Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Manhattan, New York, USA.

Sita Sings the Blues (2009)
Directed by Nina Paley
Written by Nina Paley
Produced by Nina Paley
82 minutes

Like a strange brew coated with aromatic honey, Sita Sings the Blues goes down easy for anyone wary of the letters “DIY” stamped on a movie. Cartoonist and filmmaker Nina Paley was introduced to the Hindu epic The Ramayana in comic book format while living in Trivandum with her then-husband. After their long distance breakup, Paley found solace in the records of jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, whose blues Paley felt echoed the myth of Rama’s long suffering wife, Sita. Over the course of five years, Paley animated and produced Sita Sings the Blues on a Mac in her Manhattan apartment, working primarily in Flash and editing in Final Cut Pro. Lending their expertise were sound designer Greg Sextro, three friends from India who ad-libbed narration and the French band Masala Dosa, who found Paley on the Internet and contributed a song. Her production budget was practically zero.

While Annette Hanshaw’s recordings were public domain, Paley discovered that the publishing rights to the songs she needed would cost her $220,000. She managed to get legal clearances for $70,000 by making sure Sita Sings the Blues wouldn’t reap millions at the box office, giving her movie away for free under a Creative Commons license known as a “copyleft”. Screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2008, Sita Sings the Blues played to wide acclaim at every other film festival on the planet before being issued on DVD in July 2009. While the mission statement and means in which Paley produced her film are more fascinating than anything that really ended up on screen, Sita Sings the Blues is lifted by its abundant wit, enterprising mixture of ancient myth with jazz and its equation of modern day struggles with the centuries old mysteries scribbled down in The Ramayana.

In San Francisco, Nina (Nina Paley) and Dave (Sanjiv Jhaveri) have their relationship thrown into upheaval when Dave receives a job offer taking him to India. Three shadow puppets (Aseem Chhabra, Bhavana Nagulapally, Manish Acharya) begin a story from the Hindu holy book The Ramayana, in which Rama (Debargo Sanyal), the virtuous Prince of Ayodhya, is sent into exile on the eve of his coronation. Rama pledges to rid the forests of the raksha demons terrorizing their holy men. In spite of the dangers, his loving wife Sita (Reena Shah), who cannot live without her husband, accompanies Rama on his crusade. Sita expresses her devotion and self-sacrifice through the 1920s jazz recordings of Annette Hanshaw. Back in San Francisco, Dave departs on his journey to India, leaving Nina unsure when she will see him again.

Ravana, king of the island Lanka, seeks revenge against Rama by ordering his minion Maricha to transform into a golden deer, distracting Rama on a hunt long enough for the treacherous monarch to abduct Sita. Refusing to force himself on his captive, Ravana lets Sita decide whether she wants to become his. She remains loyal to her husband, but once rescued, Rama questions his wife’s purity. These doubts spread throughout the kingdom and Rama decides to send Sita into exile, even though she is pregnant with his twin sons. Once in India, Dave develops similar doubts about Nina. He remains distant when she arrives for a visit and when Nina travels to New York for a job, Dave breaks up with her via email. Nina finds solace in Sita, whose long and lonely exile ends when she offers to prove her purity to Rama.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 574 users: 87% for Sita Sings the Blues

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 94 for Sita Sings the Blues

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The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Coco Before Chanel (2009)
Directed by Anne Fontaine
Screenplay by Anne Fontaine & Camille Fontaine, based on the book L’Irreguliere by Edmonde Charles-Roux
Produced by Caroline Benjo, Carole Scotta, Philippe Carcassonne, Simon Arnal
110 minutes

Quietly bold and gracefully dazzling, Coco Before Chanel rejects the conventions of the biopic while affirming what most good biopics do: cultural icons are rarely born into genius. In 2006, Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta approached Anne Fontaine with the idea of making a movie about Coco Chanel. Having yet to try a period film, the director insisted the right actress be attached first and that she could choose which period of Chanel’s life to portray. Once Audrey Tautou agreed to star, Fontaine urged Camille Fontaine to read Edmonde Charles-Roux’s 1974 biography on the enigmatic fashion designer. The sisters wrote a script focusing on Chanel’s youth, with material by Jacques Fieschi and Academy Award winner Christopher Hampton consulting. Warner Bros. France was sold on the script and raised a budget of roughly $23 million.

With a self-assuredness of style that never threatens to overwhelm the substance of the story, Coco Before Chanel explores a time where the only option for a woman born into poverty was to become a courtesan to wealthy men. Instead of embracing the pageantry of being a fashion designer, the complexity of Chanel’s relationships with her male benefactors becomes the central focus. This is handled with a nuance rare in American films, where political correctness run amok usually translates into men being portrayed as some sort of enemy. Collaborating with director of photography Christophe Beaucarne, Fontaine immerses her film in sophistication and mystery, slipping pieces into the puzzle one scene at a time, hinting at how Chanel built the empire she did. Alexandre Desplat (The Ghost Writer) composed a musical score that is as mesmerizing as the film it illustrates.

10-year-old Gabrielle Chanel (Lisa Cohen) and her sister Adrienne (Inès Bessalem) are delivered to a Catholic monastery, where Gabrielle waits every Sunday for a father who never returns. Fifteen years later, Gabrielle (Audrey Tautou) and Adrienne (Marie Gillain) survive as seamstresses by day and cabaret singers by night. While a baron romances her older sister, Gabrielle’s blunt nature manages to attract an admirer in cavalry officer Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), who dubs her “Coco” after the pooch in her trademark musical number. Fired from the cabaret due to her surliness, Coco indulges Balsan’s lust and hopes he can repay her with an audition in Paris. When she fails the tryout and her sister moves to Paris with her lover, Coco shows up at Balsan’s doorstep and survives as his kept woman.

