THE ZAPRUDER FILMS

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Abraham Zapruder was filming the scene from atop a concrete abutment overlooking the motorcade’s route. As many as eight other onlookers took home-movie footage or still photographs of the shooting, but Zapruder’s is the only film known to exist that captured the entire event. “The Zapruder Film” has been studied and debated for decades, inspiring scientific researchers and conspiracy theorists alike.

In a newly-stabilized version of Zapruder’s footage, two men clap
as President Kennedy’s limousine passes “The Umbrella Man”
and another man, who waves in the foreground.

Recently, through the use of computers, it has become possible to produce stabilized versions of the film — minimizing the distracting “home-movie jitter” of the original footage and smoothly tracking the movement of the President’s limousine, HERE. (WARNING: Graphic content)

By stabilizing the original footage in an entirely different manner, I have been able to shift the emphasis to the onlookers instead of the motorcade — eliminating the left-to-right panning motion of the camera and, essentially, presenting the footage in the form of seven separate and stationary “Zapruder Films.”

For the first time, we can clearly observe people clapping and waving, or calmly watching, as the motorcade moves past them. A young boy steps from between two adults to get a better view of the President’s limousine. A woman who has been walking toward the roadway makes a sudden turn away, just as the fatal bullet strikes the President. One man dives to the ground, while other onlookers begin to back away.

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A young boy steps to the side to get
a better view of the limousine.

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The woman on the right prepares
to photograph the President’s vehicle.

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A woman turns away suddenly as the President is fatally wounded.

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One man dives to the ground as Mrs. Kennedy
starts to climb onto the limousine’s trunk.

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Another group watches as a Secret Service agent
climbs onto the back of the limousine.

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A man and woman watch as the limousine starts to speed away.

GRANDMA AND GRANDPA’S PORCH

 

More winter snapshots (revised)

FIVE COUSINS

BURNING MR. CREOSOTE

A letter to TIME Magazine,Vol. 177, No. 16 — April 25, 2011:

Mistaken Identity?

On the Closeup page, a large group of men in Afghanistan
protest Florida preacher Terry Jones’ immolation of the Koran [April 18].
Yet the image taped onto the head of the body burning in effigy
is that of famed Monty Python comedian Terry Jones.
Why take things out on the hilarious Welshman?

Rob Reagan, Los Angeles

WINTER SNAPSHOTS (REVISED)

 
 

 
 

VIDEO STILL FRAMES

FRAMES FROM AN OLD HOME MOVIE

MANSON TOWING

I’m not sure what this says about me, but …

Every time I see one of these road signs, I picture Charlie Manson.

DARTH VACUUM

My latest million-dollar idea:

Living with two teenage sons – and looking for effective ways to keep them involved in the housecleaning – I’m convinced that a vacuum like this would get a LOT of use!

I LOVE WAX MUSEUMS

My sixth-grade class traveled to Washington, D.C., for a massive gathering of school safety patrols from around the country. While we were there, we took in all of the monuments and memorials, of course. We looked at loads of famous buildings and swarmed through the Smithsonian, with its impressive collection of richly varied artifacts.

So, what do I remember most clearly about that sixth-grade trip?:

— One of my classmates bought a really tiny camera from a street vendor. (It probably cost no more than two dollars, but it was super cool.)

— One of my classmates bought some realistic rubber vomit, and used it to prank our chaperon, the chief of police.

— The wax museum.

I was absolutely fascinated by the wax museum. Some of the figures were amazingly lifelike, others were stiff and utterly horrible. It didn’t matter; I loved them all.

The battle of the Alamo was a stop-motion frenzy of looming disaster. President Richard Nixon sat awkwardly behind a desk, his facial expression a bit too relaxed and engaging. (He looked more like a game show host than the shifty-eyed, tortured soul that we’d come to know from TV and magazines.) Gen. Douglas McArthur and his assistants waded ashore in the Phillipines (“I shall return!”), their pants legs eternally wet. (How did they do that?? My sixth-grade mind was boggled.)

In the years since, I’ve seen some really great wax figures — in museums in Hollywood, in London, and elsewhere — and some stunningly terrible ones, at those very same museums. (Why did the Elvis Presley figure in Madame Tussaud’s in London look like an effeminate cross-dresser? It was deeply odd, but memorable.)

I never had a chance to visit Tussaud’s London Wax Museum in St, Petersburg, Fla., but I have a post card that shows an amazing tableau from their “Chamber of Horrors”: The 1963 assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.

Somehow, Tussaud’s team of modelers was completely unable to capture any sense of horror or historical resonance; Instead, when I look at Oswald’s pose and expression, I’ve always envisioned him drunkenly singing a spirited sea shanty: