Kennedys and King Test host626

Author: Philip Sheridan

  • Parkland

    The Tom Hanks/Peter Landesman film of Vincent Bugliosi’s abridged book Four Days in November does something that most knowledgeable observers would think impossible. It makes the assassination of President Kennedy boring. Which is a negative achievement for two reasons. First, with its intrinsic materials, how could that be so? Second, the historical import of that event has proven to be rather gigantic. How could anyone make it dull?

    To briefly answer both questions: 1) The film’s writer and director, Mr. Landesman, did not use the full array of materials available to him as a screenwriter. He did not even come close. As per point number 2, the historical import of the event is something that is just about completely left out. Which should tell us all something about the image of Hanks as the amateur historian.

    To begin at the start: celebrated attorney Vincent Bugliosi wrote a rather large book on the Kennedy assassination in 2007 entitled Reclaiming History. Considering the advance he was paid, and the publicity the volume had, the book did not do very well. Therefore, the book was cut down in size rather significantly. It was reissued as Four Days in November. This was a chronicle contained in the original book that was an attempt to capture the assassination and its immediate aftermath in a quasi-novelistic form. Although Tom Hanks and his production company Playtone purchased the rights to Reclaiming History, they chose to make a film out of only that rather small portion of the book. Which, of course, would lend itself most easily to the making of a feature film.

    Peter Landesman was a rather odd choice by Playtone to both write and direct the film. Previously, Landesman had been an investigative journalist for the New York Times. Prior to him writing and directing Parkland, he had never directed a film or written a produced screenplay before. That Hanks, and his partner Gary Goetzman, chose him to do both functions on this film tells us one of two things. Either there is a story behind his choice that is not evident right now, or the partners did not think very much of the project from the start. Of course, it may be a combination of both.

    Landesman was stuck in a difficult position from the start. From the looks of the film, there was not a big production budget. Therefore, there are no big crowd scenes or set pieces in the film. Even though the story easily lends itself to both. Further, there does not seem -at least to this viewer-to have been any real attempt to compensate for this with either matte drawings, special effects, or computer generated imagery (CGI). Consequently, the production value resembles a TV or cable film. To use one example, the actual assassination of Kennedy in Dealey Plaza is not recreated. To use another, we see Jack Ruby kill Oswald through a black and white TV set. Production value does not guarantee quality. But it usually means some kind of interesting visuals to look at. In that regard, the film is quite prosaic.

    In retrospect, those two scenes were rather necessary to jab up interest. Because everything else in the film is pretty much talking heads stuff. And on top of that, its not even interesting talk. Landesman was limited by the fact that-with a few exceptions–he was working from the Warren Commission rendition of that weekend. He limits himself to four story threads:

    1. The treatment at Parkland Hospital of both President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald after they are shot.
    2. The story of Abraham Zapruder taking his film of Kennedy’s assassination.
    3. The interplay between Oswald’s brother Robert, and his mother Marguerite.
    4. The realization at FBI headquarters in Dallas that the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had been in their office two weeks before the murder.

    One of the problems with the script is that these four elements, as presented, really do not add up to a cohesive dramatic whole. At least not the way they are presented here. Zapruder was never at the hospital. Robert Oswald did not know about Lee going into the FBI office, or that the Bureau had a file on his brother. Therefore, the strands of the story do not interweave into any kind of layered mosaic, let alone a cumulative dramatic effect. They are simply strands of a larger story that we watch unfold before us. And ultimately there is no real payoff dramatically, thematically, or visually at the end. Consequently, the picture has no real overall architecture to it. We simply watch a set of scenes play out before us until Kennedy’s body is flown out of Dallas on Air Force One.

    But what makes it even worse is that there are no surprises along the way. None. For anyone who knows anything about the events of that weekend, there is nothing new here, except what Landesman has invented, which is an issue we will get to later. But beyond that, there isn’t even any real dexterity or suppleness to the way he has handled it all. There is not one memorable shot or scene in the picture. The film could have had a surface skill with some razzle-dazzle editing. But that is absent also.

    But further, Landesman has not even made the most of what he chose to present from Four Days in November. To use one example: the negotiations between Dick Stolley and Zapruder for his film gave Landesman a nice opportunity for some interesting interplay and some character development of Zapruder. Because as Stolley has related, Zapruder understood the monetary value of his film and he scoffed at Stolley’s first offer to him. Later, because of his Jewish background, Zapruder was advised to conceal the size of the stipend and also contribute the first installment to officer J. D. Tippit’s widow. Well, Landesman shows none of this. Also, there was another interesting source of dramatic conflict and repartee available. This was the contest between the Secret Service and the local Dallas authorities over where the autopsy of the president would be done. Local coroner Earl Rose demanded that Texas law be upheld and that it be done in Dallas under his control. The Secret Service, along with representatives from the White House, insisted the autopsy be done in Washington. This could have been a really interesting scene because some of the dialogue could have been really sharp, and it also gave Landesman an opportunity for some interesting character development. It reduces to some prosaic conversation and a pushing match at the hospital. When, in fact, it went beyond the characters depicted here and also the single location.

