Chappaquiddick

**Chappaquiddick** is a 2018 film starring Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms, Jim Gaffigan, Clancy Brown, Olivia Thirlby and Bruce Dern, directed by John Curran, written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan and produced by Mark Ciardi, Chris Cowles and Campbell G. McInnes.

The film was a financial failure as it generated a loss of $16 million.

## Plot

In July 1969, U.S. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy gives an interview, wherein he is questioned about standing in the shadow of his late brothers, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. After the interview, he calls his cousin, Joe Gargan, to arrange for hotel rooms on Martha's Vineyard for the Boiler Room Girls, his brother Robert's campaign staff. Kennedy travels to Chappaquiddick Island, where he meets with Joe and US Attorney for Massachusetts Paul Markham for a sail race. After losing the race, Kennedy goes to a party at a beach house with his friends and the Boiler Room Girls.

Kennedy leaves the party with Mary Jo Kopechne. After a brief stop, they begin driving away and encounter a police officer from Edgartown. The officer asks if they need help, but Kennedy backs up and drives quickly away. In his haste he accidentally drives off the Dike Bridge causing the car to flip over before it submerges into a pond. The screen goes black and he calls out to Mary Jo, then sits crying. He leaves the scene, walking back to the party at the beach house. He tells Gargan and Markham, "We have a problem." They speed over to the site and unsuccessfully attempt multiple dives to enter the overturned vehicle. Gargan and Markham insist he report the incident immediately, which he agrees to do. But instead, he gets in a rowboat he finds, and Gargan and Markham row him to Edgartown, where they go their separate ways.

Kennedy walks past the phone booth outside his hotel and up to his room and gets undressed. He submerges himself in bathtub imagining he was Mary Jo drowning. He gets dressed, puts on a suit, nice pants, and shoes and combs his hair. He goes down to the phone and calls his father asking for advice. His father (played by Bruce Dern) mutters one word, "alibi." Kennedy sits on the steps outside his room. When the night porter emerges, he asks the time, and the porter says it is 2:25 a.m. Kennedy claims he is having trouble sleeping. He gets into bed, now in pajamas, reaches past the desk phone to turn off the light and goes to sleep without contacting the police.

The next morning, the overturned vehicle is discovered by a man and his son, who call the police. Police Chief Arena (Fiore) and the fire department recover Kopechne's body from the car, which they find is registered to Kennedy. Gargan and Markham realize that he has not turned himself in, and insist that he must. Kennedy goes with Markham to the Edgartown Police Department and commandeers the Chief's office waiting for his return. The medical examiner insists it is an open and shut case of drowning, but the undertaker thinks it could be suffocation. The diver says, "She was holding herself up like she was trying to get her last breath of air." He adds, "I could have had her out of that car in 25 minutes--if I got the call--but no one called."

After giving the Chief a prepared statement (written by Markham), Kennedy travels to the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport, believing he has contained the situation. He is shocked as his stroke-disabled father Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. tells him his actions have disgraced the family, and is surprised by a damage control team led by Robert McNamara, convened to address both his legal problem (potentially manslaughter) and public relations problems. First they address legal problems such as making sure the body is not examined again and that the official records that his license has expired are changed by a Kennedy-friendly official. The team's strategy is to craft a public relations strategy for after the current news cycle, which is dominated by the landing of the first men on the Moon. As Kennedy prepares to attend Kopechne's funeral, he thinks he will gain sympathy by wearing a neck brace, but this ploy backfires in the press.

Kennedy comes up with the idea of appealing to the people of Massachusetts on national television, which his damage control team heartily endorses. They use the family's influence to speed up resolution of the legal hearing, as anything he says publicly might be used against him in the legal case. Kennedy gets a sweetheart plea deal of leaving the scene of an accident with a two months jail time, which the judge suspends on Kennedy's character and good standing.

Gargan--who has become increasingly disgusted with Kennedy for not being honest about the facts of the case and attempting to play the victim--attempts to resign. Kennedy, having just been slapped by his father, tells Gargan he intends to resign from the Senate and asks him to draft a resignation speech. He tells Gargan not to tell anyone.

As Kennedy is ready to go on national television with the speech prepared by Ted Sorensen (played by Taylor Nichols) designed to elicit public sympathy for Kennedy, Gargan delivers the resignation speech, telling Kennedy it is the right thing to do, to act with integrity. But instead, Kennedy throws it away and Gargan is pressed to hold Kennedy's cue cards for Sorensen's speech. Although the public has mixed views, the majority interviewed say they would re-elect him.

The credits explain that Joseph Kennedy Sr. died soon after the incident; Gargan became estranged from the family; and Kennedy lost the Democratic Party presidential primaries, 1980 but continued in the U.S. Senate for 40 years.