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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
A moviegoer with his own role in history looks at how fact-based films interpret reality.
Jan 19, 2001 | Historians, practitioners of a profession that has been interpreting the truth since the days of Herodotus, are the first to be offended when a filmmaker interprets the truth for dramatic purposes. Then the journalists chime in, followed by those directly involved in the historical events in question, particularly when they are not hired as consultants on the film. Only occasionally do film critics enter the verisimilitude fray, but they may take a stance if there is a sizable complaining chorus of historians or journalists or participants.
So far, Kevin Costner's new film, "Thirteen Days," which portrays President Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, has escaped the harsh words of such cinema truth seekers. Besides a glitch on some ads (which featured small photos of planes that were not in service at the time), no historian has contested its history, and no journalist has questioned the account (although Kennedy biographer Richard Reeves has raised appropriate questions). And several of the participants have viewed the film and enjoyed it. But frankly, I'm still holding my breath, because all reality-based films are vulnerable to attacks -- and they can be murderous.
When I first read that Costner was playing Kenny O'Donnell, a Kennedy White House aide, and that the story of the missile crisis would be told from O'Donnell's point of view, I happened to be reading the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, "The Dark Side of Camelot." Hersh's less-than-flattering look at JFK casts ugly shadows on O'Donnell.
Based on interviews with Secret Service agents who had never previously spoken publicly, Hersh presents O'Donnell as one of the president's procurers of women and gratuitously mentions O'Donnell "having a three-way sexual encounter" with "two young women on the White House staff." Hersh also raises a charge against O'Donnell made by Paul Corbin, a Kennedy campaign aide who purportedly developed evidence that O'Donnell skimmed $50,000 in campaign funds.
In Hersh's account, Corbin's information was given to Attorney General Robert Kennedy on the morning that JFK departed for Dallas, never to return. Although Corbin also informed journalist and presidential confidant Charles Bartlett of the charges, the matter died with the president. Hersh speculates that the campaign money may have, in fact, gone to JFK himself, who needed cash to keep one or more lady friends quiet.
Because JFK's extramarital activities had nothing to do with the Cuban missile problem, I was certain that this information would (and should) be ignored in "Thirteen Days." It is. But I was not sure if the film could simply ignore Hersh's version of the events: that the crisis was anything but a triumph of Kennedy brinkmanship; that it was instead a way to mute criticism of the Kennedy administration's failed Bay of Pigs invasion, which still remained a haunting political problem for the forthcoming off-year congressional elections.
Basically, "Thirteen Days" accepts much of the myth. Yet Hersh believes that "Jack Kennedy's deceits about his personal life ... pale beside the false legacy he and his brother manufactured in the days and weeks after the missile crisis" -- that legacy being "that the valiant young president had won the missile crisis, by negotiating from strength." Hersh makes a strong case that the legacy is bogus and that it has haunted American policymakers in the years since, making it difficult for Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to compromise and end the war in Vietnam.
"Thirteen Days" ignores the facts raised in "The Dark Side of Camelot." Hersh believes that Kennedy's ongoing efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro explain why the dictator embraced Moscow, a fact unknown to the American people at the time. In Hersh's timeline, the CIA began warning the president of Russian missiles in Cuba as early as Aug. 22, 1962 -- weeks before the fateful day of Oct. 16, as the myth would have it, when the U2 spy photographs first became available. The film fudges this problem by ignoring it. With these and many other facts Hersh has the Kennedy brothers dangerously escalating the confrontation with the Soviets for their own political gain.
View the "13 Days" movie trailer