    The part of the story which Landesman mishandled most was probably the Hosty/FBI/Oswald strand. In fact, he does not depict a powerful scene to introduce that aspect. In his book, Assignment: Oswald, Hosty provided Landesman with a fine opening to that strand. Hosty had just seen Kennedy pass by him on the motorcade route at Main and Field streets. He then walked into a favorite restaurant of his, the Oriental Cafe. He ordered a cheese sandwich and coffee. He was eating the sandwich when the waitress told him that Kennedy had been shot. This is how Hosty describes this scene in his book:

    The cheese sandwich in my mouth turned to sawdust. I pushed back from the counter where I was eating lunch, and swallowed hard. I choked out, “What did you say?”

    “Oh my God, they’ve shot the president!” the waitress said. She was sobbing and her body was shaking.

    Without thinking, I took out my wallet, put a couple of dollars on the diner counter, and pushed my way out of the front door onto the sidewalk and the intersection of Murphy and Main.

    Such a scene is made to order for adaptation to a film. It has movement to it, human interest, and dramatic impact. Apparently, Landesman did not think so. Because it’s not in the movie.

    But further, the way the issue of Oswald and the FBI is introduced in the film is also different than how it is introduced in Hosty’s book. In Assignment: Oswald Hosty tells a colleague that he had control of the Oswald file. His partner tells him to get the file and tell the man in charge, Gordon Shanklin about it. Hosty does so and presents the file, including a new translation of a letter Oswald allegedly wrote to the Soviet embassy in Washington. Shanklin is on the phone with Washington and he tells Hosty that they want him to get to the police headquarters and extend as much help as he can. He does so. That’s it. It was all pretty cut and dried.

    Hosty then describes meeting up with Oswald while he was being interrogated by the police. Hosty says that Oswald admitted leaving him a note at FBI headquarters. The note had been passed onto him by receptionist Nannie Lee Fenner. According to Hosty it had been dropped off by Oswald about two weeks before while Oswald was at the FBI office. Hosty depicts the contents as saying:

    If you want to talk to me, you should talk to me to my face. Stop harassing my wife, and stop trying to ask her about me. You have no right to harass her.

    Hosty writes that this meant little to him since he thought that both Marina Oswald and Lee were legitimate objects of interest for the FBI. Since Marina had an uncle who was an officer in Soviet intelligence who she had lived with, and Lee had been a Marine who defected to the USSR in 1959 and then returned. In fact, in his book, Hosty makes a case that Marina bore all the earmarks of a “sleeper agent” and that the Warren Commission ordered the FBI to wiretap her phone. This part of the story is completely lost on Landesman since Marina Oswald barely figures in the film at all. For all the impact she has in the picture, she might as well be an extra.

    In the film, when Shanklin finds out about the note, Landesman pulls out all the stops and essentially has Shanklin blaming Hosty for the assassination. Yet, in Hosty’s book Shanklin is upset mainly because of the problem the note will create with Director J. Edgar Hoover, who was very public relations conscious. And the scene is not nearly as loud or boisterous as it is in the film. At the end, when Shanklin orders Hosty to rip up the note, again this differs from Hosty’s description. In the film, it appears that he is ripping up and flushing down the toilet the entire Dallas Oswald file. But yet, according to Hosty, it was really only the original unsigned note and a cover memo he dictated on the night of the assassination.

    But further, there is another excellent scene in Hosty’s book which Landesman could have utilized, and again, inexplicably, he did not. On Sunday morning, after it had been announced that Oswald would be transferred from the Dallas Police jail to the country jail, Shanklin called several agents into his office. He wanted them to be his witnesses. He then called the Dallas Police and talked to Chief Jesse Curry. Shanklin told him that he should not transfer Oswald at this time. He said, “You know it’s my recommendation that you cancel those plans and try something else.” Curry declined the offer and Shanklin replied, “Well, I just wanted to warn you again.”

    In and of itself this would have been a tense and dramatic scene. But Hosty then supplies a capper. Right after Oswald was killed Hosty was going up the stairs in the FBI building when he learned from a partner named Ken Howe that Oswald had just been shot by Jack Ruby. Howe then shouted, “And we told those police!” Hosty then describes his own reaction:

    I was stunned. My mouth opened, but no words emerged. Howe shoved me aside and charged up the stairs. My knees buckled and I collapsed on the stairs. My head was reeling and my lungs tightened. I couldn’t believe it … I must have remained there on the stairs a few seconds … Somehow I got to my desk and let my body slump into the chair … I pulled a couple of papers together, put them in front of me on my desk, and stared at them. I didn’t want to read them. I wanted to be left alone so that my mind could adjust to this latest blast. I sat, then sat some more, feeling the world had gone mad. (pgs. 56-57)

    Again, is this not heaven sent for a screenwriter? Apparently, Landesman didn’t think so.

    Because Landesman shoved such interesting character development scenes aside, there really is not much for his cast to work with. And this includes some rather capable actors like Marcia Gay Harden as Nurse Doris Nelson, Billy Bob Thornton as Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels, James Badge Dale as Robert Oswald, Paul Giamatti as Abraham Zapruder, and Jacki Weaver as Marguerite Oswald. Giamatti is a skilled, imaginative, and technically sound actor. But Landesman is so constricted in his writing and characterization that Giamatti – who was affecting in Sideways – simply has little to work with. Weaver, who showed a wide range from Animal Kingdom to Silver Linings Playbook, does her best in what is clearly meant by Landesman to be a caricature. To her credit, the 40 year veteran of stage and screen underplays it so it’s not offensive.

