11/22/63

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Jonathan Demme to Helm 11/22/63

Source: Variety , Stephen King
August 11, 2011



Jonathan Demme is attached to write and direct a feature film version of Stephen King's upcoming science fiction novel 11/22/63, Variety reports. The book's plot is officially described on King's website as follows:

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed.

If you had the chance to change history, would you? Would the consequences be worth it?

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.


Demme, who most recently directed Rachel Getting Married, will also produce alongside Ilona Herzberg, who worked with him on that film
 
This sounds extremely interesting. Along the lines of Final Countdown.
 
So how does Harry Dunning fit into Jake's mission? Does he stop Dunning's father from killing his family which alters the future?
 
My guess is, Jake saves the President and Harry's family, which somehow leads to Harry or his father killing Jake in the present, thus preventing him from going back in time to change anything!

I think I've gone cross-eyed.
 
This could be interesting ...
 
I still prefer Time Quest over this one.
 
Jonathan Demme speaks 11/22/63

Posted: January 23, 2012, 23:34:46
Section: Film » 11/22/63

Jonathan Demme recently spoke to MTV about his adaptation of King's 11/22/63.

"I'm adapting Stephen King's book," Demme told MTV News in Park City, UT over the weekend, where he was promoting the Slamdance debut of his "Neil Young Journeys" documentary. "I'm on the screenplay for it right now."

"It's a time travel story," he said of the plot. "Somebody from the 20th century gets a window back to the past and they go back with the goal of trying to prevent the assassination of JFK. It's an extraordinary thriller. It's a great love story, also. It's a fabulous book."

Demme doesn't have a time-table on when the movie might start shooting — "First I have to get the script finished," he said, "and it's going really well" — but he did say that he feels more than a little bit privileged to be working with King after working with another American icon in Young.

"Sitting here with Neil Young, and working with Stephen King — these are two great American storytellers who use different mediums," he said.


Read more here
 
I don't like all of these myths that surround Kennedy in his what-if he lived scenarios. What would have different, everything Lyndon Johnson passed would be law, except the great society. JFK would have not put ground troops in Vietnam and negotiated a non-intervention treaty with the Soviets like he did over Laos. Maybe an earlier start to detant with the Russians with a joint moon mission, but not much more. No recession following the end of the Vietnam War and no Vietnam syndrome.
 
These kinds of scenarios always depress me.

What if JFK had lived?
What if Ronald Reagan was never president?
What if Al Gore had won in 2000?

They depress me because they all have the same answer: [BLACKOUT]things would've been better. [/BLACKOUT]

:woot:
 
Got about 100 pages to go in the book. It can make for a great movie but I think a good portion will have to be axed.
 
These kinds of scenarios always depress me.

What if JFK had lived?
What if Ronald Reagan was never president?
What if Al Gore had won in 2000?

They depress me because they all have the same answer: [BLACKOUT]things would've been better. [/BLACKOUT]

:woot:

Actually, things would probably be far worse if Kennedy lived. Kennedy was incapable of working with Congress, despite them being of his party and his ego prevented him from utilizing LBJ more (despite Johnson being a far more accomplished and adept statesman). Johnson was ultimately able to use Kennedy's death and his political talents and clout to push through legislation such as medicare/medicaid (and the whole of the Great Society plan), the Civil Rights Act, and get the space race properly started. None of this would have been done under Kennedy.
 
Got about 100 pages to go in the book. It can make for a great movie but I think a good portion will have to be axed.

I've been reading it as well and the whole time I've been thinking this or that will never make it to screen. It's a really good read though, gonna be interesting to see who they cast for Jake.
 
These kinds of scenarios always depress me.

What if JFK had lived?
What if Ronald Reagan was never president?
What if Al Gore had won in 2000?

They depress me because they all have the same answer: [BLACKOUT]things would've been better. [/BLACKOUT]

:woot:


As with everything in politics it's all a matter of perspective & reflection. What if's always keep you looking back instead of forwards.
 
As with everything in politics it's all a matter of perspective & reflection. What if's always keep you looking back instead of forwards.

Well, an 800 page Stephen King novel is doing the "What If", so take it up with Hollywood for making a movie that looks back instead of forward.
 
I've been reading it as well and the whole time I've been thinking this or that will never make it to screen. It's a really good read though, gonna be interesting to see who they cast for Jake.

Christian Bale Jon Hamm Gerard Butler Matt Damon.
 
I could see Matt Damon as an English teacher.

Well there are a lot of guys that would work nicely, it's not a super specific role aside from 35 years old (and even that has some wiggle room). Damon's the one I had in my head while reading the book tho and that's how my fan casting usually goes. Matthew Fox is another guy I'd look at if it were up to me.

And JK Simmons for Deke. :D
 
I hope the film manages to hit one some of the ideas the book puts forth about the time period. Basically that there are certainly some things to be nostalgic about, but at the same time, that period also had a lot of darkness in terms of cold war fears and the general acceptance of racism.
 
After reading the book just trying to wrap my mind around a movie seemed crazy but it could be done.
 
The plot of this movie sounds really cliche to me. An episode of the Twilight Zone in the 1980s had something very similar when JFK survives the attempt on his life and suddenly the Soviets blockade Berlin. Something else happens when one event is prevented that is just as or even more negative. Standard and tired old plot...

If JFK lived the only thing different he would have done was have pulled out of Vietnam like Laos and negotiated a treaty with the Soviet Union to not intervene in the country. He may have pursued detente with Russia in the moon landing, but just like after Nixon, Ford, and Carter tried it, they would have violated it like when they invaded Afghanistan.
 

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