11/22/63: Stephen King and JJ Abrams Lay an Egg

[Tracy Riddle]

It's fascinating how LNers psychoanalyze us by saying that we are trying to create order out of a random, meaningless event. I would say they're doing quite a job on their own minds by convincing themselves that JFK's death was no different than getting hit by a tornado.

Here's part of a time travel episode from the original TZ series. The main character goes back in time to try to kill Hitler, warn the people of Hiroshima, and prevent the Lusitania sinking - all too late. Finally he settles down in the late 19th century in a small town in the US, and gives a warning to a war-loving American that the coming century will be a bloody one.

[Albert Doyle]

The book is actually pretty good....IF you read it purely for the fun of reading fictional prose. But if you're looking for any "truth" in it, this excerpt from the book's afterword should tell you all you need to know:

You would expect no less from Stephen King. That's the problem is people tend to believe what such sources tell them.


I think Jim just automatically doesn't like anything that slashes Kennedy, and I don't blame him. The JFK Twilight Zone is actually very good. Only it places a gun in what is obviously Lee Harvey Oswald's hands in the 6th floor window.

[Don Jeffries]

King fans may use the excuse that this is mere science fiction, but his incendiary comments about the case reveal just how committed he is to the official fairy tale. 98-99% certain that Oswald was guilty? King has called the long dead Oswald childish names in public, like the authoritarian social justice warrior he undoubtedly is. He even passed along some psychological nonsense about Marguerite examining young Oswald's genitals every night to see if he was developing normally.


The little bit about the surviving JFK putting people in camps was just an extension of King's antipathy for the Kennedys. Like so many leftists, King has admitted to never liking them. Isn't that strange? A native New Englander, loyal "liberal," and he just never liked the most prominent political family to emerge from his neck of the country. I bet he loves FDR and even LBJ, though.


James Franco made some predictable comments a few years back, in which he expressed his admiration for the Warren Report. Hollywood, like the rest of the mainstream media, is committed to these fairy tales. That's why, as time goes on, Oliver Stone looks even more like a true profile in courage.

[Albert Doyle]

King comes from the same New England background as some of the Ben Bradlee, Michael Paine, Eastern Establishment conspirators...



Shameful and pathetic.



I remember watching CNN when 'JFK' came out. They had a Congressman on saying "I don't know why Stone is doing this"...



.

[Nick Lombardi]

I found it tragic the way King resorted to the old "conspiracy theorists and their need to find order in what was almost a random event" line,
especially since his entire scope of knowledge about the assassination is four books, probably all of which were recommended to him by Gary Mack.

[Albert Doyle]

I agree that it is travesty when persons don't avail themselves to obvious evidence for political reasons...



Rolling Stone Magazine is owned by Time Warner. Rolling Stone​ was the journalism baby of the 60's revolution. Typical of America it has been sold out for money and is now subservient to the worst sort of conservative corporate interests that it originally fought. Most Americans are either too corrupted themselves or too stupid to notice.

[Jim DiEugenio]

It wasn't the portrayal of Kennedy in 11-22-63 that I thought was most objectionable.

If you read my review, the two things about the series that were really badly done were the plottiness in order to keep the story going, and the portrait of Oswald.

The worst example of the first was when Bill Turcotte sees his dead sister coming out of a church next to Walker's house. That was just so ridiculous it was risible. This prevents Franco from knowing if Oswald shot at Walker.

The portrait of Oswald was so obsolete that it was like riding in a Model T Ford. I mean after Melanson, Newman, Armstrong and Garrison's files? Please.

The chief writer, Bridget Carpenter, ended up disagreeing with this portrait. At the end she thought Oswald was CIA. But King had veto power over the series.

[Albert Doyle]

In the end, King could just be a cheap shit-heel serving his New England readers for more sales at the expense of JFK.


A celebrity supporter of the Reich assuring its brave new future.



Americans are schizophrenic. They support people who are clearly cowardly traitors...

[Tracy Riddle]

I really like King's work up until the late eighties, when I kind of stopped reading him. But he has obviously embraced our mainstream political history, and hasn't the time or inclination to look beyond it. It works well enough for him in exploring America's dark underbelly.

In The Stand, the anti-Christ character Randall Flagg has hung out with various notorious characters in America's past, including Oswald. It recalls the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil."

http://www.academia.edu/1415513/The_Walk..._The_Stand

Having had dealings with the likes of Charles Starkweather, Donald DeFreeze, and Lee Harvey Oswald, Flagg is framed as having shaped some of the darker moments in the nation's past.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Does anyone know what the budget for this mini series was?

Producer Tom Hanks has, almost single-handedly, exploded the budgets for these kind of mini series.

The Pacific, for example, was well into the nine figures. Something that was unheard of before Hanks started this all off with From the Earth to the Moon.