The Rewatchables - ‘JFK’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Brian Koppelman

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey are joined by Brian Koppelman to discuss a movie that is a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma. We celebrate the 30th anniversary of Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK,’ starring Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, and Joe Pesci.  Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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2. This episode is brought to you by Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative studio with AI-powered image and video generation. Built for today's creative process, Firefly helps you generate, edit, and experiment fast, because the asks aren't getting smaller. And the timelines? Ooh, yeah, still tight. With all the best creative AI models in one place, Firefly brings your ideas to life. Learn more at Adobe.com slash Firefly. I sold my car in Carvana last night Well that's cool No you don't understand

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Maybe there's no catch That's exactly what a catch Would want me to think Wow you need to relax I need to knock on wood Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's lamated Okay yeah that's good

That's close enough Car selling without a catch So your car today on Carvana These may apply. The rewatchables is brought to you by Fandall Sportsbook, as well as the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the big picture with Sean Fentasy.

You can find the answer on the Ringer MBA show, because Ryan and the Watch. And Ringer Prestige Show. Yeah. You're doing Ryan and Ryan with Ryan and Rine in the morning. Yeah. Radio Free Bowman. Yeah.

Brian Cobbman doesn't have a podcast with us because he's busy doing multiple TV shows at the same time. He's been on here before. We covered Godfather, too. This might be more important. important in some ways. JFK 30th anniversary. It's coming up next.

From the shadow of a doubt. Who would leave a path as big as Lee Harvey Oswald? To the darkest suspicions. Nobody's going to tell me that kid did the shooting job he did from that damn bookstore. One man would make a dangerous journey. Don't you think the Kennedy assassination is limited out of your domain? Looking for the truth. Oswald's been shot.

Kevin Coston in an Oliver Stonefield. Nothing is going to keep me from my investigation at John. Kennedy's mother, JFC. R. Starts Friday, December 20th at a theater near you. All right, Fantasy, Chris, Capplement. We're all here. We're here to discuss one of the all-time movie Heat Checks anyone's ever had.

We've seen actors with Heat Checks and actresses, not directors as much. This is Oliver Stone coming up with his theory on the JFK assassination in 1991, tapping into this underworld of conspiracy theory, of books, of people who would go on these weird morning shows, afternoon shows, he puts it all together, somehow convinces the studio to fund it,

somehow convinces 20 really good actors to be in it. Stars. Somehow convinces, real stars, somehow convinces the studio to be okay with like a three-hour-plus movie, and it's an experience unlike any other. Why did you want to do this, compliment? Well, because it's, as you said, it's super important. it's bad shit crazy

and it, but it has throughout some just absolutely fucking killer scenes and Oliver Stone one of the greatest screenwriters

who ever lived and one of the most compelling directors of our time and I'd say this is his third Vietnam movie too.

It's two chronologically it's the second one but it's absolutely he made three Vietnam movies and this movie is another example. You know, I'm always fascinated

by a filmmaker. I know you guys are too. Filmmakers who can't stop obsessing. And this fundamental lie that America told him about why he had to go watch people he loved

get murdered for no reason is what this is the culminate even though he told Kovac's story afterwards, this is the sort of culmination of all that thinking, right? Yeah, that's,

I mean, it's like this unhealing wound from his time I'm in Vietnam and he's working through it in Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July and in this movie. This movie is the final act. The final like, I think so too. One was about experience on the ground. One was experience about what happens to people when they come home. And the other one was, why the fuck did this all happen? And JFK is his theory of why all this happened, really. Yeah, the original sin of the country in the second half of the century, right? I can't think,

I mean, we have a very poker fluent crowd here today. I can't think of another example of a director going all in like this of a director who's got this much, he's in the middle of the zeitgeist. He's probably the biggest filmmaker in the world, and he gets the biggest movie star in the world to be the avatar for what is admittedly incredibly provocative, if not downright,

irresponsible storytelling at time, you know? And to make this case to the world movie-going audience that everything you thought you knew about this incredible crime was a lot. And then you get into, well, like, what is the truth here? And what responsibility does Stone have to the truth? Or is that sort of a greater truth that, you know, Oswald isn't the only, you know, isn't a single shooter? And it just becomes this, like, sort of hall of mirrors when you start to unpack it,

which is why this is such an exciting movie to pot about. Well, it's funny, because it makes me mad, even though I like it. But at the same time, all of these movies that are based on a true story, like Argo, which we did on the rewatchables, and then basically make up the ending in that, right? it was really easy for them to get out of the airport. They wanted some dramatic tension. They made it seem like it was like to the bitter end and the people are chasing them on the runway.

That never happened. Anytime it's based on a true story, there was fucking with the facts. It's just that in this case, what was different was that people saw this movie and thought this was what happened. I don't know if people fully realized Coppaman that this was just basically

him taking something that meant a lot to him and crafting a non-fifical, fiction slash fiction story of a narrative trying to explain it, but he was really trying to do all these other things. But like you have the Kevin Bacon character isn't real. It was completely made up. You have

the Joe Pesci character who died of natural causes that make it seem like he was murdered. Murdered by Cubans. He's playing with mice. He's playing with mice. Yeah. The deleted scenes have have Jack Ruby injected with cancer.

The deleted scenes have Jack Ruby injected in his jail cell with pancreatic cancer cells. The doctor comes in and says, I'm basically giving you, giving you like a B12 and he makes him bend over and gives him a shot in the ass. That's Apex Mountain. That's what we're going to do to each other. And chronologically start, corner of the fourth of July did come first. So we made that and then he made JFK.

Right. Yeah. So I guess the question with this movie as the years pass is he gets really, really liberal with a lot of stuff and openly mixed up stuff, but we don't have an internet yet. And the dialogue of this movie was basically, oh, well, this is, this is whatever,

but this is an awesome movie. And then as the years past, people start picking apart. And it even started happening in the early 90s, where there would be these think pieces about... It started happening before the movie came out. Right, but I don't think the general public was really as aware of it. No, I still remember seeing this movie

almost 30 years ago, like right now when I was in winter break in Lake Florida with my mom visiting my grandmother. We went and saw JFK. She remembers exactly where she was when Kennedy was killed. She was working in a dentist office in Manhattan. And we got out of the theater. And I was like, that was really cool. Like I obviously had never seen anything like that in my life or been exposed to thinking like that before. And she was just in tears because she was like it never felt right. It never seemed like what they were telling us was true. And now we know. Right. Now we know. Now we have the curtain's been lifted. But they were always these, I would say,

the only thing is these theories would pop up. As a 55-year-old, I can say that in the 80s, there's no doubt you would have college classes on what was really... What really happened. Gerald Posner was writing 400 books where eventually he lands on a single shooter. Did you have your friend in college who was...

Oh, dude. Because Jacko and I, we went deep on this stuff. We saw this movie together when we were in college, and we were like, we'd been waiting for it for months. We were like, here we go. Our friend's house was called The Lodge. And you can imagine when you would go over to the lodge, They had this cooler that they kept their weed in.

They had the best weed on campus. And you would go over and they would take the special weed out and they would make gravity bon. You know, they would cut open a gravity bong, make a gravity bong. And you would sit around and just talk about things like the JFK. It's interesting. I wonder if that, does that happen anymore?

Because we would literally sit in somebody's room and talk about this and talk about theories and stuff. And now I just feel like people just go on the internet. Well, someone would call their expert friend. Like even when we were in school, someone would call their expert friend to come over. Yeah. Not even on a cell phone.

We didn't have them, right? So, like, someone would call their buddy who was like, oh, yeah, she's a history major. She knows a lot about this. And then she would come over and you'd hand them. That person weirdly never had plans. Right. They would just show up and you would hand them the gravity bong. They would do a giant hit and then be like, let me tell you about the grassy knoll.

Yeah. That's what would happen. But the thing I'm trying to figure out, because I'm not, certainly not like you guys in that I didn't have this abiding obsession with figuring out who did this or understanding or reading the Posner books or any of the thing. that stuff. I don't come to the movie with those interests for you specifically. I've known you for a long time now. You've always been obsessed with this. You've done multiple podcasts about this. And in some ways, you love this movie, but you're kind of offended by it because of the creations in it,

the fake stuff. Yeah, I just wish it had been a little more real. So why? Why is that important? It's important because I think he's kind of semi-close to getting really somewhere special with this movie. right and he's really like the key scene to me is Donald Sutherland as ex and he lays out this whole thing and this whole theory about the military complex that's in place and Kennedy wants to remove this war and it would be all this money they lose and all this power and there's CIA and the way he lays it out you're like oh shit this is really good when he goes down the road with the peshy character and the bacon character

that's just like fictional movie making which is fine I don't think you can do both you can't have it both ways it's like there's this idea, because he used to say, I think he said around the time of the movie coming out, that the intention of the film was to be a counter myth. It's like there was a mythology around Oswald. There's a mythology around what we think happened that day. My movie is a counter mythology. That would be one acceptable, you know, sort of rationale for the film.

But he still, to this day, is in the comment section on blog posts being like, you're fucking wrong. I, like, can point to the letter that got burned up in an ashtray by Harry Connick Jr.'s Dad, you know, it's like... Well, but there are... I would say that he's as a filmmaker. Yes, factually the X scenes are so crucial. I agree.

Well, and also, I'm brilliantly edited, too. Like, the stuff that he does in that 16 minutes, I don't think it's been in a phone for it. The heart and the head of the movie. I agree. And, well, and, you know, just Sutherland's eyes. But because I think this comes from this deep pain, the reason that I cut it slack,

all that stuff you're talking about, is this is a guy who's still been destroyed. Stone, we talked about it before, I think in lots of ways a monster. But I bet as a filmmaker, as an artist, he was destroyed by what happened to him as a boy, as an 18-year-old, right? Destroyed by it. And so to me, he becomes an Oliver Stone character, screaming and ranting and yelling and demanding because it's this pain.

You feel that the movie is a huge cry. And, you know, I have to say, like, the fourth Vietnam movie is, I sent these two. to, I sent these to the scene from Nixon with Larry Hagman, which that's the final scene in this movie. Yeah. And it's in a movie four years later. And it's Larry Hagman going to Richard Nixon. Well, we're going to get rid of that guy to make sure that you end up in here.

And it's just like, what the fuck? But it's a guy who can't help himself. It hurts too much. And for me, that's what's touching and moving about the whole thing. He can't help himself. Can I ask one more question? If the movie was not a phenomenon. If it was not at the center of the culture, which is, it's, I mean, we should talk about how it's

crazy how it at the center of a culture or a movie like this was, because that seems impossible now. But if it was an obscure miss, would it have bothered you as much, Bill, that he was reaching for things that were not there? I got to say, I sound like I dislike this movie more. I actually really like this movie. It's more frustrated to me because I felt like somebody had one chance to really nail it. And it turned out to be this director at the peak of the movie. his powers who had a star at the center of the movie at the peak of his powers

and a country that's kind of ready for the movie and it's like why didn't anybody talk them out of some of the stupid stuff? Two things from this movie though that I think are really important because you talk about how this became a cultural thing. One is the Supruder film we did not have the ability to just go on YouTube

and watch it whenever we wanted. This was not a thing people had seen that many times. They're going to a big movie screen and Stone is like I'm not just going to show this to you. I'm going to fucking slow-mo it. I'm going to zoom in and you're going to see the president's head get shot off 10 times. So we had that, which I don't think anybody had thought of. And then the other thing was just, I think mainstream people just hadn't really had real conversations about JFK and this started it.

Like this really got the ball rolling for major shit. Like they passed the assassination act a year later basically because of this movie. So I don't know, it leads to the Seinfeld episode. Like it pushes it. It takes it from the bowels and these weird. weird, you know, like Tom Snyder, 1.30 in the morning type shows where this is where you would get, or the books. Or the character in Slacker, who's like in the back of the books.

Well, in this crazy documentary that he put out this year, JFK revisited, they actually show where you would have seen the Zepruder film, which is, I think, on a late night show hosted by Geraldo Rivera. And it's clearly like early 80s. Oh, it's in the documentary.

You're also watching on a TV that's not that good. Right. It's not a 35-foot movie screen. So I think the Zepruder film, that was kind of the shark from jaws of this movie. Do you think, Chris? Yeah, I mean, the way he, like you said, the way he implements it into the film,

the way he utilizes it in the movie, you have the same reaction that the people in the courthouse do. Like, there is no barrier between the movie-going audience and the extras and these supporting characters who were watching Costner in that moment. Because he's doing back into the left. Let's get these guys. They did this to him.

And that's, back into the left is ultimately, like, when you're watching it, you're like, no matter what, military industrial complex Cubans, mafia, we're talking about, it does seem like

his head goes back. Right. You know what I mean? And that doesn't make sense if the shot comes from behind. Except recoil does have. I mean, there's the answer.

