No one is ever going to mistake “JFK” as a documentary. Oliver Stone‘s dizzying, three-hour-plus drama revolving around the assassination of John F. Kennedy certainly plays fast and loose with the facts, but the movie is never really about finding the real trigger man behind one of the most notorious murders in the nation’s history, so much as establishing that the official story has its own set of very large holes, while capturing the paranoid and anxiety-filled air of the moment. In a career that had already seen the director tackle American life, stories and issues from varying angles (“Born On The Fourth Of July,” “Wall Street,” “Platoon“), “JFK” vaulted Stone to the level where even “Seinfeld” made reference to the film. However, the director feels that the success of the picture (nominated for eight Oscars, and winning Best Editing and Best Cinematography), now celebrating its 25th anniversary, unfairly boxed him in.
“It was a hot potato from the get-go, much hotter than I thought,” Stone told Variety. “I didn’t realize it would hit the central nerve core of the establishment … And it did take its toll. I think it’s changed the perception of me forever. Many now dismiss me as a filmmaker who is political and only into conspiracy theories. It labeled me and I was staggered. I wish, in a way, it had just died off.”
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Indeed, while the years that followed included films like “Heaven & Earth” and “Nixon,” the filmmaker also stretched out with “U-Turn” and “Any Given Sunday.” But certainly in the last decade, Stone’s interests have been pretty pronounced, tackling projects like “Snowden,” “The Untold History Of The United States,” “South Of The Border,” and “W.” However, the director has always deeply researched his work, and that is certainly true for “JFK,” which saw him having to defend the movie during its promotional cycle, and led to him bring his voluminous notes with him when doing commentary tracks for the home-video releases.
“I may have been in defensive mode,” Stone explained. “You have no idea. I had never made a movie where I had to defend it six months later in the press. The media was very nasty and they’d set me up on shows. At some point I had quite a bit of research on my side, but I’d have to recall it all [on the spot] and I couldn’t do that.”
Variety‘s full story is a fascinating look back on a movie that remains as compelling as ever. Share your thoughts on “JFK” below.