Oliver Stone Talks 'JFK' 30th Anniversary

[Music] hey blenders it's sean and i'm here to introduce a bonus episode with a really special director oliver stone is joining the show this week to talk about jfk this is one of those rare opportunities that we get because of a home video opportunity and this is the 30th anniversary of jfk the movie that oliver stone made that uh starred kevin costner and explored the the controversies behind the jfk assassination uh and the case that jim garrison brought up to get uh to get into some more information about uh the warren commission and the zapruder film and all the things that made him pretty interested in the fact that a lot of the facts he thought were being overlooked in the investigation but it's it's uh a film that oliver stone you can tell throughout the course of this interview is still really really passionate about uh and specifically about how it was received this was a best picture nominee and uh he earned a best director nomination for it as well too and it contended against some really heavy hitters losing two sounds of the lambs obviously at the oscars so a a well-received film in our opinion and one that we that i personally go back to and checked often as i mentioned in the interview as you're going to hear this is a seven course meal of a movie uh there's so much information i feel like every time i go back to it i pick up more about not just the investigation but really a respect of oliver stone as a filmmaker and the way that he's able to put the sheer amount of information that's in a movie like jfk into the edit which is something that he discusses uh in the in the interview that you're about to hear we talk a lot about how much fun it is to get a director um for a very specific project that we admire and we don't have to really sneak in questions about something like jfk where at the end of an interview we might be like hey it's 30 years of jfk uh what do you remember about working on this we were able to really take a deep dive into his filmmaking process uh being on the ground in dallas to shoot at very specific locations this incredible cast that he put together uh for the benefit of the movie i love the way that he talks about uh working with a lot of these character actors that he admired and of course just everything that he got out of kevin costner for this outstanding outstanding performance so um it's great great opportunity for you guys to maybe revisit jfk catch up with it in this director's cut version and maybe get ready for a longer cut as he'll talk about um but without further ado is the real blind interview with oliver stone on behalf of jfk uh mr stone we are a filmmaker driven podcast we'd love to get into the the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts so please feel free to to get as geeky and technical as you can but i want to start with a bigger picture type question and just sort of ask yeah having revisited this director's cut it is an exquisite sort of seven course meal of information and every time i go back to it i feel like i learn even more than i knew going into it but i wanted to know 30 years later if the movie triggered the the amount of conversation and even the types of conversations that you were hoping that it would when you went into the production on it beyond what i was hoping i went i just i didn't realize there was such interest in the case it was really buried in the memory it was it was sort of a thing that was it just broke i mean uh you as you know the film i didn't i thought it would be my last film you know it was three hours and 15 minutes it was very risky and maybe you know too much talk and too much too much sherlock holmes stuff you know i figured you know this is maybe the the film but at least i i was happy with the film and that was what mattered so i really bulldozed it through i had some influence with warner brothers and i know that they wanted to get it out for christmas so that was a very good position when you time is running out you can always say well if you want me to go back and make changes i'm it's going to we're not going to make christmas so i kind of used i very much used that strategy you know mr stone i've always been interested in asking this because i i'm a big robert richardson fan i think he's one of the greatest dps in the history of cinema and the way you go back and forth between different film stocks and different uh like 16 millimeter 35 millimeter eight millimeter there's so many different film stocks and like archival footage you're using throughout the film uh how did what were the conversations like with robert richardson about what film stock to use when like how did you figure that out how did you guys have a discussion listen it was very natural it was uh instinctive bob and i had by this time made four or five films together so we had reached a level of intuition and it's not like on the page we said this is going to be yeah we sometimes we decided that it was clearly newsreel type footage or we wanted to go to six to eight millimeter eight millimeter end and uh but you know i i would just walk over to bob and say let's do this in 16 or let's do this super 35 and he was you know he'd come back he said let's try this it was just that kind of uh we were on a roll you know we done the doors and we had done born on the 4th of july which is a very big complicated film so we had confidence and we also done i have to say salvador and platoon salvador was a nightmare to make we had no money so during that film we bonded in a sense that very deeply so we we've seen everything but after salvador we thought we'd seen everything and we were ready to take on bigger bigger bigger responsibilities wow what to that end when you're putting together a film like this and you have to decide that you're gonna break up um a lengthy monologue or a large chunk of exposition and as you mentioned there's a lot of it in this film with um either archival footage or a recreation when do you decide when is the right moment to put in a recreation and could you talk a little bit about setting your recreations to match your archival