    Of course, then there is the obvious tailoring Landesman did to apparently satisfy the producers. The audience does not see the powerful and incredibly fast backward movement of Kennedy’s body, even though the Zapruder film is shown twice. There is no mention or viewing of the large hole in the rear of Kennedy’s head at Parkland Hospital, even though Dr. Charles Carrico and Dr. Kemp Clark, who both saw it, are depicted in the film. (In a bit of irony, Clark is played by Gary Grubbs, who was Al Oser in Oliver Stone’s JFK.) At the end, Landesman tells us that Jim Hosty was transferred to Kansas City after the assassination. But he does not tell us why. It was part of a mass disciplining by Hoover for the FBI’s failure in not placing Oswald on the Secret Service’s Security Index prior to Kennedy’s visit. Also at the end, Landesman says that Robert Oswald always believed that Lee had shot Kennedy. This is not really accurate. Robert told the Warren Commission that he was shocked when he heard the news, that he could not find any reason why Lee would do such a thing, and was not sure if Lee could have done such a thing. Later he did become a true believer in the Warren Commission view. Further, the idea that, one the night of the assassination, Marguerite said she was going to write a book about Lee is far-fetched.

    The sum total of the film is so limp, banal, and uninspired that, one really has to ask: Why did Landesman take this on in the first place? But further, why did Hanks go through with it on the big screen? Something like this was more cozily housed on cable TV. That’s how reductive of a gigantic subject this film is.

    Oliver Stone was assailed from all quarters when he made his striking and compelling film JFK in 1991. But yet, to compare these two works is to see what a valuable contribution the earlier film was. The script of JFK, by Zachary Sklar and Stone, includes about ten times the information that this film does. And because the script is complex and multi-layered, it gives the actors a chance to really flesh out and open up their characters. Cinematically, there is no comparison between the two films. In editing, photography, pace, and camera movement, Stone’s film is rocket miles ahead. And finally, the Stone-Sklar film performs a historical function for the public. It makes them ask questions about an epochal event about their past. Which is what the best historical films do e.g. The Battle of Algiers, Z, and Danton. The worst thing one can say about this Hanks/Landesman/Bugliosi production is that the only question one would pose while watching it is this: When is this snoozefest over?

    But don’t take my word for it. Next month, JFK will be re-released in certain markets. Go ahead and compare the two yourself.

  • William Olsson, An American Affair

    William Olsson, An American Affair

    They finally made a movie about Mary Meyer. And it was directed by a Swede. William Olsson directed An American Affair, which is his first feature. His first problem may have been agreeing to film this script. And I hope his unfamiliarity with American history was the reason it turned out as it did. Because although Olsson’s direction is nothing to write home about, the real problem is the screenplay by Alex Metcalf.

    This is one of those films that is not “based upon” a true story, but is “inspired by” actual characters and events. So although the main character is Mary Meyer, her name in the film is Catherine Caswell. (Get it? MM becomes CC.) Her estranged husband Cord Meyer also appears, except his first name is Graham. James Angleton is titled Lucian Carver. They didn’t have much of a choice with President Kennedy, so his name is the same.

    But the odd thing about the script is that none of these people features as the real main character. The protagonist—Adam Stafford—is a boy in what appears to be about the ninth grade. The film begins with him and it ends with him. The Meyer story is largely told through his eyes. And this is a problem I had with the film. Everything outside the Meyer story, and even a lot within the Meyer/Stafford story, seemed to me to be pretty much banal. It was essentially the teen Coming of Age Tale. And his coming of age is hurried along and impacted by his affection for and experience with the older woman across the way. This concept was not new in the film Summer of ’42. And that picture is nearly four decades old now. And like that film, when all is said and done, this picture does not really comment on the time frame it is based in. It more or less exploits it.

    Adam Stafford attends a co-ed Catholic school in the northeast. (Although I think the setting is supposed to be Pennsylvania, the actual shooting of the film took place in Baltimore.) After the story establishes some of the trite tumult a boy his age goes through—fights in school, Playboy masturbation fantasies—Catherine/Mary moves in across the street. Adam gazes at her sitting in her window one night, and becomes infatuated by her. She has just become estranged from her husband, and is living alone. So, as a way to get close to her, Adam volunteers to do some chores for her in her new house. She accepts and his parents do not find out about it until afterward. When they find out, they try to discourage him from working for her. Why? Since Dad is a journalist, they know something about her oddities. But Adam persists.

    It is through this rather thinly caused association that Metcalf brings in the controversial and hotly disputed details of the Meyer/Kennedy/Angleton tale. (Jim DiEugenio has done a lot of work on his subject. For his most recent take on those details, see his essay elsewhere on the site.) In the Metcalf rendition, Meyer is separated from Cord at the start. At the time we encounter her, the affair with Kennedy is taking place. Yet Cord/Graham is trying to win her back. Mary is an artist who also has other lovers and pot parties at her place. To spice up the plot, Adam accidentally happens to be present during both encounters. One reason Cord/Graham seems to want to get back with Mary is because he understands the diary she is keeping makes the man he works with Carver/Angleton suspicious of her. Why? Because the hint is clear that Carver is in on something having to do with Kennedy’s upcoming murder. In fact, in one of the most strained scenes in the film, Stafford sees Carver and Graham meeting in public with a Cuban named Valle—clearly meant to suggest David Ferrie’s friend and colleague Eladio Del Valle.

