John F. Kennedy assassination in popular culture
Encyclopedia
The assassination of John F. Kennedy
has been referenced or recreated in popular culture numerous times.
Sherlock Holmes in Dallas (Dodd, Mead 1980) by Edmund Aubrey, brings the renowned consulting detective (who, by 1963, would have been approximately 115 years old) out of his Sussex retirement to investigate the Kennedy assassination.
In the long narrative poem Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963 (Seraphim Editions, 1995-ISBN 0-9699639-0-4) by Steven McCabe, Earp received a prophecy from a prisoner foretelling the invention of television and the death of President Kennedy. Earp, motivated by this prophecy, time-traveled to Dallas to prevent Kennedy's assassination.
Other filmmakers have drawn inspiration from the assassination, rather than portraying it directly:
In 1975, a San Francisco-based group of artists called Ant Farm
reenacted the Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza, and documented it in a video called The Eternal Frame
. Two years later, the assassination was re-enacted again as part of the ABC television movie The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, looking at what might have happened had Jack Ruby
not prevented Oswald from going to court. The 1983 NBC
TV mini series Kennedy showed the assassination from Jackie Kennedy's perspective.
In the TV series Seinfeld
, episode "The Boyfriend, Part 1
" (1992), a ballpark spitting incident is revisited, and a "second spitter" theory, à la the second gunman theory, is discussed, in a parody
of the final courtroom scene in JFK. In another episode, Elaine said that a relative worked in the book depository building with Lee Harvey Oswald. Elaine said that when her relative told Oswald that Kennedy had been shot, Oswald "winked at him and said 'I'm gonna catch a movie'".
The 2002 film Interview With the Assassin
presents the assassination and resultant conspiracy theories in mock documentary
fashion, with a terminally-ill former Marine named Walter Ohlinger who claims that he was the second gunman behind the fence on the grassy knoll. In the same year, in Bubba Ho-tep
, Ossie Davis
played an assassination-obsessed character with a scale model of Dealey Plaza, and photos of the various players on his wall.
The award-winning Irish
short film My Dinner With Oswald
, directed by Paul Duane
and written by Donald Clarke
, focuses on a re-creation of the assassination at a Dublin dinner party.
In the Comedy Central
series Strangers with Candy
, Stephen Colbert
's character asserts that "Fidel Castro impersonated Marilyn Monroe and gave President Kennedy a case of syphilis so severe that eventually it blew the back of his head off."
The "Sibling Rivalry
" episode of Family Guy
showed a cutaway gag after a character had been called a bad marksman "nearly as bad as Lee Harvey Oswald." In the scene, Oswald is shown cheering for Kennedy from the infamous window. However, upon seeing a pedestrian near Kennedy pulling out a gun, he panics, pulls out his sniper rifle and takes aim to try to bring down the "assassin". The gag ends before he fires, implying that he was not successful and consequently was blamed for the assassination.
In "A Hero Sits Next Door", Peter is trying to stop a bank robbery. The police outside try to "take him out" but Lois bumps into the gun and the gun fires into the distance. A boy walks out of a store telling all his friends about his new John F. Kennedy Pez dispenser. The stray bullet hits the JFK Pez dispenser in the face. The boy says, "oh well, at least I still have my Bobby Kennedy Pez dispenser." Bobby was assassinated five years later.
The MTV
animated series Clone High
revolves around a high school inhabited by teenage clones of major historical figures, JFK is one of the main characters. There is also a fast food/smoothie politically-themed restaurant called the Grassy Knoll; on the roof of the establishment there is the presidential limousine
with a dummy of Kennedy hanging out of the limo and the a flagstaff with the American flag at half-mast. JFK appears to be afraid of sudden, abrupt movements as he is constantly ducks and is scared of handgun gestures
.
In the 1994
movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
, the main character Ace
says to Lt. Einhorn, "I came to confess. I was the second gunman on the grassy knoll", after she asks him what he is doing at the police station.
In the film Zoolander
, one of the characters states that male models were responsible for virtually all political assassinations, including that of President Kennedy. When told that Oswald was not a model, the original character states that the shooters from the grassy knoll were.
The third Prehysteria film has a mini-golf proprietor reviewing his tape of a crucial missed putt and realizing that he wasn't distracted by an actual bird chirp, but a spectator standing on a "grassy knoll" blowing a bird call, prompting him to exclaim "It's a conspiracy!"
There is also a skit on the show Whitest Kids U Know
about Lee Harvey Oswald preparing to shoot Kennedy. It depicts a younger Oswald, and Kennedy's vice-president, Lyndon B. Johnson, assisting in the assassination. Oswald begins singing a song, which ends when Kennedy is shot by someone else.
In the television series Red Dwarf
, the characters create an alternate time line when they accidentally knock Lee Harvey Oswald out of the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository, creating an alternate timeline where Kennedy is impeached in 1965 for sharing a mistress with a mafia boss, J. Edgar Hoover is blackmailed into running for President by the mob and allows Russia to establish nuclear missiles in Cuba, the west coast is virtually abandoned as the population flees, and the USSR win the space race as the US were traumatised by the impeachment. Fearing the repercussions of this timeline- but unwilling to kill Kennedy themselves-, the characters convince the alternate John F. Kennedy to go back in time and shoot his past self from the grassy knoll, arguing that this action will restore his historical position as a liberal icon.
On the stop-motion animated parody show Robot Chicken
, a series of animals were shown being "Nature's Assassin", "Nature's Asshole" and "Nature's Retard". The "Assassin" is the mongoose, who is shown sneaking through a forest before coming to rest on the much disputed grassy knoll and then pulling out a sniper rifle
. The mongoose aims the rifle at Kennedy's head and fires. Immediately afterward, a newspaper is shown announcing Lee Harvey Oswald as being the assassin.
, a Dallas hairdresser hitches a ride with a man & his daughter to attend the funeral. It is noted that the role of Jacqueline Kennedy is played by Rhoda Griffis
, and is regarded as her breakout role.
In The Rock (1996)
, a mysterious rogue British secret agent, grateful for help with disappearing, tells the protagonist of a microfilm database full of political secrets of the last 30 years. The last line of the movie is: Honey, uh, you wanna know who really killed JFK? The agent, played by Sean Connery, was allegedly imprisoned in Alcatraz for stealing the microfilm information without charge or trial. However, Alcatraz was closed in 1962 by order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
, a year before the Kennedy assassination.
The JFK assassination was featured in the 1993 thriller film In the Line of Fire
, starring Clint Eastwood
. Set in present day, the film is about a psychopath who plans to assassinate the current President of the United States. Eastwood's character is Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, the last remaining active agent who was on duty in November 1963, guarding Kennedy in Dallas. Horrigan is consumed with guilt over his failure to react quickly enough to the first shot in Dallas. After learning of the psychopath's assassination threat, Horrigan asks to be assigned directly to the President, determined not to fail a second time. (A close-up of Ike Altgens
' famous photograph is shown in the film, digitally altered to show a young Eastwood riding on the running board of the Secret Service follow-up car in Dealey Plaza.)