footage it's remarkable how often it does it in jfk we had we tried everything i mean the editing is the key you know because obviously this is after the film is shot and uh i supervised the editors there were three three first there were three editors and one major assistant who really became a fourth editor and we were fighting time so i would go from room to room and supervise the cut one of the most interesting things that happened is that the donald sutherland stuff which is now in the middle of the film was split in two at a in the middle and it was at the end there's a wrap up oh wow oh wow it just didn't work and that was a big adjustment we had to we need to go back and re-cut that and put in all that i wanted everything in the middle because that ups the ante completely and what is costner going to do he's overwhelmed by all this information and the truth was that garrison was overwhelmed he was he realized that he was up against a covert military he was up against a covert the covert operation and that's the hardest thing to prove in court right i couldn't imagine the film not ending with the courtroom i'm sorry i said that's stunning you know hey we didn't we i think it was unfair with some of the criticism because we showed it as it came down he was he he was found innocent by shaw and he was released and it kostner walked out very disappointed of course several of his witnesses had died and david fairy and the guy banisters his case did fall apart but he kept going because he felt like this was a and he says it in the film this is a way to catch if i can keep going there are going to be shreds like the old man in the sea when the fish fish comes in you know you're going to still have some shreds and frankly that's the only public prosecution as a result of garrison's trial we've learned a lot right about the autopsy at the beginning and about he unearthed he unearthed the zapruder film and he showed it to the jury so jim uh is much maligned and i think he's very serious man and i think he was i can't tell you how he was he was destroyed in the press you know mr stone i've always found this really interesting because i i i'm in dc uh that's where i and sean's in in charlotte but i'm in dc and i wanted to ask about your memories in terms of like the film coming out the congress and that aspect of it and kind of what it did to change aspects of people's access to certain things like do you is it true that you showed the film to congress in 91 do i have that right no i don't think we ever had a screening for all of the congress that'd be gigantic i'm sure we showed it in washington it's various schooling rooms i don't remember exactly but all this came about after the film came out so yeah we've gone through so much abuse and also praise i have to be honest we had a lot of praise so it was very controversial and people were going to the film which surprised me i didn't expect this we made quite a bit of money domestically and foreign it was all over the world wow and people wanted to see it so when i testified i was my first time of course it's nerve-wracking but it was a simple request it was thrown in at the last second by our pr people they said you know let's get the files open let's get the files open which is a good idea it's a hook yeah it's a hook you know open the files what the hell is so secret about that you have to sit on until 2029 which was the uh and the house select assassinations committee in 77 79 had classified much of their stuff so it was impossible to get to unless we opened it so we were the essentially the third official investigation although i'd say that congress didn't put much energy into the bill the bill allowed them to declassify what they wanted but the cia secret service i mean they don't they didn't cooperate they didn't cooperate and they made it it's very hard they stonewalled the these academics who were not very vicious and tough like you have to be it but it was a third investigation and and this is interesting because the press never reported what was being discovered right a lot of files were you know sixty thousand files are uncovered and it's a lot of detail it's all detail in a case in a murder case you have to go to detail it's like sherlock holmes always says that you know look at the details of the magnifying glass and this whole community of researchers that we have in america it's amazing what they've done they without us you know without making a profit to it they just wanted to solve this case they they they went into all the details of every frame it's the guy who wrote the script jim d eugenio is is one of those guys he has an incredible memory he doesn't forget he he reads a document he remembers it i mean i can't so they put together a very good and they took this all this material and they analyzed and analyzed it and we came up this film is the result of that it's taking some of that material and making it clear as a legacy piece that this is what happened and uh there's also a four-hour version too which is coming out in february oh my gosh oh wow those people who want to follow up on it uh we take it very seriously and but uh there's no it doesn't register on the national media at all they don't have any responsibility and they in my mind they were complicit from the beginning with this thing complicit they just went along or lazy they didn't want to they didn't want to bother with it it was too scary a story mr stone i've always found you to be an incredible filmmaker for two main reasons one you you make entertaining films but at the same time i learned so much watching your films and one of the beauties of you as a filmmaker is when i watch your work i can feel the passion of what you're trying to do through the work because it's important what you're trying to tell people and i wanted to ask you as a director like in your mind balancing that the idea of like okay we need to entertain an audience but at the same time i'm very passionate about the material and i want this to get across so how do you i'm sure it's probably a balancing act you've been trying to figure out for years but how do you decide on