Trivia / JFK

• Ability over Appearance: Kevin Costner is 6' 1", six inches shorter than the real Jim Garrison.
• All-Star Cast: Kevin Costner, Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Gary Oldman, Laurie Metcalf, Jay O. Sanders, John Candy, Kevin Bacon, John Larroquette,^note Deleted Scene restored for the Special Edition Martin Sheen, Donald Sutherland and others. This leads to the odd casting of The Odd Couple without either actor ever interacting with each other.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Tommy Lee Jones was originally considered for another role that was ultimately cut from the film and Stone then decided to cast him as Shaw.
  • Gary Oldman was considered for David Ferrie.
  • Frank Whaley was originally cast as Lee Harvey Oswald but was replaced by Gary Oldman. As a consolation, Oliver Stone cast Whaley in the role of the Oswald imposter.
• The Danza: Jack Martin is played by Jack Lemmon.
• Doing It for the Art: Many actors waived their usual fees to appear in the film.
• Duelling Movies: While JFK was in pre-production, A&M Films announced an adaptation of Don DeLillo's Libra, a 1988 novel about the assassination with many broad similarities to Stone's film, to be directed by Phil Joanou. A script for Libra was written and Jandou began casting key roles, but the project was suddenly abandoned in late 1990, with rumors that Oliver Stone, Warner Bros. or both strong-armed Joanou into abandoning Libra (something Stone has always denied).
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Garrison begins crying during his closing statement at Shaw's trial. This was because Kevin Costner realized the weight of his character's words, and had an instant emotional response.
  • John Candy was genuinely nervous about doing a dramatic role with so many big stars. That sweat you see on his face is real.
• Fake American: Lee Harvey Oswald is played by English actor Gary Oldman.
• Falsely Advertised Accuracy: This film presents outrageous assumptions as absolute proof that JFK's assassination was a giant conspiracy:
  • The epileptic man being taken to the hospital but never being admitted, then vanishing. In reality he was a man named Jerry Belknap who left the hospital on realizing the doctors were too busy trying to save Kennedy to treat his minor injuries.
  • The smoke on the grassy knoll. In actuality the rifles did not produce smoke like that, something Stone learned during filming and had to resort to smoke machines to get the desired effect.
  • The umbrella man signaling the shooters (actually a man named Louie Witt who was waving the umbrella as a deeply-obscure political protest)
  • The "three tramps" being arrested that day being undercover operatives (long since identified through the Dallas police records as actual at-the-time-homeless people, Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney).
  • The thoroughly debunked "magic bullet" theory, which relies on JFK and Gov. Connally sitting differently than they actually were. Specifically, it relies on both men being perfectly level and in line with their arms at their sides, when in fact Connelly was in a jump seat situated lower and to the left of Kennedy, both men were turned slightly to the right, and Connelly was holding his hat near his chest not his right knee.
  • The Shaw trial was in reality a complete farce. Among many things, the defense caught one witness, a mailman, in a complete lie when they asked him if he ever delivered mail to a specific person. When he said yes, the defense said they’d made that person up and asked the witness if his testimony would change. And the mailman still claimed to have delivered mail to this fictional person. The jury, after hearing everything, only took half an hour to acquit Shaw, because Garrison had absolutely no credible evidence.
  • Ironically, one scene that’s completely historically accurate is the news report that states Garrison and his office bribed and drugged witnesses to get the evidence they wanted. It’s presented in the movie as a way to undermine Garrison’s credibility to the public, but multiple people have confirmed Garrison’s staff really did those things. Their star witness Perry Russo (whom Willie O'Keefe is partly based on) was repeatedly drugged to elicit his "incriminating" testimony, for instance.