The Kennedy assassination was mentioned twice in the 2007 movie Shooter, which revolves around a conspiracy to kill an Ethiopian archbishop and frame protagonist Bob Lee Swagger
for the murder. The first reference, to how Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald
, was apropos of tying up loose ends in a conspiracy. The second reference occurred when Swagger and his partner Nicholas Memphis visited a weapons expert in Tennessee. This expert said that the shooter responsible for the assassination was probably already dead, since "this is how a conspiracy works". As an example, he claimed that the men on the grassy knoll were dead within three hours of JFK's assassination. These men were supposedly buried in anonymous graves in the desert outside of Terlingua
. When Memphis expressed his doubts about this claim, the man replied that he "still got the shovel" used to bury them.
One episode of Metalocalypse
finds members of Dethklok
presenting the convertible in which Kennedy was murdered as a birthday gift to Murderface.
The film Watchmen
, based on the graphic novel, portrays The Comedian, one of the members of the Watchman, as Kennedy's assassin; he's shown firing the fatal headshot from the grassy knoll.
In the Fox television program Bones
, the team at the Jeffersonian is asked by the United States Secret Service
to exhume Kennedy's remains and discover how he actually died. Agent Seely Booth is especially interested in the case, because his ancestor was John Wilkes Booth
—the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln
.
The X-Files episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
" (1996) places a young cigarette smoking man
as the assassin, shooting from a sewer drain located near the grassy knoll after setting up Oswald as his patsy.
In the Doctor Who
episode Rose
, Clive Finch's website includes a picture showing the Ninth Doctor
present at the Kennedy assassination (the photo, which shows him just seconds before the shots were fired, is a digitally altered version of a real photograph).
's The Number of the Beast
, which takes place across numerous alternate universes, the protagonist is asked to identify his timeline, which he does by naming the U.S. Presidents during his lifetime: "Woodrow Wilson—I was named for him—Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy." Upon which another character replies: "Which brings us to 1984, right?" This implies that in Wilson's timeline, the assassination didn't happen.
J. G. Ballard
wrote a 1967 short-short story entitled "The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy considered as a downhill motor race
."
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
by Robert Shea
and Robert Anton Wilson
depicts the assassination scene, with several would-be assassins trying to kill Kennedy simultaneously.
In Mark Winegardner
's The Godfather's Revenge
, the assassination of fictional President James Kavanaugh Shea is a parody of the assassination of J.F.K.
In the graphic novel
Watchmen
by Alan Moore
, which portrays an alternate history of America, the character of The Comedian is asked at a dinner party honoring President
Richard Nixon
if he is clean in relation to the murder of Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein
. He replies, "Yeah, I'm clean. Just don't ask me where I was when JFK died." Throughout the novel, The Comedian engaged in black ops
work for Nixon, yet The Comedian's involvement in the assassination is only implied.
Stephen King
's novel 11/22/63
, published in 2011, tells about a time traveler trying to stop the assaisantion, therby encountering the dilemma of changing history's course.
stories in science fiction
film, television and literature.
Profile in Silver
, a 1985 episode of the second Twilight Zone
series, features a time traveler from 2172 who is sent to record the assassination, but ends up intentionally preventing it. The interference sets up a chain of events culminating in a nuclear war that destroys the human race. The timeline is ultimately restored when the traveller takes Kennedy's place in the motorcade, while the president is transported to 2172 to take the time traveller's place.
The 1990 film Running Against Time starred Robert Hays
and Catherine Hicks
as time travelers unsuccessfully attempting to prevent the tragedy, on a theory that the Vietnam War would not have happened had Kennedy lived. In a key scene, Hays is accused of the assassination in place of Oswald.
"Lee Harvey Oswald", the 1992 season opener for the TV series Quantum Leap, finds Scott Bakula
's time-hopping character Sam Beckett leaping into Oswald's body. In the series, Sam's consciousness replaces that of various people from his own lifetime, remaining in each person until he corrects something "wrong" in that person's life or times. Shifting back and forth between earlier points in the shooter's life, Sam's guide Al Calavicci
concludes that Sam is there to uncover the conspiracy. Unfortunately, Sam begins to assume the personality of the assassin, gradually finding himself powerless to change anything. No proof of conspiracy is discovered. At the critical moment, Al breaks through to Sam, prompting him to leap into Secret Service Agent Clint Hill
. Hill attempts to reach the car before the shots, but fails to prevent Kennedy's death. In the final exchange, Al reveals that they have saved one life—that of Jackie Kennedy, whom Oswald had killed along with the President in the original timeline. This episode was written by series creator Donald P. Bellisario, in response to the Oliver Stone film JFK. Bellisario did not believe in conspiracy, and throughout the episode he interweaved supporting evidence from the Warren Commission Report and Volumes, while having Al speculate that people find it comfortable to believe in a conspiracy, because the implication suggests that if one man can kill the President, nobody is safe.
Tikka to Ride
, a 1997 episode of the science-fiction comedy series Red Dwarf
, played the time travel paradox for laughs. Craig Charles
, as Dave Lister, persuades the rest of the crew to go back in time to order some curry and ends up in the Texas School Book Depository. Lister literally bumps into Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Toby Aspin), causing Oswald to fall out the sixth-floor window before he can fire his third shot and kill the President. In the resulting timeline, Kennedy is impeached in 1964 for sharing a mistress with a Mafia boss, J. Edgar Hoover
is blackmailed into running for President by the Mob
, and Russia is allowed to install nuclear missiles on Cuba in exchange for Mafia cocaine trafficking being permitted. On a more long-term note, the crews' ship is erased from existence as Kennedy's impeachment traumatises America, allowing the USSR to win the Space Race
. After attempting to permit the assassination to take place by forcing Oswald up to the sixth floor rather than the fifth, Oswald merely wounds Kennedy, due to the steep trajectory of his shot. The crew is forced to recruit the alternate Kennedy to assassinate his past self—none of the crew being willing to kill Kennedy themselves—thus restoring Kennedy's position in history.
In the 2002 film Timequest
, a time-traveler prevents Kennedy's assassination and history takes an alternate course, including the birth of a second son, James Kennedy, who was conceived on the night of November 22, 1963 when Kennedy and his wife return from Dallas.
In Stephen Baxter
's novel Voyage (1996), the Dallas assassination attempt only succeeds in crippling Kennedy, but kills Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the First Lady, instead. Kennedy is re-elected in 1964, however, and commits the United States to landing a crewed vessel on Mars
, which occurs in 1986. However, this novel does not deal primarily with the assassination attempt, except as a backdrop to the crewed Mars mission that it makes possible and an alternate-universe US space program that results from Kennedy's longevity in this world.
In the 2006 novel Prologue (Cold Tree Press 2006 - AmazonKindle 2010) the usual time-travel scenario is inverted. Author Greg Ahlgren devises an alternative future wherein Kennedy was not assassinated, and the Soviet Union won the Cold War. Pursued by Soviet agents, the American time-traveling protagonists go back to the early 1960s to change history, and end up in Dallas in November 1963.
In the short story collection Alternate Kennedys, Kennedy's father exercised control over his boys, and first put Kennedy's older brother up for the Presidency in 1952, then yanked him before he could seek a second term. The older brother ended up becoming John's assassin in 1963.
An early story idea for the sequel
to Star Trek: The Motion Picture
(which ultimately became Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
), written by Gene Roddenberry
, involved the Kennedy assassination, as a historical event which Kirk
and Spock
must utilize time travel
in order to travel back in time to ensure the occurrence of. The story idea was dismissed as it was thought to have the potential to alienate American audiences, as it was based on the premise that the assassination was "supposed to happen", rather than the storyline revisionistically preventing it from happening.
