JFK - Back When Conspiracy Theories Were Fun

I find myself watching JFK (or at least the beginning hour or so as I go to sleep at night) once a month because it’s almost always on a streaming service I have (currently on HBO Max). Each time I watch it, I plan on watching Nixon soon after, but rarely get around to it, as Nixon is almost never on a streaming service. And because of my idiotic principles, I refuse to rent it or buy it on digital because I already own it on DVD…and the basic premise of this site concerns movies I physically own, so I finally got the DVD out and watched Nixon the old fashioned way. But first, some thoughts on conspiracy culture and JFK.

Back When Conspiracy Theories Were Fun

JFK had a huge effect on me when I first watched it. I already fancied myself a history buff and was proud of my knowledge of the era. My stupid high school mind was not ready for the all out attack of this film. I became obsessed with the JFK assassination which resulted in reading a few books and writing way too many essays on it once I got to college. 

At the time, I just wanted to believe every bit of Oliver Stone’s conspiracy fever dream. I wanted to know who those hoboes were that were arrested by the train station. Who killed Lee Bowers? How many fake Oswalds were there? Did Clay Shaw really admit to being Clay Bertrand? Was X a real person? And on and on and on.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve calmed down, though I still think that head shot came from the front. But I’m no longer making people look at fucked up pictures of David Ferrie like I did to my intro to speech class in college…definitely got a few bewildered looks that day. 

I still want to believe everything in the Stone movie, but common sense (and light research) show that a lot of it is pure fiction/fantasy. JFK is a perfect example of how a conspiracy can scratch an itch you didn’t even know you had. 

Take an accepted historical event or common fact, present the unknown “truth” behind it, follow that rabbit hole to the center of the fucking planet. It’s very satisfying. Watching JFK the first time, I felt like part of some secret club finding out all kinds of cool secret shit the CIA never wanted me to know. But just being aware of the “truth” isn’t enough. Then I had to read some books so I could throw out some extra facts that weren’t in the movie to prove I was more in the know than your basic conspiracy theorist. Eventually, though, I had to accept that there isn’t “truth” out there, only belief. And that’s when this shit gets scary.

I finally accepted that there will never be the evidence I need to prove exactly what happened on that day. The closest thing I’ll ever get to that is suspending my disbelief and rewatching JFK, which is exactly why I’ve watched it so many times. This is when conspiracy theories were fun and mostly harmless. But at some point, the conspiracies got crazier and the facts were even more ignored, and it became dangerously close to becoming mainstream. 

People would often give me weird looks when I would go deep on the JFK stuff while we were hanging out, and rightfully so. I was being a fucking weirdo about something that didn’t really matter and could never be proven. But now, mainly thanks to the internet, instead of ranting and raving at sane people who will eventually calm you down (hopefully), now all the conspiracy theorists find an online echo chamber and things get too dark. 

It’s as if being a conspiracy theorist went from being a hobby to a deranged profession. JFK didn’t necessarily create this problem, but it’s tied into it by bringing a major conspiracy theory into pop culture. I feel like this is one of the most acceptable conspiracy theories out there thanks to this film. 

These days, I watch JFK for entertainment purposes and as a cautionary tale for going too deep into a theory. The cast is insane; you have guys like John Candy and Vincent D’Onofrio showing up for just a few moments. It’s hard to find a scene that doesn’t have a recognizable actor in it. And most of them are fucking going for it. Kevin Bacon talking shit to Kevin Costner is a standout moment, and Joe Pesci deserved an Oscar nom just for how he smoked during his first scene with Costner. For a three hour movie that has a dozen plot threads and red herrings, JFK never drags and is always entertaining thanks to Stone’s frenetic style and the aforementioned cast. 