Sporting an androgynous fashion sense all her own, Coco refuses to entertain Balsan’s degenerate society pals, passing time designing hats or costumes for his lady friends, including actress Emilienne d’Alençon (Emmanuelle Devos). Coco becomes smitten with an English business associate of her benefactor’s named Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola) and receives Balsan’s blessing to spend two days with him at the resort of Deauville, where Coco sees the ocean for the first time. Crushed by the news that Boy is engaged to marry, Coco accepts a loan from her lover that enables her to open her own boutique in Paris. Chanel’s utilitarian designs — highlighted by styles plucked from her immediate environment — comes to revolutionize women’s fashions in the 1920s, but fame and fortune come at a cost.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 34,237 users: 57% for Coco Before Chanel

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 65 for Coco Before Chanel

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The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten recent movies that pass.

An Education (2009)
Directed by Lone Scherfig
Screenplay by Nick Hornby, based on the memoir by Lynn Barber
Produced by Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
100 minutes

Recalling the entrance that an ingénue named Natalie Portman made with The Professional in 1994, Carey Mulligan radiates such ingenuity in An Education that it’s easy to overlook how terrific the coming-of-age tale that forms around her is. Author Nick Hornby discovered the material in the spring of 2003 in the British literary journal Granta. Sensing that the 10-page autobiographical essay by journalist Lynn Barber had the elements of a movie, Hornby mentioned it to his then girlfriend (later wife), producer Amanda Posey, who optioned film rights with her partner Finola Dwyer. Hornby wrote the first draft of An Education on spec in 2004. Rejected by several financiers due to its limited commercial appeal and the difficulty casting the lead role, two executives at BBC Films named David Thompson and Tracey Scoffield gambled on the project.

Preferring a woman behind the camera, Hornby lucked out when Danish director Lone Scherfig expressed interest in An Education. BBC raised a budget of roughly £4.5 million ($7 million USD) and shooting finally commenced in and around Twickenham Film Studios in March 2008. Lynn Barber’s memoir has the intimacy of a finely honed short story; it’s not so much what happens but who it happens to which is so captivating. In addition to its star making performance by Carey Mulligan, Hornby and Scherfig bring whimsy to material that could have easily gone too dark, too nostalgic or too pretentious. Impeccably well cast by Lucy Bevan and drenched in shades of a jazz LP cover by John de Borman, An Education was nominated for three Academy Awards — Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay — but won none.

In the London suburb of Twickenham in 1961, 16-year-old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) blazes an academic trail for Oxford, writing A+ papers in the English class of Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) and playing cello in youth orchestra. Waiting in the rain for a bus, Jenny is offered a ride by David (Peter Sarsgaard), a witty, considerate man. While the ambitions of Jenny’s classmate Graham (Matthew Beard) fail to pass the muster of Jenny’s father (Alfred Molina), David runs into Jenny again and invites her to a performance of Ravel. Introducing himself to Jenny’s father and mother (Cara Seymour), David charms them into allowing their daughter to go on the date. After the concert, David works in supper at a nightclub with his cosmopolitan friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike).

Having the time of her life, Jenny ditches school to attend an auction with David. His exact line of work remains mysterious — “property, a bit of art dealing” — but with a winning personality and a bit of cleverness, he convinces Jenny’s parents to allow her to spend the weekend in Oxford with him and his friends. Jenny makes clear to David she intends to keep her virginity until she turns 17. David respects this wish but during the weekend, it becomes clear to Jenny that her boyfriend’s occupation involves swindling and stealing. When David promises Jenny a birthday getaway to Paris, news of their adventures begins disrupting classes. Miss Stubbs warns her pupil not to throw away her education on David, but the life of an English teacher holds little appeal to the teenager, who wants to live it up while she can.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 14,719 users: 77% for An Education

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 85 for An Education

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The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten recent movies that pass.

Bright Star (2009)
Directed by Jane Campion
Written by Jane Campion
Produced by Jan Chapman, Caroline Hewitt
119 minutes

Bright Star failed to draw a big audience or win many awards, but proving that sometimes “lessness is bestness”, the PG-rated romance took the path of restraint. The result is an overpowering depiction of the power of words. Turning 50 and deciding it was time she stopped being intimidated by poetry, Jane Campion read Keats, Andrew Motion’s biography on John Keats. Campion was impacted by the poet’s unconsummated love for Fanny Brawne, who he confided feelings for largely through letters. Deciding that the best way to tell their story was from Fanny’s point of view, she wrote an original script based on Motion’s research. French conglomerate Pathé raised $8.5 million for Campion’s seventh feature film, which was shot on a nine week schedule north of London, with one day of exterior shooting in Rome.

Campion was learning about poetry and John Keats as she was preparing the movie and it’s this spark of discovery that sets Bright Star apart among costume pictures. This is a movie about dead people that feels alive. In addition to expressing what makes Keats’s poetry vital, Campion cast two actors in Abbie Cornish and Ben Whislaw who accomplish what stars would have been incapable of: surprise. Instead of camera movement, editing or music that announces itself, Bright Star holds on compositions (lit by fellow Australian Greig Fraser) as beautiful as any painting and gives the powerful story room to breathe. Once the names and places have been settled after one viewng, the visual splendor of the images, radiance of the dialogue and elation of the characters become more evident in repeated visits.

In the village of Hampstead, north of London in the autumn of 1818, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) pays a visit to Wentworth Place, a house divided into two halves, one of which is inhabited by a family close to Fanny’s widowed mother (Kerry Fox). Only 18 years old, Fanny sews and designs her own clothes and has become well known for her wit. Though she detests one of Wentworth’s residents, brash literary snob Charles Brown (Paul Schenider) Fanny becomes attracted to his friend John Keats (Ben Whislaw), a penniless 23-year-old poet who Brown supports. Keats cares for a sickly brother while his most recent work, the epic poem Endymion, has been published to dismal reviews and poor sales. Fanny sends her kid brother Samuel (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and sister Toots (Edie Martin) to buy a copy so she can see if Keats is an idiot or not.