And that's the thing. And that's the thing. And that's the, so when we're researching this podcast, you go, you read the hot takes about JFK, you read the criticisms of it.

And you're like, oh, it's pretty compelling. And then you do a little bit more digging. And then there's all the refuteive articles, the refutations of those articles. And they're like,

if you don't do anything about this guy or that guy found this piece of paper that was lost to time, but I found it. And you're just like, oh, I'm down the rabbit hole. And then he goes down the rabbit hole. He's not the only person to look at the Kennedy assassination as this microcosmic event that explains our century. Like Don DeLillal does it with Libra, James Elroy does it with American tabloid.

Donne de Lille has this great quote about writing about this where he says, I think fiction rescues history from its confusions. And he was talking about Libra. And that's good. Fiction rescues history from his confusions. He explains a lot about it. like kind of imagine what did happen if history can't explain it.

But Stone isn't just doing that. He's like, this did happen. I am telling you with the misinformation or propaganda that the other side uses, my dream of what happened. But he's not. He's not. He's making a movie about Jim

Garrison who had a theory of what happened to JFK. That and that is really the challenge. That was now is marketed though. Who cares? But does you think he sort of has cast himself as the heir to Garrison's... Certainly we can assume that and we know because we've been listening to Stone talk publicly about this.

But if we talk about the movie, and we should talk about the movie, the movie is about Jim Garrison on a quest to make sense of something that doesn't make sense to him. And that's the best part of the movie. I'd say one of the key lines, I took a bunch of pictures. I watched the second time through this weekend with captions on. Yeah. Like when you see some of these captions as opposed to just hearing it, like daddy never keeps his promises

that's the kid to garrison but it's also garrison to the country it's what the movie's about it's that America was supposed to this is why it's America was supposed to be a certain kind of promise and Oliver stone for his whole career the best of Oliver stone is the person who says daddy's not keeping his promises

and that's at the heart of what he's trying to sort out I think Well, this movie also, it comes through for, we know it's coming. I'm just telling what it was like in 1991. It's like, this is coming. Oliverstone made a movie about the JFK assassination, Costner's in it, all these other actors. It's like, all right, pressure's on now. I'm excited to see this.

You have these rare movies where when you go to the theater that day, it's like, I've been waiting. It's like we're going to like a game seven. I agree. You know, it's like, I can't fucking wait for this. It delivered. Like, we left the theater. Like, that was fucking awesome. And I think the stuff that stuck around from a rewatchable standpoint, like the X scene, obviously.

But, you know, it's the little shit. Like, John Candy's in this movie for one scene. It's the greatest scene of all time. Daddy-oh! It's the answer to, I just told him whatever came in my cabesa. It's literally answered, like all the rewatchables categories are basically answered by that scene. It's unbelievable. Jack Lemon and Walter Mather are in this.

And they're not even the same scene. Like the most famous movie pairing of the last. I'm asking what this is like three paragraphs of everybody who is a famous person in Hollywood. Yeah. It's unlike any other movie. I wonder that it's pre-internet. If this movie's released now, I think the internet eats it alive. I think everyone grasp on the things that are wrong with it.

There's a movie to be made right now, though, about this kind of idea. Because this movie plants the seed. So I'm a little younger. I'm like 11 years old probably when I see this movie. And it did its job. Did it prove to me who killed JFK? No. make me immensely distrustful of the U.S. government and the military industrial complex?

Of course it did because it's so convincing. We made a little movie about Kennedy. Dave and I and Neil Berger made a movie called Interview with the Assassin. That was Neil's first movie before Limitless and before the Illusionist. It was Neil's first film, and it's presented as a documentary, and it's about the second gunman. And it's worth watching because it's, Neil's incredibly thorough. and his, you know, 20 years later, his examiner, or whatever, 10 years later, his examination. But you know what the internet would eat up?

For people who don't know the movie, so you talked about X, I just want to, can, I just want to read you guys. This is the dialogue of the opening. The internet would destroy. This is how we meet X. I was a soldier, Mr. Garrison, two wars. I was one of those secret guys in the Pentagon that supplies the military hardware. planes, bullets, rifles, they're what we call black operations,

black ops, assassinations, coup d'etat, rigging elections, propaganda. In World War II, I was in Romania, Greece, Yugoslavia, part of the Nazi intelligence apparatus. Part of a Nazi intelligence apparatus? Just before the end of the war,

we used those guys in the fight against the communists. In Italy, 48, we stole the elections. I mean, this is France 49, broke the strikes. Over through Carrino in the Philippines, Mozadek and Iran got the Dalai Lama out

He got the Dalai Lama out This one guy That's what Stone's doing right He made up this guy Yeah And then he gives this guy Basically has been in every Zellig

And you know And that little hunk with We were good Like after all that We were the badass It's like a scene Before the action starts In Predator

You buy that scene That's what I'm saying It's just even true It's almost like troutman Yeah In first blood Yeah It's kind of absurd.

I mean, it's just kind of absurd. This movie is if Alex Jones had Paul Thomas Anderson's cinematic talent. That's pretty good. And podcast. It's just insane. But I love it. But I get frustrated by it. In every way, it's a fever dream.

It's a fever dream in the way he made it. It's a fever dream in the way he edited it. The only thing that's keeping it attached to the earth is Costner. Costner's really good. But, I mean, Stone has a way. way, and I think this is one of his best qualities as a director, of getting really good performances out of people

who aren't even in the movie for that long. Bacon's amazing. This movie kind of reignites Bacon's career as like, all right, did I mis-evaluate this guy as the footloose quicksilver guy? Do I need to rethink this? He walks in, he's like, basically

Brad Pitt, is shirtless, he's hitting on Costner at one point. It's only in one scene. It's a really strong case for him as the best castor of actors of his generation. In every one of his movies, Michael Douglas in Wall Street, Charlie Sheenan Platoon, all of these Jim Morrison in the doors, like he knows how to locate the perfect person for his parts. You're correct.

That's a great take. Even if you think of, yeah, think about Platoon. Think about every single supporting role in Platoon. Defoe, Berenger. Even McGillard. Even like any given Sunday that he realized Jamie Fox could be Willie Beeman and he's the best part of that movie. But on down the line, I always thought his casting was really good. I also think this movie really fucked him up. And he talks about it. He said, at the 25th anniversary, he said,

it was a hot potato from the get-go, much hotter than I thought. I didn't realize it would hit the central nerve core of the establishment. And it did take its toll. I think it's changed to perception to me forever. Many now dismiss me as a filmmaker who is political and only in a conspiracy theories that labeled me. I was staggered. I wish in a way to just died off. The movies that he did, before this, where Platoon, Wall Street, talk radio, born the Fourth of July,

the doors. And Salvador. Well, yeah, in Salvador before, but Platoon is when we know who he is. Yeah. But also, it's really important

to talk about the two movies he wrote and, like, Got Nomit. Like, it's really important to talk about Midnight Express and Scarface. Yeah.

Because this is a cousin of Scarface, too, because Scarface is completely over the top, right? I mean, if you think about it, Scarface is totally over the top, and obsessed,

and also is a purported kind of true story that he takes these giant liberties. But to your point, though, about the ex monologue, the other things that he's done, aside from those Oscar-winning and big, noisy things, are he made seizure and the hand, and he wrote and had rewritten Conan the Barbarian. He is still a genre filmmaker at heart, and this movie is not a fusty drama about the assassination of JFK. It's a thriller. Yeah.

It's a pure adrenaline-thrill. Well, that's the other, when you said, why is it important? Because it is so damn entertaining. It makes you watch it over and over again. And then you start taking on these stickwork. We can all laugh at these theories, but give us three drinks. And I could convince you of a lot of the shit that's in this movie is true. Because by osmosis, I've taken it all in because I've watched the movie 20 times in the last 20 years.

Plus Chris gets covered in gold once a year. That's right. Sean, let me flip this around on you. Okay. You find out Coppomen and Levine are making a James Dolan movie. and this is going to be the movie that really we figure out what the fuck was happening with the next. Called Go New York Go,

colon, the James Dolan story. And it's this really deep dive. It's a deep dive of this guy who takes this beloved basketball team and ruins it. And they make the movie and it's like 70% factual. But then the Isaiah Thomas character

is just a completely different person. It's a gay white guy like a Tommy Lee Jones wearing a bad wig who's just lunatic who's having these weird parties and he's intentionally destroying the team and there's these things in there and you're just like that didn't happen

why is that in here? That is what I'm saying. So JFK means to you what the Knicks mean to me is that what you're saying? Like at the JFK assassination where you're like finally somebody's going to do this and with Dolan it's like oh finally somebody's going to lift the hood

and explain this fucking disaster. It's a very good question. I'd love to hear your take on this as well, Brian. But... Cobbman wrote the script just now in his head. Okay.

No. Okay. One, is the movie any good? Because that's ultimately what I care about. It's fucking great. Because JFK is good and Brian and David are good.

So I expect it to be good. Two, what are the ramifications of the movie? What are, and what were the ramifications of JFK? What did it put into the culture? Because it doesn't prove anything. But it creates... It creates dialogue about it.

Yeah, as a filmmaker, I'm not bothered by... I'm not at all bothered by them. making up the compositing of a character or the using of a certain dramatic scenes in a true story to serve the true thematics or to serve the true idea or to serve what's actually the kind of the truth without having to get bogged down in all the little details. For instance, I think one of the things that has aged the best as a result of this movie is 13 days.

That film, the Roger Donaldson film. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Roger Donaldson film, written by David's Self. That movie's fucking incredible and better every year. Every year you watch that movie, that movie's better. And I think it's as good as JFK. Also, good Costner performance. Incredible costner performance.

And I watched it yesterday to get ready for this. What's that? D minus Saxon. Well, for you. Two weeks pay. Really needs plenty of bartenders. But even, you know, like Bruce Greenwood from Canada, he does a pretty good...

Kastor's rough. JFK. But that movie, like that character, I looked him up. Yesterday I read a lot about that character that character, Costner played in that movie. You know, he was buddies with Bobby. He wasn't probably really in every one of those scenes. He really wasn't like making those decisions with them.

It doesn't bother me at all because it's a way to get at what really happened with Jack and Bobby in a room. Yeah, I need to get over it because I think this is such an important story that when you're using filmmaker devices like when Chris writes the script about the Ben Simmons the Ben Simmons saga I wanted to be authentic

No, no. About Ben learning to make a foul shot. About Ben taking over the ringer. Yeah, I don't know. I think Chris and I seem like we're slightly more bothered by some of it. But we are also more conspiracy-ish. I think it's almost more because

we're so susceptible to it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree with it. I'm like, I am almost like I want to believe. You know what I mean? I want to believe in all this stuff. So it's almost disappointing to find out, not that he cut corners or the Garrison cut quarters or anything like that,

but to Sean's point, it's like there is Garrison's version of what happened. And then there's Stone's version of Garrison's thing. And then there is Stone's behavior in and around the movie. If we're just talking about the text, it's a fucking heavyweight champion. It's just an unbelievable experience. It's unlike almost any movie you'll be. see. It is a thriller. It is just like, you know, it's one of my favorite little tidbits not to step on half-ass internet research is that James Woods wanted to play Garrison. Oh, yeah. But it was

like, it needs to be about like the Garrison family and the crucible of this guy sacrificing his family. And it was just like all-time bad take, Jimmy. You know what I mean? A guy who's had had his fair share of bad takes. And it's like, that's not the story. The story is this guy going down it's an Alice in Wonderland story. The movie has to aspire to more, I would just say the movie, a way to think about it, is a movie has to aspire to more than facts. A movie like this has to aspire to answer the question

of what does it mean to live in an America where we don't learn for sure who overthrew the government? And if you're asking that kind of question and you're trying to ask it with all the tools you have as a storyteller and filmmaker to be, bound by only the fact leads you to make documentary, I think.

And if you're, once you're making a narrative film, I think you're going, this is what I feel like is the truth that's going to last for a long time and lead you to try to figure out what America means. I mean, I think as a result of this, I went to see Norman Mailer, you know, wrote that book, Oswald's, what's called Oswald's Ghost or something? The Norman Mailer book came out in 95. I saw him speak when it came out. And Mailer, I think as a result of this, was like, and all the stuff that happened and the files that Stone got released, he went into it thinking it was for sure conspiracy.

That's no, if you know anything about Norman Miller, like, of course, that's what he did. And the book, he ends up being certain that Oswald acted alone. And so one viewer, Norman Mailer, one of the, was one of the smartest guys in America at the time, he followed the trail that Oliver Stone kind of put out there and ended up all the way walking down it and coming to an entirely different home. But that's the thing is, Mailer, a master of the counterintuitive take as well. Yeah. A person who zags when everyone zags. And in the same way that you guys are kind of rooting through your feelings because you're like, finally somebody put to paper, put to screen.

