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CONTROVERSY: JFK

© Sean Gallagher

When Oliver Stone's JFK came out in December of 1991, it was hardly the first time movies about real events and real people had been the subject of controversy over how "true" they were. But no other film has been attacked or discussed as much as Stone's epic, and it seems every film since then that has tackled history has been the subject of intense scrutiny.

Of course, Stone was handling heavily loaded material already. November 22, 1963 is still a big part of our nation's memory. And while the infamous Warren report declared there was no evidence to suggest anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald had anything to do with the shooting, the fact that Oswald was shot and killed before he could be tried means we'll never know for sure. And so, over the years, many have come to believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, one of the many being, of course, Stone.

Another one of the many was Jim Garrison, a New Orleans district attorney in the 60's who was the only one to prosecute someone - businessman Clay Shaw - for conspiracy to murder Kennedy. Shaw was eventually found not guilty, but the trial led to Garrison to write the book ON THE TRAIL OF ASSASSINS, and it was Garrison and his book (along with, to a lesser extent, Jim Marrs' book CROSSFIRE: THE PLOT TO KILL KENNEDY) that led Stone to make his movie. Garrison admittedly was also the flashpoint of a lot of controversy, with even Stone admitting he was somewhat of a paranoid crackpot. And even conspiracy theorists who in theory supported Stone's movie wondered why Garrison was made the hero.

Of course, those who were not conspiracy theorists had a field day pillioring Stone, and Garrison, for distortion. The New York Times ran an article every day, it seemed, where someone would attack Stone's movie for not being true (it got to the point that cartoonist Garry Trudeau ran a cartoon parodying the Times' efforts). And they were far from the only ones; Dan Rather and other TV journalists weighed in, as did all the major weekly magazines. The irony is, while the news and editorial scribes proclaimed how evil Stone's movie was, the movie critics for these newspapers, magazines, and TV stations - with the exception, of course, of The New York Times - mostly gave Stone's film high marks. The reason? Whether you agree with Stone's theory of events, this is a hell of a movie.