Preferring novels to poetry, Fanny admits to Keats that she did not love Endymion, but was struck by the opening: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever; Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness”. Keats’ brother passes in the winter but by spring, the Brawnes take over the lease for half of Wentworth Place. Sharing meals and walks with Fanny, Keats completes The Eve of St Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn. Aware of Keats’s love for Fanny, Brown warns his friend how his creativity will be sacrificed in support of a wife. When the men depart for a writing retreat on the Isle of Wright in the summer, Keats expresses his feelings for a lovesick Fanny in letters. Miserable over his finances, the poet keeps away from Wentworth Place, but Keats realizes that separation has not cooled his love for Fanny, but intensified it.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 3.410 users: 69% for Bright Star

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 81 for Bright Star

Read Quentin Tarantino’s handwritten note to Jane Campion at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival regarding Bright Star

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

The Pianist (2002)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the book The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
150 minutes

A tale of an urban castaway that’s as powerful as it is restrained, The Pianist was Roman Polanski’s finest work in two decades. Originally published in 1946 under the title Death of a City, Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir of survival detailed the classical pianist’s six years under Nazi occupation in Warsaw. Seizing upon the book as his next film, Polanski selected South African born playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood — whose play Taking Sides also featured a composer caught in the maelstrom of World War II — to adapt a screenplay. France’s Le Studio Canal largely financed the €38 million (roughly $33 million) production in association with England’s Cadre Films and after Joseph Fiennes declined the role in order to remain on the British stage, Polanski arrived on Adrien Brody to portray Szpilman. The actor went from 160 to 130 pounds in six weeks to prepare for the part.

Filmed at Babelsburg Studios in Berlin, with additional shooting in the Braga district outside Warsaw, what sets The Pianist apart from WWII dramas like Saving Private Ryan or Enemy At the Gates is its simplicity and grace. Written immediately after the occupation, Szpilman’s story is resplendent in detail and confident enough in its truth not to employ artificiality or unearned sentiments. Turning genre conventions on their head, we meet Jews who are less than virtuous and at least one German who is more than pure evil, creating a landscape that provokes thought and feeling. A tale of genocide, the irony is that Polanski’s craftsmanship is so solid we wish the story kept going. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, Adrien Brody (Best Actor), Ronald Harwood (Best Adapted Screenplay) and Roman Polanski (Best Director) all won Oscars.

In Warsaw of September 1939, pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is performing Chopin’s Nocturne in C Sharp minor for Polish radio when German artillery shells hit the city. Szpilman’s violinist father (Frank Finlay), mother (Maureen Lipman), younger brother Henryk (Ed Stoppard) and two grown sisters (Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer) rejoice with the news that Britain and France have declared war on Germany, but Poland quickly falls under Nazi control. Szpilman has time to take an adoring cellist named Dorota (Emilia Fox) for coffee before the city’s 360,000 Jews are evicted from their homes and sealed inside a ghetto in October 1940. Szpilman finds employment as a piano player in an upper class Jewish café and along with Henryk, rejects an offer from a family friend named Heller (Roy Smiles) to join the Jewish Ghetto Police.

When Henryk is arrested, Szpilman appeals to Heller’s ego to secure his brother’s release. He keeps his family from being deported by obtaining employment certificates for them, but these prove worthless when in August 1942, the Szpilmans are herded onto trains bound for Treblinka. Heller pulls Szpilman off the line, sparing his life, but the pianist never sees his family again. He survives by joining a Jewish work detail and buys enough time to arrange for his escape. Harbored by friends, Szpilman is reunited with Dorota, now married and expecting a child. Once the Polish uprising begins in August 1944, he’s near the brink of famine. Scrounging for food in the deserted city, Szpilman comes to face to face with Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann). Instead of being shot, the pianist is rewarded by an act of kindness after the German officer hears his music.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 107,318 users: 94% for The Pianist

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 85 for The Pianist

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)
Directed by Nunnally Johnson
Screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on the book by Corbett H. Thigpen M.D. & Hervey M. Cleckley M.D.
Produced by Nunnally Johnson
91 minutes

The Three Faces of Eve is so ridiculous that it begs for a spot on Mystery Science Theater. That may be a warning to ignore this, or an invitation to watch it, depending on your taste. The film is based on a case of multiple personality documented in a woman in Georgia known only at that time as “Eve”. Writer-producer Nunnally Johnson — who adapted The Grapes of Wrath and How To Marry A Millionaire — read the manuscript in galleys and sold Fox on purchasing the screen rights before the book’s publication in 1957. Johnson’s first choice to play Eve was Jennifer Jones, who demurred. Marilyn Monroe was considered, then Judy Garland. Joanne Woodward was a TV veteran under contract to Fox and despite having only two screen credits at that time, won the part. Woodward’s performance then won the Academy Award for Best Actress, the one and only Oscar nomination of her career.

Earnestly narrated by Alistair Cooke — who in a dash of retro style actually appears on camera to deliver an introduction for everyone in the cheap seats — the drama is thinly sketched, the psychology is poorly rationalized and the production is cheaply shot on the Fox lot, albeit in wide angle proscenium “CinemaScope” by director of photography Stanley Cortez. If given a sense of humor, the script might have been more appropriate for the Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle playing Eve. That said, the saving grace of The Three Faces of Eve is Joanne Woodward, the kooky hipster chick and wife of Paul Newman who seemed to blaze a trail in independent film 30 years before Sundance or Miramax existed (her contemporary might be Toni Collette). In what would barely qualify as a movie by today’s standards, Mrs. Woodward is nothing short of beguiling.

In an on camera introduction by “Distinguished Journalist and Commentator” Alistair Cooke, we the audience are assured that the events of the movie we’re about to see are based on an account of “multiple personality” that is a matter of psychiatric record. On August 20, 1951 somewhere in Georgia, dreary housewife Eve White (Joanne Woodward) and her husband Ralph (David Wayne) are referred to a psychiatrist named Dr. Charles Luther (Lee J. Cobb), Eve reports suffering from splitting headaches followed by spells in which she blacks out. Her health improves for few months until Ralph discovers $218 in clothes and shoes in their bedroom. Despite her signature on the receipt, Eve denies having purchased the items. Leaving his wife alone with their daughter Bonnie, Eve next tries to strangle the girl when she refuses to be quiet.

