Oliver Stone has made one movie about a conspiracy, "JFK," that probably isn't true at all, and another supposedly true story, "The Doors," which isn't about a conspiracy but should have been because that, in fact, is what really happened.
Ah, the irony...
Regular readers know I'm something of a conspiracy buff. I once called the Warren Commission Report "the greatest work of fiction that American literature has ever produced." Then I proceded to create a TV series, "Dark Skies," that had, as its basis, that President Kennedy was assassinated because he knew the truth about Roswell and was going to come clean with the American people in his second term (and, no, I never actually believed that -- it was a TV series!). We even did an episode of that series, by the way, where Jim Morrison was a character.
Now we have two news stories that are upending what people believe about JFK's assassination and about Jim Morrison's death.
Former LA prosecutor Vincent Buglioisi has a new book out, "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy." It's over 16-hundred pages and I'm not done but it make a very persuasive case that Lee Harvey Oswald was, indeed, a lone nut-case who acted alone. Just like the Warren Commission said.
Then there's Time magazine which has a new article, "How Jim Morrison Died" by Vivienne Walt that says the idea he died in his bathtub in Paris is a complete fabrication. The truth, according to Walt, is that Morrison overdosed in a Paris nightclub and that about five or six people participated in taking his body back to his apartment and putting it in that bathtub and that Paris authorities just looked the other way and never did an autopsy.
Imagine how that would have energized the ending of Oliver Stone's movie. Could have happened, too. Sam Bernett who ran the Paris nightclub was described by Time this way.
Bernett says he once met Oliver Stone's mother, and told her: "Tell your son to call me and I'll tell him how his movie should end." Stone never called.
And, yet, just as I'm accepting these new facts, there's something from each story that keeps me guessing.
First, Bugliosi, also writing in an earlier issue of Time about "What We Can Learn From JFK" had this to say about the subject of the vast conspiracy it would have taken to bring down JFK:
"Three people can keep a secret but only if two of them are dead."
Bugliosi has used this line in the famous mock-trial of Oswald he participated in for the BBC, in his book and in most interviews. It's his standard-issue one-liner and it works because, well, it generally is true.
Now let's go to the article about Jim Morrison's death.
"We carried him in a blanket and got him the hell out of there," recalls Chauvel, who was a friend of Morrison. Explaining the cover-up, Chauvel says: "I guess if you have a nightclub and Jim Morrison dies in your toilet, it is not good p.r. The five or six people who knew, who were there that night, agreed to just forget about it."
So, let's see. These six people kept this secret for 36 years now and it only broke because one of them, who's getting on in years, decided to write a book and the others have confirmed it. And they joined the conspiracy because Morrison's drug dealers didn't want their product tied to the rock star in a nightclub. Bad for business.
Maybe Bugliosi's wrong. Maybe even six people can keep a secret, provided nobody thinks there is one in the first place.