  • One of the most egregious examples of this is how completely out of context Stone takes Kennedy’s American University speech and presents it as absolute proof that JFK was desperate to get along with the Soviets and end the Cold War, and he completely ignores the Ich bin ein Berliner speech, except for showing a clip of Kennedy saying it at the beginning. While yes, Kennedy gave a speech at American University calling for more cooperation, two weeks later he gave the Berlin speech, a confrontational speech where he practically challenged the Soviet Union in front of the entire world and actually said “To those who think we can work with the Soviets, let them come to Berlin.” Stone completely ignores the fact that during his campaign for the Presidency, JFK ran as an open and unabashed Cold Warrior, constantly criticizing Eisenhower (a former 4-star general) as not being tough enough on the Soviets. Indeed, Nixon himself even said in his autobiography “In the fall of 1960, Jack Kennedy ran to the right of Ike and I and convinced the world he would be tougher on Castro, Cuba, and Communism than I would.”
  • During his rundown of the assassination, Garrison describes the outcome of six shots. The most any witness at Dealey Plaza described was four; the vast majority only heard three.
• Filming Location Cameo: The movie was shot largely on location, including Dealey Plaza in Dallas and the actual book depository where Lee Harvey Oswald (allegedly) shot Kennedy.
• Playing Against Type: One of the few dramatic roles played by John Candy, as a beatnik lawyer connected to the conspiracy. The nervous sweat you see on his face is real, as the thought of acting in a dramatic film opposite such heavyweight actors as Donald Sutherland and Gary Oldman scared Candy shitless.
• Real-Life Relative: Oliver Stone's son Sean plays Jasper Garrison.
• Referenced by...:
  • The Seinfeld two-parter "The Boyfriend" parodies JFK (which released less than two months earlier), with Jerry investigating Kramer and Newman's claim that Keith Hernandez spit on them at a Mets game in 1987. Jerry finds inconsistencies in the pair's recounting, lambasts their version of events by riffing about a "magic loogie," and theorizes that a "second spitter" was present during the incident. Wayne Knight plays the same role in both re-enactments.
  • In The Critic, Jay Sherman talks at one point about a newly restored "director's cut" of JFK that features two hours of additional footage. What's shown amounts to Kevin Costner endlessly repeating, "Back... and to the left," while showcasing Zepruder film footage.
• Shoot the Money: Averted; there is meticulously detailed set of the White House's Oval Office, which cost about $70,000 to complete, yet it only appears in about eight seconds of the film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson were Oliver Stone's first choices for the role of Jim Garrison. Also considered were Alec Baldwin, Tom Berenger, Jeff Bridges,^note He was turned down because he wasn't a box office draw Willem Dafoe, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Gene Hackman, William Hurt, Don Johnson,^note He tried hard to get the part of Jim Garrison. He was turned down, as Stone and the producers felt the actor's own public image would make him a hard sell as Garrison. Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Keaton, John Malkovich, Matthew Modine, Jack Nicholson, Nick Nolte,^note He was deemed too old Dennis Quaid, Robert Redford, and Robin Williams.
  • James Woods eagerly lobbied for the role of Garrison. However he and Stone had vast creative differences, Woods wanting the film to be more of a biography of Jim Garrison with much more emphasis on his personal life, while Stone wanted it to be primarily about the case.
  • Marlon Brando turned down the role of X.
  • Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Martin Landau, Malkovich and Woods were considered for David Ferrie.
  • Douglas, Landau, Robert Loggia, Paul Newman, Peter O'Toole, Gregory Peck and Roy Scheider were considered for the role of Clay Shaw.
  • Brian Dennehy, Glenn Ford and Hackman were considered for Guy Bannister.
  • Matt Dillon, Quaid, Tom Sizemore, James Spader and Michael Wincott were considered for Willie O'Keefe.
  • Baldwin, Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen were considered for Lee Harvey Oswald.
  • Danny DeVito and John Goodman were considered for Dean Andrews Jr.
  • Harry Dean Stanton was considered for Jack Martin.
  • Elizabeth McGovern and Cybill Shepherd were considered for Julia Ann Mercer.
  • Goldie Hawn was considered for Rose Cheramie.
  • Danny Aiello was considered for Jack Ruby. He would eventually portray Ruby in the 1992 biopic of the same name.

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