With real actors. I have. And they did it at the highest level. But it isn't what I think. And so how do I feel about that? This doesn't make sense. So how can this be real? Well, that scene where he writes off the mob.

I mean, I've always felt it was the mob. And like, I always felt it was just very straightforward. like Joe Kennedy makes a promise. Yeah, JFK fuck them. Joe Kennedy makes a promise. The wise guys deliver for Joe Kennedy. They hand the White House. Ohio goes.

They hand the White House to Kennedy. He puts his brother in. His brother's like, let's fuck these guys. Are we doing this now? We're doing conspiracies now? Can we take a break? Let's take a break. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market.

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Well, I was just because this is the only point. I wasn't doing the conspiracy is that that theory that like a lot of us believed at that time, Kastner did they do one paragraph to get rid of it in that big argument scene. He just goes, because Stone didn't believe in it. You're telling me the mob can do this. You're telling me the mob can do that. That boom, boom, boom, four lines and that's it. And he does away with that whole, there have been 40 movies about Giancana.

and hundreds of books. And he just, like, goes, I don't, that, that doesn't explain why I was in Vietnam. That's right. That's why it's a personal statement. That's why it comes back to him. He's going, no, no, no, if that's the case, then I went to Vietnam by accident.

And I can't accept that it was just fate. It has to have been someone fucked me and put me in Vietnam. It has to be the military industrial complex. Chris, the noted philosopher and conspiracy theorist, Jack O, once said, everyone's either a conspiracy theorist,

Or recovering conspiracy theorists. Which are you? I think recovering after the last couple of years. Because a lot of people have kind of gone the same way Miller did and just decided, oh, actually probably Oswald did act alone. I think most sane people think that. Let's just say, regardless of whether or not, I don't know anything. I could never answer the question of whether Oswald acted alone.

My favorite part of the ex speech is when he's like, basically, he's like, that's how it happens. it's just an idea that gets floated and it's never said and it's never exactly planned and it's all cellularized and there's no it's all plausible deniability and so I think that there was an idea and do I know who did it and do I know why they did it exactly it's like no but

I think there was 100% go for it a fourth bullet so we're just we're fully into this I just that's what I don't have anything to say about this that's what I just want to know that's not that's I don't have much to say about it either. I'm happy to stick with it. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I do think it's funny if we look at the text why the way that Stone not bats down certain theories is pretty interesting as a filmmaking technique. It was James Nolan. James Nolan on the Grassy Knoll. The problem of the Grassee-Noe is there's a photograph by the witness who's in this movie. And she has the only photograph going the other way of the Grassee-Noll. There's three people on one side.

And then maybe somebody in the bushes, but you can't tell. but it kind of debunks the grassy knoll thing because if it was the grassy knoll, you would see somebody, unless it was like doctored out. Who knows? My issues with the Kennedy thing and why I think it's superficially,

and I don't want to spend too much time on it, but like the autopsy, all the stuff that happened in the hospital room and what happened to some of the witnesses right after was really crazy. It's all superfishing. Yeah, yeah. And that's actually true.

And all of it is that's the truest part of the movie. And that is by far the most compelling part of the new documentary. documentary too, is that everything that happened with the autopsy is there's shenanigans. Like, there are people who are taking over in those rooms and there's, it feels like there's body switching. Well, and just for the audience members, you wouldn't know, this shooting happens since 1963. We don't have cell phones.

We don't have anything. You wouldn't be able to spring into action the way all of these things springed into action. Now, the flip side of this compliment is, it's been 55 years. When some of these people have talked, like we even found out who fucking deep throat is. But we have to say a couple things that. matter. There are two bad. There are two things, though, that make it not just conspiracy, because

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not a recovering one. I don't hold big conspiracy theories. You're just a pure guy. I agree. I just think that four people involved in something, it's going to come out. RICO. These things tend to surface. There's a couple things, though, that are

inexplicable. And if you had them in a Greek myth or something, you would I mean, Bill, you've been reading your Shakespeare. You got it. A little later than I thought. I thought I earned it, though. It's earned in a way. But if you look at it, that's a line from the movie, guys.

But if you look at it, if you look at it, Jack Ruby is one of the craziest things that's happened in the whole history of the 20th century. That is an insane thing that he killed that guy on live television. And supposedly that- Security all over the place. And if we just step back to the way, the reason why the conspiracy theories aren't crazy in this one case, the guy who killed the president was allowed at a time when nobody in all of America could to defect to Russia and to return

with no penalty. That's completely insane and unprecedented. And then while being, while being, and he was involved with all those people. These are just the factual things. What you're saying is Oliver Stone got it right. That's what you're saying. He got that. He got that. He got that. He got that. That That's just true, though. I have no idea how to interpret any of this. Bill was like, I think, a fourth bullet. Why not a ninth bullet? A 37th bullet.

But, Sean, hold on. If I just told you these facts, someone assassinated the president. The person was clearly involved with the American intelligence apparatus at some point because he defected to Russia and came back with no penalty. And clearly, a lot of evidence ties him to these organizations that were tied to CIA. tied to CIA and their operations. And then a wise guy, Jack Ruby was a wise guy, associate. He ran these clubs for the mob.

That's also just not conjecture. And that that guy was able to murder the guy who killed the president. Those things on live TV. Before he could tell those two facts, that's it for me. That's what makes me go. This is basically John Wilkes booth 100 years later where we have security. Yeah. He's in a police station.

Nobody should be able to get to him. that was a fucking mafia guy wants us in and shoots him and kills him it's unbelievable I have to

Chris you you've been in some interesting and powerful rooms but you guys have been in more powerful rooms than we have so I want to ask you this sincerely

because I don't I'm not a conspiracy person at all but I do believe that power moves quietly and I do believe that someone like

Alan Dulles or someone like Sam Giancana can die with a secret and in my very limited experience around people who have a lot of power and a lot of information, they will say something offhandedly,

assuming that you are in the club, and you will learn an extraordinary truth about a well-known person that is chilling or is fascinating or is hilarious. That literally happens. Is it possible that a very small, very small collection of powerful people made decisions, but it was unbeknownst to 98% of the other people who were involved? Yeah, of course. I mean, that's, I think that that's what it takes.

Now, whether it's specifically David Ferry having cancer and, you know, all of this other shenanigans with Clay Shaw, I don't even care. But I do believe that something like this could happen. Well, Mr. X has the key line. He says, the real question is, it, it's why. Yeah. I never realized Kennedy was so dangerous to the establishment. Is that why? Well, it's a real question, isn't it?

Why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the mafia. Keeps them guessing, like some kind of parlor game prevents them from asking the most important question. Why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?

Who? So it's a good question. Who benefited? And it's either the mafia? who's pissed at Kennedy because he double-crossed them, or this Russian-Cuban thing, both of whom were pissed at Kennedy, or the CIA,

who was worried that they were, Kennedy was to disband them. You'd three people with real motives, and that's why we haven't been able to figure this out. Well, I think it's true that a lot of people in the military industrial complex were, not just Bay of Pigs, were frustrated with the way

that Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis, meaning Americans were very grateful, unhappy with the way he handled it. But trading the weapons in Turkey for the weapons in Cuba when he could have gone in. You could see why that group of people, I can't see if that's where I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I don't actually, I can't think

that a governmental conspiracy like that could be kept quiet. Well, the best case against it is. Because some governmental guy would have talked. The best case against it is the CIA, there's so many incompetent stories about them during this time. The most famous one was they had this whole plan to make Castro's beard disappear

because it would have humiliating to him. Yeah. And they fucked it up and it came out. They tried to give him like a poison that would have his hair fall out. They were like the three stooges half the time. So to pull off this mastermind awesome thing, it would be, I think would have been perfect. But everything with the ex character talks about where he's just like misinformation campaigns, propaganda, sci ops, like all this stuff, which is like you think about them happening

in some of these far off lands. and I felt like the world probably felt a lot less small back then because of the lack of media and stuff. It's like that's just exactly what we're talking about. It's like once you get into a world where you're guessing whether or not something's a false flag or something was done to make people think this was happening with Cuba, then like you're up is down and black is white.

Also there are so many close calls to this kind of thing. Like, yes, in our era now even, like I won't make this political, I promise. But like the call, the calls that were made during the 2020 end of the election thing, if you read any of those books, one person just deciding to do something slightly differently and a whole bunch of other dominoes would have fallen and we never would have really known

because if those people didn't raise their hand, now we were in a side, they did. But if they didn't, like a whole bunch of dominoes would have fallen. But that idea insinuates that there is a puppet master quality to this, that there is a long game with a lot of different parts. And I think what is more likely, I don't know in this case, but in general when things like this happen, there's an idea and it evolves and something goes wrong.

And so they change the move and then a different move happens. Like the Jack Ruby thing is a great example. The Jack Ruby thing happening on live television, one of the craziest things of all time. Is that exactly how they were supposed to take care of as well? It feels like an improvisation. To your point, in Libra, they're supposed to miss. In Libra, they're supposed to miss Kenny.

Or they were supposed to kill or, sure, to scare them. they were supposed to kill Oswald at the movie theater, but they didn't count on during the day that it would be that crowd. Right. There were lots of, right, where Tippett was supposed to kill, Tippett was supposed to kill Oswald.

The cop, yeah. So then in the end, there's lots of ways, I mean, that's just a full plug for American tabloid. If you want to know about this shit, that's one of the best novels of the last 50 years, and, unless Libra's great, but Don DeLillo, if you're not somebody who reads a lot, you might not want to just dive right into the fucking DeLillo.

below deep end, whereas go read James Elroy. It's the moment you start reading, you can't stop. Chris never puts that parental advisory sticker on his deliola recommendations ever. I mean, come on, really? Go read Underworld, everybody. It's 200 pages about one at bat. Well, they definitely, they definitely fucked. That's how Grantland started.

That's true. They definitely fucked with the Zabruder film, too. Because that's a good deep dive because that existed for a couple years before people saw. and the original group of people who saw it all said the limo stops. And by the time we get the Zepruder film going, the limo never stops. Stone says in the movie that he says it stops.

See the limo stops. He says that in the movie. The people there were like, the limo fucking stopped. And so many of them moved toward, like they were kind of over there toward the smoke and the grass. No, like those are real things.

And the witnesses, a lot of them were discounted. That's another thing in the ex speech that he clarifies when he's essentially recounting to the Supruder film and he's like they never would have gone around that turn you know they never would have

like and those are things that I accepted as fact because I that the character was saying like you were like oh that must be true like all these because it's delivered with such confidence right into the kill zone yeah but I'm like is that a thing

like if you're in military intelligence or you were working the civil service like is the problem is mapped out you read one rebuttal of it and it's like no and then you read the rebuttal of the rebuttal and it's like in fact

yeah I don't know well there definitely was on a lot of security there. I mean, that's a fact. And for whatever reason, they didn't see that concern that the president was riding around in a motorcade and hostile territory with nobody kind of... We're having dinner tonight. The person who I don't want to say who it is, but you guys know, the person who's joining us, his stepfather was on the... I was a secret service man on the advanced detail in Dallas. Oh.

So he and that person just died a few years ago. And so the guy was coming at dinner with us. had a lot of conversations to him about what really happened. Maybe it can sound like Lee Oswald's son is coming to dinner with us or something. Well, I just don't want to... Lee Jr.

I don't know if the person who's coming to dinner has talked publicly about his stepfather, so I just don't want to do that. But we'll ask that, we can ask that question. Let's go to the movie quick.

Just Costner, the run he was on. Just quickly, before we get back to LBJ. Well, Costner's on the no way out. I'm sorry, untouchables, no way out. Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, revenge, which I kind of enjoyed.

Dance of Wolves, which wins all the Oscars. Robin Hood, which makes a shitload of money, comes out like six months before this. And then JFK, and then he's got Bodyguard the following year. But he's the biggest star in the world. Hank, he doesn't realize, Hank's much like Lee Harvey Oswald.

Up in the book depository and take him out and take his spot. But the fact that he was in this movie at this point in his career gave it an incredible amount of credibility. because it was like with costers in this they must have really taken this seriously the film did well too oh god can i just ask you why do you think you wanted to do this

because this is a big risk i think he wanted to work with stone i think he liked working with big filmmakers it's to kill a mockingbird he gets the speech you get a big monologue yeah it's an awesome speech you can say that's one of the best moments of his career if not the best moment the last act yeah that last speech it's really good that's the best acting he's really crying that's probably done yeah coppoman was too coppman was crying watching it He's incredible, man. Hussar's great.