    To tie the story together, Stafford’s father is a journalist who is on assignment to Dallas, Texas in November of 1963. And, of course, Carver knows this in advance. Catherine senses something is about to happen and she tries to call and visit the White House to warn JFK. But he will not accept her calls or let her on the grounds. After the assassination, Adam steals the diary from Catherine. Catherine tries to get it back. But just as Adam has arranged to return it, Carver/Angleton visits Adam’s home and gets it from his parents. Adam finds out about this too late. He runs to Catherine’s house and finds Carver reading the diary in front of Catherine’s fireplace. He asks her where Catherine is. Carver says he thought she was meeting him. He runs to their meeting place and finds her dead body at the bottom of a long outdoor stairway. He pushes back her hair and sees what appears to be a bullet hole.

    The coda of the film is Adam receiving a posthumous package from Catherine in the mail. He and his parents open up the box. It is a four-panel painting of Adam.

    To say that Metcalf has taken some liberties with the story is putting it mildly. And a lot of the liberties he takes strain credulity. The idea that a behind the scenes CIA general like Carver would meet with someone like Del Valle in public, and then allow himself to be seen, is hard to swallow. When Catherine goes to Stafford’s house and tells his mother that the boy has something of hers, why does the mother not ask what it is? Why does Mary not tell his Mom to get it for her? The scene where Meyer throws a drink in Carver’s face after he makes a comment about her dead son is not set up enough to explain her motivation. Would Kennedy actually pull up in a presidential limo with Secret Service escort to see Mary at night in a heavily residential area? And smart aleck Metcalf had to throw in that fatuous fairy tale about Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech being a mistranslation for a donut. For a thorough debunking of this urban legend, see this essay.

    Besides the hackneyed story elements, another reason the film never really becomes synoptic of its time is because of that ending I just described. Finishing as it does, the story becomes more about the relationship between Adam and Catherine than any of the historical elements in the picture. And also, that historical aspect leaves us with a question. If Carver/Angleton got the diary from Adam’s parents, why did he have Catherine killed? Which is what the film implies.

    Olsson has directed the film adequately in all aspects. Which means its rather commonplace in that regard. With the exception of Mark Pellegrino—who tries for the heartbreak of an estranged husband who still loves his wife—the acting is what I would call representational. That is, the cast looks like the people they are supposed to be, and they don’t make any blatant false moves. Which is OK for the Norman Rockwell type parents of Adam. But it’s not OK for someone acting the role of Catherine/Meyer and especially Tarver/Angleton. In those roles, the audience has the right and the assumption to expect some real creative acting. Acting of both skill and intelligence that carves the hearts and minds of the characters. To put it lightly, Gretchen Mol and especially James Rebhorn don’t fulfill the expectation. If you can imagine what say, the late Klaus Kinski could have done with the Angleton/Tarver role, you can see how pallid Rebhorn is.

    But alas, Kinski was an artist. Which is what none of the principals in this disappointment are. At least not yet.

  • RFK-Pruszynski Press Conference

    Two researchers have unveiled what they are calling a major breakthrough in the investigation of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

    Philip Van Praag, an expert in the forensic analysis of magnetic audio tape, says his analysis of the only known tape recording of the June 1968 assassination shows there were thirteen gunshots fired in the space of about five seconds – five more than the weapon allegedly used by Sirhan Sirhan could hold.

    Van Praag’s findings were revealed at a news conference in Washington DC on February 21, 2008 during the 60th annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

    Also present at the news conference was RFK shooting victim Paul Schrade, and Dr. Robert J. Joling, J.D., past AAFS president. After Schrade and Joling briefly described the assassination and some of the controversies stemming from it, they brought on Van Praag to, as Schrade put it, “talk about the new evidence that we have … new evidence (which) is scientific.” Said Schrade further: “We of course see this as a major breakthrough after nearly 40 years of studying this case.”

    Van Praag explained that key among the new evidence are three discoveries made from examinations of the tape recording of the assassination made by a Polish freelance newspaper reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski, which surfaced decades later when Pruszynski’s audio recording was discovered by an American journalist in 2004:

    1. The Pruszynski recording captured the sounds of at least 13 gunshots fired inside the Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry at 12:16 am PDT on June 5, 1968. While 13 shots were captured in Pruszynski’s tape, physical evidence points to at least 14 bullets fired in the shooting (a 14th shot could have been obscured in the Pruszynski recording by the sound of screaming 5-to-6 seconds after the shooting started). More than eight shots means a second gunman was firing during the assassination, given that convicted gunman Sirhan Sirhan’s weapon only carried eight shots in its chamber.
    2. The Pruszynski recording also captured two sets of “double shots”. (One set of double shots consists of two shots fired too closely together to have been fired by the same gun). Sequentially, in Van Praag’s 13-shot finding, these two sets of double shots were Shots 3 & 4 as one set and Shots 7 3 & 8 as the second set. The capture of just one set of double shots (let alone two sets, as in this case) by itself supercedes the necessity to count the number of shots fired in the RFK shooting. Because the presence of only one set of double shots reveals a second gun was firing during the assassination. When you add to this the fact that Sirhan possessed only one gun in the pantry, obviously it’s abundantly clear that this second gun must have been fired by someone other than Sirhan.
    3. The Pruszynski recording also captured odd acoustic characteristics in five of the shots, which is evident when specific frequencies are analyzed separately. Sequentially, these were Shots 3, 5, 8, 10 and 12 in Van Praag’s 13-shot finding. These shots apparently came from a second gun that was pointing away from Pruszynski’s microphone at the north side of the Embassy Room ballroom as his microphone recorded the sounds that were coming from the kitchen pantry.

