Sitting down to write this post I’m reminded that I wrote a song called “Lee Harvey Oswald” years ago. Or at least I tried to. I’ll have to look back through my old journals. I remember being inspired by a line from Oliver Stone’s JFK film where Kevin Costner asks “Who cries for Lee Harvey Oswald?”

Who indeed…

Stay Awake, Patsy!

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Filmmaker, Emile de Antonio is a counterculture hero who helped to distribute the classic Beat film Pull My Daisy, shot the classic JFK assassination documentary Rush to Judgement and got smashed to the gills for his appearance in Andy Warhol’s experimental film Drink.

One of my favorite de Antonio flicks is a classic art documentary featuring candid interviews with a generation of painters, allowing them to illuminate the evolution of modern art in America in their own works and words.

Here’s Open Culture’s take on the film Painters Painting:

For his 1972 movie Painters Painting: The New York Art Scene 1940-1970, De Antonio managed to get artists like Warhol, Johns, and De Kooning along with Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Barnett Newman and Helen Frankenthaler to talk about their craft. It is the definitive documentary portrait of the New York art world.

I was probably the only filmmaker in the world who could [have made Painters Painting] because I knew all those people, from the time that they were poor, and unsuccessful and had no money. I knew Warhol and Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and Stella before they ever sold a painting, and so it was interesting to [do the film about them]. They appeared in the film along with De Kooning, whom I knew very well, and Barnett Newman, who is now dead. They talked to me in a way that they would never have talked to anybody else because they knew I knew the subject.

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RIP, JFK

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With the tragedy of the JFK assassination marking its 50th anniversary this month, I’m continuing my regular posts exploring that dark day in Dallas.

Not only was the assassination of JFK one of the most important events in U.S. history, the mystery that surrounds the tragedy created the modern conspiracy theory and continues to plague us with questions five decades later.

For a contemporary audience, it’s impossible to separate filmmaker Oliver Stone’s masterpiece JFK from the killing of the president in 1963. Both celebrated and scourged, Stone’s “counter myth” about the killing of Kennedy continues to divide audiences, sticking a bold, pointing finger directly into that wound in our national consciousness.

Oliver Stone’s son Sean played Kevin Costner’s son in the movie and here he sits down with his famous father and Buzzsaw host Tyrel Ventura to talk about Hollywood, conspiracy theories, the JFK film and the secret history of the assassination.

Here are Roger Ebert’s comments on the film’s superb cast and stunning editing in his original review of the 1991 film:

As Garrison, Kevin Costner gives a measured yet passionate performance. Like a man who has hold of an idea he cannot let go, he forges ahead, insisting that there is more to the assassination than meets the eye. Stone has surrounded him with an astonishing cast, able to give us the uncanny impression that we are seeing historical figures. There is Joe Pesci, squirming and hyperkenetic as David Ferrie, the alleged getaway pilot. Tommy Lee Jones as Clay Shaw, hiding behind an impenetrable wall of bemusement. Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald. Donald Sutherland as “X” (actually Fletcher Prouty), the high-placed Pentagon official who thinks he knows why JFK was killed. Sissy Spacek, in the somewhat thankless role of Garrison’s wife, who fears for her family and marriage. And dozens of others, including Jack Lemmon, Ed Asner, Walter Matthau and Kevin Bacon in small, key roles, their faces vaguely familiar behind the facades of their characters.

Stone and his editors, Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia, have somehow triumphed over the tumult of material here and made it work – made it grip and disturb us. The achievement of the film is not that it answers the mystery of the Kennedy assassination, because it does not, or even that it vindicates Garrison, who is seen here as a man often whistling in the dark. Its achievement is that it tries to marshal the anger which ever since 1963 has been gnawing away on some dark shelf of the national psyche. John F. Kennedy was murdered. Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone. Who acted with him? Who knew?

Here’s the full interview:

What do you think? Do you have a theory about the assassination? Leave a comment and let’s see if we can’t come to our own conclusions.

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The television show In Search Of is a strange little chestnut from my childhood. I knew the show’s host, Leonard Nimoy from his turn as “Spock” in Star Trek repeats, and In Search Of’s focus on unexplained phenomena, missing persons and extraterrestrial encounters was right on target for a kid who already loved Sci-Fi.

I remember being terrified by the “Bigfoot” episode of the show and equally traumatized when the program took its cameras beneath the deep green waters of Loch Ness. But, not all of the show’s subjects were so “out there.” In 1980, their “Lee Harvey Oswald” episode dramatized the circumstances surrounding the assassination of JFK, including key evidence from authors and experts along the way.

The result is an insightful portrait of the self-proclaimed “patsy” that challenges the “lone gunman” contentions of the Warren Report. The centerpiece of the show is a Dallas police dictaphone recording that proves that there were four shots in Dealey Plaza that day in 1963. The recording confirmed a shot coming from the “Grassy Knoll” and the existence of a second shooter. The evidence was presented to the House Select Committee on Assassinations and published their findings in 1979. Among their conclusions:

Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy. The second and third shots Oswald fired struck the President. The third shot he fired killed the President.
Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that at least two gunmen fired at the President. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved.
The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfilment of their duties. President Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination was conducted. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive.
The Committee further concluded that it was probable that:

four shots were fired
the third shot came from a second assassin located on the grassy knoll, but missed. They concluded that it missed due to the lack of physical evidence of an actual bullet, of course this investigation took place almost sixteen years after the crime.

Find out more. Watch “In Search Of: Lee Harvey Oswald”

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This past Sunday over 2 million viewers tuned-in to the REELZ channel to watch a brand new documentary about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. With the tragedy marking its 50th anniversary this month, I’m planning on regular posts exploring that dark day in Dallas.

Not only was the assassination of JFK one of the most important events in the history of the country, the mystery that surrounds the tragedy gave birth to modern conspiracy culture and continues to haunt the consciousness of a society that finds itself plagued with questions five decades later.

The viewing audience for JFK: The Smoking Gun shows that the killing of the president in 1963 still captures the public mind in a manner that remains undiminished from that moment the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. It also represents the very latest examination of the crime of the century.

Here’s the IMDB summary:

Seventy-five percent of the American people still refuse to believe the official story of President John F. Kennedy’s death. They do not think he was killed by a lone gunman but by a mysterious cabal that somehow conspired to have him killed. How can this be? How can a crime this famous, witnessed and investigated by so many, remain a mystery? This is what veteran Australian police detective Colin McLaren is determined to find out. JFK: The Smoking Gun follows the forensic cold-case investigation McLaren conducted over four painstaking years, taking us back to that tragic day in Dallas at Dealey Plaza where the shooting took place, to Parkland Hospital where the president was pronounced dead, to the Bethesda Naval Hospital where the autopsy was conducted and to the conclusions of the Warren Commission that have remained controversial to this day. Driven by a seasoned police detective who, thanks to modern technology, finally had access to all the facts and to witness testimony, the documentary uses logic, reason and time-tested investigative techniques to solve a crime that is every bit as shocking and incredible today as it was when it first happened 50 years ago. Colin McLaren believes he has found “the smoking gun” that killed JFK. Once you’ve seen this film, he’s confident you will believe it, too.

Here’s the full film:

What do you think? Do you have a theory about the assassination? Leave a comment and let’s see if we can’t come to our own conclusions.

Stay Awake!

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