I think he wanted to work with Oliver Stone at that moment in time. Tom Cruise has just won the Oscar with him. Yeah, Stone's like, I'll go get, or whatever, every good actor. I guess Tom got nominated. Did he win? Did he win? He didn't win. But Douglas did win for Wall Street.

Yeah, that's the Ronnie son. That's why, right? He gets Cruz nominated and he brings Michael Douglas to the thing and the movie's preceding this. Well, also, Stone can promise, I'm going to get every good actor, and you'll actually believe him in 1991. It's like, oh, yeah, you probably will. It's just such a, it's such a bold movie. Yeah.

And Kossner is a great actor and a great movie star, one of the greatest movie stars of his generation. Couldn't agree more. But is he a bold filmmaker? Does he work with bold filmmakers? It's debatable. He makes great movies. Did he ever do anything this transgressive again? Probably not.

I mean, I mean, he did make these weird, like Mike Binder in the way. He did make some weird, like, Mike Binder in the past movies. Yeah. Yeah. In the sort of like second half. In the second half, the career, I think he did. And I even think Yellowstone is, for its time now, that's a subversive show. Sure, if you think about it.

I think he is what you said, one of the great movie stars. I mean, I wrote a piece for Grantland about how Dancers with the Wolves should not have beaten Goodfellas. And, but still, he's, you know. It's still a really good movie, but it shouldn't have been good. It's a great. I think he's, I think Kevin Costner is one of the all-time great. Yeah. That movie is him putting himself in the lineage with.

John Wayne and... Yeah, that was obviously he made Wyatt Earp, like he's trying to... He wants to be a part of that. I mean, he did go work... I mean, he worked with De Palma before this, right? But on the most, quote-unquote,

conventional diploma. Yeah. Sure. You know, the hero movie. This movie not only did gangbusters and won a couple Oscars had nominations, but he showed it to Congress

in 1991 December. It led to the 1992 Assassinations Disclosure Act. I wonder if Arlen Specter... signed by President George H. H. W. Bush. promising to release all relevant documents by 2017 November did not happen

it seemed like there was a moment where the one positive of the Trump presidents would be Trump just bulldozing and be like releasing everything even Trump was afraid to cross the line so it's still in purgatory and there's still Biden deleted a year I think Biden delayed it so it's just we just drag on

I don't understand it but 12% of the documents are still not out. In your heart of hearts. I think there's some bad CIA stuff in there. But is it about this specifically? Is it that they orchestrated? I think it's about a lot of the stuff they're doing late 50s or early 60s.

I don't think they want out. That would be my guess. I think things got... You think it's about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King? Yeah, I think they did some... Reilly that stuff. Well, they did. C.R. what do you think?

About what the CIA did in the early 60s? Tell us everything you think they did. I can't now comment on that, nor would I be. at Liberty too, even if I had knowledge of those events. I mean, Hoover was a flat-out maniac, which was why the Leo movie was so disappointing. Hoover was a sociopath and was running the most important intelligence agency we had for a long time, you know? Again, let us point you to the works of James Elroy, everybody, because he is obsessed with this. So Stone's version of the assassination is this. New Orleans was the heart of the conspiracy. Why was Oswald there? Guy Bannister and David

Ferry ran a Cuban counterintelligence Operation Mongoose. Clay Shaw was their money guy ringleader. And then Kennedy was executed because it was a coup d'etat to put Lyndon Johnson in, who was more favorable in a bunch of ways for these people, didn't want him to withdraw from Vietnam,

didn't want the Cold War to end, all the war contracts were at stake. Garrison's case involves three key witnesses in this movie. One is David Ferry. complete narrative breakdown in that part. One is Willie O'Keefe, the gay prostitute,

played by Kevin Bacon. That person does not exist. And then Garrison going to see X, played by Donald Sullivan, who is a completely made-up character. These are the three people who swing the plot of this movie. And I'm okay with it,

even though it's annoys me. I still enjoy it. Yeah. But those are the three people that push the narrative along. Is O'Keefe a made-up character or a composite of a bunch of different? He's based off Perry Russo, I think.

It's a based on character. There's been some really good hit pieces on this movie. Just from breaking it, the best one was Edward J. Epstein in the Atlantic, which was a couple years after, who really focused on how bad Garrison's trial was. Yeah, I read this before. The trial really fell apart in an embarrassing way. Garrison came out badly for years after.

So I think that's part of the New York Times said it was one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history. of American jurisprudence. You know what this reminded me of revisiting it, too, as you think of, if we think about the Garrison trial, this happened a lot in the Sorkin movie, the trial of Chicago 7. It really put to light what that judge in that trial was like,

and a lot of the lines from that film are called directly from the court transcript. And the judge also in the Garrison trial is, you know, projected to be this unjust... Member of the apparatus. Yes, right. And that's another thing that I don't know how true or not true that is.

Like, in Epstein article, he's like, Jimmy Garrison basically seems like a loon through the entirety of the trial. But in the film, obviously, he's this... He's Kevin Guster. But also, when you watch, like, there's so many things that, I'm sure all of you have seen Fog of War

at least one time. I mean, you watch Fog of War and you hear McNamara just talking, it does make you think like any of this shit is possible. Because in the Fog of War, people make really bad decisions that they think are serving

the right master. Yeah. only to turn out that they're not. So, like, could someone have said to that judge, to this one, buy the book, or, you know, Jimmy Garrison's gone crazy. I mean, especially in a pre-enginead age. How hard is it to whisper to some local court?

Garrison was a DA. He wasn't a United States attorney. It wasn't a federal trial. You know, it's the most local lawyer trying, prosecutor, in this municipality, try in this case. How many hot takes am I allowed? on this podcast. I mean, it's your time, man.

This is open season. I feel like if you're ever going to go crazy. We're on the JFK podcast in person. Tatum and Brown can't play together. I just feel like LBJ was involved in some way. So does Oliver Stone. I really do. I really think he might have been involved.

That he knew. You said that like you were for JFK. Has Robert Carroll ever written about this question? I think, I don't know whether he participated. in the assassination anyway, but I think he knew about a dissenting force that was rising

in a way that was going to be good for him and may have known more than he ever let on about that they were going to try to go after Kennedy. And he hated Bobby specifically, but he kind of hated both Kennedy's. I mean, there's been crazy rumors about

how bad that relationship was, even stuff that happened on the plane when they were flying the body home and who knows. The reason that If that feels credible, whether it is historically credible or not, is because he's well known prior to becoming the vice president as the ultimate dealmaker, right? That he's the guy who is the king of negotiations, master of the Senate. And so you get the impression. You know, Stone creates a scene in which LBJ is talking to the generals and the heads of secret service, the head of the CIA, about what he's going to get out of it and what he's going to do for them in Vietnam when he gets the scene. as long as he gets his election.

Right. I don't 100% believe it, but I think it's believable. Fagga War. I mean, Fogne Marner is talking about that phone call with LBJ right at the beginning. But the more, I think the more relevant Errol Morris movie then is the Rumsfeld movie movie because that movie is about how people who have those jobs are driven by ego. And like this, the LBJ thing is an ego thing. He's actually a...

What's the Rumsfeld movie called? The Unknown Nomey. Right. Yeah. I just thought of it as. fog of war light. It's not the semi-fog of... Robert McNamara trying to make sense of what he

did and what he was responsible for versus this vain, callow vampire, like talking about going to Iraq is different. Magnemara wasn't a sociopath, and Rumsfeld comes off like sociopaths. It's worth mentioning also that Arrowbars did a really great The Umbrella Man. Six-minute video for

the Times called Umbrella Man, which is about... Oh, send that to me, I don't know. Yeah, that's incredible. I missed that one somehow. Yeah, when you look at the Kennedy thing, you, you're Mine has to go to who won from this? That's what I always look. Like, Sean and I will read some magazine feature where there's unnamed sources. And we're like, who's, who win, who has something to gain from having this quote in there or whatever?

You can kind of play chess with it. LBJ definitely a winner. The military complex definitely winner. And the CIA definitely a winner. The mafia, a winner. And if they really felt a greed from Kennedy. But the mafia won for a long time from it. I mean, eventually.

The mafia was winning all over. What's the, just while we're on the topic, what I can't remember, what's the hypothesis of the Irishman with this? With this, with the JFK assassination? Yeah, I can't remember what, what it happens in Ireland. Is the implication that they're involved, right?

Oh, that it's, he hates him. He keeps talking about how much he hates him. Yeah, yeah, because he's fucking, Robbie betrayed him, Bobby betrayed him, and all that shit. We're way behind schedule, so I got to keep moving. This is justice we're seeking. What schedule are we on? So Stone does that, they do the PR for it.

Whenever you get close to the truth, they always want to move it on. You're part of the apparatus. I'm sorry. Stone for the, as they're promoting the movie, people are attacking the movie and it becomes part of the promotion of the movie and it just makes people want to see it even more. So that happens. He wrote a documented screenplay book after heavily annotated. I bought that book.

Reddit more than one. In which he cite sources for nearly every claim made in the film. Probably doesn't address the characters of made-up. Our supporting cast includes Kevin Bacon, Donald Sutherland, Joe Pesci, Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Walter Bathow, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Rooker, John Candy, and Lori Metcalf. Not bad. Not a bad.

I'm glad you brought up Lori Metcalfe. That's episode five of billions for some of the compliment who can just bring him big eye. But I mean, for a movie, pretty impressive. Guy named John Williams did the music. I don't know if you heard of him. The score is incredible. Amazing score.

Yep. Robert Richardson, cinematographer. Our boy. Oscar winner. Winner. Win some gold? He's an Apex Mountain candidate for me for this.

Richardson is one of the greats who ever lived. It was. The editing techniques in this movie just had not been done before. Now they seem pretty relatively standard. We've seen it a bunch of times, but in 19901 had not seen it. Here are the Oscars. JFK nominated. Loses to Silence of the Land.

JFK, Alverstone nominated our best director that year Jonathan Demi wins John Singleton Barry Levinson for Bugsy people love Bugsy that year still trying to figure that out

Alver Stone JFK Ridley Scott, Thelma, and Louise Oh yeah That's a hell of a year by the way those are all really really strong movies We have one best supporting actor nomination from this movie

Yeah can you guess what it was Clay Bertrand Clay Shaw Tommy Lee Clay Schott. He wins the Oscar. No. He does not. Jack the fugitive. Jack Pounce. He wins for the fugitive. That year of the...

No, he wins the fugitive like two years later. I got to say, I would have had Sutherland. If I had to pick one supporting actor nomination, I think Sutherland. I thought Sutherland is so amazing in that scene. He just fucking crushes it. It's so good. He just blacks out. So good. We'll do it every watchable scene.

I think there's a case for almost every but. I think Bacon and Pesci and all. all of them have a case for it. Have a case for what? Supporting actor. The more important. You think so? I think Pesci's...

I think it's the single worst. I love Joe Pesci. Can't meet a bigger Joe Pesci. I don't like Pesci's money. I thought his work in the Irishman was like the best thing I've seen in years. And I don't understand the performance. I think he's serving at all what they're trying to do perfectly. But we can debate it.

$40 million budget made $205 million. Jesus. Eight Academy Award Award nominations. Uh, one, two. Best cinematography, best film editing. Our last Oliver Storm movie to win Academy Awards. Really? Yeah, that was it.

Roger Ebert, our guy. Over the Moon. Four stars. Best movie the year, right? The achievement of this film is not that it answers the mystery of the Kennedy assassination because it does not. That's it.

Raj, coming through. Its achievement is that it tries to marshal the anger, which ever since 1963, has been gnawing away on some dark shelf of the national psyche. Perfect. That's why he's our guy. His essay in the great movies book on this movie is one of his best pieces. He said it was the year's best.

So it was one of the top ten films of the decade. Walter Cronkite called him and berated him. It was furious that Ebert loved this movie. That's the lead of his review. Yeah. Walter Cronkite. Out of Campo... Just calls Roger Evert?

Can't believe he liked it. Yeah. He'd to lecture him about how... that it was not factual. We're going to take a break, then we're going to do the categories. I wrote a little song to remind you, Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotels got it all.

A rooftop ball, have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right. Is Cambria amazing? All right. Bring a date, your team, or even your mom. Book direct at Choiceotails.com. See you on the roof. All right, most rewatchable scene.

I like the God I'm ashamed to be an American today. God, I'm ashamed to be in America. Costner, when he really like... And then that guy's had a couple of Dixies in the bar who's just letting one out. He's had a couple of Sazerax? I'm in that scene. Costner laying out the conspiracy in New Orleans to Bill and Lou. There's the CIA.

And he's just pointing around and the way they're editing it. It's really good job. And what's that little sand they have? Once O&I, always O&I. Well, he likes working near his old pals. Bill. Lou, we are standing in the heart of the United States government's intelligence community in New Orleans. That's the FBI there.

