Oswald's
Ghost
The
Mortal Wound in the Body Politic An interview with Robert Stone,
director of Oswald’s Ghost
By Jay Blotcher
Stone’s
timing is fortuitous; Vincent Bugliosi has just released a 1612-page
examination of the Kennedy shooting, called Reclaiming History.
Oswald’s Ghost will have its United States premiere at the
Woodstock Film Festival in October, followed by a national theatre
release and a PBS airing in January 2008.
This
interview was conducted in mid-July at Robert Stone’s Rhinebeck
production of€ces, where he is working on a new documentary about
the American ecology movement. This interview was conducted by ROLL
Arts writer Jay Blotcher. ROLL: Were you a gun for hire on this
project?
ROBERT
STONE: No; I’ve wanted to make this €lm for 15 years. I’ve
never been a gun for hire.
ROLL:
If it’s been in gestation for 15 years, explain the genesis
of it.
ROBERT
STONE: In the early 90’s, I was commissioned to do a € lm
installation at the John Kennedy Presidential Library. A permanent
installation. It’s still there—22 €lms in the life of
Kennedy, (with)Kennedy telling his own story. We had a huge budget
and total access to footage. And right around the time that we were
making this, Oliver Stone’s JFK came out, and it was just
incredible to witness this explosion of interest in the Kennedy
assassination, and Kennedy, all these years later. So I started
delving... just expanding out from what I was commissioned to do.
And I found all this stuff about people talking about the assassination
through the 60’s... that nobody had ever looked at before,
seen or cared about. I saw the stuff about [New Orleans attorney
Jim] Garrison, which is what Oliver Stone’s €lm was about.
And it occurred to me that nobody had ever done a €lm about the
assassination as a social phenomenon. CONTINUE....
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