Bobby

I had a very rare day off yesterday (thanks Wendy! your turn today!) and I went to see Bobby, the new movie about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. As far as movies go, it was really interesting---good I guess, but with a ton of characters connected only by the fact that they happened to be present at the shooting. Tons of stars, Harry Belefonte, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Heather Graeme, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Lawrence Fishbourne, Elijah Wood, etc., etc. Lindsay Lohan caught my eye. I had never seen her in anything other than the tabloids so I didn't recognize her. I wasn't even sure she was an actor. I thought she was just another young drunk celebrity. She was sure sweet in the movie though.

I love anything about Los Angeles in the 1960s, so this movie was cool in that regard. It was also great to hear Bobby Kennedy's words. It's unbelievable to me that a politician in the States could have come so close to getting a presidential nomination by running on such a strong peace and justice platform. His speeches sounded like he picked them right up off the desk of Martin Luther King, Jr. Was this the real Kennedy? You have to wonder what would have happened if he had won the election in 1968.

I kind of wish director Emilio Estevez would have taken the Oliver Stone-slant and done something about the conspiracy theories on RFK's murder. I love conspiracy theories, even if I don't believe a lot of them. But I have serious doubts that Shirhan Shirhan was the only one who shot Bobby. Except for a couple of exceptions (Mark Chapman, John Hinkley, Jr., Squeaky Fromm) I don't believe in the "lone, crazed gunman" solutions. Lee Harvey Oswald, Shirhan Shirhan, Timothy McVeigh---no way any of these guys did what they did alone. You can find some of the doubts about RFK's place here and here and here.

I was seven, but I actually remember that election. A bunch of us kids from Nevada Ave. in East LA went down to hear Jose Feliciano ("Light my Fire" was big that year) open for Hubert Humphrey at an outdoor mall on Atlantic Ave. That was probably during the actual presidential campaign.

The night Bobby Kennedy was shot, my brother and I were living at my BamBea's house in El Monte. I don't remember my parents being around. I woke up early in the morning to Bambea sobbing, buried in a mountain of pillows and psychedelic colours of her bedroom with the TV blaring.

I asked her what was the matter and she said they shot Bobby Kennedy last night. She had been up all night.

Later that morning, I walked to the end of street to wait from my school bus and I saw a German Shepherd get hit and killed by a trash truck. I wondered if there might not be something seriously wrong with that day.


(The photo of RFK is from the very interesting website of Mike Strong)