Winner of four Oscars, including two for best direction, Oliver Stone is the author of several major films. Among these jfk, which, in 1991, refuted the official version surrounding the assassination of the American president in 1963, occupies a special place. Thirty years later, the filmmaker revisited the subject in his documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glassthen, most recently, in the documentary series JFK: Destiny Betrayed. Invited by the Quebec City Film Festival, Oliver Stone is passing through the national capital with the co-screenwriter of the two documentary productions, James DiEugenio, author of numerous books on Kennedy, including an improved version of JFK Revisitedto be published on July 5.
A controversial figure, Oliver Stone subscribes to shocking statements. For example, he supported Vladimir Putin, with whom he conducted a series of interviews in 2017, a few days before the Ukrainian invasion before retracting, which he rarely does. But beyond the controversies, Stone is a filmmaker who has given a lot of thought to his country, painting a very critical portrait of his nation by examining its various obsessions: money in Wall Street and its sequel, Vietnam in Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth (heaven and earth), violence in Natural Born Killers (murder in blood), football in Any Given Sunday (Sunday heroes), its presidents in Nixon, W. and especially jfkto which the director returns tirelessly.
Before reading the book by Jim Garrison, the prosecutor in charge of the Kennedy assassination investigation, had you ever been interested in the case?
BONE : Not especially. I knew the broad lines, but not the details. It was an “interesting” murder, let’s put it like that, but I had never stopped there. At a film festival, I ran into an editor, Ellen Ray, who wanted to give me a copy of Jim Garrison’s book. I finally took it because Ellen is one of the founders of CovertAction Quarterly [une initiative d’anciens employés de la CIA très critique des politiques étrangères américaines et de diverses opérations des services secrets]the best magazine underground in the investigation of CIA operations. I read it and was captivated. I immediately bought the adaptation rights. It’s not that I wanted to reopen the investigation: it was just a fabulous political thriller, like those of Costa-Gavras, à la Z. I turned Fourth of Julythen The Doorsthen I was finally able to get down to jfk.
You have admitted in recent interviews that you were taken aback by the outcry raised by your film in 1991.
BONE : I was naive. I had been in the business for a while, but I had never been exposed in public like this before. Being called a liar, a storyteller… Having my integrity questioned like that was new to me. jack valenti [le président de la Motion Picture Association of America, auparavant conseiller de Lyndon Johnson, qui succéda à John F. Kennedy] fell on the movie like a ton of bricks right before the Oscars [où JFK était nommé huit fois, entre autres pour meilleur film, meilleure réalisation et meilleur scénario]. Former members of the Warren Commission have done the same. I’m sure that hurt the film vis-à-vis the Academy.
J.D.: It’s the only movie, to my knowledge, that was attacked seven months before anyone saw it. Jon Margolis from Chicago Grandstand wrote a denunciation of the film without having seen it. George Lardner [correspondant sur la sécurité nationale au Washington Post] wrote an attack based on a first draft of the scenario: unheard of.
Being already well versed in the subject, what did you think of the film, Mr. DiEugenio?
J.D.: Technically, it’s a marvel. Upon its release, the film was attacked for its dramatic license. I’ve since gone through the exercise of scrutinizing the first third of the film in light of new facts that have since come to light, and it turns out that Oliver was very conservative in his approach. What’s more, the average Hollywood film is generally quite unscrupulous about historical facts without taking offense: The Untouchables (The incorruptibles), Bugsy ? Oliver was attacked because it was political. That jfk succeeded in doing in 1991 was to get the message across to a wide audience that Lyndon Johnson had changed Kennedy’s foreign policy; that the Vietnam disaster would not have happened with Kennedy.
Exactly, jfk ended with the mention that the documents related to the case would remain under seal until 2029. However, after seeing the film, Congress passed the “President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992”, aimed at make these documents public sooner.
BONE : Five researchers were allowed to review the documents and do limited searches. Except that during the four-year window, from 1994 to 1998, when the documents were no longer sealed, several of their requests remained unanswered.
JD: In JFK Revisited, we have the Chairman of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board outlining some of the issues he has had with the CIA and the Secret Service. We also have Douglas Horne, who did the extraordinary autopsy reviews. We have some results in the film and the findings are remarkable.
These years, misinformation and conspiracy theories abound. In this context, do you find it easier or more difficult to be heard?
BONE : There have always been conspiracies, in the United States as elsewhere: it’s as old as the hills. With social media, there are 10,000 conspiracy theories a minute. It’s out of control, but I fundamentally believe in freedom of expression. Except that I also believe that we must rely on facts to support what we are saying. At the same time, the mass media denounces these theories as harming America, while they themselves are responsible: since day 1 [de l’assassinat de Kennedy] that they don’t bother to study the facts. When JFK Revisited was released in 2021, major US media did not cover it. It doesn’t surprise me. Even if the documentary proves that my film jfk wasn’t fabrication, I don’t feel revenge so much as I just feel like I did what I had to do. You know, it was very hard, because at the time of my films on Vietnam, I was considered as a kind of hero, then I became an outcast. Perhaps history will be kind to Jim Garrison, and to my film.
Oliver Stone and James DiEugenio will meet Jean-François Lépine on the Diamant stage in Quebec City on June 15. The film and documentaries are available in VOD on several platforms, including iTunes.