Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar, �JFK � The Book of the Film�
(This is part 10 of an 18-part story, which begins here. Part 5 is here. Part 15? Right here. And the end of this entirely too long story is located here. After that, you�re on your own.)
Two weeks before I arrived my father was on a hike, marching along the side of this dead volcano when he slipped and fell, screwing up his arm. He doesn�t own a car of any kind, and hasn�t for a long, long time. So he went to a local rent-a-wreck place in order for us to get around.
The only problem is, he rented a car with a stick shift, which I had no idea how to drive. Normally that would be fine and he would drive, but after wrenching his arm out of its socket, he could barely lift it, much less constantly shift gears over the high hills and low valleys. So we went back to the dealer who, after searching around for ten minutes trying to find a car that was an automatic, said he just needed to do a little work before he turned it over to us.
A little work turned into two hours as we waited and even then, it seemed like they were rushing. If there�s one thing you don�t want somebody to do, it�s rush when they�re working on a huge machine that weighs two tons that�s designed to transport you at high speeds. I mean, really, if they told you they needed to �work a little� on an airplane that you were about to get on, would you want them to finish up quickly, or would you want them to carefully and meticulously take their time? Nevertheless, they soon handed me the keys and pointed over to our vehicle.
And it�s a BMW.
A BMW with a fucking American flag in the back window.
Okay, so it�s an old crappy BMW from 1977 that has a hood that�s rusting off the hinges, but still!
My dad drives the car back to his house, and as we come to one of the many sharp steep turns on the two-lane highway that makes Highway 17 look like a kiddie go-kart track, he starts to turn to the right.
Nothing happens.
We�re suddenly in the opposite lane at the same time that a huge van is headed right for us. He yanks the wheel to the right and we swerve back into our proper lane. But the force he exerts on his arm makes it clear that I�m going to have to do the rest of the driving.
I�ve had three cars in my life, and I�ve put in a total of about 5 months of driving during that time. The first car I had ended up with me barreling into somebody who was parked at a stop sign. Since then, I�ve driven in the style of Grandma Moses. It�s funny. I�m perfectly willing to walk around the streets of Belfast by myself at 3 a.m. and not be nervous at all. But put me on a highway and I�m terrified. I think it�s because dying in an automobile crash seems so pointless, and I want my death to have some meaning behind it. Or at the very least, it should involve massive gunplay.
But I take over the wheel. The brakes are soft and squishy like a wet sponge. The steering has about three inches of leeway before it responds. The directional signal works when I�m not planning to make a turn, but does nothing when I try and signal. And the trade winds, despite the fact that this car seems to be built out of the heaviest steel known to man, push the car all over the road. After ending up in the wrong lane myself three times, I get used to how it operates, but my dad still mentions that I look like I�m going to bend the oversized steering wheel with my bare hands.
I mentioned that his injury came about from falling while hiking through the mountains. And so what�s our plan for today? To hike through some mountains.
FOUR REASONS WHY HIKING SUCKS
- 1: You can�t read while hiking.
- 2: You can�t drink either, or at least not alcohol. Hard liquor dehydrates you, and beer is much too heavy to carry around.
- 3: The majority of hikes involve slogging through marshes that have bugs the size of your knuckle. Bugs that bite. A lot.
- 4: Hiking is similar to playing a really hard video game. You really want to finish, you put in hours and hours trying to reach the end, and you�re never really sure what�s going to happen until you do complete it. Sure, some games have added bonuses like special screens or movies, but a lot of games will simply say, �You win! Thank you for playing!�
So we continue to march through the bugs and the marshes and the forests, occasionally coming across a nice vista point where we can view the side of the island. But of course, since that�s only the middle of the hike, the end must be spectacular, no? So we press on, swatting at bugs along the way. (Or I guess I should say that I swatted at bugs. They really only seem to like fresh meat.)
Eventually, after a little over three miles, my dad announces that he�s going to turn back � it�s simply too hard on his shoulder, and you never really notice how much you use it while you�re walking until there comes a time when you can�t use it at all. This is one of those times. I continue on.
The trail is pretty much deserted and we�ve only passed two people since we started. All you can really do during this time as you march along is think. And I�m thinking about a lot of things. Like how could Oliver Stone not know that he had a movie that was going to be five hours long when was working on this script? This screenplay has a lot of scenes that ended up being deleted, and for the most part, it seems like he deleted all the right parts. I�ve already said that I�m a big fan of the film, so it�s actually kind of nice to see that somebody really did it right, and it wasn�t by chance.
The book also has a lot of reviews and articles and news clippings that came out during the making and after the release of the film, and for the first time I noticed what an incestuous lot reporters are. I once wrote a piece for the De Anza campus newspaper, and a reporter called from the San Jose Mercury News, asking for a copy. Two days later I saw my piece in the paper, but with a different person listed for the byline, with only about five graphs that had any significant addition or revision.
I was actually a little flattered by that. But in the case of JFK, because one columnist wrote a long piece (a piece that actually has a lot of incorrect information), reporters cited the columnist over and over, thinking that his word must be gold. �After all,� they say, �he must have done some research, right? That just saves us time because now we can just quote him!� The laziness astounds me, but of course I have that luxury since I�m not facing a deadline.
But JFK wasn�t all I thought about. I thought about how despite the fact that I�ve just noticed that you can�t drink on hikes, the people who built this trail in the first place seem to have been drunk on fortified wine. The trail meanders more than this fucking journal.
I also notice that anybody with a particularly dark sense of humor (i.e. me) could easily play a great practical joke with only a minimum of planning. All you would need was a week to stomp a new trail that breaks off from the main one. The trail doesn�t even need to be that big, �cause if it looks traveled at all, people will follow it. Have the trail go a mile or so away from the main path, and then stick an albino in a rocking chair with a banjo at the end of it and then just wait for the pasty-white tourists to plod along the trail.
Then watch them run away screaming bloody murder.
And of course, right after I think of this scenario, I notice that my trail seems to have petered out and I�m lost in the middle of the mountain.