Confiding to Dr. Luther that she hears voices, Eve suffers a spell in her psychiatrist’s office and a new personality emerges. Giving the name “Eve Black”, this side of Eve is a party girl who expresses contempt toward Ralph. Dr. Luther’s colleague Dr. Day (Edwin Jerome) is prepared to pronounce her a faker, but when the spells continue, Eve is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Feeling Eve Black is no threat to her other personality, Eve White is released, but her husband struggles to accept his wife’s illness. When Eve Black reasserts herself and goes out on the town, Ralph hits her. Placed under therapy, Eve reveals a third personality. Giving the name “Jane”, this side of Eve balances her disparate poles and even begins dating a new beau (Ken Scott). Searching for answers, Dr. Luther places Jane under hypnosis and digs into her past.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 70 users: 91% for The Three Faces of Eve

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

In Cold Blood (1967)
Directed by Richard Brooks
Screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on the book by Truman Capote
Produced by Richard Brooks
134 minutes

Richard Brooks’ screen version of the “non-fiction novel” by Truman Capote opened the same year as The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, so if there’s a debate about which 1967 film had the greatest impact on future of motion pictures, In Cold Blood is not in that debate. The murder of the Clutter family never warrants the thousands of man hours that were dedicated to analyzing and recreating the crime, but the film illustrates how a gifted actor, composer and cinematographer can elevate material into something magnificent. Ignoring suggestions by Columbia Pictures that Steve McQueen & Paul Newman play Perry Smith & Dick Hickock, Brooks cast unknowns in Robert Blake & Scott Wilson and tried to inject as much realism as possible into this true crime story, shooting at some of the actual locations and casting participants in the 1959 murder trial as extras.

Playing a natural born killer itched by the occasional impulse to do good, Robert Blake is brilliant. Quincy Jones composed a jazz score that initially seems inappropriate for heavy drama, but the music keeps the viewer off-balance, unsure of how we’re supposed to feel about what’s happening. The best reason of all to revisit In Cold Blood is the cinematography by Conrad Hall, one of the most vivid examples of the harsh beauty he would become renowned for. In terms of precision, lighting a black & white movie is like being called up to pitch in the majors and Hall was one of the league’s superstars; few movies using monochrome film stock or widescreen framing utilize the medium as gorgeously as In Cold Blood. Largely forgotten in spite of the number of actors he directed to Oscars, Richard Brooks brings intelligence and a point of view to the examination of a motiveless crime.

Stepping off a Greyhound bus in Kansas City with a guitar and most of his possessions in a box, Perry Smith (Robert Blake) makes an urgent call to the Kansas State Penitentiary, hoping the pastor there can put him in touch with a friend whose guidance he desperately needs. Instead, smooth talking ex-con Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) picks him up, violating Perry’s parole by returning him to Kansas. Dick is eager for Perry’s help breaking into a home 400 miles west in the town of Holcomb, where according to a former cellmate of Dick’s, farmer Herbert Clutter has $10,000 or “maybe more” locked in a safe. Chewing Aspirin for chronic leg pain he’s suffered since a motorcycle accident, Perry resists going along with the robbery, but is talked into it by Dick, who has never killed anyone and covets Perry’s experience in that area.

When Clutter, his wife, 16-year-old daughter Nancy (Brenda Currin) and 15-year-old son are found shot to death, FBI agent Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) begins pursuing leads. With no shotgun shells and no fingerprints to work from, the feds catch a break when Dick’s cellmate comes forward to offer information in exchange for a reward. Dreaming of sunken treasure, Perry drags Dick down to Mexico, a trip his partner finances by cutting phony checks along the way. Missing his gravely ill father (Jeff Corey), Dick compels Perry to return with him to Kansas. Arrested in Las Vegas for a stolen car, the men are interrogated by Agent Dewey and his men. Also hovering around the case is reporter Bill Jensen (Paul Stewart) who is obsessed by the senselessness of the crime and seeks answers of how something like this could happen.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 1,891 users: 83% for In Cold Blood

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Iris Yamashita, story by Iris Yamashita & Paul Haggis, based on the book Picture Letters From Commander In Chief by Tadamichi Kuribayashi
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Robert Lorenz
141 minutes

In his research for the $90 million World War II drama Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood had his interest piqued by the general who designed the ingenious defenses for Iwo Jima. Pitched as an audacious companion piece that would illustrate the battle from the perspective of the Japanese — budgeted at $20 million and shot largely on the Warner Bros. backlot — Letters From Iwo Jima turns out being vastly superior to the unwieldy Flags of Our Fathers and more complex than Saving Private Ryan or any other war movie of the past 20 years. Rejecting genre clichés like a beachhead, Eastwood’s film is both a vision and a discovery, of actors we’ve never seen before, of a place we’ve never seen portrayed on film in this way and a discovery of a culture and people reduced to caricature in other movies.

Letters From Iwo Jima owes its eyes and its heart to Iris Yamashita, a Los Angeles web programmer who’d won a screenwriting contest with a spec titled Traveler to Tokyo and whose work was referred to Paul Haggis, who Eastwood had hired to structure a screenplay. In addition to keeping the dialogue in Japanese, Yamashita paints a vibrant depiction of men sent to war; some descend into pettiness or barbarism, but for the most part, these are men who miss their families and want to go home, a quality they either already understand or soon learn they share with their enemy. Like all great movies, this one feels like it’d been waiting to be made, at least by an American filmmaker as intuitive and skilled as Eastwood. Letters From Iwo Jima is the best picture he’s directed without acting in so far.

