JFK Filmography "Dead Again and Again"

After the killing, the assassins lay low in Dallas with Rosanna for a week and then drive to Toronto, allowing them to go through Little Italy for a brief sightseeing adventure. It was Scorsese's plan to have this drive take up most of the second half of the film and to include lots of eating, swearing and male bonding. He intended all along to make his foreign thugs likeable characters. By the time they hit Sault Ste. Marie they even regret the passing of Camelot momentarily, until they realize they're on the wrong road and begin swearing again. The documents do not clearly indicate why Scorsese's film never got made, but one rumor around town had certain elements complaining that unlike previous Hollywood depictions of the Mafia, Many Bullets was insufficiently sympathetic.

Enter Sir Richard Attenborough with Oswald. In the wake of Scorsese's fanciful wanderings, one studio came to think Attenborough's notion of filming the 26-volume Warren Commission report had merit. Attenborough had lured Robert Bolt away from David Lean's Nostromo long enough to pen the reverential, 480-page script I came upon, which, of course, posits Oswald as the lone nut assassin. Like the Warren Commission, Bolt had trouble establishing a motive for Oswald, but unlike the Warren Commission, the studio was bothered by this. Attenborough refused to compromise, it seems. In one memo he states that he has no intention of engaging in revisionist history just so his main character will be believable; he was determined to film "the truth."

Notations on the opening pages of the script suggest that Attenborough had his eye on British actor Rupert Everett to play Oswald; the casting of Charlton Heston as Earl Warren would compensate for the unknown star and lend credibility to the plot line, as well as catapult Heston into Lloyd Bridges-level stardom. Unfortunately for Attenborough, the studio did a late marketing study which revealed that a Farsi-speaking 7-Eleven clerk in West Los Angeles was the only known person in the United States who still took the Warren Commission's conclusions seriously. Oswald quickly went the way of Many Bullets.

The producers, by now weary of big-name, big-budget male directors, decided to give Susan Seidelman a comeback opportunity, since Seidelman had talked her Desperately Seeking Susan star Madonna into reuniting on this project. Seidel-man's original notion had been to cast Madonna as Judith Exner, the good-time gal shared by JFK and Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, but after seeing Dick Tracy Seidelman came to agree with the producers that uncharted territory was less frightening than trampled ground, and Madonna should play Jackie instead. In the initial screen tests, Madonna was not bad at portraying a dark brunette, but her inability to convey believable grief led to a total rewrite of the script, not to mention history.

The Seidelman draft, O Jackie, had the soft-spoken First Lady finding one too many pairs of foreign panties in the family wing of the White House and deciding to have her pathological womanizer of a husband bumped off. Madonna's extensive experience with moving limos permitted the producers a certain measure of confidence that she would bring off the scene where Jackie tries to climb out the back of the car in Dealey Plaza when the assassins she's hired turn out to be over-enthusiastic. But there was not a single screen actor above the C level who was willing to appear in any film that starred Madonna, so crucial roles like JFK (the idea of playing JFK--hell, any president--was sorely tempting to Beatty, Madonna or no Madonna), and Oswald (Madonna's Greek chorus of intimates fought among themselves over this one) never got seriously discussed, and the studio gave a flat no to the idea of Sandra Bernhard as Lee Radziwill. Ultimately, the Seidelman version was tanked because Jackie got wind of it and had Teddy put the kibosh on it. She had no problem with the script, but she didn't want to be played by Madonna.

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