On Mon, 12 Apr 1993 01:45:26 -0400, ken fisher
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
>The "director's cut" of JFK turns out to be 20 minutes more detestable
>and mendacious than the first cut. Goebbels couldn't have done better.
>
>A typically despicable "restoration" is the scene based on Jim Garrison's
>appearance on the Tonight show. I remember that show vividly -- Carson
>was subdued and respectful, and devoted the entire show to Garrison. In
>O. Stones's version, "Johnny Johnson," in the snide and unsubtle person of
>John Larroquette, does nothing but toss out sarcastic and demeaning
>remarks
>to noble lawyer Garrison, who quietly puts him in his place -- at which
>point Garrison is yanked off the show. I guess this must be artistic license.
>
>It makes me dizzy to think of an entire gullible, uncritical MTV generation -
>and other folks who ought to know better -- accepting this captious claptrap
>as a rational interpretation of history. Miserere nobis.
>
>kjf-
 
 
Quite a polemic.  Clearly I missed a lively discussion of _JFK_ before
I signed on.
 
Let me preface my comments by stating that I am in way a fan of Stone's,
and I laughed all the way through _The Doors_ and cringed all the way
through _Born on the 4th of July_, I assure you.  I am also repulsed by
his sexual politics and obsession with an infantile, overly Oedipal
notion of politics.  You can also count me as someone who dearly
wishes he found (or created) some hero other than Garrison, if
(as he has asserted) he really needed a protagonist in the first place
for strictly narrative reasons.
 
At the same time, however, I'm interested in Ken's (and anyone else's)
sense of a) what a "rational" interpretation of the Kennedy assassination,
particularly a cinematic "rationality," would entail; and b) the degree to
which Ken's (and anyone else's) reaction to the film was against
either the use of Garrison or (perhaps and/ or) the film's overt
criticism of the Warren Commission.
 
In other words, while I certainly agree that Stone's film is flawed
--- fatally flawed, in some respects --- I'd ask that rather than use such
terms as "claptrap" and "Goebbels couldn't have done better," you define
more clearly the offense you've taken:  is it primarily aesthetic
(that is, Stone misuses cinematic "tricks" to "misrepresent
the truth of rational history") or political (i.e., Warren Commission critics
are inherently "irrational")?  (Or, more likely, both?).
 
I ask not to get into an argument about the specifics of the
assassination (one can go to alt.conspiracy.jfk on the Usenet
groups for that), but because the question of aesthetics and
truth is a pretty vital one for the study of cinema, and rather
than just dismiss Stone, I'd like to see a discussion as to the
assumptions one makes in stating that Stone "misrepresents"
the "truth".  At the risk of waxing philosophical, what is the
truth of the assassination, and how would one propose to better
represent it cinematically?
 
(By the way, another "new" scene Ken didn't describe is an hys-
terically paranoid scene of Garrison/ Costner in the men's room.)
 
I must admit that I am currently enjoying the new digest format,
so if this topic has been a ripe one today and this merely repeats
what others have said, I apologize.
 
Mark Fenster
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