Don DeLillo's 1988 novel Libra focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. In DeLillo's 1997 novel, Underworld, characters watch the Zapruder film at a dinner party.
The Broadway musical Assassins
climaxes as the ghosts of John Wilkes Booth
, Leon Czolgosz
, Charles Guiteau
, and other "would be" assassins appear before a suicidally depressed Lee Harvey Oswald, and convince him that the only way for him to truly connect with his country is to share his pain and disillusionment with it. The best way to accomplish this, they argue, is for him to shoot the president.
The Kennedy assassination has been the subject of two music videos, Ministry
's "Reload"; Marilyn Manson
's "Coma White" (with Manson as JFK), and the album cover for The Misfits' album "Bullet" (depicting an image of the president with his head blown apart).
The Beach Boys song The Warmth of the Sun
was written in the aftermath of the assassination, on the evening of November 22, 1963.
The Simon & Garfunkel song The Sound of Silence
was written in the aftermath of the assassination.
The Phil Ochs
song "The Crucifixion
" (1966) paints Kennedy as a Christ
-like figure and draws parallels between their lives and deaths.
The Human League song "Seconds" from the 1981 Dare
album deals directly with the Kennedy assassination and is directed at Lee Harvey Oswald. When playing live, the group regularly projected slides onto the background of the stage, and would play this song in front of images of Kennedy and the assassination in Dallas.
"Sleeping In" by The Postal Service
has the lyrics "Where there was never any mystery of who shot John F. Kennedy/It was just a man with something to prove/Slightly bored and severely confused/He steadied his rifle with his target in the center/And became famous on that day in November."
"Tomorrow, Wendy" by Concrete Blonde
has the lyrics "Underneath the chilly gray November sky/We can make believe that Kennedy is still alive and/We're shooting for the moon and smiling Jackie driving by..."
Saxon
described the assassination from the viewpoint of Lee Harvey Oswald in their song "Dallas 1 PM", released on the album "Strong Arm of the Law
" in 1980.
Mob Rules
have recorded an 18-minute song about the assassination, called "The Oswald File (Ethnolution Part II - A Matter Of Unnecessary Doubt)". It was released on their 2009 album Radical Peace.
, which simulates the cause-and-effects of changing history through time-travel, features Kennedy's assassination as a Linchpin card. When flipped (and Kennedy is injured rather than killed), it affects three later Ripple Points: the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy
and MLK
(1968), the Apollo 11 moon landing
(1969), and Richard Nixon's resignation (1974).
In the free MMORPG
Kingdom of Loathing
video game there is a location called "Degrassi Knoll"; the "Knoll Gnolls" who inhabit it are led by a "Mayor Zapruder".
In DC Comics' 100 bullets
, a theory is put forward that the shooter on the grassy knoll used the eponymous 100 bullets to kill the president. While no names are mentioned, there is a clear implication that the shooter was baseball player Joe DiMaggio
. DiMaggio wanted to kill Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy ordering the murder of DiMaggio's ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, because she wanted to go public about her love affair with the President. In the story, it appears DiMaggio was not part of any conspiracy plans; it was sheer chance he chose that day and place to kill Kennedy.
In 2004, the video game JFK Reloaded was released, which puts the player in the Texas Book Depository, where he or she attempts to assassinate the president. The game was made in an effort to prove that it was entirely possible for Oswald to have done the shooting by himself.
Kennedy appears as a character in Call of Duty: Black Ops
. In a cinematic cutscene he assigns the player character, Alex Mason, to undertake a sabotage mission at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. During this sequence Mason has a hallucination of pointing a pistol at Kennedy's head. Later in the game it's revealed that Mason was brainwashed by the KGB to assassinate Kennedy (it's also implied that Lee Harvey Oswald, who Mason mentions as being "compromised", was also a sleeper agent) and it's heavily implied that Mason did carry out his assignment and killed Kennedy, becoming the legendary second gunman on the grassy knoll.
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
has been referenced or recreated in popular culture numerous times.
Fictional detectives investigating the assassination
The novel Gideon's March by J. J. Marric, published in 1962 by Hodder and Stoughton in London, gives an eerily prescient look at the Kennedy assassination. Inspector George Gideon learns of a plot to assassinate President Kennedy during a state visit to London. The assassination is to take place during a parade, by means of a bomb; the assassin is a Southern bigot who hates the President for his Roman Catholic faith and his civil-rights initiatives. The assassin is given the distinctly Irish name of "O'Hara". The novel's publication, a year before the actual assassination, is reminiscent of Morgan Robertson's 1898 novel Futility, which depicted the sinking of a massive ocean liner called "Titan" fourteen years before the sinking of the Titanic.Sherlock Holmes in Dallas (Dodd, Mead 1980) by Edmund Aubrey, brings the renowned consulting detective (who, by 1963, would have been approximately 115 years old) out of his Sussex retirement to investigate the Kennedy assassination.
In the long narrative poem Wyatt Earp in Dallas: 1963 (Seraphim Editions, 1995-ISBN 0-9699639-0-4) by Steven McCabe, Earp received a prophecy from a prisoner foretelling the invention of television and the death of President Kennedy. Earp, motivated by this prophecy, time-traveled to Dallas to prevent Kennedy's assassination.
Television and film portrayals
The assassination and the subsequent conspiracy theories surrounding his death have been the topic for many films, including:- the 1966 Emile de AntonioEmile de AntonioEmile de Antonio was a director and producer of documentary films, usually detailing political or social events circa 1960s–1980s...
documentary Rush to JudgmentRush to JudgmentRush to Judgment is a book by American lawyer Mark Lane. It is about the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and takes issue with the conclusions of the Warren Commission, suggesting there was a conspiracy to assassinate John F...
, based on Mark LaneMark Lane (author)Mark Lane is an American lawyer who has written many books, including Rush to Judgment, one of two major books published in the immediate wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination that questioned the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Another book, Plausible Denial, published in 1991, continued...
's book; - David MillerDavid Miller (director)David Miller was an American movie director who directed such varied films as Billy the Kid with Robert Taylor and Brian Donlevy, Flying Tigers with John Wayne, and Love Happy with the Marx Brothers.-Filmography:* Bittersweet Love * Executive Action * Hail, Hero! * Hammerhead...
's 1973 Executive Action; - Nigel Turner's 1988, 1991, 1995 and 2003 continuing documentary The Men Who Killed KennedyThe Men Who Killed KennedyThe Men Who Killed Kennedy is a 9-part video documentary series by Nigel Turner about the John F. Kennedy assassination. The series, which related various conspiracy theories, was extensively challenged on factual grounds....
. - Oliver StoneOliver StoneWilliam Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
's 1991 JFKJFK (film)JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison .Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay...
, based in part upon the book On the Trail of the AssassinsOn the Trail of the AssassinsOn the Trail of the Assassins is a 1988 book by Jim Garrison, detailing his role in indicting businessman Clay Shaw for conspiracy to kill U.S. President John F. Kennedy, therefore holding the only trial held for Kennedy's murder....
by former Orleans Parish (LouisianaLouisianaLouisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
) District Attorney Jim GarrisonJim GarrisonEarling Carothers "Jim" Garrison — who changed his first name to Jim in the early 1960s — was the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana from 1962 to 1973. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best known for his investigations into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy...
. - The Rat PackThe Rat Pack (film)The Rat Pack is a 1998 HBO TV movie about the Rat Pack. The movie stars Ray Liotta as Frank Sinatra, Joe Mantegna as Dean Martin, Don Cheadle as Sammy Davis, Jr., and Angus Macfadyen as Peter Lawford....