That's the CIA. That's the secret service. That's the O&I. Doesn't this seem to you a rather strange place for a communist, spend his spare time. The movie makes you want to drink, though, when you just pointed that out of it. Doesn't it?

I don't drink a lot. Any movie in New Orleans makes you want to have it. It's New Orleans and just everybody's... A lot of two fingers of brown. I don't drink scotch, really, and I got a bottle of scotch, and I started drinking it watching this the other night. Makes me want to smoke for real.

It does. It makes you want to do those things. It's the only place I still smoke, New Orleans. John Candy's big scene. If I answer that question, you keep asking. If I give you the name of the big enchilada, you know. Then it's Bonvoyardino. I mean like plumbing it.

I mean like a bullet with my head, you dig. You're a mouse fighting a gorilla. Kennedy's as dead as that crab meat. The government's still breathing. You want to line up with a dead man? My lips, Dino, either you dance into the grandeur with the real identity of Claire Bertrand or your fat behind is going to the slimer. Now, you dig me.

You're as crazy as your mama. Goes to show it's in the jeans. You have any idea what you're getting yourself into, Daddy, yo? the government's going to jump all over your head Jimbo and go cockado do-do-do. Dino. John Candy, when did he die?

Like, within a couple years of this probably? Well, they killed him, Bill. They killed him. He said they were going to kill him if he spoke out. Kennedy's as dead as that crab meat. They put the heat on my man. You're going to line up with a dead man, Jimbo? Just like you doing.

I just said the first thing. Came into Micaheitha. You a mouse fighting a gorilla. Also, the sunglasses. just move around. He's like, Dino, put down that crab meat. Chris,

we got to start working this in all of our conversations. Do you have any idea what you're getting into, Daddy? Just in any sort of NBA conversation.

Also, just every time you talk, you just want to make sure to remind people that you're their friend. You're causing her. I love that.

Now, you and I have been friends thick as Dave since law school. Yeah. Daddy-o. Next time KOC is like, I want to write

something about the systemic problems of the Lakers defense. He's like, you got any idea what you're getting into, Daddyo! Frank Vogel

This is bigger than Frank Vogel Kevin Bacon's scene Will they are going to be attacked by a lot of different people Oh bring all those motherfuckers on man Bring that college degrees in here I got nothing to hide

You can't buy me They can't buy me I don't even need this damn parole See this about the truth coming out You are a goddamn liberal Mr. Garrison You don't know shit Cause you never been fucked in the ass

This ain't about justice You think this about justice No this is about order who rules? Because see, fascism is coming back. Nobody wants to buy you and no one's promising you a parole here. I want to be perfectly clear about that. But I need to know is why.

Kevin Bacon just comes in and hits four-three from 30 feet. Culminating with him going, you don't know shit because you've never been fucked in the ass. I can't believe it was in the script. That is the part, though, like Bacon's scene is when everybody in this movie is just Ashley Schaefer from Eastbound and down. Like a snake son in a seat. on the road. Mr. Gasset said I'd love to see you again.

Not a bad looking man. Pesci's last big scene. Oh, what a deadly web we weave when we practice the decease. And who killed the president? Oh man, why don't you fucking stop it? Shit, this is too fucking big for you. You know that?

This is... Who did the president? Who killed... Fuck, man. It's a mystery. It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma. The fucking shooters don't even know. Don't you get it? it? Fuck, man!

I can't keep talking like this. You're gonna fucking kill me! I'm gonna fucking die. Who the fuck pulls? Whose chain? Who knows? The fucking shooters don't even know. Do you get it?

That part's great. I agree with Coppa Pes she dials it up a little bit too much. Even the smoking, like... The wig is out of control. The wig is terrible. And I know the real guy... We've all looked up the real guy.

But he never inhales when he's smoking. He's just kind of puffing out. It's Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise smoking. We're skipping by. I just want to set a special note about the first Pesci interrogation. It was like, oh, you're right.

Now that I remember, me and some young friends in my way, goose on. Oh, we did leave the goose. We did leave the rivals in the car. Yes, we did leave the rivals in the car. No, but my favorite, and I was saying when I was in the theater, I remember, and it was before I started really writing,

but I would notice dialogue, you know, and the, I'm sorry that this has to, and unpleasantly for you, David, that he's going to detain him. And the way Kossner comports himself in that scene before he goes crazy, because it's the beginning. And just the way he handles himself,

that's such a movie star sequence. The way he manages that scene on a Sunday is incredible. It's just the opposite of the Easter Sunday thing. Underrated aspect of this movie in general is that when you set a film in New Orleans and you cast all actors like, this, it lets all of them just be foghorn, leghorn.

You know, they're just like, ah, say, snake summon yourself like a snake in the sun. But an amazing thing about what you just, where I thought you were maybe going with the New Orleans thing, and it goes back to Bob Richardson. The filmmaking thing is, like the mezzan scene in this movie, like just everything that you, everything you see in every frame,

because it's New Orleans, it's just like, oh, God, the Dean scene when they're flambaying something at the other table in the restaurant. And it's like, it's like, stacks and layers and layers of stuff in the frame all the time. There's just this amazing shit in the frame. You're just feeling, don't you feel the, like Angel Heart does this incredibly well. I think, but where you feel.

Angel Heart Rwashables. I will fly out. You feel, there's a, all right, it's a small spoiler. There's a run about this in Villains next year, about Angel Heart, obsessively watching Angel Heart. Because the, the, but New Orleans. and the way that it's a character in the movies. Heaven's Prisoners? Where to stand on that one?

I don't remember it finally. I haven't seen it a while. I think it's the most underrated New Orleans movie. I don't know that movie. What is that? What's it called? Alex Baldwin, Terry Hatcher? Terry Hatcher.

I don't even, I never heard it. What year? It's not James Patterson. Whose book is that? Can't remember. What's it called? It's Eric Roberts. Prisoners.

Eric Roberts, last chance. You guys have all seen it? All three of you've seen it. that movie? How did I miss it? 96. I saw it in the theater. Classic Bodwin. He's just covered in sweat the whole movie. It's just like reeks in New Orleans. A to Faye. 96, I was playing a lot of poker in the spare of time.

Oh, wow. Oh, the great Phil Gineau. I love that guy's. You haven't seen him, prisoners? No, I've seen it, sure. Yeah. Wait, Phil Ginoe directed that movie? Oh, that's Eric Roberts. State of Grace, it's an incredible film. Script by Scott Frank. Eric Roberts, who worked on a New Orleans accent for months, I think before and is doing

that, you think you're big of the me. Robesha. Like Al Bobman's playing this guy Robesha. It's good. I don't know how I missed. Phil Schwanu and fucking Scott Frank movie. All right.

I'll watch it this weekend. Mr. X. Anything else said in Mr. X seen or no? Just Dale Die wearing aviator sunglasses indoors. Big fan of that. Did you shout out Garrison as Earl Warren?

Earl Warren? Yeah. I had it coming later, but yeah. All right. Because I find that rewatchable. Because I rewind all the time. It's like, To watch him.

I rewind to watch his like those eyes that he has. So this is a true, this is a true story. When I first moved to Los Angeles to work for Granlin, did not have a lot of friends in L.A. My closest friends, Chris and his wife, Phoebe, spent a lot of time together, especially in the first couple of years. They would come over to our house. We would go over to their house Friday nights.

You get to that point when you're hanging out on a Friday night, three, four, five hours have gone by. Key party? You've had ice cream. No key party. That's ridiculous. No, but where you're like, sitting in front of the TV and you're like, what's on?

There's nothing on. And on more than one occasion, I forced Eileen, my wife, and Phoebe to watch the Mr. X scene. And to be like, I just want you guys to understand when Chris and I are alone, this is what we do. This is what it sounds like.

This is how we talk to each other. And I don't think they enjoyed it one time. They never enjoyed it. They were miserable every time we did it. But like, this is true. Tell me I'm wrong. No, this is one of the all time. I have 30 minutes to kill.

Yeah. I'm dialing up X. JFK Sutherland. That's for me that Boogie Nights, the second, when he shows up at Jack Horner's house, just that 35 minutes. It's just my favorite 35 minutes of my life. There are some movies that have those great. They're like, they're not scenes. They're like extended segments.

Mega sequences. Two more scenes for this. Jim explaining the magic bullet theory, which became iconic once Seinfeld grabbed onto it. And then a little bit later, the back into the left. President going back and to his left. Shot from the front and right. Totally inconsistent with a shot from the depository. Again, back and to the left.

Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Leading to his big monologue. It's X, though. X is the answer. Yeah. More than the John.

scene. Oh, yeah. I love the I vote for the John Candy scene, but yeah, I understand. I also like the

interrogation of Clay Shaw. Did we mention that? It's great. I like that. I also love the Jack Lemon scene. The Jack Lemon at the horse track scene. Yeah,

oh, that's great too. I have Jack Lemon at the track down. Yeah, for sure. You're gonna line up with the dead man Jimbo? Oh, you also, Ed Asher,

you were running before you were running that Mathound Lemon, but we, I mean, the movie basically opens with Ed Asner beating the shit out of Jack.

Aster. In the 2000s, I had a fantasy football team called Guy Bannister P.I. It's a true story. I would have watched that show. All right, what's age the best? Can I go, can I say number one? Because we haven't said it yet. Yeah.

It is what's aged the best. Is Oldman. He is so... I had him down. Fucking good as Oswald. And looks like Oswald. It's fucking great. It's so creepy.

But he is actually, like, when you think about what that must have been like for him, I can only imagine, they shoot a movie with. awesome. Oswald. Like he does everything that they present like his past, they present all the day of, they present all the stuff in New Orleans leading up to it. Gary Oldman must have shot JFK

on his own with Oliver Stone and like I would love like if they just did the Gary Oldman cut and it's like here's the Lee Harvey Oswald movie. So did you see that do you know that they did this whole in the deleted scenes? There's a 16 minute sequence

that Oldman said to Oliver Stone Hey, can you just point the camera at me? I have some shit, I want to say. And Stone goes, it was really late. But I had a lot of faith in Gary that he understood the character. So I kept everyone there. And I was like, what do you?

And he was, yeah, I just have a bunch of stuff I want to say as Oswald. Can you just put the camera on me? And he puts the camera on him. And Gary Oldman just goes and just does this whole elegiac thing. And then Stone shot him in a casket and laid this whole huge sequence out

that you guys can find. on YouTube of Oldman talking and he's just his kind of disembodied head because Stone was so taken with it and then he was going to end the movie with this whole thing of Lee Harvey Oswald. This was his plan and then somehow like obviously the drugs wore off and he made a different call but that was the plan at one point.

So maybe it's interesting. Morwood's age the best. The Seinfeld 1992 spoofed the boyfriend also features Wayne Knight. Wayne Knight somehow in both things because he's playing Newman. Well, it also features Keith Hernandez. And Keith Hernandez.

One of the greatest living humans. Probably the last great moment in Mets history until he signed Max Scherzer. Also, weirdly, I think Keith Hernandez, this is the worst thing about him. I think he's a QAnon guy. So there's some synchronicity to all this. You know, it's all kind of fitting together.

That really slipped pretty quickly on Keith Hernandez there. Well, I can't say I agree with his political points of view, but I love to listen to him to call Mets games. I was there for every minute of Seinfeld. The boyfriend was the episode where it was like, oh, this is going to be the biggest show in the world. That was the first time. That episode?

That episode. Oh, interesting. Yeah. It tapped. It just was perfect. All the characters were in place. They knew who they were. And Seinfeld, that whole double spitter thing was fucking lights out.

It was so good. Does Seinfeld work for your kids? No. They like friends. Yeah. It's too bad. What's age the best? The wig battle between Peschi and Tommy Lee Jones.

Tommy Lee wins. It's a 10-8 round. But a good battle. I wish there were more wigs. We mentioned Kevin Bacon's career, which he admits. He said this movie was a turning point, reignited him. He got a few good men.

And all of a sudden, he's in everything. Oliver Stone's Dave cameo has aged the best for me. Shows up in Dave two years later when he's like, if you look closely, the president, it's just it was funny that he was self-deprecating about it. you mentioned Oldman. I just wrote this down, Chris. Tommy Lee in gold paint

getting slapped by Peschi dressed as a dangerous liaison's character. I was going to save this for Apex Mountain, but it's definitely Apex Mountain for the New Orleans anti-communist homosexual underground. That's the thing. Sean's not going to tell you that really late on those Friday nights.

God and Gold, he gives me a little titty twister. Those are wild times. Do some poppers, start blogging? This is the good version of, the bad version of when Nicholson and the Departed was like, I have an idea, Marty, what about a scene with opera and cocaine and dildos? And it doesn't work and they have to cut it. This one, somebody was like, I have an idea. We'll put Tommy Lee in gold paint.

