NZ exclusive: Oliver Stone on his new documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed

JFK with Gen Curtis LeMay as shown in Oliver Stone's new documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed. Streaming on DocPlay.

For a period beginning with 1986's Platoon and continuing through a stunning run of hit films including Wall Street, The Doors and Natural Born Killers, filmmaker Oliver Stone was firmly at the centre of the zeitgeist, sparking debate and creating iconic cultural moments with everything he made.

During this fruitful period, the Stone movie that unquestionably had the largest impact was 1991's JFK, which presented a wide-ranging "counter-myth" to the official story of the assassination of US President John F Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963.

The film elevated interest in the JFK assassination to a level that can still be felt, and Stone is revisiting the subject in the new four-part documentary event series JFK: Destiny Betrayed, available on the DocPlay streaming service.

"This is not a dramatisation, this is a documentary," Stone tells the Herald in an exclusive interview. "This is fact. It is crucial that people understand this came out of the Assassination Records Review Board, [an independent agency] that was created out of the [reaction to the 1991] film. Unfortunately, the media didn't pay any attention to the files. So we had to do this. I have to do it."

The series presents a raft of eye-opening material from files declassified by the ARRB covering the corruption of the evidence chain, eyewitness accounts contradicting the official timeline, the farcical autopsy and the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald was working alone.

"All I can do is show you what we found out from this and you'll see that it's clear that there was more than one gunman. It's also clear that there's a motive for Kennedy's death. And it's damn clear that there's a lot of corruption around the case."

Director Oliver Stone has made a documentary about the JFK assassination.

Speaking to the Herald via a Zoom video call from his book-lined home office, the multi-Oscar winner is as passionate as ever about the JFK assassination. In JFK: Destiny Betrayed, he posits that Kennedy's liberal, globalist policies were just starting to re-shape the planet for the better when he was murdered and his successors reversed course, giving rise to a much more militarised approach.

"Since he was killed, we've been unable to change the lock that the national security state has on all of our countries. Kennedy was breaking through that. It would have been a happier world if he'd been successful."

When JFK was released, conspiracy theories were almost romantic. But events in the last several years have illustrated the real-world dangers of such thinking. I ask Stone, perhaps the world's most famous conspiracy theorist, if he thinks conspiracy theories have gotten out of control.

"I can't talk about these other things that people talk about. Crazy things get said all the time. I'm not responsible for that. But I do believe this case is valid and important because it sets our policy today."

He acknowledges that JFK led to greater suspicion of governments.

"I think in general, my film contributed to it. Governments lie. This is not news. But it's news for a lot of people who grow up very naive. Governments line their own interests."

Does Stone think the general public is equipped to distinguish between genuine cover-ups and paranoid fantasies?

"It's always hard. This is what history is about - it's a fight. A fight between what one side says and other people say. People have to decide for themselves and hopefully every citizen should be concerned. It doesn't work out that way."

"What we need to understand is the our government, the US government, is corrupt. It was corrupted after World War II, in that period when we became another kind of nation, we became an armed citadel. We're a colossus. No government can operate outside our gaze. [The JFK] assassination opened the gates of corruption in a big way."

I end our conversation by asking Stone if he remains hopeful for the future despite the dispiriting power dynamics outlined in his new series.

"I'm always hopeful because I'm an optimist. We have to be. It's the only way humanity can survive. By being optimistic."

He smiles.

"I'm still alive. They haven't killed me yet."

Episode one of JFK: Destiny Betrayed is available on DocPlay now and new episodes are released Mondays.