      4. The first two of these three discoveries were mentioned in last year’s Discovery Times documentary, “Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination”. However the third discovery was not made until after that documentary was produced and premiered on June 6, 2007.

    During the presentation, one reporter asked a question which was incorrectly worded (a question based entirely on a false premise). He asked the following: “ABC News did an extensive analysis of this recording a few years ago and it said it had conclusive proof that there were no more than eight gunshots fired. Would you say that their analysis was incorrect?”

    Following their conference, Van Praag, Joling and Schrade learned of the reporter’s mistake and that the reporter had even acknowledged his error-laden question. Essentially what the reporter had done was mix up the Pruszynski recording with three other recordings (the West, Brent and Smith/ABC recordings) that had been analyzed by Dr. Michael Hecker for ABC’s “20-20” program during the early 1980s. Hecker had examined the Andy West and Jeff Brent sound recordings as well as sound from ABC TV’s own videotape of the Embassy Room (during which anchorman Howard K. Smith’s voice is heard in a playback of the videotape) and had concluded the three recordings showed 10 shots had been fired in the RFK shooting. ABC eventually decided against doing the proposed 20-20 segment for reasons never clearly stated but Kennedy family pressure was rumored (in any case, no one ever suggested the network had concluded anything, one way or the other, from the three recordings). Decades later, it was determined that none of the three recordings had captured the RFK shots (that sounds in the three recordings which some had assumed were shots actually were caused by other things). For example, the West and Brent tape-recorders actually were not recording at the moment of the shooting. Both West and Brent had their recorders stopped — or paused — at that crucial moment and when both the West and Brent machines finally resumed recording, both already had missed capturing the shots. Recently, Dr. Joling, and even Hecker himself, confirmed that the Hecker conclusions about the West, Brent and Smith/ABC recordings were wrong. This is stated on pages 255-256 of the first printing of Joling’s and Van Praag’s book, An Open and Shut Case.

    So the reporter’s question at the 2/21/08 DC press conference was heavily laden with error. To re-cap: ABC (and this goes for CBS and NBC as well) has never done any kind of analysis of the Pruszynski recording at any time ever. Instead, ABC attempted to do an extensive analysis of the West, Brent and Smith/ABC recordings more than 25 years ago (as opposed to “a few years ago”) but then suddenly canceled the early 1980s project before the analysis could be completed… and ABC never concluded anything about any RFK recordings whatsoever. The presser panel was informed that before he left the presser, the reporter had acknowledged his error concerning ABC.

    “The one other thing that’s very interesting about Phil’s findings,” said Joling at the presser, “is that it substantiates to a ‘T’ the actual factual background (in the RFK shooting).” Although not pointed out at the presser itself, the panel is acutely aware that the pattern of the 13 shots captured by Pruszynski eerily follows the pattern most often cited by assassination witnesses. Witnesses differed in their accounts as to the number of shots they remembered hearing and as to the pattern of the shots. However, among the witnesses, the most frequently cited pattern for the shots was that first there were two shots fired in quick succession, then there was a brief pause in the firing (during which it is believed assistant hotel maitre d’ Karl Uecker grabbed Sirhan’s firing wrist while placing him in a headlock), and then there was a string of very rapidly firing shots. This, in fact, is the very pattern of shots captured by the Pruszynski recording.

    The AAFS will be publishing Van Praag’s paper on the Pruszynski recording when it next publishes its scientific papers. No date is set yet, but it could be by mid-year or the fall.

  • The Good Shepherd

    Watching Robert DeNiro, Angelina Jolie, and Matt Damon discuss The Good Shepherd with Charlie Rose was an interesting experience. They were saying things like:

    “So many good people involved. ”

    “It’s why you want to be in the film business. ”

    “Everybody loved the script. ”

    “Such an interesting story. ”

    The banality of these answers was equaled by the banality of the questions. Rose even tried to relate the film to The Departed, something I still don’t understand. But there was one important point that surfaced. DeNiro had tried to get the film made for eight years. So clearly it was close to him personally. Second, DeNiro apparently liked the script by Eric Roth a lot. I will return to this later since I think Roth and his script are a real problem. In fact, the root of the problem.

