Trivia for
JFK (1991) More at IMDbPro »

• Perry R. Russo, who was a key witness to conversations taking place between David Ferrie, Clay Shaw (aka Clay Bertrand), and Lee Harvey Oswald, plays a man in the bar at the beginning of the film, where Garrison and Lou are watching the TV coverage on the shooting. Mr. Russo yells about how they should give the shooter a medal for shooting Kennedy.
  
  
• In Bull Durham (1988), Kevin Costner's character stated "... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone...”.
  
  
• The real Jim Garrison plays Earl Warren.
  
  
• During the conversation between Jim Garrison and X, there is a close-up of a desktop nameplate which is partially obscured. It reads "M/Gen. E.G... nsd... e", and is a reference to Edward G. Lansdale of the United States Air Force. Lansdale is the subject of the book "JFK and Vietnam" by John M. Newman, one of the film's technical advisors.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Oliver Stone] Oliver Stone can be seen very briefly in the assassination re-enactment. Look very close for him as the Secret Service agent who runs towards the back of the limo after the fatal headshot.
  
  
• Director Oliver Stone's favorite film of his own.
  
  
• The film generated intense controversy upon its release with many accusing Oliver Stone of making up many of the facts. In fact, Stone published an annotated version of his screenplay, in which he justifies and attributes every claim made in the film. Stone later addressed the controversy in his TV movie "Wild Palms" (1993) in which he has a cameo. That film takes place in the 21st Century and has Stone appearing on a talk show discussing how all his conspiracy theories surrounding "JFK" had been proven true.
  
  
• Donald Sutherland and Kevin Costner both have very long monologues in the movie. According to director Oliver Stone, both of them memorized these speeches (Kevin Costner had thought that one take was necessary for his speech).
  
  
• Director Oliver Stone's first two choices to play Jim Garrison were Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson.
  
  
• Every detail concerning the set for the Oval Office was meticulously reconstructed based on archival footage of the White House during President John F. Kennedy's term. The set cost about $70,000 to complete, yet it only appears in about eight seconds of film and is in black and white.
  
  
• "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it" was a Nazi quote, but it did not belong to Adolf Hitler; it was spoken by Josef Goebbels.
  
  
• No one on Jim Garrison's team was called Bill Broussard, but Garrison did frequently visit a restaurant in New Orleans called "Broussard's" (as told in his book "On the Trail of the Assassins").
  
  
• Initially, Kevin Costner turned down the chance to play Jim Garrison.
  
  
• Even before "JFK" had finished filming, the Washington Post national security correspondent George Lardner showed up on set and wrote a scathing article attacking the movie. Lardner based this on the first draft screenplay he had read. Other leading newspapers followed suit upon the film's release, many taking particular umbrage with the liberties with the facts that Oliver Stone had taken.
  
  
• Stone hired Jane Rusconi, a recent Yale graduate, to head up a team of researchers and assemble as much information about the assassination as possible while he completed his directing duties on Born on the Fourth of July (1989). While Stone read two dozen books about the assassination, Jane Rusconi read well over 200 books on the subject.
  
  
• The first draft of the screenplay was 190 pages long, pared down to 156 pages for shooting.
  
  
• Many actors waived their usual fees to appear in the film.
  
  
• Getting permission to film in the Texas School Book Depository proved to be very difficult. The Depository demanded $50,000 to put someone in the window where Lee Harvey Oswald had stood. They were only allowed to film at certain times of the day, with only five people allowed on the floor at any one time. Co-producer Clayton Townsend said that the hardest part of the whole process was getting permission to transform the building back to the way it looked in 1963. That took five months of negotiation. Scenes of interior action on the sixth floor were actually filmed on the fifth floor, as the sixth floor is a museum exhibit. But all point of view shots of the motorcade were filmed from the actual sixth floor window, as well as all shots of the shooter behind the window as seen from the outside.
  
  
• Making Dealey Plaza look the same as it did in 1963 cost $4 million.
  
  
• Veteran movie critic for The Washingtonian Pat Dowell had her 34 word capsule review for the January issue rejected by editor John Limpert, a known opponent to the film. Limpert didn't want a positive review for a film that he regarded as treacherous. Dowell resigned in protest.
  
