The tie that binds. (history and art; motion picture "JFK")

Nation, The, April, 1992 by Ephron, Nora

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at The Nation Institute's recent forum, "Hollywood and History: The Debate Over JFK."

I am not here to talk about JFK per se, but about what it is like to have written a movie based on something that happened. Nine years ago, Alice Arlen and I wrote the screenplay for Silkwood. It was a carefully annotated script, meticulously researched, and we kept scrupulously to what we determined were the key historical facts of the case. In Karen Silkwood we wrote a character who was considerably closer to whoever Silkwood was than to the person who had been written about in journalistic accounts--most of which had tended to whitewash Karen and gloss over certain less-than-perfect aspects of her character. In fact, what drew...

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