, a 1998 HBO TV film about the group of entertainers giving their contribution to Kennedy's election in 1960. He was portrayed by William PetersenWilliam PetersenWilliam Louis Petersen is an American actor and producer, best known for playing Dr. Gilbert "Gil" Grissom on the hit CBS series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. He portrayed President John F...
.
Other filmmakers have drawn inspiration from the assassination, rather than portraying it directly:
- The 19741974 in filmThe year 1974 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 7 - Blazing Saddles is released in the USA.*August 7 - Peter Wolf, lead singer of The J...
film The Parallax ViewThe Parallax ViewThe Parallax View is a 1974 American thriller film directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, Hume Cronyn and William Daniels. The film was adapted by David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr and an uncredited Robert Towne from the 1970 novel by Loren Singer...
is about a senator who is assassinated, with the assassin himself dying violently quickly thereafter. The protagonist, an investigative reporter played by Warren BeattyWarren BeattyWarren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
, is on the verge of solving the mystery when another senator is murdered. This time, he gets blamed for the murder, also posthumously. - The 19791979 in filmThe year 1979 in film involved some significant events.- Major events :* March 5 - Production begins on Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.* May 25 - Alien, a landmark of the science fiction genre, is released....
French film I comme IcareI as in IcarusI as in Icarus is a 1979 French thriller film directed by Henri Verneuil.-Selected cast:*Yves Montand as Henri Volney*Michel Etcheverry as Frédéric Heiniger*Roger Planchon as Prof...
takes place in a fictional Western country, and tells the story of a presidential assassination from the viewpoint of one of the dissenting members of a Presidential committee similar to the real-world Warren CommissionWarren CommissionThe President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
. He then starts his own investigation. The title is from the Greek myth about IcarusIcarus-Space and astronomy:* Icarus , on the Moon* Icarus , a planetary science journal* 1566 Icarus, an asteroid* IKAROS, a interplanetary unmanned spacecraft...
, who flies too close to the sun. The investigator himself is killed when he comes too close to the truth. - In the 1979 film Winter KillsWinter KillsWinter Kills is a black comic novel exploring the assassination of a U.S. President. The novel parallels the real life assassination of John F. Kennedy and the various conspiracy theories that surround the event.-Plot summary:...
, U.S. President Timothy Kegan is shot at Hunt Plaza in Philadelphia. The ensuing Presidential commission condemns a lone gunman as the killer. The film starts years later, when Kegan's half-brother, Nick, witnesses the death-bed confession of a man claiming to have been part of the "hit squad".
In 1975, a San Francisco-based group of artists called Ant Farm
Ant Farm (group)
Ant Farm was an avant-garde architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design practice, founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels.-The group:...
reenacted the Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza, and documented it in a video called The Eternal Frame
The Eternal Frame
"The Eternal Frame" is a video piece documenting the reenactment of the John F. Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza in a collaboration between two San Francisco-based artist collectives: T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm...
. Two years later, the assassination was re-enacted again as part of the ABC television movie The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, looking at what might have happened had Jack Ruby
Jack Ruby
Jacob Leon Rubenstein , who legally changed his name to Jack Leon Ruby in 1947, was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby, who was originally from Chicago, Illinois, was then a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas...
not prevented Oswald from going to court. The 1983 NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
TV mini series Kennedy showed the assassination from Jackie Kennedy's perspective.
In comedies
After thirty years, JFK assassination theories could be treated humorously.In the TV series Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
, episode "The Boyfriend, Part 1
The Boyfriend, Part 1
"The Boyfriend" is a two part episode of the sitcom Seinfeld. It makes up the 35th and 36th episodes of the show, and 17th and 18th episodes of the show's third season. It first aired on February 12, 1992. In the 'extras' section of the Season 3 DVD, Jerry Seinfeld says it is his favorite episode...
" (1992), a ballpark spitting incident is revisited, and a "second spitter" theory, à la the second gunman theory, is discussed, in a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the final courtroom scene in JFK. In another episode, Elaine said that a relative worked in the book depository building with Lee Harvey Oswald. Elaine said that when her relative told Oswald that Kennedy had been shot, Oswald "winked at him and said 'I'm gonna catch a movie'".
The 2002 film Interview With the Assassin
Interview with the Assassin
Interview with the Assassin is a 2002 drama/"mockumentary" starring Raymond J. Barry and Dylan Haggerty.-Plot:An unemployed cameraman, Ron Kobeleski , is asked by his reclusive neighbor, a retired Marine named Walter Ohlinger who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, to document a startling...
presents the assassination and resultant conspiracy theories in mock documentary
Mockumentary
A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
fashion, with a terminally-ill former Marine named Walter Ohlinger who claims that he was the second gunman behind the fence on the grassy knoll. In the same year, in Bubba Ho-tep
Bubba Ho-tep
Bubba Ho-tep is a 2002 American comedy horror drama film starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley — now a resident in a nursing home. The film also stars Ossie Davis as Jack, a black man who claims to be John F. Kennedy, explaining that he was patched up after the assassination, dyed black,...
, Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis was an American film actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist.-Early years:...
played an assassination-obsessed character with a scale model of Dealey Plaza, and photos of the various players on his wall.
The award-winning Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
short film My Dinner With Oswald
My Dinner with Oswald
My Dinner with Oswald is a short Irish film, directed by Paul Duane and written by Donald Clarke, in which a group of eccentrics recreate the assassination of John F Kennedy at a middle-class dinner party. The film ends with the most fanatical of the diners spotting a solution to the mystery,...
, directed by Paul Duane
Paul Duane
-Career:Has directed television programmes including:*Ballykissangel*Casualty*The Royal*Small Potatoes*Footballer's WivesHe has also made several short films including LSD 73!, based on an original script by the Irish novelist Patrick McCabe. More recently he co-created the ITV series Secret Diary...
and written by Donald Clarke
Donald Clarke
Donald Clarke may refer to:* Donald Clarke , writer on music* Don Clarke, New Zealand rugby union player* Donald C. Clarke, US law professor...
, focuses on a re-creation of the assassination at a Dublin dinner party.
In the Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
series Strangers with Candy
Strangers with Candy
Strangers with Candy is a television series produced by Comedy Central. It first aired on April 7, 1999, and concluded its third and final season on October 2, 2000. Its timeslot was Sundays at 10 p.m....
, Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
's character asserts that "Fidel Castro impersonated Marilyn Monroe and gave President Kennedy a case of syphilis so severe that eventually it blew the back of his head off."
The "Sibling Rivalry
Sibling Rivalry (Family Guy)
"Sibling Rivalry" is the thirtieth episode of the fourth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on March 26, 2006. The episode follows Stewie as he battles with his half-brother, Bertram , who is born to two lesbians after Peter donates sperm...
" episode of Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
showed a cutaway gag after a character had been called a bad marksman "nearly as bad as Lee Harvey Oswald." In the scene, Oswald is shown cheering for Kennedy from the infamous window. However, upon seeing a pedestrian near Kennedy pulling out a gun, he panics, pulls out his sniper rifle and takes aim to try to bring down the "assassin". The gag ends before he fires, implying that he was not successful and consequently was blamed for the assassination.
