This essay challenges many of the conventionally held assumptions about the JFK assassination by specifically revealing many of the mistruths, half-truths and outrights lies and myths contained within Oliver Stone’s film JFK. The essay is brutal in its systematic deconstruction of the myth that Stone’s is even close to being a true story, while at the same time admiring the film as a brilliant work of cinema. Cinematic fiction, that is.
The essay points out many of the problems that are immediately refutable and that serve to call into the question some of the more murky half-truths contained within its conspiracy schema. For instance, it is revealed that though the film has a famous politician asserting that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lousy shot who could not possibly have pulled off the assassination, in fact he was a sharpshooter with one of the highest scores in his platoon.
More damaging is the attack on the infamous magic bullet theory. This essay reveals a classic methodology to conspiracists: their unique ability to not give all the facts. The film contains an infamous sequence in the courtroom in which Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison gives a blow by blow account of how the bullet that killed JFK and wounded John Connally would have had to stop in mid-air and then a make a sharp turn. What Stone doesn’t include in this demonstation is the verifiable fact that Kennedy was not seated directly behind Connally and at them level, sitting higher than Connally and slightly off-center. The tractory of a bullet from the Texas Depository at this angle reveals a straight line through Kennedy and Conally without any need at all for magic. The rest of the essay is equally critical of the withholding of necessary facts that are necessary to make the case that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.