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IanEye wrote:Jack Black makes mention of the fact that both of his parents were aero-space engineers, with his father working specifically on intelligence satellites.
IanEye wrote:I enjoy listening to David Feldman's podcast.
On this episode entitled, "CIA, JFK & Bush" Mr. Feldman interviews Russ Baker.
Feel free to point out any instances of disinfo or limited hangout.
streeb wrote:I think it's bullshit. Interesting that he doesn't include David Atlee Phillips in the plot. LBJ? Sure. Whatever.
This is a partial admission of something resembling truth, with an all important clause exonerating Hunt. It'll satisfy a portion of the assasination nerds, but I don't buy it. And to use his son as the messenger? Assuming that any of this actually transpired between Hunt and St. John, and further assuming that Hunt is feeding him lies, then it's a hugely shitty thing to do. But not worse than anybody reading this blog would expect from the man.
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Five Reasons to Love the JFK Bit in Dallas Theater Center's Second City Does Dallas
By Elaine Liner Thu., Sep. 13 2012 at 7:00 AM
3 Comments
Categories: Comedy, Theater
So a couple of snooty critics and uptight theater patrons are upset about a sketch in The Second City Does Dallas, the new Dallas Theater Center comedy that just opened at the Wyly. The bit comes toward the end of the two-hour evening of satire, which hits on such easy-aim Dallas targets as the death-rays shooting off Museum Tower and the intolerant attitudes of Highland Park (where, their punch line goes, you can be pulled over and ticketed "for driving through Highland Park").
This is a topical show, written and performed by members of the famed Second City comedy troupe from Chicago. They do revues like this in other cities, too, sending a couple of writers -- for this one they sent Brooke Breit and Ed Furman -- to town a few months in advance to gather topics from conversations with locals.
I went to lunch with Breit and Furman this summer. They were nice kids but not exactly a barrel of giggles over burgers at Lee Harvey's. They turned out to be funnier writers than talkers. I laughed a bunch at Second City Does Dallas, which I saw opening night. Wouldn't mind seeing it again to hear lines I missed when everyone else was laughing louder than I was.
This brings me back to the bit theatergoers are giving DTC flak about.
Toward the end of a fast-moving two hours of digs at Mayor Rawlings (depicted as a pizza-obsessed good ol' boy), Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (a chubby guy in drag tries out for the squad a la Chris Farley and the Chippendales) and how nobody gives a shit about Fair Park except when it's corny dog season, they do a sketch about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.
The scene is framed as a meeting to figure out what Dallas should do to commemorate the city's darkest hour and how the event can turn a profit. Actor Amanda Blake Davis plays the boss, with cast members Frank Caeti, Martin Garcia, Liz Mikel, Scott Morehead and John Sabine chiming in with ideas. (Sabine, by the way, grew up in Lake Highlands and graduated from Jesuit College Prep.)
As they pass on things like parades and candlelight vigils, Sabine keeps popping up to offer the most egregiously offensive suggestions. Like, using one of those wavy cloth figures that dance over car lots to greet people at the Grassy Knoll (which is, after all, "the only grassy knoll in the entire world"). Or selling "before and after" JFK bobble-heads. Or building a rollercoaster called "The Magic Bullet" that would take riders through the hole in a giant JFK head. Each time the guy spouts one of these tasteless notions, he's shouted down by the rest of the group, even when he insists "I've got a buddy" who can get the bobble-heads wholesale or build the thrill ride cheap.
Then Sabine, in character as the office boob, suggests flipping the event to celebrate Jack Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald instead. Shut up, say the others. OK, and I'm paraphrasing the material here, what if the only way to draw attention away from Dallas on November 22, 2013, was if another president was assassinated somewhere else? "I've got a buddy," says Sabine. And blackout.
Some comments on Dallas Theater Center's Facebook page have expressed mild outrage at both the jokes about JFK as a bobble-head and the suggestion of another presidential assassination. A spokesperson at the theater said a few patrons had called or emailed to ask that the bit be taken out of the show. A couple of local theater critics have typed their disapproval in their reviews, with one saying flatly, "It's not funny."
It's only not funny if you don't get the joke. Here are five reasons why this sketch, given the context of the show it's in, is hilarious...
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmast ... _jfk_b.php
“JFK” was based on “On the Trail of the Assassins,” by Jim Garrison, a former Orleans Parish district attorney who, in 1969, unsuccessfully prosecuted Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, for conspiring to kill the president. Kevin Costner played Garrison as an Atticus Finch type fighting an ingrained power structure, though Garrison is dismissed by many mainstream historians as a con man. In researching “JFK,” Stone also relied on L. Fletcher Prouty, a former Air Force colonel who, before becoming disillusioned with government, was chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy administration. Prouty never actually met Garrison except in Stone’s film, where he is Donald Sutherland’s Colonel X, who lays it all out for the D.A. in the shadow of the Washington Monument — how the military deliberately underprotected the president in Dallas, how defense contractors, big oil and bankers conspired with the military to make sure the president died because he didn’t intend to go to war in Vietnam. Costner is a kind of stand-in for Stone, soberly shaking his head as X says: “Does that sound like a bunch of coincidences to you, Mr. Garrison? Not for one moment.”
In advance of the film’s release, Stone pronounced “JFK” “a history lesson.” Prouty, however, who died in 2001, turned out to be extremely problematic. He had many theories in addition to his theories on Kennedy, including that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had foreknowledge of the Jonestown Massacre and that greedy oil barons invented the fiction that oil is made of decomposed fossils. And it was Prouty, Stone said, who turned him on to “The Report From Iron Mountain,” a 1967 document ostensibly written by a secret panel of military planners. The document is a favorite among conspiracy theorists, who, like Prouty, seem unaware that in 1972 the satirist Leonard Lewin admitted he wrote it. “I’ve acknowledged when I’ve made mistakes,” Stone said of the movie now. “There were a few mistakes, but nothing that changes the big story.”
It has been more than 20 years since Stone made “JFK,” a film that he now says should be looked at not as history but as a dramatized version of it — “the spirit of the truth.” “It’s called dramatic license,” Stone said about his approach in “JFK.”
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