Japanese archeologists sifting through the island of Iwo Jima in 2005 discover a mail pouch buried in the cave network abandoned in World War II. Moving back in time to 1944 — as outmanned and outgunned Japanese forces fortify the beaches of the volcanic rock against an impending American invasion — Private Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya) runs afoul with his sadistic superior Captain Tanida (Takumi Bando) when he’s overheard making comments deemed unpatriotic. A baker and comparatively weak soldier drafted into the army, Saigo writes letters home to his wife Hanako. His friend Kashiwara (Takashi Yamaguchi) becomes stricken with dysentery while Nozaki (Yuki Matsuzaki) gossips about the newly arrived General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) who received his military training in the United States.

Notified that reinforcements have been destroyed off the Marianas, Kuribayashi shifts his defenses from the beaches to Mount Suribachi, where the Japanese begin digging a cave network that will hold out much longer than a frontal assault against the Americans. The contemplative general finds an ally in Lieutenant Colonel Takeichi Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), a charismatic cavalry officer who won gold as an equestrian in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Newly arrived superior Private Shimizu (Ryo Kase) reveals to Saigo and Nozaki that he received his training as a military policeman, raising concerns that he might be a spy; the truth behind Shimizu’s deployment to Iwo Jima reveals another side to him. Drilled that Americans are weak and inferior, once the invasion begins, Saigo and the others quickly learn otherwise. Their only honorable course of action is to embrace ritual suicide.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 195 users: 91% for Letters From Iwo Jima

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 89 for Letters From Iwo Jima

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Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by John Lee Hancock, based on the book by John Berendt
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Arnold Stiefel
155 minutes

The film adaptation of John Berendt’s Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil — known in Savannah with equal exasperation and pride as “The Book” — may be a tone deaf murder mystery/comedy that never comes together despite a ponderous two and a half hour running time. It may also be a faithful adaptation of a book less enamored with John Grisham style plotting and more devoted to the dissonant rhythms of a town, chock full of eccentrics and historical anecdotes that fascinate despite never really coming together in 400 pages of paperback. What to make of this luxuriously made film by Clint Eastwood is that it’s about the murder trial of an antiques dealer, a fairly flat made-for-TV movie that could have easily taken place in Portland, Maine or Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil transposes scenes straight from the book without managing to capture anything like the feeling of reading the book. It’s a mystery that fails to feel mysterious. The setting is oddly flat, as if Eastwood was more comfortable shooting west of the Continental Divide than in the Deep South. His sensibilities seem to drift toward a feature length Perry Mason episode attempting to press into sheet metal what is strange and exotic in the book. Maybe Alan J. Pakula would have brought something atmospheric and kinky to the film, maybe no director would have. Kevin Spacey brings terrific panache to his performance, but John Cusack is given little to nothing to do as the writer unraveling a ho-hum murder.

Author John Kelso (John Cusack) arrives in Savannah, Georgia on behalf of Town & Country Magazine to write an article on the annual Christmas party of antiques dealer Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), whose civic accomplishments and invitation only social affairs are renowned in the Coastal Empire. Word of Kelso’s assignment gets around, particularly to singer Mandy Nicholls (Alison Eastwood) who lures the author to a party hosted by musician and scalawag Joe Odom (Paul Hipp). Kelso discovers that Williams asked Town & Country for him specifically based on a poorly received novel Kelso wrote, but the author is exposed to a different side of the nouveau riche renovator when the night of the party, Williams shoots his volatile young lover Billy Hanson (Jude Law) to death in self defense.

Exclaiming to his agent that Savannah is like “Gone With the Wind on mescaline”, Kelso ditches his magazine piece to write a book on the Jim Williams trial. Among the characters with a place in the mystery are transvestite entertainer The Lady Chablis (as herself) who insists on accompanying Kelso to a cotillion ball, industrial chemist Luther Driggers (Geoffrey Lewis) who serves as jury foreman despite his veiled threats to poison the city’s water supply, armed and daffy society dame Serena Dawes (Dorothy Loudon) and a “root doctor” named Minerva (Irma P. Hall) who Williams reaches out to for legal assistance along with his obtuse attorney (Jack Thompson). Minerva believes that Billy’s restless spirit must be appeased for Williams to have peace and she sees through the empty space in Kelso’s soul as well.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 29 users: 52% for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 57 for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

What do you say?

JFK (1991)
Directed by Oliver Stone
Screenplay by Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar, based on the books On The Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs
Produced by Oliver Stone, A. Kitman Ho
Running time: 189 minutes (theatrical version)/ 206 minutes (director’s cut)

Should I Care?
Before Michael Moore came along, columnists representing all the colors of the political spectrum looking forward to the day they could be outraged again had to wait eighteen months for Oliver Stone to make another movie. Irked by the dramatic license Stone took to make entertainment amid the social turmoil of Central America (Salvador) or Wall Street (Wall Street), pundits got their bowties in a bundle when Stone started muddying the waters of history in movies dealing with the antiwar protest (Born on the Fourth of July), the life and times of Jim Morrison (The Doors) and most notoriously, the JFK assassination in JFK. Whatever your favorite conspiracy theory, this epic re-examination of the crime of the century from every conceivable angle — plus seven or eight you probably never conceived of — is nothing short of cinematic Cirque du Soleil, unfolding flashbacks within flashbacks through film editing and sound in a controlled demolition of sorts.

It’s easy to armchair quarterback JFK and question some of the audibles. Kevin Costner seems a bit wholesome to play a district attorney in the Big Easy and some of the oratory typed up for him gets almost as stiff as Costner does. In terms of both the murder mystery at the heart of the material and the technique employed to bring it to the screen, the film has few peers. Drafting top craftsmen — from director of photography Robert Richardson to composer John Williams on down — Stone juggles archive footage with fabrication, black & white with color, Tommy Lee Jones with Joe Pesci. The assassination is initially presented as it was understood at the time, slowly unraveling until an alternate, much more insidious version is proposed. This becomes the stuff great thrillers are made. Critics who argue that it’s all propaganda haven’t really watched the movie. Stone never declares who he believes killed the president and why. That’s ultimately left up to the audience to discuss and decide on our own.