that and balance i don't think there's a contradiction i think that if you know the material and you find it exciting to you it'll be exciting to others because i have an ability to to transmute to alkalize uh alchemy you know you make something it works if you if you're genuine and and passionate and i think that's true for every no matter what film you do so uh it's a nice conjunction when the audience and you come together very rarely very rarely does it happen i mean passion passion of course is a can is can lead you the wrong way i didn't want to i don't want to be feverishly passionate about something that could be wrong so i had a lot of people around me who were in the research community i had good advisors i had people come in i i talked to a lot of people as i was making the film didn't want to make a fool of myself and uh not you know things with we've learned more since 1991 but that film essentially holds yeah no it really does um i'm also stunned going back to revisit it uh of the sheer amount of amazing actors that you had lined up for this one and i mean like you'll get walter matthau for you know a scene essentially um so can you talk about the casting process were people lined up at the door to contribute to this one with you are there certain people that you wanted to get that you maybe didn't get at the time i think first of all warner brothers would have wanted to make the film with me they liked me and i sold it to them as a murder story that would a lot of tension tension you know investigatory that sort of along the lines of the thriller films in the 70s they wanted the star because the the budget was it was bigger than it was 40 million plus 42 million costner was there ace in the hole he just done robin hood for them yeah he was their ace in the hole so harrison ford turned it down and i uh and mel gibson turned i don't know if mel gibson turned it down but anyway we ended up going to kevin and he the uh his he was really you know scared of it a bit his wife played a key role here at that time she played a key role and mike ovitz at caa played a key role in bringing him into the into the film the more he read the more he researched the more involved he got and uh the other thing that was true about this film is that i got the star but uh in other words i could they didn't care about who i cast in the smaller roles but i cared because if you think about how complicated the film is yeah you want to have a face like jack lemmon or walter matthau or john candy or kevin bacon somebody who can make an impact in in a few moments so that you remember the link because a lot of this evidence is is tricky so you remember oh that's the guy who that's the guy that's the woman who so i tried to make it so it would be visually memorable oh wow i couldn't believe looking at i'm sorry kevin i couldn't believe that costner didn't get an oscar nomination like i was looking back over the the sheer number of nominations that the film got i was like well clearly he got in there and when he wasn't there i was blown away i was blown away no there was you know there's a lot of old guard in hollywood and there was there was certainly a strong negative reaction too mr stone you mentioned harrison ford passing on the film and like you think about like history and like movies and like and like who would have been in what role and it is interesting to go down that rabbit hole but obviously whatever we end up with is what we know um but i was just curious like in terms of harrison ford did like like when when he passes on a movie like do you meet with him first are you guys working together for a bit of time like what was that what was that process with harrison like i met with him uh i met with him we talked about this the film he read the script and he passed it's uh it's i don't think it was like the script it was like he was didn't want to get involved in in the sense of oh i think he sensed that it was a hot potato that's right that's my but you never know yeah um it's interesting this film uh is i believe the second of three collaborations that you've done with um john williams and i was curious because he's you know largely considered spielberg's guy and spielberg approaches history in a different way when do you realize that that the project you have is is what john it requires what john williams can bring john williams is john williams beyond john gilbert he is a he is a modern maestro and he's done so much i mean he's an institution and he loved kennedy i sensed that right away in fact it's interesting to note that he wrote the score the first draft of the score off the script in fact he may have started it before he even saw the script because when uh we went to him he's jfk meant something to him and i think he was paying respect to him by writing the score with a profound score oh it's fantastic that's incredible you know i was reading somewhere and i you know you never know what you're reading on the internet it's real or not but i i believe you shot some of these scenes in the in in the real locations that that the events occurred and i wanted to ask you about some of those specific locations that you sought out and what and how you were able to kind of pull that off and like was there a particular location that was more tricky for you to be able to like execute oh yeah steely plaza was our opening we went right to the horse's mouth i mean that's very complicated technical stuff and we shot the president the act the stamp the actor who played him we shot him at least 10 20 times you know in various positions for the angles we had a lot of camera and wow in the middle of dallas which is not that big a city i mean you can hear the shots and you you know it reverberates to the canyons and it was quite something to see a motorcade like break into chaos and people got into it man it was three it was i believe two to three weeks there i was exhausted because i was running from one end of daily plaza to the other it was you know we had so much to think about it was really one of the most complicated layouts and when we got everything and and we never went back i don't