Joe Pesci is in a dangerous liaison's outfit. Yes. And Bacon is dressed like Glenn Close. But you know that Bacon is up for all this, right? Tommy Lee is not that guy. So for him to do it, it's great. But this bumps right up against what's aged the worst, which is the movie's attitude about homosexuality. I mean, it's right.

No, but I'm saying you got to bring it up right at the time we're making a titty twister joke. Sorry, you got to right then, you got to just say the film's attitude about homosexuality is not acceptable on any level. It's pretty retrograde. And even though she brings it up, she goes, you just don't like him because they're homosexuals. But that's one line that's said in the movie. And Jim is like, whoa. Where did that come from? But when the whole time he's clearly looking at them like they're frees.

But that's part of Garrison's case, though. This crazy Clayshan, he would have these gay parties. It was part of why he was trying to knock him down. In the era, that era's judgment about perversion in the language of that time. That's why it's age the war. I'm just saying when we're laughing about that moment. Who's the madman character? Sal, yeah.

Sal, all of a sudden, he's it. We never saw him again on the show. Here's another what's aged best. Stone wanted to recreate the Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza and actually pulled it off. They spent $4 million to restore it to 1963 conditions. They had to pay all this money to reroute the traffic. And they did it.

All of us Stone said Sutherland and Koster memorized both of the monologues. Love it. I'm convinced. All right. I'm glad you're here. I'm going to ask you this. acting. 80% just having a good memory.

20% charisma talent, 80% just being able to remember our shit? Really no. Really no. Okay. Because I have a terrible memory. That's why I didn't become an actor. I mean, Brando.

Maybe that proves it. Maybe he's the one guy who proves the other thing. Why do all these actors like, yeah, I memorized that 16-page monologue? Yes, it's an amazing trick when they, like Dave Costable plays Wags. He literally could just shrews. it to him and he got he has it

like four pages is that like theater training he could just go off book like yeah he can just go okay and you're like no seriously he's like no seriously and he does and he's a great actor but I don't think those things are connected you're born

totally movie stars different than actor right but um did famkee jansen have it when during the scene when she was trying to seduce Mike Lee and the writers of the movie were like no no this wouldn't make sense for them to hook up I mean who had you mentioned hottest Russian in the world. He's definitely passing this up.

He's hit rock bottom. He's definitely not going to have sex of this person. How many times has he brought this up to you on a pod? I try to work it in now. It's like a bit. I mean, he brought it up on the curious guy. It's a long fucking time, man.

I mean, honestly, it's a long time. It's a long time. It's a ready bit now. You're right, though. It was a mistake. Acting is mostly... We've been a quickie. Mostly can't be taught,

and it's just... These people are just somehow really compelling when the camera goes on them. Like Donald Sutherland, that's just a fascinating. There's something about when a camera goes on that guy's face, you can't fucking look away. And they have the ability to show you what's on the inside. The bad ones force it, but the really good actors,

they just look at you and you just can see what they're thinking and feeling. And it has nothing to do with memorizing text. Yeah, theater acting, you better be able to memorize text, but on a movie. So 70% memory. Okay, sure thank. You got it. It's also the idea of believability.

You read some of the ex monologue. You've acted before. If you're not as good an actor as Donald Sutherland. When you were reading, I was like, this is not as good as Donald Sutherland. Well, I was also attempting to make fun of it. John Laines wasn't playing when he was doing it. I was true.

I wasn't. Go look at Michael Clayton before you say I'm not a good actor. I did not say you're not a good actor. Or guy number five in Rounders at the Chesterfield South. Fair, yeah. No, exactly right. In Atlantic City, yeah. No words, though, in that one. So, for sure, I'm just making sure. I was on big picture with Sean, and we did a top five sports movie section, and I had Rounders in there, and Sean got mad because he didn't forgot that it was eligible. Is it. Wait. Honestly, the amount of Internet, hey, I'm going to get right now for Rounders even coming up on this. Can we just move? Let's just. Why? But Rounders is a sports movie.

Yeah, but I mean, honestly. You be the judge as Rounders a sports movie. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fucking. I wish you'd call me, but a crime movie any other, what's age the best for you guys? John Williams' scorer, New Orleans is a setting. Those two.

New Orleans, for sure. And just JFK, the specter of JFK himself. Like, because you don't really think, like the P speech at the end, which he starts the documentary with. You know.

The shot of him when he's like, like Caesar, they're all around him, you know, in the ex speech. And then there's like the shot of the still photograph of Kennedy kind of leaning over

the table. It's just such good stop. Can I make one other thing that he does in this movie that? I don't know if I've ever seen this before and we'll ever see it again. But he gets the highest level character actors to do less than one scene. Ron Rifkin's in got one line. Crew of Taylor Vince, Vincent DiNofrio,

Lolita Dividovich. Have a Brian Doyle. Brian Doyle. Brian Doyle Murray. Apex Mountain for Brian Doyle Murray. I mean, I have him saved for that. John Larket. Yeah. All these people crop up in this movie for like 45 cents. So do that's because they shot a 120-hour movie and there's like a lot of

Lolita DeVivage that we didn't get. Maybe, I don't know. She was having a moment back then. Chris and I always had this joke about cable channels that should exist, but there's not quite enough movies for them. Like the Heist channel. Oh yeah. Just be like Channel 528 on whatever.

It's just high-st movies, but there's not enough I would turn that on the way these guys turn on the titty twister. That's not what I said for the rat. Watching that, I would be watching that all the time. Do you think a new one? Orleans channel. There's probably only like 15 New Orleans movies.

They just roll them over and over again. Yeah. Every time we're in New Orleans, I'm happy. The Heist Channel would be the best. Weirdly, I didn't like CSI, New Orleans that much. Well, because you probably don't like CSI. I don't. I don't really like CSI.

You know, there's an NCIS Hawaii now? Yeah. Yeah. But are you an Angel Heart person or no? Come on. Lisa Bonnet is like... You're the secret. The attorney.

You're the attorney. Which is like a lawyer, but more expensive. They don't have enough movies where the lawyers are actually the devil. That should be a channel. The devil's advocate and angel heart on the way. The most important people in my life in 1986, obviously Larerberg was first, but Letterman. Larry Bird was not in your life.

And Epiphany? Epiphany Proud? No, Lisa Bonnet was in like the top 12. No, because she was also Cosby. Well, she was, you can make her argument. She was the most beautiful. You can make the argument. She was the most beautiful woman in the world.

of that moment. Who were the other 11? She comes in the enemy of the state and gets killed and you're like, you're devastated. He wants the movie to stop. Devastated. And you need Kleenex.

Love Lisa Bonnet. Huey Lewis. And she gave us Zoe Kravitz. Like, she just keeps giving us gifts. What's age the worst? Let's take a break and then we'll do what's age the worst. If data management is slowing down your business. You need the Intuit ERP.

If one entity is here and one here and one here and one here. You need the Intuit E. ERP. If scaling your business feels like start starting starting over, you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite is the AI native ERP solution that consolidates, migrates, and automates, all in one place. Learn more at intuit.com slash ERP. All right, what's age the worst? This movie's too long. I mean, it's three hours and eight minutes. It's too long. Disagree. You could get rid of I was, yeah, I was going to throw for what's age the best, three hour movies. I literally was going to say three hour movies.

It's too long. What would you cut? Other than the... Other than the long... It's Sissy SpaceX not in the movie. I don't care about Jim Garrison's family. Oh, that channel I would watch, the channel that cuts Anne Hesha's scenes out of Brascoe.

Just the annoying other person, like the domestic side. Not because they're women. If the man, if the movies about women... We don't need the domestic side. They always want to get it in there. There's never any nuance in the telling of those stories. It's always the wife is dragging the hero man away from the story. The only moment with Ann Hachian

Brasco I want is when he goes, I want to listen to you, breathe. That's it. It doesn't also help that. Liz Garrison's big contribution of this movie is going up to the housekeeper and telling her to get a hold of herself after Kennedy gets killed.

Yeah, that's tough. Oh, that's, yes. Well, that leads to all the Sissy SpaceX scenes for Woodstage's Awears. She doesn't have a single good scene in this movie. Jim's waking up in the middle of the night having JFK nightmares, and she's yelling at him for that. It's like, why are we here?

Why are we here with you? Brian made the point. It's because Daddy never keeps his promises. There has to be this like... Yeah, you have to perpetuate this idea of the... The trauma of the American male because of the lies of the American father and America. He has to tell that story.

But the fatherhood style, that style of being a dad is age the worst. This should have been an assassination movie. We never should have been met his family. Could care less. This is tough because you love your dad. You have an uncomplicated love for your father. There's movies for a family.

This is not a family movie. We didn't get to be Mr. X's family. Do you guys remember when you were loyal, when you were really loyal page two readers? We were loyal page two readers. Back when I wrote. And it would always be like, I'll never be one of those guys who talks about my family, my kids on the thing or my thing. And now I do Parent Corner on a podcast. Yeah, because.

And that's why he had to do this. He had to show the family. I don't know if you've heard the big picture recently, but I, have a five-month-old at home, and it creeps into every single conversation. Of course it does, because it should, by the way. But that's why he had to, how about this? I think the scenes are badly written, but he needed to show you the cost on, as if, if you're showing it, making a movie about an obsessive, and if his movies are about

obsessive, you make a movie about this obsessive, you must see the cost of the obsession. All right, that's fair. But there were just badly written. The scenes are terrible. I agree. And you could cut off them out. It's the same movie. It always feels like, to me, screenwriters, who don't know how to do you,

to deal with their families while they're trying to write. And so they recognize that they're like, the wife is always in the way. My kid always knows my time. It feels like a note. It's like, we've got to humanize this guy. I don't think it was that. I think it's about obsession and about the cost of obsession. I think Stone has shown us that many different ways in his things.

But I agree. I half agree. Those scenes suck. I think he really cared about Jim Garrison and wanted to make this well-rounded person that Costner would want to play, and that means you have to have wife scenes. Did they work in Apollo 13, in your opinion? Did you care about the Kathleen Quinlan character? I actually did.

Apollo 13 doesn't bother me because it's like, that's actually like my husband's in a spaceship. Yeah. So I agree with you on that one. Yeah. The worst line of all time, maybe in any movie by anybody, is the moment he's finally about, he's having sex with his wife for the first time. And he literally says, I should have loved you more. I mean, that is what Costner says in that moment.

I should have loved you more when they're actually. about to have. That's his, that's what he says, Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's mind as he's about to embark. Well, look, you guys, you guys all like Kate Corleon, so I don't, I'm not, I'm never to win this battle. It's not a weird opinion. It's not a controversial opinion at all. I'm back. I'm back from Italy. I know you haven't seen me in five years. I also was married when I was there. My wife blew up. It's time for us to be together. Take those 12 school kids you're with and hop in the car with me. They'll find their way back to the school. Kay, my wife blew up.

That is the worst scene of the best movie that's ever been made. It's a perfect scene, anyway. It's so bad. It's a perfect scene. Get the car, Kay. Who's being? You don't have that scene. You don't have.

Who's being naive now? When you start bringing up... Literally the key line. Who's being naive is good. When you start bringing up K, I want to just be K and say, this must all end. It was an abortion, Michael! Now, she's better in the second part of Godfather, too.

I think she's essential at that point. compliment's hair. I thought we had to run it back. I'm so happy to talk about it. More, what's age the worst? How do we feel about Kosterner's accent? Can we just go around the table? It goes in and out. But you know what?

He has so much volume. It's like he's going to throw up some bricks. Hell of a lot better than the Prince of Thieves accent. Yeah. It's more consistent. It definitely goes in and out a little. Sure. Yeah.

Especially during the court... The courtroom. It's basically he's Bull Durham at that point. Yeah. But Pesci's is worse. Justice be done, though, the heavens fall. That's literally out of untouchables. He does that same scene.

The magic bullet theory has been pretty much debunked because they realized that the way Connolly was sitting was actually a little bit different than how they thought. When you watch Stone's documentary, he goes back at that hard, doesn't he? He still believes most of the things that are in this movie, clearly.

But that thing, he really... Where Conley was sitting in the car, No. The bullet trajectory. Stone really thinks the bullet trajectory proves his argument. That's impossible. Other people think

Connolly was positioned wrong in the early stuff and that actually... Sure, it makes total sense. I still think there's four bullets. Last one is Pesci. It seems like Cappellman and I liked him way less

than you guys did. I think to Copleman's point, like the sort of conflation of like being a homosexual at that time with also being in the mafia or being like an anti-communist soldier, like those things all being just like of a piece

is pretty, pretty whacked. Also, actors bring the baggage of what they've, they just bring the baggage of who they are sometimes. Yeah. And I, you just, I cannot suspend disbelief watching Pesci in that role. If you, if, some of the casting what ifs for that part, it's like, oh, that would have been pretty interesting.

