Throughout the career of documentarian Errol Morris, the writer/director has fiercely investigated the multiple truths to every event, whether in his own work or the support for others, as with Joshua Oppenheimer‘s “The Act of Killing.” Two years ago, he released a short film, through the New York Times, “The Umbrella Man,” on the Kennedy assassination, focusing on a mysterious person on the scene, and true to Morris’ credos, another director has set about with his own interpretation.
In Morris’ doc, he used a snippet of a conversation with author Josiah “Tink” Thompson, who wrote a book on the assassination and together they lightheartedly touch on a theory for the Umbrella Man’s presence—the man in fact shot Kennedy through a rigged umbrella-turned-weapon. Now, “Repo Man” director Alex Cox has taken on the pair’s claims (via Boing Boing) in a brief video reaction, elaborating on that umbrella weapon and reassessing its status as an absurd, crackpot theory.
The reaction is not a stand-alone venture; Cox has been within the subject for some time, and has a new book, “The President and the Provocateur: The Parallel Lives of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald,” to show for it. Just as Morris’ six-hour interview with Thompson calls for more installments, Cox hopes for a series of short films “in connection with the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.” Watch the first of his oddly staged, intriguing clips below, and also check out Morris’ original op-ed piece.
Cox is a human /alien hybrid, right?