Oscar winner Al Pacino (The Godfather), Oscar nominee Viggo Mortensen (Green Book), Oscar nominee John Travolta (Pulp Fiction), BAFTA winner Shia LaBeouf (Honey Boy), NBR Award winner Rebecca Pidgeon (Heist) and Golden Globe nominated singer and actress Courtney Love (The People vs. Larry Flynt) are set to star in the thriller Assassination, we can reveal.
The film, which Arclight is launching for the Cannes market, is to be directed by Pulitzer Prize-winner and Oscar nominee David Mamet (Wag the Dog) from a script he co-wrote with Nicholas Celozzi.
Assassination will retell the fateful murder of John F. Kennedy from the mob’s point of view, reimagining his death as a hit ordered by Chicago mob kingpin Sam Giancana as payback for JFK’s attempt to undermine the mob after they helped get him elected (that thread formed a big part of Oliver Stone’s JFK).
Mamet co-wrote the script with Nicholas Celozzi, who is Sam Giancana's grand-nephew.
The mob theory was part of what director Oliver Stone presented in the film JFK, which focused on findings by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) that contradicted the lone gunman conclusion by the Warren Commission. When Celozzi’s script was sent to Mamet, it reawakened the writer-director’s own skepticism that he felt a decade ago when he was going to direct a movie about inconsistencies in the Zapruder film, the only known visual chronicle of Kennedy’s final moments.
“I wrote a really good script based on the Zapruder film about 10 years ago, Cate Blanchett was going to do it and we were all ready to start shooting it and then the money guy pulled out,” Mamet told Deadline, who acknowledges the difficulty of definitively declaring what actually happened that tragic day. “There was a wonderful physicist named Richard Fynman who said the great discoveries in science aren’t when someone says, ‘Eureka I have found it,’ but when the scientist says, ‘Hey, that’s funny.’ I was inspired to get into the Zapruder film for the idea that several of the frames were missing, which they are. One of the frames had actually been altered. Why has the film been altered, that’s funny. When you look at the secret panel on assassinations, their secret findings were held and were supposed to be released last year. But they said, we’re holding some of them back. I said to myself, that’s funny. What does it mean, I don’t know, but it means something.
The story was about a young woman who has a mysterious source of funds that comes her way each month. After she had a minor family crisis with her son, she decided to try and find out where the money is coming from. This is the main action of the film. It turns out her father was part of a top secret photographic alteration department in a large corporation. She finds out that this department worked on UFOs. But she later also finds out that they worked on the Zapruder film. It turns out that the real film showed Oswald outside during the parade. With Allen Dulles in the crowd.
Wow - Zapruder film altertation! I wonder is that will stay in the final script.
Celozzi previously was the producer of Momo: The Sam Giancana Story.
Here is an excerpt from a transcript: (starting at 1:26:52)
Arthur Lurigio: The theories abound and we talk about organized crime's connection to the Kennedy assassination. Sam's name comes up.
John J. Binder: The outfit despised the Kennedys going back to the McClellan Committee hearings.
Arthur Lurigio: Organized crime certainly had a motive. They certainly had the means and they had an opportunity.
Narrator: According to Pepe Giancana, Sam told his brother of his own complicity in the events of November 22nd 1963 in his Oak Park basement. According to this account, Lee Harvey Oswald was recruited by Carlos Marcello as a patsy. One of Oswald's uncles was Marcello's lieutenant, but more importantly, Oswald had deep ties to Cuba and Castro would be blamed. The actual shooters were supplied by Giancana - Richard Cain, Chuckie Nicoletti, and Milwaukee Phil Aldericio.
Mr. X - Outfit Soldier: Oswald, I don't think could figure out how to wrap a gumball machine, let alone to be positioned to this. It had up come from people that, you know, know how to kill is like tying their shoes.
Narrator: It was Richard Cain, according to Sam's brother, who fired the shot that killed John Kennedy. Interesting guy, this Richard Cain. He was a Chicago cop on Sam's payroll. both an FBI informant and a made member of the outfit. He had also worked with the CIA, Sam, Roselli, and Ruby on the whole Cuban fiasco. FBI agent Roemer always claimed that no way could Sam have been involved in the Kennedy assassination, because the FBI surveillance would have picked it up, but the guy he had watching Sam was FBI informant Richard Cain, and in 1963, Roemer and the FBI had no idea that Cain was actually working for Sam. So, there were things that the feds didn't know. To make certain that Oswald would never talk, Sam got his old helper Jack Ruby to get two Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit and Roscoe White ,who were secretly on his payroll, to shoot Oswald.
Dave Perry has debunked the Roscoe White story. I hope Mr. Celozzi is smart enough to take that out of his upcoming movie.
Mr. Celozzi wasn't the first member of the Giancana family to cash in mobster Sam. Daughter Antoinette Giancana wrote a book, JFK and Sam: The Connection Between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations, in 2005:
Ginacana’s book resurrects the same old myths about the assassination, including Grassy Knoll "witnesses," discredited photo analyst Robert Groden’s purported photographic "proof" of Grassy Knoll gunmen and the alleged physical evidence which "proves" Oswald’s innocence. A central weakness in Giancana et al’s book is the heavy reliance on so-called conspiracy witnesses whose outrageous tall tales have been investigated by the JFK assassination research community and found to be bogus. Their reliance on Madeleine Brown alone, a purported mistress of Lyndon Johnson, renders their overall thesis untenable. Brown’s story was investigated by Gary Mack and Dave Perry who exposed her outrageous lies.
Another major weakness is the authors’ belief in the confessions of alleged assassin James Files. Again, the authors simply haven’t bothered to fully research Files’s background as a reputed conman or the inconsistencies in his story. Files’s story was fully researched by acclaimed JFK assassination writers Martin Shackleford, Dave Perry, John Stockwell, Edward Bell and Edward J. Epstein and found to be bogus.
And Madeline Brown also features: (pages 21 - 22)
JFK researcher David Perry has debunked a variety of nonsense regarding Madeline Brown and the supposed party in particular.
I guess David Mamet was not happy with Oliver Stone's myth about the JFK assassination, and now he wants his own.
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