinema portrays Richard M. Nixon equally a pitiable figure caught upward inwards tangential interest alongside the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, assassination attempts against Castro, as well as escalation of the Vietnam War, all of which are primal to JFK as well as ultimately conspire, inwards Stone’s rendition of history, to topple the Nixon regime inwards the Watergate scandal. But to a greater extent than often than non because of JFK, Oliver Stone’s bring upward has move synonymous alongside “conspiracy theory.”