    The Good Shepherd was subtitled in its trailer, “The Untold Story of the Birth of the CIA.” This is a real misnomer, since most of the “untold” actual events are immediately recognizable to anyone who has a cursory knowledge of the history of the CIA. In another sense the subtitle is true since the story it tells is very liberally fictionalized. In that sense, it is untold. The main character in the film, Edward Wilson is based upon legendary counter-intelligence chief James Angleton. And there are other characters that are clearly based on CIA luminaries. DeNiro plays a man named William Sullivan who is based on OSS chief William Donovan. William Hurt plays someone named William Arlen, which suggests Allen Dulles. There are two Russian defectors in the film also. One, who Wilson befriends, suggests Anatoly Golitsin. A second one, who Wilson disbelieves, is modeled on Yuri Nosenko. And as in the Nosenko story, we see the CIA handlers torture the second defector on Angleton/Wilson’s orders. This sequence ends with screenwriter Roth borrowing the denouement of another CIA episode. The handlers inject the defector with LSD (why they do is very weakly explained) and he suddenly turns and jumps out the hotel window to his death. This actually happened during the MK/Ultra program with unwitting subject Frank Olson.

    The story follows Wilson from his college days at Yale to his recruitment into the CIA by Sullivan. We then watch him on some of his and his cohorts’ assignments in places like West Germany and South America. These are done in flashbacks, and the recurring present “frame” of the story is the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle. Wilson is charged with investigating “leaks” about that operation. The trail ends up fingering a family member who the KGB has bugged. This leads to a personal tragedy for Wilson and his family: his marriage falls apart; his son’s fiancée is killed. But he gets a higher position at the CIA’s new building, which went up near the end of the Kennedy presidency. The film ends with him walking through the new wing to his new office.

    What Roth has done with this story is not just a mutation of the facts. Its one thing to make up a fiction, like say John Le Carre does, based on experiences, which are intrinsically interesting and also dramatic in personal terms. It is something else to seriously alter real events and actually make them less interesting than they are. And to rely on cheap devices to create drama. For instance, the climactic personal drama in the piece comes from Wilson’s son overhearing a conversation while in the shower through an open door. Roth uses the whole open door motif throughout the film. We are to believe that when someone like Donovan/Sullivan comes to see him Wilson would leave the door to his den open so anyone could overhear. In other words, if the doors would have been shut, as they should have, the film would have no climax. Another Rothian touch: he uses a deaf girl that Wilson liked in college to humanize the rather inscrutable character. They go to bed as youths, but she can’t go through with it. Many years later, they see each other at the theater, a production of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. Moments later they are in a bar together. Moments after that, they leave the bar together, presumably never to see each other again. But wait: Roth summons Movieland. She steps out of the taxi she was in, they stare at each other, and Presto! They are in a hotel bed together, except this time, they go all the way. Later, Wilson’s wife Clover (Angelina Jolie) gets photos of this rendezvous. She confronts Wilson with them in public and creates a huge scene at a Christmas party. (Who took the photos, how and why, are never made clear. )

    What Roth does with the Bay of Pigs episode is also done for the purposes of making personal drama. He postulates that the Cubans knew the landing site in advance. In no book or report that I have read is this stated. In fact, the best report I know, the one by CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick, states that Castro knew an invasion was imminent because of the CIA leafleting and supply drops made by air in the weeks prior to the landing. So he put his huge militia of over 200,000 men on alert. When the invasion came it was quite noisy and it alerted a regular army detail near the scene. They in turn called out the nearby militia and enough troops and armor got to the front to prevent a beachhead from being established.

    This in turn relates to another point of CIA mythology that Roth uses. He states that Kennedy’s canceling of the so-called “second” air strike doomed the operation. This canard, repeated by such military pedant types as Alexander Haig, has been refuted by Kennedy’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. He told author Noel Twyman that the second strike was not in the original plans, which Allen Dulles would not leave for JFK to study. That the CIA came back to them, after the invasion was in operation, and requested the second strike. Further, as Kirkpatrick notes, what difference would it have made if the second strike had taken place?The bottom line was that you had a weakly supplied invasion force of 1,500 men against a strongly supplied army and militia of over 225, 000 men. When looked at in this way, one sees why Dulles would not leave the plans with JFK. Under scrutiny it would have become clear that the mission could not succeed as planned. In actuality, the Agency had banked on Kennedy caving as the invasion faltered. That he would then order an American invasion of the island to save face. Which he didn’t. He couldn’t, because as the film shows, about seven days prior he had told a press conference American troops would not invade Cuba. Further, near the end of the film, when the Dulles character is fired, it’s because of embezzling funds. In reality, he was terminated because JFK realized he had been duped about the operation.

    All of the above seems to me to be more interesting than what Roth has reduced it to. And in his direction DeNiro does not mitigate much of the heavy handedness. We see Wilson trying to decipher a photo of the man suspected of leaking the invasion. We suspect early that the reason we cannot see the man is because it must be someone close to the protagonist. When Wilson finally realizes the actual location where the leak took place, he personally flies to the location alone. So now we know it must be someone close to him since men in that position in the CIA usually don’t go to far off exotic places themselves. Early on, after Wilson contacts an old college professor in England, he is asked to get the undercover operative to leave the spy service. He must do this by asking the old man to tie his shoe in view of other spies. Which he does. But that’s not enough for Roth. Even after we see this, the Kim Philby type running the operation has the old man killed by drowning him in a river down the street. First we hear the screams, which rise in volume. Then Wilson walks down the street to see the splashing of the old man who is already underwater. Then we watch as his cane slowly disappears beneath the surface and the water subsides. The Philby type says to Wilson, “He knew too much. ” Roth doesn’t have Wilson ask the obvious: “Then why did you have him go through the whole charade of tying my shoe?”This whole scene was done with all the subtlety of DeNiro’s pal Martin Scorsese.

