“I think I found a bombshell, actually,” exclaimed Chris Larson, clutching his 14-by-22-inch grainy blowup photo of President John Kennedy’s brain spurting out of his skull. “I think this is the smoking gun everyone’s looking for.” Larson had come all the way from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to show his prized reproduction to director Oliver Stone at a panel discussion on the movie JFK.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
They got their blowup by rephotographing a picture that was published in a “very rare” 1968 book by “a personal friend of Kennedy’s.” When copies of the photo appear in other publications, they’re missing a blurry triangular smudge just above and behind Kennedy’s head. But this murky detail tells Larson that the bullet came from the front, not from behind the president’s head, as the Warren Commission concluded.
The original was a Polaroid shot taken by Mary Moorman, who no longer wants to talk about it. But Larson says her friend Jean Hill, who was standing next to her when they saw Kennedy shot, says she too saw what Moorman’s camera captured. According to Larson, UPI took a picture of her picture back in 1963, and somebody altered the resulting negative. But not before at least one print was made that showed a bloody cloud of gray matter.
Ebert went on to say a director like Oliver Stone is “like a God who says ‘Give me your attention for the next two hours or three hours, and I will experience the world for you. I will say, look here, look there. Look for a longer time, look for a closer time. Regard this. Think about that. Be afraid of this. Be attracted to that.’ And for two hours–if the director’s doing the job–that’s what’s happening to us. We are voyeurs, and we are having an out-of-the-body experience.”
“Nothing that’s legitimate,” Stone replied. “The threat’s always the press. They did the dirty work by destroying my credibility.” He then fingered a Washington Post reporter he said covered the CIA for 30 years. “I’m not saying he works for the CIA. But he sleeps with them.”
Studs then announced, “I hear we got to blow this joint by 7:30.” He looked around for a hand in the air. “One more shot, if you’ll forgive the phrase.”