Because of those elements, I can turn my brain off and enjoy it all. When I want to engage with the film a bit more, these days I focus on Costner’s home life in the film. The first few times I watched it (before I had a family of my own, by the way), I wrote off Sissy Spacek and all their kids as the typical hindrance to the hero’s devotion to the “right” thing to do. Watching now, I see Spacek as the real hero of the film, putting up with Costner’s crazy shit. If I ditched my wife on Easter and left her to take all the kids to a busy restaurant, I wouldn’t be here typing this nonsense right now. In this film, though, Costner just brushes it off to “not checking the calendar.” As if Tommy Lee Jones couldn’t wipe off the silver body paint and come into the office on another Sunday? Come on!

That’s the story of the film that gets lost in all the magic bullet and “back and to the left” (and realizing that Newman was in the magic bullet scene and the Keith Hernandez magic loogie scene in Seinfeld) stuff. Now I watch this and see the damage fully committing to a conspiracy theory can cause. The victory at the end of the film isn’t that the jury agreed a conspiracy existed and Costner brought about the only trial for it; it’s that Costner, even though he swears to keep fighting (but he doesn’t sound nearly as convincing as he did in his closing argument), walks away from the crowd with his wife and son. And now instead of reading a book or writing an essay (um…aside from this one just this one time) or going down a reddit rabbit hole, I walk away from it, too.

Bubba Ho-tep - "Hail to the King...Maybe."

October means horror movie month for me this year, so I’m not starting off with a Van Damme movie, mainly because I’ve already covered the Van Damme movies that are closest to the horror genre (Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning and Replicant). That said, I think Hard Target might qualify since it’s loosely based on The Most Dangerous Game, which I consider to be a horror short story. Anyway, I own that one and will get to it at some point if I don’t get around to it this month. For this article, I decided to revisit one of my horror DVDs that I haven’t watched since I first purchased it: Bubba Ho-tep.

Sometimes the Idea Behind a Movie Is Better Than the Actual Movie

On paper, Bubba Ho-tep should be one of my favorite horror comedies of all time. It stars Bruce Campbell as an elderly Elvis, fighting a mummy alongside a now-black and somehow still alive JFK played by Ossie Davis. The zany concept alone makes it worth watching. But for me personally, the inclusion of Bruce Campbell was a big selling point because at the time (2002) I was at peak fandom for the Evil Dead star. And the kicker was the inclusion of JFK as a character because I was also at peak fascination with the Kennedy assassination at the time. I had to love this movie.

I just like this movie, which is somehow worse than hating it. I bought Bubba Ho-tep sight unseen because of the elements mentioned above. Imagine my disappointment when I found it only mildly enjoyable. This movie predates Snakes on a Plane, but it suffers from the same problem as that high-concept film. It has an entertaining, crazy premise that it just can’t live up to. 

There’s nothing that I find wrong with Bubba Ho-tep, exactly. Campbell is having a blast playing an aged Elvis who can no longer get erections. And Ossie Davis is funny simply because he’s just being himself even though he’s supposed to be a skin-dyed Kennedy (there is no attempt at a Kennedy accent). And writer/director Don Coscarelli (of Phantasm fame [a series I still need to check out]) is able to stretch a small budget into a great looking horror film. I suppose the film struggles at turning a short story (by Joe R. Lansdale) into a feature film. 

I haven’t read the original short story, but I can imagine that the premise of Bubba Ho-tep works much better in that short form. Here, it ends up being more like an SNL sketch that overstays its welcome. For example, a growth on Elvis’s mostly useless “pecker” is referenced far beyond humor. And, even for a film set in a nursing home, the pace is set to such a crawl that it’s easy to lose interest. 

Still, Campbell and Davis, along with the effects, make it an amusing film. My expectations were just way too high for this movie. I think if I came across it years later unaware of its existence, it might have worked for me a bit more. But I was eagerly looking forward to this when it was first released, and it just didn’t wow me. 

Even with my unrealistic expectations, it seems like the talent involved should’ve been able to make a modern horror comedy classic with Bubba Ho-tep, instead of the forgotten oddity that it became.

Why Do I Own This?

I can’t remember for sure, but I think this might be one of the rare releases I bought without seeing first. I do like this movie, but not enough to own it. I just assumed that with Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK (I was pretty obsessed with the Kennedy assassination when this came out) that I would love this movie. Instead, I just like it, and I don’t really ever want to watch it again.