In "A Hero Sits Next Door", Peter is trying to stop a bank robbery. The police outside try to "take him out" but Lois bumps into the gun and the gun fires into the distance. A boy walks out of a store telling all his friends about his new John F. Kennedy Pez dispenser. The stray bullet hits the JFK Pez dispenser in the face. The boy says, "oh well, at least I still have my Bobby Kennedy Pez dispenser." Bobby was assassinated five years later.
The MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
animated series Clone High
Clone High
Clone High is a Canadian-American animated television series that aired for one season on MTV and Teletoon....
revolves around a high school inhabited by teenage clones of major historical figures, JFK is one of the main characters. There is also a fast food/smoothie politically-themed restaurant called the Grassy Knoll; on the roof of the establishment there is the presidential limousine
Presidential limousine
The presidential state car is the official state car used by the President of the United States. A variety of vehicles have both officially and unofficially been acknowledged as the presidential vehicle. Since the late 1930s, the U.S...
with a dummy of Kennedy hanging out of the limo and the a flagstaff with the American flag at half-mast. JFK appears to be afraid of sudden, abrupt movements as he is constantly ducks and is scared of handgun gestures
Finger gun
The finger gun is a hand gesture in which the subject uses their hand to mimic a handgun, raising their thumb above their fist to act as a hammer, and one or two fingers extended perpendicular to it acting as a barrel...
.
In the 1994
1994 in film
1994 was a significant year in film.The top grosser worldwide was The Lion King, which to date stands as the highest-grossing traditionally-animated film of all time...
movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective is a 1994 American comedy film directed by Tom Shadyac and starring Jim Carrey. It co-stars Courteney Cox, Tone Loc, Sean Young and former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino....
, the main character Ace
Ace Ventura
Ace Ventura is a fictional character, created by screenwriters Jack Bernstein, Tom Shadyac and Steve Oedekerk. Ace was played by Jim Carrey in the films He was voiced by Michael Daingerfield in the animated television series.-Biography:Ace is a...
says to Lt. Einhorn, "I came to confess. I was the second gunman on the grassy knoll", after she asks him what he is doing at the police station.
In the film Zoolander
Zoolander
Zoolander is a 2001 American satirical comedy film directed by and starring Ben Stiller. The film contains elements from a pair of short films directed by Russell Bates and written by Drake Sather and Stiller for the VH1 Fashion Awards television specials in 1996 and 1997. The short films and the...
, one of the characters states that male models were responsible for virtually all political assassinations, including that of President Kennedy. When told that Oswald was not a model, the original character states that the shooters from the grassy knoll were.
The third Prehysteria film has a mini-golf proprietor reviewing his tape of a crucial missed putt and realizing that he wasn't distracted by an actual bird chirp, but a spectator standing on a "grassy knoll" blowing a bird call, prompting him to exclaim "It's a conspiracy!"
There is also a skit on the show Whitest Kids U Know
Whitest Kids U Know
The Whitest Kids U' Know is an American sketch comedy troupe and television program of the same name. The group consists of Trevor Moore, Sam Brown, Zach Cregger, Timmy Williams and Darren Trumeter, though other actors occasionally appear in their sketches. They were accepted into the HBO U.S...
about Lee Harvey Oswald preparing to shoot Kennedy. It depicts a younger Oswald, and Kennedy's vice-president, Lyndon B. Johnson, assisting in the assassination. Oswald begins singing a song, which ends when Kennedy is shot by someone else.
In the television series Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
, the characters create an alternate time line when they accidentally knock Lee Harvey Oswald out of the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository, creating an alternate timeline where Kennedy is impeached in 1965 for sharing a mistress with a mafia boss, J. Edgar Hoover is blackmailed into running for President by the mob and allows Russia to establish nuclear missiles in Cuba, the west coast is virtually abandoned as the population flees, and the USSR win the space race as the US were traumatised by the impeachment. Fearing the repercussions of this timeline- but unwilling to kill Kennedy themselves-, the characters convince the alternate John F. Kennedy to go back in time and shoot his past self from the grassy knoll, arguing that this action will restore his historical position as a liberal icon.
On the stop-motion animated parody show Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...
, a series of animals were shown being "Nature's Assassin", "Nature's Asshole" and "Nature's Retard". The "Assassin" is the mongoose, who is shown sneaking through a forest before coming to rest on the much disputed grassy knoll and then pulling out a sniper rifle
Sniper rifle
In military and law enforcement terminology, a sniper rifle is a precision-rifle used to ensure more accurate placement of bullets at longer ranges than other small arms. A typical sniper rifle is built for optimal levels of accuracy, fitted with a telescopic sight and chambered for a military...
. The mongoose aims the rifle at Kennedy's head and fires. Immediately afterward, a newspaper is shown announcing Lee Harvey Oswald as being the assassin.
In drama
The aftermath and John F. Kennedy's funeral is often portrayed as well. In the 1992 drama film Love FieldLove Field (film)
Love Field is a 1992 American independent drama film written by Don Roos and directed by Jonathan Kaplan, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Dennis Haysbert...
, a Dallas hairdresser hitches a ride with a man & his daughter to attend the funeral. It is noted that the role of Jacqueline Kennedy is played by Rhoda Griffis
Rhoda Griffis
Rhoda Griffis is an American actress, perhaps best known for playing supporting roles both in independent and mainstream films and television.- Life and career :...
, and is regarded as her breakout role.
In The Rock (1996)
The Rock (film)
The Rock is a 1996 action film that primarily takes place on Alcatraz Island and in the San Francisco Bay area. It was directed by Michael Bay and stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris. It was produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer and released through Hollywood Pictures. The film...
, a mysterious rogue British secret agent, grateful for help with disappearing, tells the protagonist of a microfilm database full of political secrets of the last 30 years. The last line of the movie is: Honey, uh, you wanna know who really killed JFK? The agent, played by Sean Connery, was allegedly imprisoned in Alcatraz for stealing the microfilm information without charge or trial. However, Alcatraz was closed in 1962 by order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
, a year before the Kennedy assassination.
The JFK assassination was featured in the 1993 thriller film In the Line of Fire
In the Line of Fire
In the Line of Fire is a 1993 American thriller film about a disillusioned and obsessed former CIA agent who attempts to assassinate the President of the United States and the Secret Service agent who tracks him...
, starring Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
. Set in present day, the film is about a psychopath who plans to assassinate the current President of the United States. Eastwood's character is Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, the last remaining active agent who was on duty in November 1963, guarding Kennedy in Dallas. Horrigan is consumed with guilt over his failure to react quickly enough to the first shot in Dallas. After learning of the psychopath's assassination threat, Horrigan asks to be assigned directly to the President, determined not to fail a second time. (A close-up of Ike Altgens
Ike Altgens
James William "Ike" Altgens was an American photographer and field reporter for the Associated Press. Based in Dallas, Texas, in 1963, Altgens took arguably the most famous photograph of the in-progress assassination of President John F...
' famous photograph is shown in the film, digitally altered to show a young Eastwood riding on the running board of the Secret Service follow-up car in Dealey Plaza.)
