President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 48 years ago today in Dallas, Texas, prompting what would become the biggest single market in conspiracy theories until 9/11. Many of them came bundled in such staggeringly ambitious work as Oliver Stone's JFK, Don DeLillo's Libra, and Josiah "Tink" Thompson's exhaustive Zapruder film study Six Seconds in Dallas -- the latter of which filmmaker and Movieline favorite Errol Morris reconnects with today for an intriguing new short exploring the legend of that fateful day's "Umbrella Man."
For years, I've wanted to make a movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Not because I thought I could prove that it was a conspiracy, or that I could prove it was a lone gunman, but because I believe that by looking at the assassination, we can learn a lot about the nature of investigation and evidence. Why, after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case? What is it about this case that has led not to a solution, but to the endless proliferation of possible solutions? [...] Last year, I finally got to meet and interview Tink Thompson. I hope his interview can become the first part of an extended series on the Kennedy assassination. This film is but a small segment of my six-hour interview with Tink.
Someone! Fire up a Kickstarter campaign for the rest of the series, already.
ยท "The Umbrella Man" [NYT via @ebertchicago]