Random Thoughts / Favorite Lines

Haven’t watched this since I first bought it seventeen years ago. I completely forgot about all the narration about having a growth on his “pecker” at the beginning. I’m a fan of the use of pecker; it’s a very underused term for penis.

“Big damn bugs, man. Size of a peanut butter and banana sandwich.”

“Pharaoh gobbles donkey goobers.”

“Cleopatra does the nasty.”

I let the movie play through the credits, and not only are there a few goofy credits (a warning about Bubba Ho-tep among the legal stuff and a promise of a return of Elvis in “Curse of the She-Vampires” [which is apparently a real project that just stayed in development hell]), but there’s also a bit where Elvis comes on and tells you to “be kind and rewind” before realizing that you don’t need to do that with a DVD. 

That’s just an example of the era in which this movie came out. They went all out with DVDs back then. There are a ton of special features for this one, including an entire commentary with Bruce Campbell in character as Elvis. And the DVD insert booklet contains an interview with Campbell and Don Coscarelli. I don’t like this movie enough to partake in any of this shit, but I do miss the days of too many special features. I used to love taking a deep dive with the movies I really loved. Now, you end up just streaming a movie and don’t get the special features at all. And even when I do buy a movie, the special features included are increasingly basic because it’s no longer a selling point. An occasional movie gets a few interesting special features, but most releases are pretty bare bones these days.

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This Article Is Inspired by Movies that Are "Based on" True Stories

I'm just going to assume that everything said in this scene is exactly what happened in reality.

"Based on a true story" can make or break a movie. For horror films, it usually makes it. (Stupid) people like to watch horror films and talk about how it really happened to get themselves even more freaked out by it. True story: at the end of Paranormal Activity, I heard an audience member react to the credits which thanked the San Diego Police Department with, "You see, that was a true story." This blew my mind. Let's assume it is actual footage and follow that line of thinking. We have video evidence of demonic possession, but it is only used as entertainment? Wouldn't the world be freaking out a bit more if Paranormal Activity was real footage. Not to mention it is also video footage of a death used for entertainment. None of that occurred to this guy. He just thought, "Wow, that's really freaky, and it really happened!" Maybe I'm overreacting and the guy was just trying to mess with whoever he was with, but there are enough people that think at least some of it is real to the point that an FAQ on the IMDb page is "Does this film feature real video footage?" This is similar to what happened with films like Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project, but what makes it doubly infuriating now is that we have instant access to the truth. With films in the past, it was harder to confirm if a story was made up or not.

So what, right? Some idiots believe in scary movies because it adds a level of enjoyment to their experience. That's fine, but, unfortunately, that same line of thinking is applied to films that are actually based on true stories. And that is a problem because too many of these people will just accept what they see as fact and not investigate it further. Now, the FAQ at IMDb is evidence that people wanted to know for sure, and that's a good sign, but people are probably more likely to take a historical film's word for it over a horror film. We know (at least subconsciously for the dumber folks) that scary movies are trying to mess with us. The "Based on a true story" message is akin to a jump scare. It might get people at first, but a little thought will dismiss it as just another scare tactic. 

Special thanks to the San Diego PD for releasing this evidence of demonic possession and murder.

If a historical film claims to be based on a true story, we don't see that as a scare tactic; we see it as a badge of authenticity. We're about to watch a historical document. Of course, this is wrong. How could any narrative film tell a 100% true story in a standard two hour running time? A lot of people do not realize that, though. When they see American Sniper (a movie I liked, by the way), some will come away thinking there really was a rival sniper that Chris Kyle came across, and there really was a man called "The Butcher" that he and his team were tasked with stopping. While there are elements of truth to these aspects, they are largely fictionalized to make a more traditional story for the audience. Alterations like that are likely to be taken as fact by some of the audience. Changes like, say, (SPOILER) killing Hitler in Inglourious Basterds, are blatant enough that the audience knows it's fictional. 

Tarantino's films don't claim to be true stories, of course, but even if they did, the audience for a film like that knows what to expect. Audiences for "legitimate" historical films expect the truth, even though they shouldn't. There's not much that can be done for this, but I think an attempt should be made to remind the audience that a film is not the whole story. This has been attempted before. For instance, with Oliver Stone's Nixon, that film began with a disclaimed stating that the film was partially based on an "incomplete historical record." Sure, this is more of a dig at Nixon regarding the missing Watergate tapes, but it's something we should consider for all "true stories" today. Just put something at the beginning reminding people: "The following film is a slightly fictionalized account of a true part of history. For the entire story, you should do some research and reading." I'm sure there's a better way to word it, but the gist is that people shouldn't take movies as fact. With this warning, maybe people would stop overreacting to films like Selma and American Sniper. 

I'm sure the real Nixon would have loved 19 minutes of silence instead of the
speculation Stone created, but that would have been much less interesting.

Studios aren't very likely to add any new disclaimers, though, because admitting that changes were made makes a movie appear less substantial. When a horror movie claims to be true, it's for the scares; when a historical film claims to be true, it's for the Oscar. Who can blame the studios? Look at this year's nominees: American Sniper (Picture, Actor), Selma (Picture), The Imitation Game (Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress), Foxcatcher (Actor, Supporting Actor, Director [but not Picture for some odd reason]), The Theory of Everything (Picture, Actor, Actress), Wild (Actress, Supporting Actress), not to mention awards-hopefuls like Unbroken and Mr. Turner that came away with a few lesser nominations. 

The Academy Awards are not really all that important aside from the fact that they add prestige to these movies. That's when people get up in arms. "You mean to tell me that the Academy means to reward Selma's inaccurate and unfair depiction of President Lyndon Johnson?!" As if being nominated for an award retroactively changed how the film was written and made. When a movie is presented as awards-worthy, people like to assign responsibility to it. Films start getting labelled as "reckless" and "dangerous." It's all hyperbole, of course (as if it is truly dangerous for a junior high student to come away from Selma with a slightly negative opinion of LBJ), but it's something to consider. There is a middle-ground to this debate. Films should not purport to be based on true stories if they plan on making intentional changes. Filmgoers, likewise, need to realize that movies are not 100% true. The main point needs to be that these films should be judged on their merits as films and not necessarily on accuracy. It's time for us to put some responsibility on the viewer, which is why my proposed disclaimer encourages the viewer to do some research. Odds are a lot of people would not take that advice. Researching is boring, tedious work. I suggest that for those audience members unwilling to take the time to look up factual information we come to this conclusion: screw 'em. 

Honestly, who cares what an ignorant person thinks? If someone comes away from American Sniper believing that the Iraq War was a direct response to 9/11, then it is likely that that person was stupid before they watched the film, not after. Why worry about people who don't care enough about something to look into it for themselves, especially when there are websites that do all the work for them? Well, maybe we should worry about an uninformed public, but Hollywood and the Academy Awards is not the place to start. Not to get too political or anything, but if we're worried about the knowledge of our citizens shouldn't we be focusing on our education system instead of Hollywood? It seems like any outrage over historical accuracy in film is meant more to distract us from real issues than it is to deal with any so-called problems created by the films.

If anything, I think movies sometimes adhere too closely to the true story. It's far more interesting when a film like Walker (the criminally underseen Alex Cox film) inserts cars and other anachronistic elements into a film set in the 1850s, especially when it's done to service the theme connecting it to (then) modern issues. Or take JFK, a film that should be seen more as a visual essay of conspiracy theories about the assassination rather than a historical document. I watched that film as a teenager and came away wanting to do research about the subject. It inspired me to know more about it. I didn't just assume that the film was everything. The most important thing about these two examples is that I found them to be endlessly entertaining. They were, in my opinion, good movies. It's fine to fault a film for being boring, silly, poorly made, etc. But to bash it because they took liberties to create a potentially more interesting experience? That seems lazy, especially when anyone truly interested will find out the truth on their own. As for everyone else, let them be scared and amazed by that "Based on a true story" claim. As for the rest of us, we'll just enjoy the movie.