The Kennedy assassination was mentioned twice in the 2007 movie Shooter, which revolves around a conspiracy to kill an Ethiopian archbishop and frame protagonist Bob Lee Swagger
Bob Lee Swagger
Bob Lee Swagger is a fictional character created by Stephen Hunter. He is the protagonist in a series of books that relate his life after and during the Vietnam War—Point of Impact, Black Light, Time to Hunt, The 47th Samurai, Night of Thunder, I, Sniper and, most recently Dead Zero...
for the murder. The first reference, to how Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
, was apropos of tying up loose ends in a conspiracy. The second reference occurred when Swagger and his partner Nicholas Memphis visited a weapons expert in Tennessee. This expert said that the shooter responsible for the assassination was probably already dead, since "this is how a conspiracy works". As an example, he claimed that the men on the grassy knoll were dead within three hours of JFK's assassination. These men were supposedly buried in anonymous graves in the desert outside of Terlingua
Terlingua, Texas
Terlingua is a mining district in southwestern Brewster County, Texas, United States. It is located near the Rio Grande and the Texas villages of Lajitas and Study Butte, Texas,as well as the Mexican village of Santa Elena. The discovery of cinnabar, from which the metal mercury is extracted, in...
. When Memphis expressed his doubts about this claim, the man replied that he "still got the shovel" used to bury them.
One episode of Metalocalypse
Metalocalypse
Metalocalypse is an American animated television series, created by Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha, which premiered on August 6, 2006 on Adult Swim...
finds members of Dethklok
Dethklok
Dethklok is both a virtual band featured in the Adult Swim animated program Metalocalypse, as well as a real band created to perform the band's melodic death metal music in live shows. The band was created by Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha. The music heard on Metalocalypse is performed by Brendon...
presenting the convertible in which Kennedy was murdered as a birthday gift to Murderface.
The film Watchmen
Watchmen (film)
Watchmen is a 2009 superhero film directed by Zack Snyder and starring Malin Åkerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Patrick Wilson. It is an adaptation of the comic book of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons...
, based on the graphic novel, portrays The Comedian, one of the members of the Watchman, as Kennedy's assassin; he's shown firing the fatal headshot from the grassy knoll.
In the Fox television program Bones
Bones (TV series)
Bones is an American crime drama television series that premiered on the Fox Network on September 13, 2005. The show is based on forensic anthropology and forensic archaeology, with each episode focusing on an FBI case file concerning the mystery behind human remains brought by FBI Special Agent...
, the team at the Jeffersonian is asked by the United States Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
to exhume Kennedy's remains and discover how he actually died. Agent Seely Booth is especially interested in the case, because his ancestor was John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...
—the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
.
The X-Files episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man
"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" is a 1996 episode of The X-Files television series. It was the seventh episode broadcast in the show's fourth season...
" (1996) places a young cigarette smoking man
Cigarette Smoking Man
The Smoking Man is a fictional character and the antagonist on the American science fiction television series The X-Files. He serves as the arch-nemesis of FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder. Although his name is revealed to purportedly be C.G.B...
as the assassin, shooting from a sewer drain located near the grassy knoll after setting up Oswald as his patsy.
In the Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
episode Rose
Rose (Doctor Who)
"Rose" is the first episode of Series One of the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by show runner Russell T Davies and directed by Keith Boak, the episode was first broadcast on 26 March 2005....
, Clive Finch's website includes a picture showing the Ninth Doctor
Ninth Doctor
The Ninth Doctor is the ninth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He is played by Christopher Eccleston....
present at the Kennedy assassination (the photo, which shows him just seconds before the shots were fired, is a digitally altered version of a real photograph).
In books
In Robert A. HeinleinRobert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
's The Number of the Beast
The Number of the Beast (novel)
The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980. The first edition featured a cover and interior illustrations by Richard M. Powers...
, which takes place across numerous alternate universes, the protagonist is asked to identify his timeline, which he does by naming the U.S. Presidents during his lifetime: "Woodrow Wilson—I was named for him—Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy." Upon which another character replies: "Which brings us to 1984, right?" This implies that in Wilson's timeline, the assassination didn't happen.
J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
wrote a 1967 short-short story entitled "The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy considered as a downhill motor race
The Day of Forever
The Day of Forever, is a short-story collection by J. G. Ballard. It contains the following stories:*"The Day of Forever"*"Prisoner of the Coral Deep"*"Tomorrow is a Million Years"*"The Man on the 99th Floor"*"The Waiting Grounds"...
."
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magick-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both...
by Robert Shea
Robert Shea
Robert Joseph Shea was an American novelist and former journalist best known as co-author with Robert Anton Wilson of the science fantasy trilogy Illuminatus!. It became a cult success and was later turned into a marathon-length stage show put on at the British National Theatre and elsewhere. In...
and Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
depicts the assassination scene, with several would-be assassins trying to kill Kennedy simultaneously.
In Mark Winegardner
Mark Winegardner
Mark Winegardner is an American writer born and raised in Bryan, Ohio. His novels include The Godfather Returns, Crooked River Burning, and The Veracruz Blues. He published a collection of short stories, That's True of Everybody, in 2002. His newest novel, The Godfather's Revenge, was published...
's The Godfather's Revenge
The Godfather's Revenge
The Godfather's Revenge, a 2006 novel written by author Mark Winegardner, is the sequel to The Godfather, The Sicilian, and The Godfather Returns. The story takes place from 1963–1964, and picks up the story from where The Godfather Returns left off...
, the assassination of fictional President James Kavanaugh Shea is a parody of the assassination of J.F.K.
In the graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
Watchmen
Watchmen
Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colourist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form...
by Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
, which portrays an alternate history of America, the character of The Comedian is asked at a dinner party honoring President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
if he is clean in relation to the murder of Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
and Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
. He replies, "Yeah, I'm clean. Just don't ask me where I was when JFK died." Throughout the novel, The Comedian engaged in black ops
Black operation
A black operation or black op is a covert operation typically involving activities that are highly clandestine and often outside of standard military protocol or even against the law.-Origins:...
work for Nixon, yet The Comedian's involvement in the assassination is only implied.
Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
's novel 11/22/63
11/22/63
11/22/63 is a novel by Stephen King about a time traveler who attempts to prevent the John F. Kennedy assassination which occurred on November 22, 1963 . The novel was officially announced on the author's official site on March 2, 2011. A short excerpt was released online on June 1, 2011...
, published in 2011, tells about a time traveler trying to stop the assaisantion, therby encountering the dilemma of changing history's course.
"What if?" themes
Not surprisingly, the assassination of J.F.K. has been the subject of several time travelTime travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
stories in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
film, television and literature.
Profile in Silver
Profile in Silver
"Profile in Silver" is the first segment of the twentieth episode of the first season of the television series The Twilight Zone.-Synopsis:...
, a 1985 episode of the second Twilight Zone
Twilight zone
-Television series and spinoffs:*The Twilight Zone, the anthology television series and its franchise:**The Twilight Zone , the 1959–1964 original television series***Twilight Zone: The Movie, a 1983 film based on the original series...
series, features a time traveler from 2172 who is sent to record the assassination, but ends up intentionally preventing it. The interference sets up a chain of events culminating in a nuclear war that destroys the human race. The timeline is ultimately restored when the traveller takes Kennedy's place in the motorcade, while the president is transported to 2172 to take the time traveller's place.
The 1990 film Running Against Time starred Robert Hays
Robert Hays
Robert Hays is an American actor and is arguably most well known for his role in the movie Airplane!-Life and career:...
and Catherine Hicks
Catherine Hicks
Catherine Mary Hicks is an American stage, film, television actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Annie Camden on the long-running television series 7th Heaven and as Karen Barclay in Child's Play.-Personal life:...
as time travelers unsuccessfully attempting to prevent the tragedy, on a theory that the Vietnam War would not have happened had Kennedy lived. In a key scene, Hays is accused of the assassination in place of Oswald.