Yeah, I'm so into that to figure out. Let's go. I've been thinking all day about that. I got it. So Garrison, Stone sent copies of the script to Costner, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford ended up being Costner. So those are the two choices.

Gibson would have been a weird choice. I see, I disagree. I told Chris I thought Gibson would have been great. I think because... Is an Australian though? I don't know. I feel like the guy has to be American. One, he's always played well, I think, as an American in all of his films.

Two, the movie feels... There's more frustration in it for someone who's followed this story closely because Costner is this vision of dignity and truth, right? He is the American way. He is Field of Dreams. If you cast Gibson... who later made a movie called conspiracy theory. Right.

As this wild-eyed, desperate person seeking the truth, it actually would have been a more interesting representation of kind of how Stone's mind works. Because Garrison is so noble. You know, and he's a little distressed and obsessed, but he's so decent seeming. And Gibson always just seemed kind of nuts. Like he kind of made his way and movies that way.

Yeah, right. So I thought that that would have been cool. It would have been a different movie. It probably would have had a different energy, but I would have like to have seen Harrison Ford I don't think makes sense But it is a big like what if

Like I wish Harrison Ford Had one or two more movies like this No one's mentioned Michael Rooker yet We gotta mention Michael Rooker by the way It's coming Okay good Don Johnson Yeah tried really hard to get the Jim Garrison part

And I'm kind of into it It's like a little post Miami Vice I think it would have been good for him Costner's better But that goes back to the ineffable thing He doesn't read smart enough He may be very smart, but he doesn't play. Like, that's that thing, right?

When the camera goes on Don Johnson, you don't believe he's the district attorney who can think sixth levels deep in the chest game. The other one in here that I thought would have worked is Jeff Bridges. He'd have been amazing. Yeah, that's great. Brilliant. I think Hank would work, honestly. Maybe he might have been two years too young. A little awshucksie.

I would have cast Will Patton as David Ferry. That would be good. Well, Stone wanted James Woods. Woods wanted to play Garrison, and that's where the conversation ended up. I was like, no, you're James Woods. That's not happening. Frank Whaley was going to be Oswald. Yeah.

And then he becomes the other guy. The imposter. Because they decided to go to Oldman, and to make it up to him, they made him the imposter. So he gets to be the silent assassin in two movies. Because he's the silent assassin. We almost had a Frank Whaley moment because he was in the doors. That's right. He's going to be.

He's the assassin in the hobby. That's a big part of Frank Whale. Yeah. Look at the big brain on Brits. Oh, I keep meaning to see that movie. I ought to see that. Two people turned down the fairy roll. Willem DeFoe, he would have killed it.

John Malkovich. Malcovich would have been unbelievable. That's a tough what if. Wow. How the fuck did John turn that down? The red wig. He could have used his old dangerous liaison's outfits. The red wig would be just, it's tough to see anybody rocking that thing.

Yeah. John would have been mind-boggling to be great in that movie. Stone considered Marlon Brando for the, role of Mr. X. Not sure what happened, but that was... He would have to stand there with, like, cue cards. Yeah, those would have been some, like, SNL monologue-style cue cards.

And how this movie got made was he met with Warner Brothers to make a film about Howard Hughes, but Warren Beatty on the rights. And, yeah, eventually made that movie. And Stone was like, here's my second backup pitch, JFK. That's why Copperman goes into meetings with three pitches. Because he ever knows him.

They don't like the first one too out of the back pocket. You don't want to just... Totally. come out of the bathroom holding your dick. No. Do you have one false idea that you know is never going to go that you open with every time? That's hilarious. You should.

That's a good one. Like a sorbet. It's J.F.K., but it's James Dolan. Yeah, I want to tell the 72 Olympics from Doug Collins point of view. That's the one. It's just all about Doug Collins.

It's all about Doug Collins. I would watch that. And why people thought Bobby Jones was the better defender. It really upsets them. Two greatest free throws in American history. So, yeah, so clutch. More categories. Best that guy, okay, the Joey Pants Award.

I mean, there's 100. But Wayne Knight, I feel like is Wayne Knight. He's not eligible. J.O. Sanders. He's in. I think is it, because I never knew his name. We're getting Rooker. Hold on.

I have a Rooker spot. Don't worry. Rooker's going to be covered. But he's important. I mean, you've got to talk about him in this category. No, because he's Michael Rooker. Can I just show you guys the Wikipedia photo of J.O. Sanders right now? Yeah.

Oh, Jay. Kind of looks like Will Ferrell. Jay doesn't look well. He looks like Dodd-Tradis character. Terrific and true detective season one. So for people listening, Jayos Sanders was one of Costner's two cohorts. He's the guy who quits and then shows up in the courtroom at the end. He's been in a million things and I never knew what his name was.

The only other Joey Pants guy I have is Peter Maloney, who plays the medical examiner. And he's actually, he's also in The Thing. He's like, once you see him, you're like, oh, yeah, I've seen this guy a million times. I have one more, but you guys won't get it. Oswald's wife in this movie was also the gay guy in Melrose Place, the Russian doctor who he pretends to marry.

Do you know that she also, she's in like one scene in this movie? Like, she actually winds up in the theatrical version and just like one, basically one scene of JFK. And she, to prepare for this movie, read all 26 volumes of the Warren report. Well, I think she was really, Russian because, and Melrose plays, she plays a Russian doctor and she has

to stay in the country and they try to fool she's on, but it's basically the same character. She plays Polish. Her name is Bita Posniak. Yeah, yeah. That's it. Those were two moments. She did play Dr. Katia Petrovna. Dr. Katia, that's who it was. What year did George C. Scott die?

He was an incredible non-sequenture. Because he would have been a great Mr. X. We're trying to talk about Dr. Katia here. Come on. You're pivoting to. He died in 99. He would have been a great. He would have been angrier than X.

X is almost bemused by all this information he has. The perfect person played it. I agree. Vincent Hanna, give me all you got a word for most overacting. It's got to be Pesci. Peshing, no doubt about it. Not even in a good way. Rooker and Asner, I think, are both in there.

Asner is very agro. I can't say a bad word about Asana. Camelot in Ashes. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. Pesci, though. Pesci wins that bio. The Jed Nelson Award for the person who's in a completely different movie is obviously Sissy

SpaceX. She's in a really boring 1960s domestic drama. I'll tell you what a movie I want to see is Mathau is Russell B. Long. That would be a great movie. Yeah, that would be a good. Matho's amazing in the movie. So good in that scene on the plane. All right, here we go. One of the

most important D.N. Waders' Awards we've ever handed out. I'm going to narrow to three nominees, unless you have a fourth one. John Candy, Kevin Bacon, Donald Sutherland I think our three I think Oldman's in the movie too much

he's not eligible I mean you gotta put Brian Doyle-Murie in there Nah we really don't Oswald Um Oswald I didn't even say that This is really tough

Because bacon and candy aren't in the movie that long and they fucking annihilate it They just annihilate it But Sutherland I think has to be the winner For this 16 minute monologue It's tough because when you add up Sutherland's screen time, he's like the third. He's probably got the third most screen time other than...

Do you want to do candy? I kind of do. I'm fine doing candy. I think it's John Candy. Are you sure it's not Bacon? Fascism is coming back. John Candy, here's why John Candy because he does something that he never did. Bacon, like he's saying, Bacon went on to do this.

He did various. He got this power of, I mean, you know, think about Diner, one of the greatest movies of all time for me and the performance. But then, like you see, goes on to do it. a few good men, and then he goes on to be sort of a guy, he found this tough swagger in this movie and he kept going. John Candy never did.

Nothing you'd ever seen John Candy do before. Like he did never did character or stuff. Nothing you'd ever seen him do before prepared you for just getting blown the fuck away. It made me wish he would have done the Dusty Rhodes story. Like think about how great he would have been as Dusty Rhodes.

Was that ever discussed? Did you just come up with that? Yeah, just right now. It's like magic. It just happens. But it'd be incredible if you played Dusty Rhodes. All right, Candy wins. Recasting Couch. So he's making up shit in this movie.

Denzel Washington as David Ferry. Why not? Who cares? We're making up characters anyway. Let's get Denzel in this thing. By the way, Denzel as Axe would be incredible too, man. Denzel as Mr. Axe would be insanely great. I don't think if Dean Gensel would have made sense of David Ferry.

Just going to put that out there. Are you talking about, so for recasting couch, do you want to do today or do you want to do if we're just? No, 1999. The one I think we should recast is Sissy SpaceX, only because she's too good of an actress, and that's a crummy part. Because I just wanted to throw out. So we're actually doing the opposite.

What we're doing is opening up opportunity for Sissy SpaceX to take on a better part to get her time back. Mr. X? Not in this movie, but in another movie somewhere else in an alternate universe. She's free. Right.

She can go play. I put Sally Field in here. I think maybe she does more. She's a great actress, too. Nah, but I feel like Costa and SpaceX, I don't see them together. That is part of my issue. How about for Renee Rousseau?

Madeline Stowe. Oh, that's perfect. As René Rousseau would have gone back at gym a little bit. She would have been perfect. Chris, I watched two for the money yesterday. Did you? Thank you. I'm scouting.

I wrote something like that for Ferry. Gary Sinise would have killed Ferry. He would have been amazing. He would have been incredible as Ferry. Because you would have just believed it. Have we ever had an Oldman-Senis showdown? Right, that's a good question. Gary, Gary?

Has to have happened. Have fast internet research. Stone hired somebody, Jane Riscone, to lead the researchers. He read two dozen books in the assassination. Riscone read between 100 and 200 books. Apparently, that's how many they had back then. I think they'd be a little more precise there. The difference between 100 and 200 books is a lot.

Stone found X. It was Colonel Leroy-Fletcher Prouty, who once worked in the Pentagon. He was sent to South Pole. But did not do the things that he said he did. There's a lot of holes in Proudy's stories. A lot. Just so you can Google that. As you said,

the real Garrison appears in the film. It's Judge Earl Warren. We've mentioned most of the other stuff unless you guys have... What were you going to say about Rooker? You said you had a spot on. It's coming.

Apex Mountain. Tommy Lee Jones decided he wanted to paint himself gold. That's my favorite half-ass internet research. Is that true? Yeah. That didn't come up in my research. TLJ was like, I'll do that. Yeah.

You learned that late one night on Friday at my house. Apex Mountain, Koster. I still think it's dances with wolves. I mean, he won all the Oscars. He became the new modern Warren Beatty. I think it has to be that.

He has the most use coming out of that movie that you could have. No argument for me. Oliver Stone, it might be this. He convinced the studio to fund a movie about an assassination where he made up his theory for it, basically.

And they said, cool. He also made the Doors and JFK in the same year. I think there's a really good case for it. JFK Assassination Conspiracies, Chris? Was this it? Was this the apex right here? early 90s? Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like it was too. The Rooker Sants. I mean, Henry is his high point. See you love. Henry Portchard of a serial killer JFK. And it's all happening

for Michael Rooker. It's one year. I'm buying his rookie cards. All three of them. It's like in like a two year span. I'm buying his rookie cards. Henry, if you haven't seen Henry Portia serial killer,

I mean, don't necessarily, but if you're a real movie to recommend. But if you're a real movie fanatic, I disagree. It's a really good horror movie And I think people should see it No I think watch it

So I saw that movie Full-throated Would you rather watch Ben Simmons The shoot three-pointers Or watch Henry Ford of a serial till we're done It's a very realistic portrait There are a couple of scenes in it They're among the most disturbing scenes

I've ever seen in a film I used to drive in from college To go to Selta Games And I would go early to beat the traffic To go to the combat zone? No There's this movie theater in BU that would have movies like Henry

the Portrait of the Cereo. Oh, yeah. And I would go and they would always have like a 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, so I would go early, see the movie, and then go meet my dad at the game. And I saw Henry Portrait of the Cereo there and it was me and like seven other guys.

Yeah, it was. All spaced apart. And like halfway through that movie, you start having to go out of the game. You're like, am I just going to get my throat slit during this? The never-sleeping. You've seen that movie alone.

Oh, yeah. I used to solo all the time. Me too. I love going to movies alone. But the all-time. never sleep again double feature to watch at home is that and then what's the name of that Carl Franklin movie one false move yeah that and one false move as a adult I think I would go one false move first and then Henry just Henry's the sort of palate cleanser yeah but then if you watch those two

in a row that's it if you don't have an alarm at home you're never sleeping again I said to Chris the other day when I was re-watching the movie that you know this is one of the craziest studio movies ever made when Michael Rooker is the most normal seeming character in the whole movie Michael Rooker famed for being an absolute lunatic and almost everything he does. And he seems kind of logical. Yeah, he's the only person who's just like, what are we talking?

