From: pmm7@ellis.uchicago.edu (peggy boucher murphy (you had to ask?))
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: JFK to LBJ: galled by Stone?
Keywords: Oliver Stone, JFK, tabloid political thrillers, nasty Lyndon Baines
Date: 12 Apr 92 19:58:49 GMT
Reply-To: pmm7@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <ktkltvINNvu@news.bbn.com> rrizzo@star-trek.bbn.com (Ron Rizzo) writes:
>Monday night on a lark & in a throwaway mood I went to the movies instead
>of the boob tube and saw JFK. 

i saw _jfk_ too.  

>More than 3 hours after we plunked down our dollars we staggered outside    
>at quarter to 1 in the morning into an unmerciful freezing light rain. 

yes, this was a *long* movie.  but it kept my attention for over
3 hours.  i didn't doze or get bored.  

>I didn't know what to think, aside from the less than fabulous role the
>lavender people play in Stone's political fantasy life. 

ok.  everyone is real mad at stone for these portrayals.  which 
strikes me a little funny.  2 points to think of:

	1) look at *who* oliver stone got to portray queers on 
		the big screen.  on soc.bi we have been discussing
		outing ad nauseum, and one point regularly made 
		is that playing a queer is the kiss of death for
		an acting career... especially for a heartthrob.  
		i have younger sisters.  kevin bacon is a 
		heartthrob.  and tommy lee jones ain't no slouch.  
		he, in particular, played a sympathetic queer.  

	2) as someone who was born only a few monthes before the
		assassination, i have nomemories of this time.  
		the overwhelming feeling i got about queers from
		was that it was very dangerous to *be* queer then. 
		just being queer made you a criminal, and if you 
		did anyhtin else wrong at all, you were in much 
		more trouble because you were also queer.  and 
		the feeling was that this was *much* more widespread
		then than now.  then it was ok.  
i liked the portrayals.  i liked the movie.  i want to see positive
queers on the screen, but i'm not willing to trash this movie
becasue of the queers.  and i liked jones' portrayal especially.  a
man in the closet, fighting for his political/professional life, in
denial perhaps even to himself sometimes.  

>My memory is defective, but I think what
>Mitzel found was a typical Louisiana/New Orleans politician (Big Jim Garrison)
>--- hard-drinking, whoring, tall-tale-telling, completely corrupt ---
>stringing the public along for years at a stretch by exploiting the crazy
>talk and bizarre behavior of mad queans in the delta city.  Kevin Costner
>is about as similar to Big Jim as John Hurt is to Mike Tyson.

so?  bad-mouthing people doesn't make them wrong or right.  after
all, those kenedys sure know how to party, don't they?  i'm not 
saying i buy _jfk_'s tale, but it seems as logical as the warren 
commission.  and the idea of closeted queers inthe cia and fbi makes
a great deal of sense.  
>
>Now, a generation more or less later, a prominent American film director
>has swallowed the gaytalk hook, line and sinker, and thinks he has his
>finger on the conspiratorial pulse of postwar America's zeitgeist.  

more importantly, it brings the topic of the assassination up 
again, and the truth may yet come out, if it is at all possible.  
having the real assassins outed and punished seems important to 
me.  i want to know.  i have the right to know.  

>Come to think of it, Stone's film is a lot of raging bull. 

i liked it.  

>What's so special about 1963?

i was born in 1963.  ;)
peg
-who knows that she no longer appears politically correct as 
queer, but just had to put in hewr own$.02 worth.  i liked it.  
Xref: sparky soc.motss:19388 soc.bi:4180