"Lee Harvey Oswald", the 1992 season opener for the TV series Quantum Leap, finds Scott Bakula
Scott Bakula
Scott Stewart Bakula is an American actor, known for his role as Sam Beckett in the television series Quantum Leap, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama in 1991 and was nominated for four Emmy Awards. He also had a prominent role as Captain Jonathan...
's time-hopping character Sam Beckett leaping into Oswald's body. In the series, Sam's consciousness replaces that of various people from his own lifetime, remaining in each person until he corrects something "wrong" in that person's life or times. Shifting back and forth between earlier points in the shooter's life, Sam's guide Al Calavicci
Al Calavicci
Rear Admiral Upper Half Albert “Al” Calavicci USN is a fictional character on the science fiction drama Quantum Leap, created by Donald P. Bellisario and played by Dean Stockwell.-Biography:...
concludes that Sam is there to uncover the conspiracy. Unfortunately, Sam begins to assume the personality of the assassin, gradually finding himself powerless to change anything. No proof of conspiracy is discovered. At the critical moment, Al breaks through to Sam, prompting him to leap into Secret Service Agent Clint Hill
Clint Hill
Clinton J. Hill is a former United States Secret Service agent who was in the presidential motorcade during the assassination of John F. Kennedy. After Kennedy was shot, Hill ran from the car immediately behind the presidential limousine and leapt onto the back of it, holding on while the car...
. Hill attempts to reach the car before the shots, but fails to prevent Kennedy's death. In the final exchange, Al reveals that they have saved one life—that of Jackie Kennedy, whom Oswald had killed along with the President in the original timeline. This episode was written by series creator Donald P. Bellisario, in response to the Oliver Stone film JFK. Bellisario did not believe in conspiracy, and throughout the episode he interweaved supporting evidence from the Warren Commission Report and Volumes, while having Al speculate that people find it comfortable to believe in a conspiracy, because the implication suggests that if one man can kill the President, nobody is safe.
Tikka to Ride
Tikka to Ride
"Tikka To Ride" is the first episode of science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series VII and the 37th in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 17 January 1997...
, a 1997 episode of the science-fiction comedy series Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
, played the time travel paradox for laughs. Craig Charles
Craig Charles
Craig Joseph Charles is an English actor, stand-up comedian, author, poet, radio and television presenter, best known for playing Dave Lister in the British cult-favourite science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf...
, as Dave Lister, persuades the rest of the crew to go back in time to order some curry and ends up in the Texas School Book Depository. Lister literally bumps into Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Toby Aspin), causing Oswald to fall out the sixth-floor window before he can fire his third shot and kill the President. In the resulting timeline, Kennedy is impeached in 1964 for sharing a mistress with a Mafia boss, J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
is blackmailed into running for President by the Mob
American Mafia
The American Mafia , is an Italian-American criminal society. Much like the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia has no formal name and is a secret criminal society. Its members usually refer to it as Cosa Nostra or by its English translation "our thing"...
, and Russia is allowed to install nuclear missiles on Cuba in exchange for Mafia cocaine trafficking being permitted. On a more long-term note, the crews' ship is erased from existence as Kennedy's impeachment traumatises America, allowing the USSR to win the Space Race
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...
. After attempting to permit the assassination to take place by forcing Oswald up to the sixth floor rather than the fifth, Oswald merely wounds Kennedy, due to the steep trajectory of his shot. The crew is forced to recruit the alternate Kennedy to assassinate his past self—none of the crew being willing to kill Kennedy themselves—thus restoring Kennedy's position in history.
In the 2002 film Timequest
Timequest (film)
Timequest is a 2002 science-fiction film directed by Robert Dyke. It stars the ensemble cast of Victor Slezak as John F. Kennedy, Caprice Benedetti as Jacqueline Kennedy, Vince Grant, and popular b-movie actor Bruce Campbell...
, a time-traveler prevents Kennedy's assassination and history takes an alternate course, including the birth of a second son, James Kennedy, who was conceived on the night of November 22, 1963 when Kennedy and his wife return from Dallas.
In Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter
Stephen Baxter is a prolific British hard science fiction author. He has degrees in mathematics and engineering.- Writing style :...
's novel Voyage (1996), the Dallas assassination attempt only succeeds in crippling Kennedy, but kills Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the First Lady, instead. Kennedy is re-elected in 1964, however, and commits the United States to landing a crewed vessel on Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
, which occurs in 1986. However, this novel does not deal primarily with the assassination attempt, except as a backdrop to the crewed Mars mission that it makes possible and an alternate-universe US space program that results from Kennedy's longevity in this world.
In the 2006 novel Prologue (Cold Tree Press 2006 - AmazonKindle 2010) the usual time-travel scenario is inverted. Author Greg Ahlgren devises an alternative future wherein Kennedy was not assassinated, and the Soviet Union won the Cold War. Pursued by Soviet agents, the American time-traveling protagonists go back to the early 1960s to change history, and end up in Dallas in November 1963.
In the short story collection Alternate Kennedys, Kennedy's father exercised control over his boys, and first put Kennedy's older brother up for the Presidency in 1952, then yanked him before he could seek a second term. The older brother ended up becoming John's assassin in 1963.
An early story idea for the sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
to Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the first film based on the Star Trek television series. The film is set in the twenty-third century, when a mysterious and immensely powerful alien cloud called V'Ger approaches the Earth,...
(which ultimately became Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a 1982 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. The film is the second feature based on the Star Trek science fiction franchise. The plot features James T...
), written by Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer...
, involved the Kennedy assassination, as a historical event which Kirk
James T. Kirk
James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk is a character in the Star Trek media franchise. Kirk was first played by William Shatner as the principal lead character in the original Star Trek series. Shatner voiced Kirk in the animated Star Trek series and appeared in the first seven Star Trek movies...
and Spock
Spock
Spock is a fictional character in the Star Trek media franchise. First portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in the original Star Trek series, Spock also appears in the animated Star Trek series, two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, seven of the Star Trek feature films, and numerous Star Trek...
must utilize time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
in order to travel back in time to ensure the occurrence of. The story idea was dismissed as it was thought to have the potential to alienate American audiences, as it was based on the premise that the assassination was "supposed to happen", rather than the storyline revisionistically preventing it from happening.
Don DeLillo's 1988 novel Libra focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. In DeLillo's 1997 novel, Underworld, characters watch the Zapruder film at a dinner party.
In music
In Luke Powers' song "I Saw John Kennedy Today," from the Americana CD Picture Book (2007), Kennedy explains that he faked his own death in Dallas using a body double. Being free "because he was dead," Kennedy bought an old pickup truck and has been traveling the byways of America "where the girls are always friendly."The Broadway musical Assassins
Assassins (musical)
Assassins is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr. It uses the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted to assassinate Presidents of the United States...
climaxes as the ghosts of John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...
, Leon Czolgosz
Leon Czolgosz
Leon Czolgosz was the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley.In the last few years of his life, he claimed to have been heavily influenced by anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.- Early life :...
, Charles Guiteau
Charles J. Guiteau
Charles Julius Guiteau was an American lawyer who assassinated U.S. President James A. Garfield. He was executed by hanging.- Background :...
, and other "would be" assassins appear before a suicidally depressed Lee Harvey Oswald, and convince him that the only way for him to truly connect with his country is to share his pain and disillusionment with it. The best way to accomplish this, they argue, is for him to shoot the president.
