“Anybody who was alive at that time can remember exactly where they were when they heard the news,” Rob Reiner says about Nov. 22, 1963, the epochal day when President John F. Kennedy was once assassinated whilst driving in a motorcade in Dallas along with his spouse, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connelly, and his spouse, Nellie. “I was in my high school physics class,” Reiner remembers. “I was 16 years old. A student came in and whispered into the teacher’s ear and the teacher turned to us and said, ‘I have some terrible news,’ and then they sent us home.”
Since that tragic day, Reiner, the director of probably the most maximum cherished and rewatched motion pictures of our time (Stand through Me, When Harry Met Sally…, The Princess Bride), has been desirous about Kennedy’s assassination. A bookcase at house is dedicated to the topic. He has seen numerous documentaries. Several occasions, he has visited Dealey Plaza, the place the motorcade was once passing via when Kennedy was once shot, and the Book Depository, from the place meant lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald fired. And he has executed his personal analysis, speaking to authors, forensics mavens, CIA officers, and historians in addition to those that had been in Dealey Plaza that day. Like one thing out of the vintage Seinfeld episode, “The Boyfriend,” which partially parodies Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, he and his spouse will awaken every different in the midst of the night time to speak bullet trajectories.
Reiner is at center, a storyteller, and at the instance of the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, he believes he has come the nearest but to fixing one in all America’s most important unsolved homicide mysteries. He items his case with Who Killed JFK, a 10-part podcast dispensed through iHeartPodcasts and co-hosted through Emmy-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien.
This begs the query for the director of A Few Good Men: Can we maintain the reality?
Town & Country spoke with Reiner concerning the soul-searing affect the assassination had on him, how comedians took the lead in wondering the legitimate tale, and what listeners can be expecting through the general podcast episode.
You bear in mind the place you had been whilst you heard concerning the Kennedy assassination. Do you bear in mind your preliminary impressions?
Stunned, stunned. The complete concept that you have to kill an American president in vast sunlight at the streets of an American town was once simply unthinkable. We ran house. We watched tv nonstop proper up till and thru when Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on reside TV.
The newest mission from actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner, who directed motion pictures together with When Harry Met Sally…, Misery, and A Few Good Men, is a 10-part podcast titled Who Killed JFK?
What had been your discussions along with your friends? Was there another radical than the others who prompt we weren’t getting the entire tale?
I don’t assume any folks idea that. It was once simply horrific. Kennedy was once the youngest president. He was once good-looking, sensible, and humorous. We all hooked up with him. I didn’t assume on the time that the federal government was once mendacity to us till other folks began criticizing the legitimate Warren Commission file. The first ebook I learn concerning the assassination was once Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgement, and I believed, Wait a minute, one thing’s flawed right here. I used to be a part of a bunch referred to as the Committee, a politically motivated San Francisco improv workforce. That’s after I were given into the ones conversations that the federal government was once no longer telling us the total tale.
Mel Brooks has stated that the function of the comic is to be truth-teller to the king. I point out this for the reason that first two episodes of the podcast word the jobs comedians Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory had in elevating skepticism concerning the Warren Commission’s file. They weren’t purchasing it. What affect did that experience on you?
The in reality nice comedians are observers of human nature and the way we are compatible into the sector and relate to one another. They will let you know the reality and do it in a humorous approach, however whilst you strip away the comedy, you’ll to find the reality about all of it. When I used to be 19, I used to be acting on the Hungry I in San Francisco with Larry Bishop, Joey Bishop’s son. We had been opening for Carmen McRae within the giant room. Mort Sahl was once within the smaller room, and when Larry and I stopped our set, we’d cross pay attention to Mort. All he mentioned was once how the federal government was once mendacity concerning the assassination. I heard that each and every night time and I began having a look into it. It’s 60 years later, and we’ve gotten the tale of the assassination in drips and drabs. Any one revelation doesn’t essentially imply a conspiracy or what that conspiracy could be however begin to put the items in combination and then you definately begin to in reality perceive what took place.
Who Killed JFK? will query the normal widsom in regards to the assassination. “Look at the Kennedy assassination from all angles,” Reiner says, “and there is no question that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman.”
Conspiracy theories all the time abound, however the Kennedy assassination appears to be the Rosetta Stone of them.
You use the time period conspiracy principle, which as of late has gotten this bizarre connotation; any individual trafficking in conspiracy theories is a tin-foil-hat wearer. The reality is this stuff do occur. Look on the Kennedy assassination from all angles and from all of the that has pop out, and there is not any query that Lee Harvey Oswald was once no longer the lone gunman. There had been others concerned. All you need to do is take a look at what the CIA has executed. Look at their playbook. There is a factor referred to as Operation Northwoods [a proposed 1962 false flag operation meant to justify a war against Cuba]. From hardliners within the CIA and the army and the mafia to Cuban exiles who felt deserted on the Bay of Pigs fiasco, there was once a number of anger and hatred towards Kennedy.
What is it concerning the podcast structure that appealed to you to inform this tale?
I in fact considered doing it as a miniseries. As time went through, I began having a look at how podcasts informed tales. Rachel Maddow was once an ideal inspiration with Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. The trick is to inform the tale in some way that’s compelling to those who don’t find out about it in addition to for individuals who do have wisdom of it. You can’t oversimplify, or the ones other folks shall be insulted through it.
Was it essential to you to collaborate with Soledad O’Brien, who mentions that she was once no longer alive in 1963?
I appreciate her enormously and it offers the podcast extra legitimacy. Half the rustic hates me as a result of my politics. To listen the reactions of any person who wasn’t born on the time of the assassination provides an ideal component to the podcast.
Lee Harvey Oswald, observed right here with policemen in 1963, has lengthy been stated to be the lone gunman accountable Kennedy’s homicide. Rob Reiner thinks there could be extra to the tale.
In 2006, Mark Felt got here ahead and recognized himself because the famed Watergate supply, Deep Throat. Can you be offering anything else as definitive at the Kennedy assassination?
Most of the individuals who deliberate the assassination are lengthy long gone, so that you’re no longer going to get it from the pony’s mouth. But we do have any person at the podcast who just lately got here out, a Secret Service agent who was once at the path automobile in the back of Kennedy about 15-20 toes away at the working board. His title is Paul Landis. He talks very in particular about what he discovered that day, what has come to be referred to as the magic bullet. [Landis recently published his memoir, The Final Witness.]
The Kennedy assassination is likely one of the maximum reported on and scrutinized occasions of the 20th century. What, in the long run, does Who Killed JFK carry to the dialogue?
First of all, this presentation is essentially the most complete, it’s the inner most dive. We lay out precisely what we imagine took place that day. We’ll title the shooters, and who all was once concerned. I believe we will be able to be making news.
Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based leisure and books creator. He contributes to the Washington Post, Vanity Fair.com, Vulture.com, AARP, rogerebert.com, Town & Country, and different shops.
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