    And that’s a problem with this enterprise. A friend offers his hand to Wilson before going on a CIA operation at a coffee plantation in South America, Wilson tells him he should not be wearing his school ring down there. DeNiro makes sure we see the ring. We then watch the operation go awry. Cut to Wilson in his office and a coffee can arrives on his desk. His assistant then laboriously goes through the process of peeling it open. I’d say half the audience understood what would be inside. But DeNiro shows us a close-up of the severed finger. I won’t even go into the ending. I will only say that I think everyone understood what would happen to the son’s fiancée at least three minutes before it occurred. Eric Roth telegraphs better than the old Western Union. And DeNiro does nothing to lessen his telegraphic powers.

    The really surprising thing about the film is not Roth’s dull script. Since this is the guy who helped bring us things like Ali and Munich, I knew what to expect. The surprise is that DeNiro has directed a cast that is, to be kind, unexceptional. Angelina Jolie brings nothing new or original to a part that has her light and cheery at the beginning, and frustrated and sad at the end. The usually pallid William Hurt is palled again as the Dulles figure. DeNiro himself play the Donovan character as a kind of avuncular long lost relative. He has none of the force, drive, or scalpel mind Donovan had. But the real failure in the cast is Matt Damon as Wilson/Angleton. When Damon has to go out and get a role, as in Good Will Hunting, he does alright. But here, the role is one that is almost completely interior. Most of it takes place as they say, “between the ears”. It’s the kind of acting that is difficult, unappreciated, and rarely attempted by a star since it is completely devoid of glamour and personal appeal. Damon is not up to it. He doesn’t have the kind of subtle imagination and immense concentration a role like this requires. His facial pattern of inquiry and response are neither clear nor interesting. Instead of negating oneself in order to create another, what Damon has done is just the negation part. (If you want to see how an actor can do this kind of role, see Russell Crowe in The Insider, or a much younger DeNiro in The Last Tycoon. )

    The worst part of this disappointment is that there is more to come. DeNiro has said that he made a deal with Roth. He would act and direct in Roth’s script while Roth wrote another one about a similar espionage scene, except more modern. After this, I’m not looking forward to it. If you need to jazz up the Bay of Pigs and still turn it to dross, I’d hate to see what happens with, say, Aldrich Ames. Meanwhile, to see how this kind of story is really done, and done exceptionally well, rent the DVD of Richard Burton’s classic, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Its something Eric Roth could never come close to.

  • Bobby: A Review

    It is neatly ironic that Emilio Estevez should release his Robert Kennedy film within several days of the death of storied film director Robert Altman. For in its structure, intent, and effect Bobby is more similar to Altman’s Nashville than any other political film he could have made on the subject. And it bears no relation at all to Oliver Stone’s JFK. And the film is not about Robert Kennedy in the way that Stone’s film was about John Kennedy.

    Although there are many news clips of Kennedy in the film, the main action all takes place at the Ambassador Hotel on the last day of the California primary, June 4, 1968. This was the primary Robert Kennedy had to win in order to win the nomination at the Democratic convention. As in Nashville, there is no main character in the film. The picture episodically depicts a number of people’s lives in that one day as they sometimes interact at that famous, and now perished, hotel. The people who Estevez tracks in the film (he was both the writer and director) are all fictional. And in fact, as we shall see, this fictionalization extends as far as the actual RFK assassination. The characters include: black and Hispanic workers in the kitchen, a fading nightclub singer and her manager/lover, a middle-aged couple having a mid-life crisis, two young Kennedy workers who flirt with a waitress and then go on their first acid trip, a news reporter from Czechoslovakia, a former doorman and his friend, a kitchen manager, his boss and the boss’s wife who has a hair salon in the hotel, two phone operators — one who is having an affair with the aforementioned married boss — and a couple of young RFK managers who hope to get plum assignments when Bobby becomes President Kennedy.

    As the reader can see, Estevez was not interested in the actual events surrounding the RFK murder. In fact, in interviews he has explicitly stated he was not out to make any kind of “Oliver Stone conspiracy picture.” That was his option of course. But what has he given us instead? And what does his film intrinsically achieve on its merits?

    Aesthetically, Estevez does all right. As a director he keeps his camera in the right place most of the time and he understands that given the confines of the story, he needs a camera in motion much of the time to avoid a feeling of stasis. He does this dexterously enough, very seldom did it call attention to itself.

    Primarily known as an actor, Estevez has assembled a large, ensemble, all-star cast including Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Demi Moore, and his father, Martin Sheen. Considering the brevity and sketchiness of the parts, most of them do OK (although I could have done without Ashton Kutcher as an acid dealer). One performer in the cast who is really extraordinary is Sharon Stone as the hair dresser wife. From her make-up (I wasn’t sure it was her until about halfway through the film), to her voice, demeanor, and her ability to register sharp emotion effortlessly, she reminds us of the special and rare abilities that make the mystery of re-creation possible.