So, What’s This About?
On November 22, 1963, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is notified that the president has been shot. A family man, World War II veteran and popular anti-corruption crusader, Garrison and his staff (Jay O. Sanders, Michael Rooker, Laurie Metcalf, Wayne Knight, Gary Grubbs) watch live on TV as Dallas police apprehend a suspect in Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) who in a press conference coolly maintains his innocence. Oswald is shot in a parking lot the next day by nightclub owner Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle Murray). Alerted that Oswald spent the summer before the assassination in New Orleans, Garrison summons a known associate named David Ferrie (Joe Pesci) for an interview on a tip he might have been a getaway pilot for Oswald. The FBI questions and releases Ferrie mysteriously. Four years later, a candid chat with Senator Russell Long (Walter Matthau) and glaring inconsistencies in the Warren Commission Report prompt Garrison to reopen the murder of President Kennedy.

The case begins on the night of the assassination when private eye Guy Bannister (Ed Asner) pistol whipped his friend Jack Martin (Jack Lemmon). Martin links David Ferrie and Oswald to Bannister, who was involved in a CIA scheme to train Cuban exiles for another invasion of the island. Garrison follows the trail to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, where witnesses report hearing shots fired from a grassy knoll in front of the president’s motorcade, as well as intimidation from federal agents. Garrison’s suspicion falls onto New Orleans industrialist Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) who has CIA ties and discussed an assassination plot with Ferrie and Oswald months before the murder. Scrutinized, attacked and discredited, Garrison’s own wife Liz (Sissy Spacek) begins to question her husband’s case. Garrison is summoned to Washington by a retired Air Force colonel who gives the name X (Donald Sutherland). X confirms that Garrison is closer to the truth than he thinks; Kennedy was killed by a military coup d’état opposed to the president’s intent to end the Cold War.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
In May 1988, Oliver Stone attended the Latin American Film Festival in Havana to accept an award for Salvador. In an elevator, a publisher named Ellen Ray introduced herself and told the filmmaker about a book by Jim Garrison that she was publishing titled On The Trail of the Assassins. Headed to the Philippines to shoot the Vietnam sequences for Born on the Fourth of July, Stone read the galleys within days and quickly optioned the film rights out of his own pocket. In search of a writer who could get to work on a first draft, Zachary Sklar, editor of Jim Garrison’s book, was recommended. Stone would also option a book by Jim Marrs titled Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy and hire a researcher named Jane Rusconi to lead a team that poured over a hundred more books and documents examining the Kennedy assassination in detail. Arriving on the structure for a murder mystery spanning three cities — New Orleans, Dallas and Washington — Stone successfully pitched his concept to the heads of Warner Bros. in December 1989 and found a home for JFK.

With a screenplay ambitious enough for two movies and a budget that doubled what Stone initially proposed at $40 million, producer Arnon Milchan came on board with financial support from investors based in France (Le Studio Canal+) and Germany (Alcor Films). Stone and casting director Risa Bramon Garcia considered virtually every name actor for a role in the film and doggedly pursued Kevin Costner to take the role of Jim Garrison. The script was kept under wraps until filming was set to get underway in Dallas, but by May 1991 the first scathing attack on the film’s historical inaccuracies appeared in The Washington Post. Many more newspapers and magazines picked up on the furor and despite Stone’s repeated attempts to conduct articulate damage control, JFK and its director were assailed in the media leading up to a hurried release in December. A critical and commercial success and nominated for eight Academy Awards, pundits would continue to attack JFK as propaganda for months.

How’d They Do It?
Ellen Ray was the publisher of a newsletter called CovertAction Information Bulletin and meeting Oliver Stone in a hotel in Havana, began telling him about a book by former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison she was set to publish. In Stone: The Controversies, Excesses and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker by James Riordan, Stone recalled, “It was at this socialist hotel where it takes like thirty minutes for the elevator to get to the twelfth floor. We were on this creaky elevator and at first I thought she was another of the three thousand crusaders that go to these things around the world, who would talk my ear off about her pet peeve. But Ellen Ray is an extraordinary person in her own right. Back in 1967 she went down to New Orleans to volunteer her services to work with Garrison. She’s one of the most courageous women I’ve met in my life. She has a small printing press with her husband, Bill, and they publish that bulletin. She’s amazingly accurate about some things. And she said, ‘Read this book.’”

Stone ended the conversation by telling Ray to forward the galleys of On The Trail of the Assassins to his office at Fox. Two days later, Ray received a phone call from Stone. Interviewed for a Texas Monthly cover story in December 1991, Ray recalled, “He said, ‘It’s a great book, but I can’t do it. I’m on my way to the Philippines to film Born on the Fourth of July. But you won’t have any trouble selling it.’ Two days later, he called from Hawaii, saying, ‘I just read the book again on the plane. I can’t do it. I’m overloaded.’ Three days later, he called from the Philippines, saying, ‘I’m hooked. I’m going to option it.’” Stone was initially drawn into the material for the film noir aspects that seemed to leap off the page of Garrison’s book. “This pistol whipping occurs on the night of November 22, 1963 on a rainy night in which this guy Jack Martin gets his skull laid open by his boss, Guy Bannister, and out of that little Raymond Chandler kind of incident, Garrison spins this tale of international intrigue — a hell of a trail. As a dramatist, that excited me.”

Oliver Stone was 17 on the day the president was assassinated. “The Kennedy murder was one of the signal events of the postwar generation, my generation. Vietnam followed, then the bombing of Cambodia and Laos, the Pentagon Papers, the Chile affair, Watergate, going up to Iran-Contra in the eighties. We’ve had a series of major shocks. I think the American public smells a rat that’s been chewing on the innards of the government for years.” He added, “As an adolescent, I was self-absorbed with other problems, but I still felt like there was something wrong with the official version of the assassination.” Rather than engage a studio to option On The Trail of the Assassins, Stone kept his interest as quiet as possible by putting up his own money. Stone would also option a book by Jim Marrs titled Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. He contracted a recent Yale grad named Jane Rusconi to head a research team and assemble as much information on the assassination as they could compile.

