Buster Keaton- Assassinations Theorist
I was once a good Republican child. I believed Oswald acted alone. Buster Keaton would change that.
It was the 1960's, but I was conservative to the bone. So conservative that I spent a great deal of time studying the past. In 1968,as the rest of the world was looking to a new future, I was starting my early research into silent movies. In my local branch library was a book by Buster Keaton about his career and in particular his early creativity in inventing film technique. Buster was most proud of having invented the "Triple Shot".
The Triple Shot is a technique whereby the viewer through three or more fragmented and separate images, is made to believe he has seen something he hasnt seen. In Keaton's illustration in the book, he shows himself dressed as a caveman throwing what looks like a huge rock. Next he shows the rock flying through the air, and finally he shows the rock landing on someone far far away. In the movie one believes one has seen Keaton throw the rock a far distance and hit someone, when this is not at all what one has seen. Brilliant.
On 5 June 1968, as a dutiful Republican junior politico, I was staying up late, viewing the television returns of the California Primary. I believed that if Senator Robert Kennedy won the Democratic Primary, he would be the Democratic Party candidate, he would win the Presidency, and my candidate of choice, Richard M. Nixon would lose, and lose big time. It would be a w i i i iiiipe OUT.
As the Democratic Primary results were announced and Bobby Kennedy gave his speech, I was one despondent Republican kid. All was lost. I announced this to my parents, and was going to go to bed, when suddenly on camera, I saw this waiter shooting in the room, a jumble of distorted images as the camera jerked all over that little kitchen in the Ambassador Hotel, and then Senator Kennedy, laying on the floor. Oh My GOD!!! A TRIPLE SHOT!!!
In that brief moment, I became a Conspiracy Theorist. In that second, I stopped believing in lone nuts. I didnt know how, at that point I could not imagine why, I just knew that a whole lot of people were involved, in ways large and small, known and unknown to them, that the conspiracies were real and they were active. A triple shot! I was dizzy with the implications. My parents thought I'd slipped a gear.
Unknown to me at that moment, my little town of Altadena California and our neighbor to the south Pasadena , were the centers of action in this conspiracy. The place where my Grandmother bought her cake decorating supplies, the strip club that excited my pre pubescent imagination with its sign, the health food store where I bought honey crunch bars and Grandmother got her arthritis "cures", the gun store where my Father bought targets and ammunition, the gun range where we took target practice, these were each places central to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I walked through them my entire life. The ghosts of untruth and injustice whisper in them still, the feeling of "wrong" chills your skin in them for reasons most people can not imagine or quite touch. An innocent man is yet convicted and imprisoned for a crime he could not have committed, a crime that altered America and the world forever.
Tom Noguchi says his "professional judgment" is at odds with the physical evidence and shrugs. Buster knows. Buster told me, it was a triple shot.
It was the 1960's, but I was conservative to the bone. So conservative that I spent a great deal of time studying the past. In 1968,as the rest of the world was looking to a new future, I was starting my early research into silent movies. In my local branch library was a book by Buster Keaton about his career and in particular his early creativity in inventing film technique. Buster was most proud of having invented the "Triple Shot".
The Triple Shot is a technique whereby the viewer through three or more fragmented and separate images, is made to believe he has seen something he hasnt seen. In Keaton's illustration in the book, he shows himself dressed as a caveman throwing what looks like a huge rock. Next he shows the rock flying through the air, and finally he shows the rock landing on someone far far away. In the movie one believes one has seen Keaton throw the rock a far distance and hit someone, when this is not at all what one has seen. Brilliant.
On 5 June 1968, as a dutiful Republican junior politico, I was staying up late, viewing the television returns of the California Primary. I believed that if Senator Robert Kennedy won the Democratic Primary, he would be the Democratic Party candidate, he would win the Presidency, and my candidate of choice, Richard M. Nixon would lose, and lose big time. It would be a w i i i iiiipe OUT.
As the Democratic Primary results were announced and Bobby Kennedy gave his speech, I was one despondent Republican kid. All was lost. I announced this to my parents, and was going to go to bed, when suddenly on camera, I saw this waiter shooting in the room, a jumble of distorted images as the camera jerked all over that little kitchen in the Ambassador Hotel, and then Senator Kennedy, laying on the floor. Oh My GOD!!! A TRIPLE SHOT!!!
In that brief moment, I became a Conspiracy Theorist. In that second, I stopped believing in lone nuts. I didnt know how, at that point I could not imagine why, I just knew that a whole lot of people were involved, in ways large and small, known and unknown to them, that the conspiracies were real and they were active. A triple shot! I was dizzy with the implications. My parents thought I'd slipped a gear.
Unknown to me at that moment, my little town of Altadena California and our neighbor to the south Pasadena , were the centers of action in this conspiracy. The place where my Grandmother bought her cake decorating supplies, the strip club that excited my pre pubescent imagination with its sign, the health food store where I bought honey crunch bars and Grandmother got her arthritis "cures", the gun store where my Father bought targets and ammunition, the gun range where we took target practice, these were each places central to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I walked through them my entire life. The ghosts of untruth and injustice whisper in them still, the feeling of "wrong" chills your skin in them for reasons most people can not imagine or quite touch. An innocent man is yet convicted and imprisoned for a crime he could not have committed, a crime that altered America and the world forever.
Tom Noguchi says his "professional judgment" is at odds with the physical evidence and shrugs. Buster knows. Buster told me, it was a triple shot.
posted by Red Taliesin at 2:37 PM
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