You can't be accusing LBJ of assassinating the president. It's a weird, you wonder, there was definitely that's something that definitely was cut out. And I read this my, the details of how they all felt Rucker betrayed them. Because that is an absurd scene, that argument. Don't you feel like there's half that argument? We should have that in one stage the worst.

There's a whole thing where that character is supposed to be also like X FBI or X like intelligence or something. Well, all of them are. Yeah. A J.O. is. Yeah. That scene is very weird. Oh, yeah.

Do you like him in Cliffhanger? Of course I like him in Cliffhanger. What are you talking about? He's one of those guys. He's just fantastic all the time. And yet you won't put him in anything. I've met with him. He and I've had a meeting.

It was a fascinating, fascinating meeting. He's huge now. He's in the MCU. He couldn't fucking work for X Capital for three episodes? You see him as a hedge fund guy? I think he's like a custodian who might be on inside. More Ipex Mountain.

Wayne Knight, no question. Well, Newman, I guess simultaneous time. And when was third rock? And when's Jurassic? Jurassic's right around here, right? Oh, Jurassic, too. How about the Zupreter film?

Apex Mountain for the Zeprooter film? Yeah. When was the Apexper? For Abrams Zeprooter? Well, yeah, because it was knocked up in the time life building. I would say it was selling it.

How about Dallas? come back. Cowboys doing well. 91. Mavs title. JFK. When is Zupruder going to make his NFT? Gary Vee is like, what you got to do is?

You got to turn it to an F. Gary Vee. NFT. I mean, it's a good idea. Honestly, it's not a bad idea. Gary Vee would already have six of them marked by the end of this pod. He'd have six of them released. Any other Apex Mountains for you, guess? Brian mentioned Richardson.

Who's got? one of the greatest filmographies of any cinematographer. He really does. Say some of his movies, Sean. I mean, he was Stone's go-to guy for years and years, so did Salvador platoon, Wall Street,

talk radio, born on the 4th of July, Doors, JFK, heaven and earth, natural-born killers, Nixon, U-turn, and then I think they stopped working together. I liked U-Turn. He also was working with John Sales

at the same time. He was eight men out. He was doing City of Hope during this movie. Yeah. He then starts working with Martin's Corsezi. And he shoots Casino. and bringing out the dead. And then he starts working with Quentin Tarantino

and shoots Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2, Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained, Hateful 8. And once upon the time in Hollywood. One of the greatest cinematographers, whoever lived, and really at the top of his game in this film. CR's like, he's no Gordon Willis. Too bright. But he's really flexible.

Think about how all those movies look so different. And he's such a distinctive style that blown out, like, white light overhead stuff. The Tarantino Stone thing is so fascinating to me. because they were kind of... Well, he hate... They hate it. I know.

They hate each other. I told you to listen to the... There's the best episode of my podcast probably ever, other than, of course, when you were a guest, is Quentin's episode, and we talk at length

about Oliver ruining natural-born killers because Quentin's script's incredible. The original Quentin Tarantino script's one of the best scripts I've ever read in my life. I'll just say also... They should make that again, speaking of Stone and his contemporaries

is... It's fascinating to me that Stone and Spikely both were in the same NYU film class. And they made these kinds of films and like, you could make an argument that Malcolm X is like... Wait, Stone and I didn't know that Stone was there. Oh, because Stone came back from Vietnam. And Scorsese was his professor.

Scorsese taught him. I don't know that. And honestly, one of the best books I read last year was the Stone biography. It's called Chasing the Light. And it's about everything up to Platoon. It ends after he wins the Oscar for Platoon. Does he talk about seeing like we cut heads and stuff?

He talks about seeing... He talks about Spike at NYU? Oh, see, he talks about NYU. He talks about Scorsese a lot. And he's, you know, he's clearly this guy who's wearing a jacket, not the one you're wearing right now, Brian. You know, the Army jacket all the time and kind of like a little more sullen, very internal guy who hasn't totally figured out what kind of movies he wants to make.

This is an Alex Mill Mod jacket. What the fuck, man? It's not an Army jacket. It's green. It's just the color that I'm referring to. But that book is really, really good because it talks a lot about his psychology and a lot of the stuff that we're talking about it, why he wanted to make all these movies about why the establishment lied to him.

And he's not who, you know, he's obviously not who you think. He's like, he was a very well-to-do kid. He came from a good family. His father did very well. His mother was his beautiful woman, and he enlisted. Yeah. He went to Yale. The best Chris Ryan book is the one, it ends right before he gets to Grant Land.

He just moved. He just got to L.A. I just quit smoking. It's like a lot of Newberg. You're wearing a nicotine patch and then it ends. What's the name of the book? C.R. Bet on yourself.

It's my book. Come on. That's my title. Picking Nits. On the trail of the assassins, the Chris Ryads story. Picking Nits. I mean, it's the entire movie. I think we've picked.

You've picked it. Could this be remade as a 10-episode Netflix show? Fuck yeah. I'm in. Please. There's no other reason for Netflix to exist. Five seasons. Yeah.

I just don't know if Sarandos is man enough to do it. We just got to start pulling up. Sarandos, Reed Hastings. They're afraid. They're afraid of this. They don't want this smoke Netflix could shut down Daly Plaza for what

two months? This is what powerful men do they? Yeah. When you're asking if it could be a series, do you want the Jim Garrison series or you want the JFK something about the assassination? I want the fiction of JFCA.

Yeah, you want a modern four seasons. A mafia plot, some reason. A CIA plot. Yeah. Something happens now that makes somebody start investigating

that's a good idea. Yeah, it's the crown. The crown for JFK, good. that out in the world. Probably in answerable questions. Did Oliver Stone invent QN? I don't know what that means. What do you mean? You mean like our conspiracy culture? Yeah. Did this popularize conspiracy culture and make it okay and lead to the crazy conspiracy world we're in now? I would argue that 9-11 is a much more significant event in terms of

where we're at now in a culture. In the aftermath of 9-11. Yes. For conspiracy culture. Yes. But the post-Vietnam... The 9-11 stuff is so lame, though. People coming back from Vietnam and going to college and then learning about things like the LSD experiments. Like those... There were enough fucked up things that the CIA did,

not conspiracy theory. You know, you can go look at the papers, like that they've... The government is freedom of information put it out... They did a lot of fucked up shit. Speaking of there's an Errol Morris movie about this as well. But, I mean, that's, I think... I don't think it's...

I think Stone picked up on... Contrails. Like, I don't think that he, I think he picked up on stuff that was out there. There's, there's something to be said for the obsessive nature of looking at, quote-unquote, documentary evidence. It's a Pruder film watching the planes hit the towers, like the January 6th, you know, riot, like all that stuff. And then starting to see things in those things that you are looking for that I think he taps into it. But not, that's a conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory, though, January 6th. Let's just be clear. Sure.

No, I was the same. I meant more like there's footage and you start looking at the footage and you start, you can try to manipulate it. Well, 9-11 was insane because we actually have the footage of the planes going in the towers and then people are like, no, actually. And it's like, no, but the thing is right,

we have witnesses and video. Because like January 6th, there was a conspiracy to overthrow the will of the people. 9-11, there was a conspiracy. It was bin Laden and Mohammed Atta and 12 other guys and probably 200 people. people around the world. Right.

And we know how it played out. We know what happened because it was a, what they were trying to conspire to do was this incredibly public thing. But for two years or however long they were planning it, nobody fucking knew, which is the one thing that might refute this idea that if it were a conspiracy, we'd know. But the JFK, I mean. Yeah. They're all related to each other.

And the danger of even having a conversation like this is that people who feel disempowered and disenfranchised in the world, people who are like, I'm. I don't have what I want or I lost what I had and I want it back. Go seeking answers in places where those answers may not exist. And the whole start of this conversation was Oliver Stone having this traumatic event in his life and then working through it through art for 25 years. That's right. And it's all kind of related to people who are like, why am I broke? Why am I not a millionaire?

Maybe it's in this video where it tells me how the steel leaves melt. Willie O'Keefe in this movie is ranting and raving about Nixon losing the presidency in 1960. He's an amazing. He's a white supremacist. And a Trump voter years later, if he lives. 100%. Yeah. All right. Probably an answerable question. Last one. Who killed JFK? We all have to guess. Sean, you go first. You know the least. Who killed? Your theory. Who was it? If you had to guess that good point. You have to pick. I'll pose a theory.

No, you have to pick. You have to make an answer. I'll say Oliver Stone, because here's why. Oliver Stone obsessed with the nobility of the leaders of the 60s who were killed. He's talked about this endlessly over the last 40 years. King, obviously, the Kennedys, a number of others. He insinuates Malcolm X into this conversation. This movie

is called JFK and it is not about JFK. It is not about any of the ideas that JFK had. It is not about what he pursued. It allows another person to tell the story of this person's death. It has a very rosy vision of what JFK was about at the time of his death. Yes. So what would you have

I don't think it's a bad title. I'm not saying it's a bad title. It's a very effective title. But it didn't, it doesn't do what you can tell is in Oliver Stone's heart, which is he wants to lift up what he believes Kennedy's ideals to be. Because he talks about this all the time now. He still talks about how we wouldn't have gone to Vietnam. He still talks about how much more quickly the civil rights movement would have reached ahead if he continues to be there in an office. So weirdly, the movie doesn't, it does create the sense of distrust. But I don't know that it really celebrates JFK. you didn't answer I don't fucking know I don't know You're out Chris who killed JFK I lean the intelligence community Intelligence community

Yeah like the Whether it's like active or X CIA Compliment The Mob American Tabloid has it right The mob and the CIA worked together But I think it was the mob And the CIA together

I agree Who's the trigger man That guy's dead Yeah that guy That guy was murdered Who was it? And Oswald was in on it. Does anyone here think Oswald was completely innocent?

No. No. No. I think that'd be fun. Not for him. Because if you are truly innocent, you don't immediately know you're the Patsy. You're part of the conspiracy. That's how you know you're the Patsy.

Come on. That's how you know you're the Patsy. Also... Fuck you, Lee Harvey. The guy fucking killed. I mean, the Jack Ruby thing is just as bizarre. It's just on it. You couldn't put it in the movie.

What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie? I have a great answer for this. David Ferry's wig. John Candy's sunglasses. Boom. I want the entire Dealey Plaza model that Garrison uses in the big courtroom. It's like basically bigger than this table

and it's got all the different pieces and the people. I think that would be amazing to have in a living room. Oh, you know what I want? Yeah. Come on in look at my Deely Plaza model. Let me go through the assassination. Just bring guests over. Can you imagine you have that?

And then you finally agreed to a big profile in like Vanity Fair. And you're on the cover of Vanity Fair, leading against Dealey Plaza. Pointing it. Pointing against little Deely Plaza or something like that. I do think it would be funny to enter. So we get Sutherland's Fedora. And we introduce ongoing Mr. X as like a thing on this podcast where you get to talk for 16 uninterrupted minutes. We should add that to the pod.

All right. Do you want to go Mr. X? Just go. But only on like, uh. Who will the movie, Sean? Oliver Stone Oliver Stone. Yeah, Stone.

I have Stone as well. That was boring. The other argument is Lee Harvey Oswald. Wow. That's interesting. That's interesting perspective. Does everything you can to take blame away from that guy.

Is this Stone's best movie? Oh, man. I still think, I love Wall Street. We already did it on the rewatchables. You like it? That's your favorite, too? It's a perfect time capsule of... It's the most rewatchable.

Wall Street's the most rewatchable. I think the one that hit me hard is this platoon, but this is probably... But Platoon is... I love Platoon. It's aggressive. But you're not really going to go watch that movie over and over. No, it's best is not the same as rewatchable.

This is definitely his most rewatchable movie. This is my favorite of his movies. Okay. It isn't U-Turn. I enjoy U-Turn. I think it's misunderstood. I don't mind U-Turn. Wall Street and this are the...

Wall Street and this are the... And, yeah, the platoon would be third. All right, so if we leave this podcast with anything, it's that the mafia and the CIA probably conspired in that you guys shouldn't see Heaven's prisoners. And that's where we're going to end it. Read American Tabloid. Complement, thank you.

Chris and Sean, great to see you as always. This podcast was produced by our guy Craig Horlebeck who learned about the JFK assassination last night watching this movie. We'll be back. Did you watch this before or after the Seahawks game? After. We'll be back. We'll be back on Monday.

Saturday Night Fever. Me and Jimmy Kimmel. Yeah, that's next. That's all. See you next time.