Stone’s technical advisers included Larry N. Howard, founder and coordinator of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas. Howard left no bones about why he believed the president was murdered. “John F. Kennedy committed suicide, political suicide. He was getting out of Vietnam, getting rid of the Mafia, dumping Lyndon Johnson in 1964. He fired Allen Dulles from the CIA, said he was going to break up the CIA into a million pieces, make peace efforts with Castro and Krushchev, sign the nuclear test ban treaty. Civil rights was going strong. He had Bobby to succeed him; he had Teddy after Bobby. So the real people who had the power in this country, the military industrial complex, decided that Kennedy was soft on communism and was a threat to national security and worldwide peace. So they got rid of him through rogue elements of the CIA, with the Mafia as a junior partner. And from that point on, they covered it up from the top — the Warren Commission, which Johnson set up with Dulles on the panel.”

Also advising Stone was Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force colonel who served as chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy administration. Prouty had provided logistical support for clandestine CIA operations from 1955-63. He gave Stone a declassified document that he had helped draft: National Security Action Memorandum 263, in which President Kennedy called for the recall of 1,000 advisers from Vietnam by 1963 and a complete withdrawal of U.S. personnel by 1965. As Prouty saw it, this is what got Kennedy killed. “Who did it? I would go to Lyndon Johnson for reference, when he said shortly before he died, ‘We had been operating a damned Murder, Inc.’ That’s an enormous statement coming from President Johnson. He was convinced that Oswald did not do it as an individual, that there was a conspiracy, and that the government had the capabilities to do it.” Prouty didn’t believe LBJ was involved in the assassination, but that the president kept his suspicions to himself after the fact.

In December 1989 — with Born on the Fourth of July in theaters and Stone prepping to shoot The Doors in March 1990 — the filmmaker and his agent Paula Wagner met with Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Robert Daly, president Terry Semel and production executive Bill Gerber. Stone revealed that he was writing a script about the JFK assassination. Semel recalled, “My reaction was we should do it. It was entertaining and intriguing, a great murder mystery, something we cared about and grew up thinking about. It took me two minutes to be totally engrossed with the whole idea.” Warner Bros. agreed to put up $20 million in financing for worldwide distribution rights. Stone recalled, “The film had a home. I know I could have made a better overall deal by selling off the international market separately, but I wanted to sell the whole thing to Warners because I didn’t want the script going all over the world to be bid on and read. I knew the material was dangerous and I wanted one entity to finance the whole thing. Given Terry Semel’s record of political films, Warners was my first choice.”

Stone hired Zachary Sklar to adapt Jim Garrison’s book into a screenplay. Sklar clarified, “I had not been what you call an assassination researcher –I was fifteen when the assassination occurred, and of course it deeply affected me, as did the other assassinations that followed. I didn’t take any particular research interest in it, I did become a journalist, and I edited a number of books about the CIA for Sheridan Square Press, which publishes books by former CIA agents who have become disillusioned with the agency. Sheridan Square Press approached me in 1987 with a manuscript from Jim Garrison that had been rejected by another publishing house. I worked on that book for about a year and a half with Jim Garrison, we re-structured and re-wrote it, and that book became On the Trail of the Assassins, that’s how I got into the assassination.” While Sklar focused on the Jim Garrison story, Stone worked on the Lee Harvey Oswald angle, the events at Dealey Plaza and the Mr. X story in Washington.

By July 1990, Kevin Costner, Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe were on Stone’s short list to play Jim Garrison, but also being considered were Harrison Ford, Nick Nolte, Michael Douglas, Robin Williams, Michael Keaton, Mel Gibson, Gene Hackman, John Malkovich, Alec Baldwin, Robert DeNiro, Dennis Quaid, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford and Marlon Brando. In the end, scripts went out simultaneously to Harrison Ford and Kevin Costner. Ford reportedly backed away from the material because he didn’t believe there was any conspiracy. Costner — a conservative tilting supporter of George H.W. Bush — may have had similar reservations, but Stone wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Costner was a big break for us. I chased him and got him. Mike Ovitz was instrumental in that. It helped that he was a strong fan of the movie and was strongly urging Costner, his client, to be in it. He kept saying, ‘He’s gonna do it, don’t worry. It’ll happen.’”

Whether Dallas was ready to move beyond 11-22-63 or were just happy to see Stone — who had shot most of Born on the Fourth of July in Dallas and was now bringing $5 million to the local economy — for the most part, the city welcomed JFK. In an open audition that drew 11,000 to the Dallas Convention Center, locals were cast as the Kennedys and Connellys, as well as in sixty other bit parts. Shooting was scheduled to begin April 1991. The trouble began two months earlier. Assassination researcher Harold Weisberg had dispatched an angry letter to Stone disparaging the Jim Garrison investigation. Weisberg failed to draw a response, but did get a hold of a script, a first draft that he passed along to George Lardner Jr. of The Washington Post. Stone recalled, “When Lardner showed up at our offices and walked down the fucking hall uninvited, I knew we had a problem. He’s an old CIA investigative reporter and has many contacts in the agency. He was snooping around, and we escorted him off the set. And he wrote the worst possible story he could write.”

Many columnists would blast Stone for playing fast and loose with history at best, misleading the public at worst. Stone later commented, “I believe the Warren Commission Report is a great myth. And in order to fight a myth, maybe you have to create another one, a countermyth. No one really knows what happened on November 22, 1963, or who did it, but there sure are an abundance of flaws in the official investigation. I wanted to use Garrison as a vehicle for a larger perspective, a metaphoric protagonist who would stand in for about a dozen researchers. Filmmakers make myths. D.W. Griffith did it in Birth of a Nation. In Reds, Warren Beatty probably made John Reed look better than he was, but remained true to the spiritual truth of Reed’s life. I knew this would make Garrison somewhat better than he was and, in that sense, we’d be making him more of a hero. I knew I would catch a lot of flak for that, but I figured it was worth it to communicate, really get across, some truth in an area that had been steeped in lies for nearly thirty years.”

