Is The Movie Thirteen Days History or Entertainment

1996 Words4 Pages

The movie Thirteen Days is 2000 docudrama and is directed by Roger Donaldson who is Australian and tries to portray the film in a serious manor. The movie is based on the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and shows the perspective of the US political leadership, specifically Special Assistant to the president Kenny O’Donnell, President John F. Kennedy and the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. This film is not based on the book of the same name written by Robert F. Kennedy like the first docudrama film about the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Missiles of October; this film was meticulously researched and was based on The Kennedy Tapes: inside the white house during the Cuban Missile Crisis which was written by Ernest May and Phillip Zelikow. This is a positive for the film because Thirteen Days had the possibility to become an almost accurate film due to the declassification of important documents, but this was not the case due to the ‘Hollywood effect’ which is a key reason why this film is not history but entertainment. This film exposes how close America actually came to a Nuclear Holocaust. In this essay I shall cover all the positives and negatives to show whether or not the film is a good source of history but or actually was made for entertainment purposes. There are two main historical issues with this film that make it more entertainment than History; the first being Kevin Costner’s portrayal of Special Assistant Kenny O’Donnell, although the film is seen through his eyes and shows him to be in John F. Kennedy inner circle; in reality he may not have played an important role as the film portrays, since he was only Kennedy’s appointment secretary not the Personal advisor he is portrayed as in this film. Another historical w...

... middle of paper ...

...e, Article, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/brenner.htm,
Nebraska PBS & NPR Stations, Article, http://netnebraska.org/article/news/jfk-revisited-nebraskan-ted-sorensen-kennedys-speech-writer
American Diplomacy, Article, http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2007/0709/whit/white_rfk.html
Contact Music, Interview, http://www.contactmusic.com/interview/sculp
World Socialist Website, Article, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/02/cuba-f07.html
Entertainment Weekly, Interview, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20267989,00.html
Cuban Missile Crisis, Article, http://www.cubanmissilecrisis.org/for-educators/media-depictions/thirteen-days-analyses/#almond
The Atlantic, Article, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/the-medical-ordeals-of-jfk/309469/
The Los Angles Times, Article, http://articles.latimes.com/2001/jan/22/entertainment/ca-15450

More about Is The Movie Thirteen Days History or Entertainment

Open Document