Director's Cut


I watched Oliver Stone's cut of "JFK" last night. There are some added scenes with factual people such as George de Mohrenshildt. If you take "JFK" and look at it just as a movie - then it's real good. It's a good story with some terrific acting. If you look at "JFK" as some kind of historical documentary - well, to put it mildly, it isn't that. The added scenes were just like the rest of the movie, some of them actually happened, others were completely made up. It's why this movie should be looked at as nothing more than a movie.

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I don't think so. The controversy over the allegations in this movie caused the government to study the case again. The movie laid out all the possibilities. In their new study the government went so far as to admit there probably was a conspiracy. That is a far cry from the Warren commission saying it was a single shooter and no evidence of conspiracy. There's plenty of evidence that Oswald worked for the CIA and that the CIA wanted to kill the president. Especially with newly released documents (and they are still holding some of them back).
Even though some scenes are fictional, the actual theories are laid out and so is the behaviour of all the key players. The movie is a good companion to reading many of the books with these theories, to get an overall picture of the assassination.
When so much documentation has been destroyed, it is not surprising we can't be sure of the details of the murder. But we are closer to being sure it is a conspiracy now than we ever were.
JFK said he wanted to shatter the CIA into a million pieces. I am paraphrasing, but they lied to him and he fired the 3 top men in the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, for lying to him about Castro and Cuba. This alone makes me positive they killed him, using the mob to help - yes, I think they are in bed together, the CIA and the mob.

I should add that at least 2 members of the Warren commission disagreed with the lone shooter conclusion. But they were pressured to sign it. Bobby and Lyndon also disagreed on the lone nut theory. But they never spoke against it. They wanted to calm the public. There were 26 volumes of the appendix with notes and interviews, and one summary volume. One of the commission said "No one reads!" And true, very few people bought all 26 volumes. But the researchers who did buy them and read them found startling discrepancies in them. Some witnesses were brushed aside or not even interviewed if what they said did not match the offical lone nut theory they wanted to prove. One member of the commission was the top guy that JFK fired: Allen Dulles. A lot of these things are in other documentaries. There are some very good ones so you can piece together what probably happened, based on means and motives. Oswald was the perfect fall guy for them. I believe his words "I'm just a patsy." The men who plotted the assassination had set up other patsies in Florida and Chicago for previous planned assassinations that fell through. They were the same type as Oswald.

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Perhaps it's naive of me, but this is why I've never seen this movie. I was 14 when JK came out, but even at that age I remember thinking, "So 28 years later they expect us to believe an epic conspiracy. Why wasn't this prosecution successful in the 60's when the evidence was fresher and witnesses were still alive? No thanks."

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