  
• This mammoth production was shot in only 72 days.
  
  
• Oliver Stone regards this film as his The Godfather (1972).
  
  
• 24 researchers were involved in the scripting process.
  
  
• Dr. Marion Jenkins, the anesthetist, plays himself in the film. He was genuinely surprised at the level of detail and research that had gone into preparation for that key scene. Even the tiles for the set of Trauma Room One were exactly the same shade of green he remembered (even though the scene itself is black and white in the finished film).
  
  
• Oliver Stone showed this film in December of 1991 to all of Congress on Capitol Hill. It led to the 1992 Assassinations Disclosure Act
  
  
• The real Jim Garrison never made the speech that Costner makes at the end of the movie. It was taken from several speeches the he gave and some of it from his book.
  
  
• "X", Donald Sutherland's character, is based on L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and, thus, principal liaison officer between the Pentagon and the CIA) during the JFK presidency. He was a technical advisor for the film.
  
  
• James Belushi makes a cameo in Director's Cut as an accomplice of JFK's murder. He appears in Elm Street (where the president was killed) as archive footage when Jim Garrison explains step by step the JFK's murder in the trial.
  
  
• "Let justice be done though the heavens fall" is an old Roman maxim: Fiat justitia ruat caelum.
  
  
• " [O]ne may smile, and smile, and be a villain" is from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", Act I, Scene V.
  
  
• Rated #5 of the 25 most controversial movies of all time. Entertainment Weekly, 16 June 2006.
  
  
• In preparation for her portrayal of Marina Oswald, wife of the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, Beata Pozniak studied the 26 volumes of Warren Commission Report, read every single "Time" and "Newsweek" magazine article about her character, and then actually lived with Marina Oswald for a while.
  
  
• When shooting footage of the grassy knoll gunman Oliver Stone could not find a gun which made enough smoke to be visible. Since modern guns release almost no smoke from their barrels a smoke machine was made to get the effect which they wanted.
  
  
• In New Orleans, director Oliver Stone borrowed author Anne Rice's Labrador Retriever to portray the Garrison family's dog.
  
  
• In the commentary, Oliver Stone said that filming the murder of "JFK" was "probably the hardest two weeks" of his life. However, he maintained that it was a powerful moment for him.
  
  
• Martin Sheen provides a narration at the beginning of the film. He played John F. Kennedy in "Kennedy" (1983) and would later act in the film Bobby (2006), which is centered around the assassination of John's brother Robert F. Kennedy.
  
  
• During the conversation between Jim Garrison and X appears a flashback in black and white which a headmen group of some organizations (CIA, NSA, Pentagon... ) plot to control Kennedy, and one of them ask Max Taylor follows McNamara. Max Taylor is really Maxwell D. Taylor, general of USA Army in this time, and McNamara is really Robert McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense when Kennedy was President and one of the Kennedy's advisers.
  
  
• Frank Whaley, who plays one of the Oswald impostors in "JFK", plays Lee Harvey Oswald in Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald (1993) (TV).
  
  
• Gary Oldman, who played Lee Harvey Oswald in this film, also voiced Lee Harvey Oswald in the TV's "Frontline" (1983), Episode #11.20: "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?", original air date: 9 November 1993.
  
  
• Mel Gibson also passed on the chance to play Jim Garrison.
  
  
• After reading Jim Garrison's book, Oliver Stone immediately bought the rights with his own money.
  
  
• Oliver Stone made a handshake deal with Warner Brothers on the proviso that the studio would retain all rights to the film if they stomped up $20 million for the budget. Stone did this deal because he didn't want the screenplay to do the rounds of all the studios, thereby lessening the chances of potential leaks.
  
  
• While Zachary Sklar dealt with the Garrison side of the story in the screenplay, Oliver Stone concentrated on Lee Harvey Oswald, the events at Dealey Plaza and the character of Mr X.
  
  
• Kevin Costner researched the character of Jim Garrison extensively, including meeting the man himself as well as his friends and enemies.
  
