In addition to Oliver Stone’s JFK, there have been numerous films and TV shows that incorporate or have allusions to the Kennedy assassination in their plots, including Execu- tive Action (1973), The Parallax View (1974), Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), In the Line of Fire (1993), and the remake of The Manchurian Candidate (2004). A Twilight Zone TV epi- sode in 1985, “Profile in Silver,” used time travel to stop the assassination from happening, at least temporarily. The Kennedy assassination has played a central role in American culture in almost every way, and it is featured in hundreds of plays, comic books, novels, television shows, and with the passage of time, comedies, from Seinfeld to Robot Chicken. Hunter S. Thompson first used the phrase “fear and loathing” to describe the Kennedy assassination in a November 22, 1963, letter to a friend; it would later become the title of Thompson’s most famous book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (New York: Random House, 1971). One of the best- known comedy entries is the fraternity movie Animal House (1978) starring John Belushi. The film’s director, John Landis, has indicated that the climactic homecoming parade scene was intentionally dated November 21, 1963, since the film portrayed a happy-go- lucky postwar America that ended with the JFK assassination. One of the homecoming floats was set to the theme of the New Frontier and dominated by a likeness of President Kennedy, with the women on the float all dressed in the pink suit and pillbox hat Jackie wore in Dallas. Two well-known songs were written as a result of the assassination: Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” and the Beach Boys’ “The Warmth of the Sun.” An interesting question with an unknowable answer is: Was Oswald’s assassination plan influenced by two movies about presidential assassination that he might well have seen? In 1951, when Oswald was twelve, MGM released The Tall Target, starring Dick Powell. It was a film about the alleged Baltimore plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln as he passed through the Confederate- sympathizing city on February 23, 1861, on his way to Washington for his inauguration. Lincoln was scheduled to leave his train and give a speech, and the conspirators placed their assassin in an open window of a building overlooking the site. The conspirators described a “rifle with a telescopic lens.” Then in 1962, when Oswald was back living in the United States, United Artists released The Manchurian Candidate, starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury. This film also spotlighted a potential presidential assassination from a window high above the national convention of an unnamed party. The assassin again uses a rifle with a telescopic lens. Marina Oswald also told the Warren Commission that Lee had watched two assassination-related films, We Were Strangers (about the assassination of a Cuban dictator) and Suddenly (about the attempted assassination of a U.S. president). The precise dates of viewing have never been determined, though Marina thought her husband might have watched them in October 1963. See Warren Commission Hearings, vol. I, p. 71, and John Loken, Oswald’s Trigger Films: The Manchurian Candidate, We Were Strangers, Suddenly? (Ann Arbor, MI: Falcon Books, 2000). Gary Mack told me: “I spent a lot of time on this and could not confirm it—there were no double features on local TV or any time when We Were Strangers was scheduled. The other film did air on two different days, as I recall, but not Strangers.” E-mail from Gary Mack, June 15, 2012. Marina was not asked about The Tall Tar- get, which is actually closer to the November 22 reality, but then, Oswald might have viewed it years before he met Marina.