Asia-Pacific

Stone: US in denial over JFK assassination

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-26 09:05

Director talks about movie controversy in lecture on filmmaking and peace

BANGKOK: Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone said yesterday the United States remains in denial over the possibility that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald could have assassinated John F. Kennedy, calling it a "national fairy tale."

Stone: US in denial over JFK assassination

Speaking to 300 high school students in the Thai capital, Bangkok, Stone said exploring alternative theories over the JFK assassination remains too sensitive for those in the media or academia who "would be endangering their careers and their position."

"To this day, many key Americans in power are in total denial about this story," Stone said. "They don't even want to know about the possibility that he was killed by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. It is a national fairy tale."

Stone was in Bangkok to talk about filmmaking and peace as part of a series of talks facilitated by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation.

His 1991 film JFK, which he acknowledged was his most controversial, ridicules the Warren Commission conclusion that Oswald acted alone and suggests a massive conspiracy.

Stone's film centered on a theory by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that a CIA-led mutiny killed the president and the plotters walked away unscathed. Garrison's theories went to court in 1967, but Clay Shaw, the alleged "evil genius" behind the assassination, was acquitted.

Stone said yesterday he thought it was "a good thing" to revisit the JFK assassination. But he came under fire from historians and film reviewers who contended that Stone had fudged facts, invented characters and elevated speculation to truth to support his burning belief that the killing was a high-level conspiracy.

"It's an amazing story and I did it," Stone said. "I thought I would be respected for it, and I was lambasted in the establishment press. I was called a myth-maker, a propagandist. I didn't see it coming. I thought the Kennedy murder was safe."

Stone is famous for several other movies, including the Vietnam War films Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon, and World Trade Center, about two policemen buried in the rubble of the twin towers after the Sept 11 attacks.

Platoon won four Oscars, including best picture and best director.