    One of the achievements of Nashville is that it communicated the feeling that the country, in its go-go and hustling egocentricism had itself created — actually demanded into existence — the urban microcosm that Altman was presenting. And one of the ways he did this was the deliberate intersection of the political strands of the story with the entertainment/music/Movieland strands. Altman dramatized this with the culminating assassination, which is not of the politician running for office, but a C&W superstar singer who has been urged to stage a campaign rally for him. (And we see retroactively that this had been planned by political operatives for political purposes.) The underlying message being how shallow and callous — and ultimately demeaning — both the political and artistic culture of America is.

    Although it tries, Bobby never attains that kind of overarching cultural or sociological relevance. Part of this is because the individual stories never really accrue to anything larger than themselves. In fact, some of the situations are simply banal: the philandering husband-manager, the faded, alcoholic Judy Garland-type singer and her entourage, the foreign reporter who wants to get her career-altering interview with the future president. Also, when Estevez tries to strain for some real poetry in the scripting e.g. a situation between a black kitchen worker and a Chicano, or a tender moment between the middle-aged couple, the writing becomes strained. Both in itself, and in the context of the characters.

    Almost as if he realizes his story strands are weak, he tries to give the whole scenario both timely characteristics and a parallel to the present. There are mentions of the two iconic films of the day i.e. Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. (Estevez actually uses “The Sounds of Silence” from the latter’s soundtrack toward the end.) One of the parallels is with a new voting system instituted at the time which has, of course, “chads.” But he mentions these matters, and that is about as far as they go. They never build into an intricate, multi-layered mosaic as the Altman film did.

    And that is surprising, since Estevez took such artistic license with the actual facts he does depict. For instance he has Sirhan entering the Ambassador Hotel as if he was a man on a mission, which is not accurate. He got there that night by serendipity, thinking there was going to be some kind of Jewish rally in the area. Estevez then has him go almost directly to the kitchen pantry. So there is no drinking the four mixed drinks at the bar, and no coffee with the crucial and infamous Girl in the Polka Dot Dress (who is nowhere to be seen here). Then in the assassination scene, Sirhan appears to be wearing an outfit like a kitchen or maintenance worker instead of the actual casual street clothes he had on that night. Which, when added to the other revisions, suggests that Sirhan committed first-degree murder. Further, the other shooting victims besides Kennedy are not the actual people who were shot, but the Estevez-scripted fictional characters. So in addition to the fictional characters the film tracks through the main body of the action, the culminating event also becomes something of a fable.

    Which would be acceptable if it all built to something. For me, it didn’t. After the assassination climax, the film ends with the surviving characters mourning Kennedy and the other victims as they are carried out and then driven out of the hotel by ambulances. As we watch them in various states of emotional disarray, first we hear the Simon and Garfunkel standard. Then Kennedy’s voice comes on the soundtrack and he gives one of his usual idealistic and emotional calls for America to realize its ambitions and promise. The speech goes on for quite awhile, interspersed with black and white documentary footage, and then the film ends. I was puzzled by this rather attenuated, operatic, and didactic closing. (It reminded me of Spike Lee’s similarly simplistic and undramatic ending to another dream project, Malcolm X.) If a film is meant to epitomize an era, if it is going to try and mark a milestone — which Estevez has clearly stated was his intent — then the close of the film has to somehow suggest or delineate the milestone in some clear and potent way. With his wacky assassination gone awry, Altman tried to sum up just how screwed up American had become after Vietnam and Watergate. In Good Night and Good Luck, George Clooney tried to parallel the specter of McCarthyism with today’s similar specter of terrorism. His concluding message, Edward R. Murrow’s prophetic speech, was that television was crippled at its outset from telling the truth about either. In American Graffiti, George Lucas achieved this marking effect beautifully and unforgettably with his final scene of the friends at the little Modesto airport wishing one of the main characters goodbye. After the plane disappears into the sky, we learn through a photo montage what happened to the four friends afterwards, and with that knowledge, what happened to America. And the brevity and understatement of that final denouement made the impact even more emotionally jarring. We realized that what we had really seen was the end of the early innocent sixties, the Camelot Years of President John F. Kennedy. For those of us who had lived through that dreamy era, Lucas’s ending had the impact of a gut punch.

    What Estevez is working with here is the era that followed JFK’s murder: the angry sixties of 1964-68. And clearly, 1968 was the end of that era. Politically, Kennedy’s murder would lead to the destruction of the Democratic party as we knew it, the ascension of Richard Nixon, and the coming apart of America over Vietnam. Socially and culturally, RFK’s assassination would lead to the “psychedelic sixties” of hard rock, grass, and legions of “drop-outs” who sub-consciously realized the last hopes of a great decade had ended at the Ambassador Hotel. This final vestige of the sixties would dramatically assemble itself the following year at the gigantic Woodstock demonstration: the final dying spasm of a generation registering its protest over its loss of control over it own destiny. So clearly, Estevez had a huge and magnificent historical subject. For all the liberties he has taken, and for reasons stated above, he didn’t do it justice.

    * * *

    The Ambassador Hotel, scene of RFK’s assassination, was torn down in early 2006. For a lively discussion of the hotel and its fate, check this Ambassador Hotel Blog.