BACK AND TO THE LEFT: Kathy Shaidle on Oliver Stone’s JFK. 

My complaints begin with the title:

It should have been called Garrison, after the film’s “hero.” A New Orleans D.A., Jim Garrison tried and failed, in 1967, to convict some admittedly sleazy-seeming locals of being part of the “conspiracy” to assassinate Kennedy, which he theorized had been — and I can’t believe I’m forced to type this — a “homosexual thrill killing.”

Stone, and actor Kevin Costner, portray Jim Garrison as a real-life Atticus Finch, when, in reality, “[o]n the job, he was accused of using truth serums, bribing witnesses, and making promises for reduced sentences,” and “was not present at much of the trial.”

These are just my beefs with the title and the main character, and the damn thing is three and a half hours long. This fellow has compiled an extensive list of Stone’s JFK prestidigitations; while it isn’t as well sourced as I’d like, I must share my favorite:

In the film, the rifle of one of the “grassy knoll” shooters emits a cloud of smoke, but, “Stone could find no gun that emitted that much smoke, [so he] had [a] special effects man blow smoke from bellows.”

The author adds:

“Many consider this an appropriate metaphor for the entire movie.”

Indeed. If viewed as a leftwing political paranoia thriller, it’s (almost) on par with John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate. But as history, JFK is as reliable as Stone’s later Showtime series, The Untold History of the United States.

Flashback: “Trapped In Camelot:” my interview with James Pierson, the author of Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism.