Thursday, February 12, 2015

Parkland - the Movie - Reconsidered

Parkland - The Movie




Parkland the movie is surprising for a number of reasons, beginning with its unique perspective of participants on the ground - one that should be expanded on.

Another is its attention to detail and accuracy - right for the most part, and only promoting the provably false lone nut theory at the very end.

I was surprised because Parkland is said to be based on a chapter of the over weighted opinion laced book Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi Reclaiming History, which promotes the preposterous idea that a deranged loner killed JFK all by himself and he was subsequently killed in police custody by another lone nut.


Bugliosi's New York literary agent is Peter Miller, whose father led the house band at Atlantic City's 500 Club, not an unrelated fact, as some scholars believe the mob was responsible for the assassination.

Parkland's producers include super star Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, Nigel and Matt Sinclair and Billy Paxton, who as a young boy perched on his father's shoulders, saw JFK in Fort Worth shortly before he was killed.

Little Billy Paxton looks on as JFK says a few words at the Fort Worth hotel November 22, 1963


I understand there is also an ambitious project afoot to focus on a play or project to memorialize JFK's last night and morning on this earth.

Paxton also produced The Greatest Game, Hollywood's not so great movie and falsely depicted  version of the 1913 US Open golf championship.Read about the historical inaccuracies of "The Greatest  Game " at 
Kellys Golf History / Golf's Forgotten Legends: & Unforgettable Controversies - Jeff Gold - Google Books

I thought that crew Hanks, Paxton and Bugliosi would butcher the facts but screenwriter and director Peter Landesman seems to have avoided some pitfalls by taking the divorced witness approach - and it works, kinda.




                                                       James B. Dale as Robert Oswald 


Robert Oswald, played believingly by James Badge Dale, is clearly the only moral star of this drama, challenged only by Abe Zapruder, who cashes in his chips right away - for the security of his family, it is left to Oswald's wacky and opportunistic mother Marguerite to call the spade a spade - "My son was a government intelligence agent."

It's a shame she is the only one who bothers to express that notion because, as is clearly depicted in this film, the FBI with Ron Livingston as James Hosty and Secret Service Agent Forest Sorrels (played by Billy Bob Thorton) also came to a similar suspicion after a cursory review of the accused assassin's file that, as accurately portrayed in Parkland, was officially ordered deep sixed and flushed down the toilet in the FBI office.


For the most part however, Parkland sticks to the facts and presents them through a different perspective, and I didn’t detect any blatant propaganda until the very end when it is announced the untrue factoid that Robert Oswald always believed in his brother’s guilt.

As anyone who has actually read Robert Oswald’s book “Lee” – he comes right out and says that, as a former US Marine Corps sharpshooter, if his brother didn’t practice with that rifle and scope in the weeks and days before the assassination, then he didn’t kill the President.

In Robert’s exact words  [ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2014/11/oswalds-brother-lee-did-not-fire-shots.html ]: “If Lee did not spend a considerable amount of time practicing with that rifle in the weeks and months before the assassination, then I would say that Lee did not fire the shots that killed the President and wounded Governor Connally.”




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