The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been a subject of interest for the vast majority of my life. At times, it has consumed me. At times, I’ve had to get up and walk away because for many it can eat people alive. At times, I’ve yelled at the top of my lungs in disagreement……..even if no one else is there to hear.
That leads me to a few days ago when I had the opportunity to view the Peter Landesman film “Parkland” twice. To say the film is powerful isn’t enough. There are moments we read about and hear about but it’s difficult to imagine what it was really like. Jackie Kennedy’s hesitation for her husband’s limp body to be pulled from the bloodstained limousine because she didn’t want people to see. A doctor trying desperately to keep a dead President’s heart beating while others looked on in horrified silence. A man who loved his President yet filmed his President’s public execution. Rushing a very heavy casket filled with blood up a narrow stairway and breaking a wall inside Air Force One to make it fit. It happened and now we are given a idea of what it probably looked like.
I do not feel there is an agenda to the movie. In 1991 we saw Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” That had an agenda. You can believe Stone’s account that it was a conspiracy. You can believe Lee Harvey Oswald is guilty. It’s up to you. In “Parkland” it tells the facts, for the most part, of what happened. One might argue it leads you to believe Oswald is guilty. I took from it that Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and denied killing the President. Isn’t that what really happened 50 years ago? Yes. He was arrested, charged, and he “Emphatically denied these charges.”
I say it tells the facts, “For the most part,” because there was one minor problem I caught. In an infamous note left for FBI Agent Jim Hosty, played by Ron Livingston, Lee Harvey Oswald is said to have threatened to blow up the FBI Headquarters. The real Jim Hosty told me (And I still have the audio) that the claim Oswald was going to blow up anything was a myth that began with an FBI receptionist who gave that account while under heavy pain relieving medicine after an operation. Hosty denied, at least to me, that was in the note. Of course, we will never know because Hosty tore up the note and flushed it down the toilet after a supervisor said he never wanted to see it again.
The most personal story comes from a man who, with his family, fled the Russian Empire after fear of certain death. That man first went to New York then onto Dallas where he opened a clothing design company called Jennifer Juniors. He also owned a Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera. That man was Abraham Zapruder. Finally, telling the story of a man who was one of several victims of the assassination only because he was there.
As we near the upcoming 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death, I think it’s important we look at all sides of the story. “Parkland” might be a good starting point. And, maybe, when “JFK” is re-released in theaters in November we go see that too. My only goal is having a peaceful conversation about the differing views. Unfortunately though, I doubt that will ever be possible because as I mentioned before: The subject can become obsessive and eat people alive.
Eric Bushman