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"Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived" Feature

VIRTUAL JFK (DVD MOVIE)

"Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived" Overview

In the era of nuclear confrontation, John F. Kennedy attempted to prevent war six times during his short tenure as president. He didn't live to face a seventh. Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived takes up one of America's controversial what-if scenarios, examining the question: Would the U.S. have escalated the war in Vietnam if Kennedy was not assassinated in 1963? With insight and erudition, the film traces JFK's presidency a 1,000-day term plagued with tense political stand-offs through rare and previously-unseen archival footage, offering nuanced accounts of the former president's political decisions and, by extension, his probable response to the escalating conflict in Vietnam.

Featuring unprecedented access into the leadership style of one of the nation's most important leaders, Virtual JFK sheds new light on the man who helped avoid war in six crises and did not live to save America from the devastating war in Vietnam.

Q&A with Virtual JFK director Koji Masutani

What do you think virtual history can teach us that the more traditional study of history can't?

We identify our film as a work of "virtual history," a term coined by the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. Virtual history, Ferguson explains, involves the study of "what if" questions: the investigation of how the past would have unfolded had precipitating events or the underlying conditions been different. In the case of Virtual JFK, we ask what if Kennedy had not died in 1963? Would he have chartered a less-disastrous course in Vietnam than his successor, Lyndon Johnson? The approach is controversial. The Cambridge historian of Soviet Russia, E.H. Carr, described counterfactual narratives as a "parlor game." History, he insisted, is "a record of what people did, not what they failed to do." Yet, historical analysis, by its nature, presupposes consideration of roads not taken. We believe that virtual history can teach us (or remind us) about the contingent aspects of history that more traditional history does not emphasize.

What drew you to JFK's presidency as a subject?

My formal background in International Relations attracted my attention to JFK's presidency—particularly within the framework of foreign policy issues. Virtual JFK represents the synthesis of more than forty years of debate, much of it acrimonious, over what Kennedy would have done in Vietnam had he not been assassinated. Although I grew up outside the United States, I have always been keenly aware of the enduring debates over what JFK would have done, and the parallel debate over who or what was behind JFK's murder. Oliver Stone's 1991 film, JFK, integrated these two issues into a single and conspiratorial hypothesis. In Virtual JFK, we deal decisively with what JFK would have done, and leave it to others to debate whether, as Stone believes, Kennedy was killed because he had decided to withdraw the U.S. from Vietnam. However the debate about the motives behind JFK’s assassination may evolve in the future, we believe, on the basis of considerable evidence, that if JFK had lived, he would have withdrawn the U.S. from Vietnam.

Can you discuss your collaboration with producer Peter Almond, who produced Thirteen Days, the Kevin Costner film on the Cuban Missile Crisis?

As a young filmmaker who is constantly setting foot on new terrain (by default), I require--without exception--a highly experienced producer. As in any industry with more than one member, when newcomers arrive they are bound to encounter an infinite array of personalities, conduct, and intellect. So being able to find and connect with a producer who demonstrates first-rate efficiency, responsibility, and perceptiveness has been critical to my learning curve. The task of delivering the film to an audience would have been a wildly different and impossible operation without a producer like Peter Almond.

How did your collaboration with the authors of Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived: Virtual JFK (Rowman and Littlefield) come about? Was the origin of the project the book, or the film? How do you think the two complement each other?

I was fortunate to cross paths with two dynamic professors/authors from the Watson Institute for International Studies (at Brown University) almost immediately before graduating from college in 2005. I kept up a rigorous correspondence with them over email the summer after I graduated and, very quickly, we discovered that we had a team to be able to simultaneously produce a book, film, and a teacher's guide. The book and film—in particular—were produced side by side, and they complement each other in that one strengthens and enhances the other. There is only so much information that can be conveyed in an 80-minute documentary, and there is only so much that a reader can do to participate vicariously reading a book.

The project as a whole was not necessarily conceived within a narrow disciplinary framework, because the question of what JFK would have done in Vietnam long ago overspread disciplinary boundaries. Many people, from diverse backgrounds and professional allegiances, believe they have a stake in this question: government servicemen, journalists, archival researchers, historians, political scientists, economists, psychologists, novelists, poets, filmmakers, and songwriters. However, the specific origins of the Virtual JFK project lay at the intersection of three disciplines: Cold War history, diplomatic history, and the various branches of political science that deal with decision-making.

The Kennedy family continues to make news and capture our imagination as a nation. What do you think it is about the family and JFK in particular that we find so compelling?

To his admirers, JFK represented a presidential era of glamour, intelligence, wit and possibility. In my mind, this combination of assured traits plays well to the American attitude toward history, one where "personalities have always been more interesting than facts" (to quote Kennedy himself). This attitude toward history (and politics) possibly explains the receptivity to and appetite for all things Kennedy. To those interested in U.S. foreign policy history, of course, JFK and his assassination fuel interest for another reason: November 22, 1963, was the single most significant day in the history of the Vietnam War.

The film includes some incredible footage and audio recordings that were recently declassified and never seen or hear before. How did you go about tracking down these recordings?

For three years, we researched every possible source for footage and secretly recorded audio tapes revealing internal deliberations from the Kennedy administration. We conducted rigorous research via the National Archives, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and the Miller Center of Public Affairs (particularly with help from Professor Marc Selverstone and his team). We conducted research for 36 months (uninterrupted) and we even tracked down JFK's family friends who--to this day--have been in possession of rare footage.

In addition to footage that would have otherwise been locked in vaults for decades longer, and in addition to recently declassified materials in the form of documents and audio tapes, Virtual JFK proudly features 30 entire minutes of Kennedy's press conferences--revealing moments of dismay, suspense, and outrage. Half a century after his abbreviated presidency, Americans are still trying to figure out who Jack Kennedy really was, and we invite viewers to get to know Kennedy directly--without talking heads or experts speaking on behalf of Kennedy.

"Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived" Specifications

If you have any political curiosity at all (or even just a jones for Kennedy lore), Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived will prove a most enticing "what if" enterprise. What if one single piece of history hadn't happened? What if John F. Kennedy had not died by assassin's bullet on November 22, 1963, but survived to preside over the bulk of an incredibly turbulent decade? Virtual JFK does not create a new alternate-history story line, but it does lay out a series of game-changing events during the Vietnam War and then reflects back on Kennedy's actual speeches, writings, and actions to suggest ways he might have dealt with each new twist of the disastrous conflict. Thus the film examines Kennedy's responses to the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the communist incursion into Laos, and the raising of the Berlin Wall--instances in which his moderate but decisive actions forestalled U.S. military action. More famously, his approach to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 was the mark of a true chess player; we hear tapes of JFK cannily predicting that overt American military action in Cuba would give the Soviets an excuse to take West Berlin. Predictably, he was accused of being an appeaser during strategy sessions--but he won the day in history's eyes. We'll never know how Kennedy might have handled Vietnam, but these arguments (urged along by Brown University professor James G. Blight, the only talking head in the movie) make for tantalizing viewing, and director Koji Masutani has assembled a particularly impressive collection of original footage, some of which might be new even to veteran Kennedy watchers. This image of a prudent, thoughtful president practicing farsighted diplomacy was probably part of the point of this 2008 film; along with the history lesson, it wants to suggest contemporary ways of being smart on the world stage. --Robert Horton

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