Every November, right around Thanksgiving, America looks back across it's history to a crisp and sunny day in 1963 and the murder of a President. Everyone who was alive and cogent in 1963... I was, remembers where they were and what they were doing when the news broke that President Kennedy had been killed in Dallas.
For the record, I was home sick from school that day and was sitting on the couch wrapped up in a blanket while my mom folded laundry watching soap operas... as back in those days she was a stay at home mom and hooked on soaps, when the first bulletins interrupted and announced that our life as a nation was taking a new direction.
Fast forward to 19921. Oliver Stone's film "JFK" opened to controversy, scathing criticism and no small amount of box office. So after the video came out, I took my then rocking hot 286 machine running DOS 6.22 and pounded out my thoughts on it all. So here from the memory banks......
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Oliver and Me
I watched "JFK" twice in the last couple of days. When I was finished, I realized that I share some things in common with the creator of that film.
Oliver Stone is, by many accounts, a renegade. As an Academy Award winning writer, producer and director he has taken creative chances and succeeded. Stone has given us in his career, among others, "Platoon", "Wall Street" and "Scarface". The story of his life and career is that of an American son made good, without regard to the cost.
Oliver Stone is also an arch liberal. Politically, he and I could not be farther apart. Much of what he stands for and believes is anathema to me. Were it solely for politics, this would have been written as a hit piece a long time ago.
I studied film and film makers in high school, as much for an easy elective as for anything else. But after the course was finished I realized that I had learned. What started as an easy grade became something of a passion and studied film actively on into college. I had always enjoyed a movie, but I found over time that by examining the work in depth that I was better able to appreciate and interpret what I saw.
All my studying aside, I am most certainly not a film critic. I know enough, though, to say that Stone created a powerful film in "JFK". Casting aside the fact that he created some characters and situations out of whole cloth, and ultimately blamed some of those creations for the crime, Stone achieved the goal of all movie makers; he got the audience involved. Just look at the uproard prior to the initial release and then the new rumblings now that the video is on the street. And all that uproar gave me a thought.
In high school I took courses in creative writing. It was in those days that I learned to funnel a rampant imagination towards an end. During one of my semesters I created an exercise in imigination that would also reveal a lot about the person I was talking to. That the exercise happened to tie into a favorite story line of fiction writers everywhere was an unexpected bonus.
When I was in my early teens there was a television show called "The Time Tunnel". It was not a particularly good show so I won't discuss it at any length. Suffice to say it was about two guys stuck in a perpetual time warp. They went from one famous event to another, all the while trying to avoid getting killed or screwing up history. This series, and countless other films, stories and novels, have explored the notion of travels through time.
This led to the germ of an idea in my mind; If you could go anywhere in time, for one hour, but not be able to change everything, where would you go?
Over the years since my sophomoric epiphany I have asked many people this question. Some of the answers might throw you for a loop while others make perfect sense. Like I wrote above, this exercise says a lot about the person responding to it. For instance, I had one friend tell me that he would go ahead in time two weeks. Knowing him well the answer should have been obvious, but I've always excelled in the role of straight man so I asked why.
"To get the lottery numbers for that week then come back and play them," went the answer.
A co-worker told me that she would go back one hundred years to the wilds of Wyoming to see what the land looked like. Having been to Wyoming a time or two, I told her that parts of it look the same now as then. She replied immediately that it was not so. When I asked her if she had ever been there she replied, "No.... but I know whay Wyoming looks like".
It was that conversation which taught me to never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
When I first came up with this problem, I knew where I wanted to go. To this day I would still go to the same place. And this is where I think both Oliver and me could find some common ground.
I want to show up at twelve noon on the 22nd of November in the year 1963. My arrival place would be in Dallas, at Dealey Plaza. I even know where I would want to stand. Come 12:30, I would be ready.
Stone seems to think, as do I, that the assassination of the President on that day is the watershed moment of American history for our generation. Within that instant of time, depending on whose compilation of the facts you hold to, the course of our nation changed dramatically. For all intents and purposes, no matter what the direction of events might have been had he lived, an era ended with the death of John Kennedy.
Some, who've heard my destination in time, have accused me of morbid curiosity; of wanting to see the man's head explode. That would not be my purpose. In fact the last thing I would look at would be that shiny black Lincoln limousine.
I would look at the fence, atop the "Grassy Knoll". I would look at the the book depository, the roofs, the windows around the plaza. I would look anywhere that might hide another shooter.
Then I would know. I would know that it was all a lie. That a cover up may in fact have happened. Or worse, that a conspiracy really did take place, and that it could all happen again. Then again, I might also know that Oswald really did act alone and pulled off one of the greatest trick shots of all time.
People I tell this story to think that I would take a camera. That I would try to come back with photos and get rich. I suppose that is within the realm of probability, but not of possibility. At least for me. All I really care about is to know; for certain and for myself, what really happened that day. And I have to believe that even though Oliver Stone and I are completely polar political opposites that we would both find ourselves drawn by the need to simply know the truth.
When he tried Clay Shaw for his alleged role in the conspiracy, Jim Garrison said; "We seek the truth, or the heavens may fall".
The heavens may fall, but the truth is worth it.
