Oliver Stone: An Empire Podcast Interview Special

The Empire Film Podcast

Bauer Media

Tv & Film, Film Reviews

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Almost thirty years after JFK blazed a trail and called into question the facts surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, Oliver Stone is returning to the subject with a new documentary. JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass is out in cinemas today (November 26) in the UK and is, perhaps, Stone's final word on the subject of the Kennedy assassination, presenting his theory about what happened on that fateful day, augmented and enhanced by new information and declassified documents. In this in-depth interview, Chris Hewitt catches up with Stone over Zoom for a long chat about the director's fascination with JFK (both subject and man), and an examination of what the success of the 1991 movie meant for Stone's career. They also talk about the famous Mr. X sequence from the original movie. Whether you believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or not, this is a fascinating interview and an insight into Stone's creative and thinking processes. JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass is also available from November 29 on digital platforms, including altitude.film Enjoy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to a very special interview edition of the Empire
0:20.6	podcast.
0:22.0	Oliver Stone's JFK is one of my favourite films of all time.
0:27.7	And whether or not you buy into the case constructed by Stone in that movie, that
0:32.8	President John F. Kennedy was not killed by Lee Harvey Oswald on the February 22, 1963,
0:40.2	but instead by a multifaceted conspiracy involving a number of interested parties, including
0:46.6	disgruntled CIA officials, the mob and high ranking government figures, we can hopefully
0:52.5	agree that it is a scintillating and epic slice of storytelling which marked something
0:57.6	of a seed change for Stone in how he operated as a filmmaker.
1:02.2	Unusually for such a dense, talky and controversial movie, and perhaps because of the all star
1:08.2	A-list cast that Stone assembled including Kevin Costner, Sissy Spacec, Tomy Lee Jones,
1:14.9	Jack Lemon, Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, John Candy, Walter Mattel, Michael Rooker, Gary Olben,
1:21.9	Laurie Medcalfe and of course Wayne Knight.
1:25.5	It did exceptionally well at the box office when it was released in 1991, grossing $70 million
1:31.6	domestic and it was nominated for eight Oscars winning two.
1:36.2	Its progressive way of presenting dense reams of information is hugely influential to this
1:43.0	day.
1:44.5	Stone's career since then has fluctuated somewhat and when I caught up with him earlier this
1:49.7	week on Zoom it was interesting to hear him attribute that to some extent at least to
1:55.8	the impact of JFK, but we'll get to that soon enough.
2:00.7	The reasons Stone and I were chatting again on Zoom's a bear mind will be a bit of audio
2:05.8	ducking here and there was because he has returned to the directorial fray with JFK
	...

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