think we could have gone back we got permission barely barely from the denver city council i think by one vote and uh our location manager was on top of the board you know taking them out to dinner trying to charm them uh but i think the vote was three to two something like that to to permit us to shoot there because they thought you know i'd made more in the fourth of july and i was okay but they they i was controversial too you know i'd also made the sixth floor museum which is up there is a is a bit of a fraud you know it really is in the sense that they they sell you this story oswald shot it from moose this window on the sixth floor so they wouldn't give us the sixth floor because that was where the museum was we shot on the seventh floor which is a little bit higher but uh it's good enough to get the sense of the direction can i ask you emotionally like just like stepping back you're making a movie and you're operating and everybody you know you and bob everybody's you're in the middle of filming it but as you are recreating that moment emotionally just for you like like do you remember like what was going through your mind were you able to step back from it and go this is crazy that we're like recreating this in the exact spot i mean it must have been wild for you as a filmmaker it was it was a responsibility to i i didn't want to screw it up you know uh certainly you feel ghosts you know there's things like that but uh on top of it we had the washington post reporter national security reporter running around the set on day one trying to get poison on us he was writing an article without telling us so and they actually pissed on us they had a big sunday piece coming up right after that and it was making fun of our film and the guy was operating from an earlier draft so it's you know it was i i had so much on my mind i it was really preoccupied it's so many details you know uh that's a it's good in a way because you you lose a sense of if you get involved in something you're not thinking about the oh jesus christ you know i'm breaking the i'm breaking the barrier here yeah um i would love to drill down a little bit more into the the mr x character who's just a a fascinating device that you gave yourself uh the ability to include a lot of that information but um but sutherland's performance is just an absolute master class how much time did you have with him to film uh and and can you talk a little bit about prepping with him just to get all of that right just to make it clear because some people are confused you know all that dialogue is very much based on what fletcher prouty told me he was a lieutenant colonel in the air force since world war ii he'd been a major he was the focus officer providing hardware to the cia their operations abroad in laos none in laos in tibet indonesia he'd been involved in several you know dirty ops but he walked away from it all after this assassination because he felt that something it had gone wrong everything had got wrong and he was in that period of his life when he was older and he was like giving us information about how the government does his office he was hated by them i mean there was so much discredit it was like jim garrison they tried to discredit him but they couldn't because he had the goods and he all his details were very good he knew alan dallas he knew these people you know they they dealt with each other he knew the feel which is important for me i also got some other military intelligence guys john newman again and there's a lot of there's a lot going into this movie but uh donald is a brilliant man he's i have to tell you he's he's he's on a genius level in the sense that yeah he absorbs very fast i don't have to talk to him very much that dialogue was heavy and then i knew he was a good actor but i was shocked at how he spit it out man and he knew the pace for himself because you know i talked to marlon brando about the role and i realized you know that it would be ridiculous uh to try to make a scene that much dialogue it's about 15 16 minutes of talking he did it he did it like on the money and he i don't think we did many retakes he's very fast he's very smart it's yeah because that character has to make it seem like it's completely second nature to them yeah you know like it's ingrained there's the whole nature of the movie because up to there it's a local story it's new orleans uh costner feels he's operating in the fishbowl and kind of after he's with sutherland the whole thing becomes international and it changes the whole game no it really does terrific scene mr stone i'm gonna i'm gonna switch gears just here for briefly because you know we are a film podcast and like your films have been so instrumental in my life in terms of shaping me and my love of cinema and the film that i always think about when i think of you in terms of just my childhood it was natural-born killers because i remember i know it sounds weird but i would go to blockbuster every single day every other day and i would pass by the natural-born killers vhs um sitting there and i just remember that film and i remember finally seeing it and being like blown away by it and i know tarantino wrote the story for it um i wanted to ask you just if you don't mind asking about that experience now all these years later what that film means to you now like because that was the film that like kind of introduced me to your work at the age of 10. so i think it's a very uh maligned film and it's a one-off in the sense that when i went there and you know i did it uh i did it right after heaven and earth heaven and earth was a classically shocked film beautiful vietnam and then i went right into this man i was getting a divorce at the time so perhaps that paid it played a role in in the anger and the and the cynicism of it but uh i was really down on the press the media had pissed me off so much with the jfk case and now here they were in this i i saw the luridness of the what what what tv reporting was going to you have to realize in that time o.j simpson was the only thing they could talk about on the news murder and there were various other violent acts