Filming wrapped in July 1991 and post-production supervisor Bill Brown highlighted the technical challenges of assembling the film Oliver Stone had in mind. “A show like Return of the Jedi would maybe have four to five hundred opticals. For JFK, we had two thousand opticals. Of course, the shots in something like Return of the Jedi would generally be much more complicated than the opticals we used in JFK, but the sheer volume of the JFK material made it very difficult. We smashed all the records at the optical house.” He added, “A line in the script would say, ‘A C-130 transport plane flies over the South Pole’ and we would have to find that shot. Now there’s a warehouse sitting out in Van Nuys with Air Force footage in it and there’s probably hundreds of thousands of feet of C-130s, but the Air Force has to read the script for you to get it. Obviously, we’re not going to turn the script of JFK over to the U.S. government armed forces, so we have to scrounge it from other places. Or he would ask for a shot of Robert Bissell, who was a CIA agent. Well, these guys are spooks; they’re not supposed to have their picture taken.”

In an interview with Cineaste in 1992, Stone explained “I wanted to do the film on two or three levels — sound and picture would take us back, and we’d go from one flashback to another, and then that flashback would go inside another flashback, like the Lee Bowers thing. We’d go to Lee Bowers at the Warren Commission, and then Lee Bowers at the railroad yard, all seen from Jim’s point of view in his study. I wanted multiple layers because reading the Warren Commission Report is like drowning. The levels and the consciousness of reality created through sound — the work done by Wylie Stateman and Michael Minkler is incredible — was also in the script. But Warner Bros. was confused by the script — you can imagine 158 pages filled with flashbacks like that and I think there are some 2,800 shots in the movie — so I took all the flashbacks and I gave them a simpler script which they liked. Then I and the editors — Joe Hutshing, Pietro Scalia and Hank Corwin — ended up putting all the flashbacks back in the editing room, and adding quite a few new ones in a sort of prismatic structure.”

Arriving in U.S. theaters in December 1991, JFK dazzled critics. Desson Howe, The Washington Post: “Despite its three hours, JFK is almost always absorbing to watch. It’s not journalism. It’s not history. It is not legal evidence. Much of it is ludicrous. It’s a piece of art or entertainment. Stone, who has acknowledged his fusing of the known and the invented, has exercised his full prerogative to use poetic license. He should feel more than mere craftsman’s satisfaction at the result.” Richard Corliss, Time Magazine: “Part history book, part comic book, the movie rushes toward judgment for three breathless hours, lassoing facts and factoids by the thousands, then bundling them together into an incendiary device that would frag any viewer’s complacency. Stone’s picture is, in both meanings of the word, sensational: it’s tip-top tabloid journalism. In its bravura and breadth, JFK is seditiously enthralling; in its craft, wondrously complex.“ Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle: “Stone makes it virtually impossible to leave the theatre convinced, beyond all shadow of doubt, of the lone gunman theory. Or, at least, he sets the stage for a good argument. And that’s where JFK‘s real power lies — in stirring the national debate.”

On Siskel & Ebert At The Movies, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both delivered a ringing endorsement for JFK and debated the media furor it had stirred up. Roger Ebert: “I think intelligent moviegoers are capable of looking at this movie and knowing exactly what Stone did. He took real footage, he took fictional footage and a lot of it is speculative; in other words, Garrison’s imagining different ways the same thing could have happened and it’s exhilarating for us to follow that thought process through to the end, even if in the end, we still don’t know who killed Kennedy.” Gene Siskel: “I think what he is saying really, I think that included in the conspiracy is the American public, in the sense of not demanding more. Here’s a guy who feels, ‘Hey look it, I went to Vietnam, I have reason to believe that the whole Vietnam experience was caused, or could have been averted if Kennedy had lived. Not sure, but could have been — maybe a better chance than LBJ running the ship — and therefore, I laid my life on it, I have the right to make a film about it too.’”

Stone took the airwaves to discuss and defend JFK, appearing on Nightline, City Desk and The Oprah Winfrey Show for starters. He accepted an invitation to mix it up with Dan Rather on the CBS news magazine 48 Hours. “On Nightline they aired something like a six-minute clip and raised all kinds of charges, but then didn’t allow me to answer any of them. Because of that kind of prejudice, I was wary about the CBS News interview. When we did it, I was very painstaking about my answers. I left the Q&A session after every question to consult with my research assistants and then I’d come back and lay out the answer. That seemed to upset Dan Rather a bit. In the end, the interview took two hours and must have included twenty questions, but when they aired it they cut all by one question, the most innocuous one. They simply would not allow me to get my point across.” Four months after its release, MPAA president Jack Valenti, a former top aide to Lyndon Johnson, joined the chorus denouncing the film, comparing JFK to Triumph of the Will as a “propaganda masterpiece” and “hoax”.

Nevertheless, JFK drew box office receipts of $70.5 million in the United States and $135 million overseas. It would be nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Looking back on the media firestorm years later, Stone was still snakebit. “When Anthony Lewis would come out with a strong criticism about the film — and he was so one-sided in some of the statements he made — I would try to correct it and I couldn’t get the letter published. I had to go to the mat several times with Warners backing me to say we’re gonna take a full-page ad in The New York Times denouncing this unfair practice unless you publish this letter. It was that way with several publications. The moment I entered that arena I regretted it in a sense because it’s an endless battle — you’re attacked, and if you reply, they attack you again. They leave stuff out of your letter to make you look bad. The attacks became a major newspaper event. It was like Tommy Lee Jones said, everybody and their dog got to write an article about it and got paid for it.”

Where’d You Get All of This?
“Can Hollywood Solve JFK’s Murder” By Mark Seal. Texas Monthly, December 1991

“Interview with Zachary Sklar, Co-Writer of the Movie JFK” By Frank Morales and Paul DeRienzo.14 January 1992

“Clarifying the Conspiracy: An Interview With Oliver Stone” By Gary Crowdus. Cineaste, 1992

Stone: The Controversies, Excesses and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker. By James Riordan. Hyperion (1995)