The assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy is the subject of another film that recounts the event at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital following the shooting. Watch a preview of PARKLAND starring Zac Efron, Billy Bob Thornton, James Badge Dale, Ron Livingston, Paul Giamatti and a slew of other famous names.
CM: Your next film is Parkland and it deals again with the JFK assassination. Why do you think people are so obsessed with that event?
JBD: It’s an event that touched all of us in a way that we hadn’t… it’s almost the end of innocence to have some assassinated publically. We all saw it. Everyone remembers where they were.
CM: Yes.
JBD: And everyone had an opinion of that man. That man was… truth be told he was very polarizing. People either loved him or they hated him. But he really brought out a lot of emotion in a lot of people. You know, the people in this country… it changed us. It changed our psyche. I think. And that is what the movie is about. Our movie isn’t a conspiracy theory movie. Our movies doesn’t deal with the aftermath. It deals with the forty-eight hours when it happened. It spans from when he was shot to when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot. It’s more of a story about the human interactions around those circumstances.
CM: And who do you play in the movie?
JBD: I play Robert Oswald, Lee Harvey’s older brother.
CM: Interesting.
JBD: The film follows probably about four different groups of people. I read the script, and they said, “Take a look at it, see what you like.” And one of the groups of people was Robert Oswald and their mother, Marguerite Oswald. And I loved it. I loved the writing. I loved the character. I loved the dynamic. And Jackie Weaver had signed on to play Marguerite Oswald and I really wanted to work with Jackie.
And I was on the phone with the director Peter Landesman. And I just said, he was bringing up other roles and I said, “It’s Robert. It’s Robert Oswald. Let me do it. Let me do it. I.. I... I’ll do you right man. I’ll do your movie right. I get what he is and what he represents in the story as a whole.” And it’s a great cast and I love that film. And I hope we did something special. I hope we honored that material.