The Kennedy assassination has been the subject of two music videos, Ministry
Ministry (band)
Ministry is an American industrial metal band founded by lead singer Al Jourgensen in 1981. Originally a synthpop outfit, Ministry changed its style to industrial metal in the late 1980s. Ministry found mainstream success in the early 1990s with its most successful album Psalm 69: The Way to...
's "Reload"; Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson may refer to:* Marilyn Manson , an American rock musician* Marilyn Manson , the American rock band led by the singer of the same name...
's "Coma White" (with Manson as JFK), and the album cover for The Misfits' album "Bullet" (depicting an image of the president with his head blown apart).
The Beach Boys song The Warmth of the Sun
The Warmth of the Sun
"The Warmth of the Sun" is a song written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love for the American rock band The Beach Boys. It was released on their 1964 album Shut Down Volume 2 and as the B-side of the "Dance, Dance, Dance" single, which charted at number eight in the United States and number twenty-four...
was written in the aftermath of the assassination, on the evening of November 22, 1963.
The Simon & Garfunkel song The Sound of Silence
The Sound of Silence
"The Sound of Silence" is the song that propelled the 1960s folk music duo Simon & Garfunkel to popularity. It was written in February 1964 by Paul Simon in the aftermath of the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. An initial version preferred by the band was remixed and sweetened, and has become...
was written in the aftermath of the assassination.
The Phil Ochs
Phil Ochs
Philip David Ochs was an American protest singer and songwriter who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, earnest humanism, political activism, insightful and alliterative lyrics, and haunting voice...
song "The Crucifixion
Crucifixion (song)
"Crucifixion" is a 1966 song by Phil Ochs, a U.S. singer-songwriter. Ochs described the song as "the greatest song I've ever written".-The song:...
" (1966) paints Kennedy as a Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
-like figure and draws parallels between their lives and deaths.
The Human League song "Seconds" from the 1981 Dare
Dare (album)
Dare is the third studio album from British synthpop band The Human League.The album was recorded between March and September 1981 and first released in the UK on 20 October 1981, then subsequently in the U.S...
album deals directly with the Kennedy assassination and is directed at Lee Harvey Oswald. When playing live, the group regularly projected slides onto the background of the stage, and would play this song in front of images of Kennedy and the assassination in Dallas.
"Sleeping In" by The Postal Service
The Postal Service
The Postal Service is an American electronic indie pop band composed of vocalist Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and producer Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel and Headset.-Background:...
has the lyrics "Where there was never any mystery of who shot John F. Kennedy/It was just a man with something to prove/Slightly bored and severely confused/He steadied his rifle with his target in the center/And became famous on that day in November."
"Tomorrow, Wendy" by Concrete Blonde
Concrete Blonde
Concrete Blonde is an alternative rock band based in the United States. They were initially active from 1982 to 1995, and again from 2001 to 2004, and once again in 2010.-Biography:...
has the lyrics "Underneath the chilly gray November sky/We can make believe that Kennedy is still alive and/We're shooting for the moon and smiling Jackie driving by..."
Saxon
Saxon (band)
Saxon are an English heavy metal band, formed in 1976 in Barnsley, Yorkshire. As front-runners of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, they had 8 UK Top 40 albums in the 1980s including 4 UK Top 10 albums. Saxon also had numerous singles in the Top 20 singles chart...
described the assassination from the viewpoint of Lee Harvey Oswald in their song "Dallas 1 PM", released on the album "Strong Arm of the Law
Strong Arm of the Law
Strong Arm of The Law is the third studio album by heavy metal band Saxon released in 1980. This was released a few months after the classic Wheels of Steel and debuted on the UK chart at #11."Dallas 1 PM" was written about the assassination of John F...
" in 1980.
Mob Rules
Mob Rules (band)
Mob Rules are a German power metal band. They were founded in 1994 by erstwhile Van Blanc guitarist Matthias Mineur and bassist Thorsten Plorin. Pulling in vocalist Klaus Dirks and drummer Arved Mannott, the quartet began to gig. Opening slots included shows with Pink Cream 69, C.I.T.A...
have recorded an 18-minute song about the assassination, called "The Oswald File (Ethnolution Part II - A Matter Of Unnecessary Doubt)". It was released on their 2009 album Radical Peace.
Miscellaneous
The card game ChrononautsChrononauts
Chrononauts is a card game that simulates popular fictional ideas about how time travellers might alter history, drawing on sources like Back to the Future and the short stories collection Travels Through Time. The game was designed by Andrew Looney in 2000 and is published by Looney Labs...
, which simulates the cause-and-effects of changing history through time-travel, features Kennedy's assassination as a Linchpin card. When flipped (and Kennedy is injured rather than killed), it affects three later Ripple Points: the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
and MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
(1968), the Apollo 11 moon landing
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
(1969), and Richard Nixon's resignation (1974).
In the free MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
Kingdom of Loathing
Kingdom of Loathing
Kingdom of Loathing is a browser-based, multiplayer role-playing game designed and operated by Asymmetric Publications, including creator Zack "Jick" Johnson and writer Josh "Mr. Skullhead" Nite. The game was released in 2003...
video game there is a location called "Degrassi Knoll"; the "Knoll Gnolls" who inhabit it are led by a "Mayor Zapruder".
In DC Comics' 100 bullets
100 Bullets
100 Bullets is an Eisner and Harvey Award-winning comic book written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Eduardo Risso. It was published in the USA by DC Comics under its Vertigo imprint and initially ran for one hundred issues...
, a theory is put forward that the shooter on the grassy knoll used the eponymous 100 bullets to kill the president. While no names are mentioned, there is a clear implication that the shooter was baseball player Joe DiMaggio
Joe DiMaggio
Joseph Paul "Joe" DiMaggio , nicknamed "Joltin' Joe" and "The Yankee Clipper," was an American Major League Baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career for the New York Yankees. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game hitting streak , a record that still stands...
. DiMaggio wanted to kill Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy ordering the murder of DiMaggio's ex-wife, Marilyn Monroe, because she wanted to go public about her love affair with the President. In the story, it appears DiMaggio was not part of any conspiracy plans; it was sheer chance he chose that day and place to kill Kennedy.
In 2004, the video game JFK Reloaded was released, which puts the player in the Texas Book Depository, where he or she attempts to assassinate the president. The game was made in an effort to prove that it was entirely possible for Oswald to have done the shooting by himself.
Kennedy appears as a character in Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Black Ops is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch, published by Activision and released worldwide on November 9, for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii consoles, with a separate version for Nintendo DS developed by n-Space. Announced on April 30, 2010,...
. In a cinematic cutscene he assigns the player character, Alex Mason, to undertake a sabotage mission at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. During this sequence Mason has a hallucination of pointing a pistol at Kennedy's head. Later in the game it's revealed that Mason was brainwashed by the KGB to assassinate Kennedy (it's also implied that Lee Harvey Oswald, who Mason mentions as being "compromised", was also a sleeper agent) and it's heavily implied that Mason did carry out his assignment and killed Kennedy, becoming the legendary second gunman on the grassy knoll.
See also
- Assassinations in fictionAssassinations in fictionAssassinations have formed a major plot element in various works of fiction and have also attracted scholarly attention. In Assassinations and Murder in Modern Italy: Transformations in Society and Culture, Stephen Gundle and Lucia Rinaldi analyze modern Italian assassinations in their historical...