Where were you when you saw the video?
For the first time, the public can own (or rent) a copy of Abraham Zapruder's 26-second home movie of the assassination of President Kennedy. Packaged as a documentary, the digitally enhanced, rephotographed video, "Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film," went on sale this week for $16.99 at video outlets.
Besides a lengthy behind-the-scenes look at the restoration, the documentary ends with a flurry of new versions of the famous sequence -- including slow-motion and zoom versions, where technology keeps President Kennedy front and center in each frame. Even the rectangles of blank film caused by the sprockets of Zapruder's camera have been restored to reveal, if nothing else, additional scenery.
In the video versions, your eyes are drawn more to Kennedy as the presidential motorcade turns into Dealey Plaza. You see Kennedy waving to the crowd before Zapruder's view is momentarily obstructed by a road sign. We immediately see, up close and in slow motion, Kennedy's arms rising and straightening at his neck.
In clear color (Zapruder's jittery camera work having been digitally stabilized), we see the shot that struck Kennedy's head. The explosion of red. Jacqueline Kennedy, in her pink pillbox hat, facing her downed husband. We see her expression more clearly.
"I'm sick about it," Zapruder said in a TV interview in Dallas that November day 35 years ago. Along with the 500-plus frames of the assassination, the 45-minute documentary includes footage, such as that TV interview, about the Russian-born Zapruder -- "the unassuming man with an ordinary camera who unwittingly captured a seminal moment in American history," says the narration.
The documentary details how the video was first developed and shown at a Kodak processing plant in Dallas and how a Life magazine editor called Zapruder's home every 15 minutes for five hours until Zapruder, a Dallas dressmaker, picked up the phone. The magazine's perseverance and deep pockets paid off: Zapruder sold Time, Inc. the print and film rights for $150,000. But it was hardly a tidy end to the story of the famous film.
Now comes Illinois-based MPI Home Video, which has shipped out 30,000 copies (including one to President Clinton) and hopes to sell 200,000 copies eventually. MPI -- distributors of the "Lost Honeymooners" episodes and "A Hard Day's Night" -- now has the worldwide rights to the Zapruder video.
"It's a different venue than the Beatles -- there seems to be no limit to this story," says Natalie Olinger, speaking for MPI Home Video.
Baltimore-area Blockbuster stores have fielded a few calls about "the JFK thing," as one clerk called the video. Despite its national release Tuesday, the video has been scarce here, with several outlets still awaiting delivery. There's been little rush for orders -- after all, the documentary is competing against shelves of "Good Will Hunting" and "As Good As It Gets."
On the Internet, reaction was swift: "I do not want to see it. I know how it ends" ... "more likely that will be on cable" ... "I have no desire to watch JFK's head being blown off or to see poor Jackie's pain."
The documentary could well develop a cult following. Although we do know how the film ends, some people aren't convinced how the president died. The images continue to feed the prevailing conspiracy theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole gunman. Kennedy, some theorists have maintained, could not have been shot from behind, specifically, from Oswald's sniper post on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
For this reason, the home video will also be coveted as evidence, says a leading author on the subject.
"The film shows clearly that when the bullet hits the president, he is driven backward and to the left. How could that have been accomplished from a bullet coming from behind?" asks Washington attorney Mark Lane, who has challenged the government's position that Oswald acted alone. Lane's 1966 book on the subject, "Rush to Judgment," was made into a movie, then a video distributed by MPI Home Video.
"We make no judgments as to what happened to President Kennedy," Olinger says. "We're not part of history, but maybe we can contribute to some final conclusions to close this."
Conclusions aren't likely. But, now packaged and produced, the moving pictures of Kennedy's death are likely to exhume the ache and pain of the tragedy. It's graphic. It's not for children, Olinger strongly suggests: "Maybe some high-schoolers could handle it."
The 8-mm film has been a story in itself. Long before Zapruder's film would be made available for home viewing, Lane, now 71, took the film on the road. He was at the film's first public showing in 1969 during New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's unsuccessful prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw. Believing the film "belonged to the American people," Lane says he made 100 copies and showed it across the country during speeches and media appearances.
A bootleg copy first appeared on television in 1975. Lane says he was the one who gave Geraldo Rivera the copy to broadcast on his show then, "Good Night America." (The new video includes footage of a young, hairier Rivera warning his TV audience, "This is very heavy.") A month after the controversial broadcast, Time sold the film and commercial rights back to the Zapruder family -- Zapruder had died of cancer in 1970 -- for $1.
The family has kept the rights, but since 1978, the film has been stored in a 25-degree vault at the National Archives annex in College Park. In 1994, Zapruder's home movie joined the likes of "E.T." and "The African Queen" in the Library of Congress' collection of films deemed culturally and historically important.
Three years later, the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board proclaimed the film an "assassination record" and property of the U.S. government come this August.
The question became: How much compensation do the Zapruder heirs deserve for their father's celluloid legacy? The family, in stormy negotiations with the Justice Department, is asking $18.5 million. The government first offered $750,000; the Zapruder family then hired a heavyweight Washington lawyer. The latest offer is $3 million.
Zapruder's son, Washington tax lawyer Henry Zapruder, had no comment other than that the negotiations have been "painful."
To satisfy constant requests for the film, the Zapruder family spent $300,000 to produce "Image of an Assassination," which began production last year. The video chronicles how Zapruder came to be such a famous amateur filmmaker.
Credit his secretaries.
On Nov. 22, 1963, Zapruder, a women's dress manufacturer whose office was directly across from the Book Depository, had stepped away from the office to get a better view of Kennedy's passing motorcade. But he didn't have his camera. Two assistants nudged him into going back for it.
Zapruder hauled his Bell & Howell (with telephoto lens) to a spot on Elm Street, as the motorcade crawled down Elm toward the triple underpass. Steadying himself on a concrete abutment, Zapruder filmed what he thought would be something to show his kids and grandchildren one day. A souvenir.
Throughout, Zapruder held his shot. After the shooting, Zapruder went back to his office and wept, called the police, "and we were required to get a place to develop the film."
Also from his 1964 testimony before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Zapruder, in one of the classic understatements of the century, testified "I knew I had something. I figured it might be of some help."
Frame by key frame, Zapruder was asked to describe what his camera left for us. He told the commission he heard a shot and saw "the president lean over and grab himself ... before I had a chance to organize my mind, I heard a second shot and then I saw his head opened up and the blood and everything came out."
This fraction in time starts at frame No. 313 -- and now can be seen in ghastly clarity on the home video.
"That was -- that was the horrible one," the filmmaker said, before weeping before the Warren Commission, before apologizing "for breaking down," and after handing his camera over to the FBI.
"I didn't want the camera," Zapruder told the U.S. government. "I didn't want anything for myself."
Thirty-five years later, his family and the government are fighting to put a price tag on 26 seconds of American history -- which is now available on home video for about 17 bucks.
Pub Date: 7/16/98