  
• For the recreation of the assassination at Dealey Plaza, the producers had to pay the Dallas City Council a large amount of money to hire police to reroute traffic and close down streets for three weeks. Stone only had 10 days to shoot the entire sequence. Director of photography Robert Richardson employed two 35mm cameras, five 16mm cameras and 14 different film stocks for the sequence.
  
  
• Shortly after the film's release, film critic Roger Ebert received a tongue-lashing from Walter Cronkite, berating him for praising "JFK". Cronkite was adamant that there wasn't a shred of truth to the film.
  
  
• Those are real tears choking up Kevin Costner as he makes his closing summation as Jim Garrison. The weight of what he was saying meant the actor became emotional although the speech was not scripted that way.
  
  
• In an interview, Kevin Costner once revealed that he rehearsed his rather long trial summation to the jury while in the swimming pool, with his mother correcting him from the script.
  
  
• Is the only film that stars both Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau without the two of them sharing a scene
  
  
• The characters "Janet and Bill Williams" are based on Michael and Ruth Paine who, like in the movie, take in Marina Oswald into their home. It was actually Ruth Paine who got Lee the job at the Texas School Book Depository.
  
  
• The television show "Seinfeld" (1990) would later parody the "magic bullet" theory featured in "JFK" in an episode where Kramer and Newman believe that they had been spat at by NY Met Keith Hernandez. Jerry diagrams the course of the "magic loogie" and Keith later reveals that there was a second spitter, Roger McDowell. Wayne Knight, who plays Newman, is also in "JFK" as a member of Garrison's team. He would be one of the two men to model the shooting in court to prove the implausibility of the "magic bullet", not unlike how Jerry disproves Newman and Kramer's theory.
  
  
• The fifth pairing out of ten movies of comic actors and great friends Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
  
  
• While walking down the street, a woman comes up to Jim Garrison asking if he remembers singing with her at a party to which he responds, "oh right, we sang 'You're The Cream In My Coffee'" as he walks away. After pitching his perfect game at Yankee Stadium in For Love of the Game (1999) Costner's character carries 'John C. Reilly I' to his hotel room, where Reilly says to him, "you're the cream in my coffee."
  
  
• Oliver Stone was given a copy of Jim Garrison's book, "On the Trail of the Assassins", by a friend to read on the plane to the Philippines during the filming of "Platoon". After reading the book, Stone knew he'd found a new film project.
  
  
• Dean (John Candy) Andrews' sweaty face during his talk with Garrison is real. Candy was petrified at the idea of appearing in a dramatic film with professional actors like Gary Oldman and 'Donald Sutherland'. He sweated profusely throughout all his scenes.
  
  
• The alleged assassin rifle - the Mannlicher Carcano - was of Italian manufacture.
  
  
• In its native Italy, the Carcano rifle is called "The Humane Weapon", because it is almost impossible to shoot anything with it.
  
  
• John Candy was picked by Oliver Stone to portray Dean Andrews because he bore a very strong resemblance to the man.
  
  
• During Willie (Kevin Bacon) O'Keefe's flashback, David (Joe Pesci) Ferrie is talking about making Fidel Castro's beard fall out to embarrass him. This was an actual CIA plot, which failed.
  
  
• Computer mock-ups of the assassination, particularly one by Dale K. Myers have since strenuously argued against the Magic Bullet Theory as presented in this film by pointing out that the Presidential Limo actually had a step in its manufacture, moving the passenger seats inwards. This had been overlooked in Garrison's diagram. However, Myers' simulation is not without criticism of its own in regard to accuracy.
  
  
• James Woods eagerly lobbied for the role of Garrison. However he and Oliver 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.
  
  
• The real Jean Hill filmed a cameo in which she played the stenographer during her own questioning. The shot was composed so that her face and the face of Ellen McElduff playing her would ironically be seen on split sides of the screen. But it didn't make the final cut. Her cameo can be seen as an outtake on the 2-disc special edition DVD.
  
  
• When discussing the Oswald impersonators, Laurie Metcalf's character tells them about one of the impostors going to buy a car. The salesman remembers him being 5"7 but the real Oswald was 5"11. In reality, Frank Whaley, who plays the impostor, is 5"7 1/2, while Gary Oldman, who plays Oswald, is 5"9.
  
  

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