JFK The Rewatchables
JFK poster
JFK

What’s Aged the Best?

Gary Oldman as Oswald; Seinfeld spoof; Pesci-Tommy Lee Jones wig battle; Kevin Bacon's career revival; Oliver Stone's Dave cameo; Tommy Lee Jones in gold paint; Dealey Plaza recreation; John Williams score; New Orleans setting; specter of JFK; character actors in tiny roles

In the discussion (15)
Approx. transcript time · 01:12:33Read transcript
  • Offered as number one: Oldman as Oswald is creepy, great, and looks like Oswald.
  • Oldman must have shot much of his material separately with Stone; a 'Gary Oldman cut' as a standalone Oswald movie is wished for.
  • Deleted-scene story: Oldman asked Stone to point the camera at him late at night for an elegiac Oswald monologue; Stone shot him in a casket and planned to end the film with it before making a different call; it can be found on YouTube.
  • The 1992 Seinfeld spoof 'The Boyfriend' features Wayne Knight and Keith Hernandez; Hernandez is praised and then jabbed as possibly a QAnon guy.
  • 'The Boyfriend' is remembered as the episode that showed Seinfeld would be the biggest show, with the spitter bit called lights out.
  • The wig battle between Pesci and Tommy Lee Jones: Tommy Lee wins a 10-8 round.
  • Bacon is said to call the film a turning point that reignited his career, leading to A Few Good Men.
  • Stone's self-deprecating cameo in Dave two years later has aged best for one participant.
  • Tommy Lee in gold paint getting slapped by Pesci in a Dangerous Liaisons outfit is praised as the good version of a wild idea, unlike a cut Nicholson idea in The Departed; Tommy Lee doing it is what makes it great.
  • Objection: the same scene bumps against what's aged worst, the film's attitude about homosexuality, called retrograde and unacceptable; the counterpoint is that it was part of Garrison's case against Shaw and that era's judgment.
  • Stone recreated the assassination in Dealey Plaza, spending $4 million to restore it to 1963 conditions and reroute traffic; Sutherland and Costner memorized their monologues.
  • Debate on whether acting is mostly memory: one participant says no, the camera reveals compelling people like Sutherland and memorizing matters more in theater; it is jokingly settled at 70% memory.
  • John Williams's score and New Orleans as a setting are named.
  • The specter of JFK himself: the speech that opens Stone's documentary, the Caesar-like shot in the X speech and the still photograph of Kennedy.
  • Top character actors appear for less than a scene, including Ron Rifkin with one line, Lolita Davidovich, Brian Doyle-Murray and John Larroquette.