but that's what they focused on to get the ratings so the whole country seemed to be mad we were driven by the need to see violence which is a problem in america it really is and if you know if you look at your just tv shows i mean it's just normal to have violence to have some kind of uh uh good versus bad resolution it's it's sad that we raise kids this way and i was doing this as a throwing up in the face of all the stuff i saw on tv and that's what it is and it's a chaotic film and i love it i spent a lot of time in the editing room it's about 3000 images or something like that it's a hell of a film and the editors were great and it was wrong love that movie thank you for answering that and bob shot it like crazy we all were crazy at that point yeah that was a really it's a really interestingly well shot film it's like it's a chaotic probably the best way to put it i mean it is absolutely insane no it's controlled chaos we didn't yeah we controlled it and then we went back and did nixon which is a completely different style which i loved uh very classical style but using some of the madness from the natural natural-born killers it's kind of what it's very much what i love about your filmography is right as people are trying to pigeonhole you into something you go in a completely different direction them yeah exactly one thing in life i have a problem with this is summing people up but i i they come in and they pigeonhole you they say this that it's so boring the thing about being a dramatist is being able to change identities and yeah slip slip around things and become richard nixon or jim morrison or you know just have fun with it and become a you go outside yourself in the year that you make that film and i did i beat jim morrison in one film and then i turned into richard nixon in the next you do can i ask about the real fast you said you're you're jim morrison they turn into the other do you do you think of it like that like like you're that person telling the story kind of i identify with the character so when i did george bush you know the people say why are you doing george bush you know he they they didn't understand that i have to get into shoes i have to empathize with him it's not like i improve on what he did i just i want to understand what how you can go to war like that and how you can believe this nonsense and the same thing is true about nixon i mean i nixon hurt our country in many ways and but i knew my father and i had that and i wanted to get inside that character so that's really what it's about getting inside people um knowing your fascination for controversial world leaders like this are you workshopping a trump project that we should brace for in a few years i would watch that yeah he doesn't interest me as much because yeah i mean i know i'm not going to do it good good real quick i just want to end on this if you don't mind cause we're running out of time um you you said earlier that you thought that this might be your last movie which is fascinating to me because it ended up becoming so beloved yeah and was the best picture nominee and so you know you said basically your response to the people who you know want to pigeonhole you is them this is a bit of a victory lap for you do you see it that way do you see the fact that the movie is still the topic of conversation 30 years later and has had that resonance do you feel that you succeeded that it that it uh went beyond what you ever dreamed possible for it it went beyond in the underground sense you know i mean there is a an audience for the film but the official and the official academies of whatever the establishment calls it's not acceptable so you know it's always that way but i think america america's got to grow up you know and stop seeing you know they can't accept the idea of assassination of a president and that we did it you know that's that they can't accept the idea that we're like the rest of the world you know we are things that happen in france russia italy happen here too and uh there's no difference we consider ourselves better than other people which i find racist and i find that to be very arrogant quality american corporation executives and war leaders have presence you know we are we are the standard uh i so i'm trying to say well look at this you know you have problems we have problems so i it's a message it's hard to put across this in this day and age especially after 2001 when the bush hit the patriot drums yeah very true well i'm thrilled that this movie is still part of the conversation uh oliver i know that we're so excited that you were a guest on the show we really appreciate you coming by and um we can't wait for everybody to check out the director's cut of this film and and the four hour cut that you say is coming that's amazing is coming excellent thank you mr stone thanks for all the movies appreciate it thank you take care bye-bye guys naturally we want to thank warner brothers home entertainment and oliver stone himself for coming on the show and being our very last show of 2021 we are wrapping up the year uh we'll be back next week with a full-on episode uh premium members you're gonna get an episode on monday as normal but for the rest of us we're taking some time off for the holiday and i will see you guys when we get back to it hopefully we'll be doing our top tens of 2021 and maybe even doing a most anticipated show uh we might have a couple of fun things coming for the 200th episode because it's a landmark for real blends so happy holidays to you guys hope you all have a very happy new year thank you as always for supporting the show uh we can't tell you how much we appreciate you guys checking us out every single week tell a friend about the show uh if you're here on the youtube channel hit like and subscribe uh you'll be able to get all of our new videos as soon as they drop and we'll be heading into 2022 guns of blazing we'll talk to you guys soon hope everything's well stay safe talk to you later [Music] you

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Length: 31min 27sec (1887 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 29 2021