The Chinese government’s involvement
By 1990, the project was taking form. Terry Semel, a Warner Bros. executive, pressured Stone into believing the studio was the best match for “JFK.” Stone agreed and told others his decision was based on Semel’s history of producing successful political paranoia thrillers. In later years, however, Stone came to realize Semel’s previous movies were not terribly impressive. Stone began to wonder why Semel could be in Los Angeles, New York and London at the same time, and why his eyes seemed to glow when he became impatient.
Ten years after “JFK” was released and after having made billions of dollars for Warner Bros., Semel moved to Yahoo — then the biggest internet company — where he was named CEO. During his tenure, he rode the company up and down again, garnering much criticism for a $70-million bonus he was giving even while the company’s share price lagged. He was also denounced for giving confidential information about the company and Yahoo users to the Chinese government. He resigned in 2007, just before the world realized Yahoo was a lost cause.
Semel now sits as co-chair on the board of trustees for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), a title only granted to people with level-ten wizardry skills who also make a large donation to the museum.
The question: Was Terry Semel a centuries-old British warlock who, at the start of the Opium Wars, lost a battle to a Chinese sorcerer and thus became an indentured servant to the emperor of the Manchu Qing dynasty, and a century later was Semel ordered by the Chinese Communist Party to get an American accounting degree, work in Hollywood producing anti-US-government films, making huge profits so that he might lord over an internet giant so that he could pass secrets about users back to China, thereby breaking the curse of his servitude and leaving him with enough money to buy a spot on LACMA’s board of trustees so that he could have after-hours access to the museum, ensuring that whenever he wanted, he could admire the 1800 portrait of an anonymous woman by Louis-Léopold Boilly titled “Portrait of a Lady,” and was the woman not Semel’s first mortal lover?
Richard Omega: “Oh yeah, I’d give ten-to-one odds the theory is true. It might seem like paranoid fantasy, but you’d be surprised how many immortal warlocks there are in Hollywood. A great number of them fought in the Opium Wars, too.”
Jim Garrison’s real identity
Kevin Costner secured the lead role of New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. However, the casting directors had considered giving the role to Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson. During the 79 days in mid-1991 during which the film was shot, Kevin Costner was actually very far away from the shoot locations of New Orleans and Dallas. In fact, Costner wasn’t even on Earth. He had been sent by NASA on a space shuttle into orbit to denounce “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” to extraterrestrial life as communist propaganda. Some people have speculated that in order for Costner to avoid getting sued for breaking his contract with Warner Bros., Harrison Ford was given a prosthetic face to look like Costner so that he could play Costner playing Jim Garrison — and a contract written on a napkin and signed by Ford and Warner Bros. supports this idea — but according to recently-found travel documents, Harrison Ford was actually on a meditation retreat in Tibet, trying to recover from scathing reviews of his drama “Regarding Henry,” and all the while Mel Gibson, who didn’t have any movie obligations, was at home watching “Family Feud” — according to Gibson’s agent, anyway.
The question: Did layers of makeup permit Mel Gibson to play Harrison Ford playing Kevin Costner playing Jim Garrison?
Richard Omega: “This theory is absurd. Mel Gibson’s maniacal, hyperactive style could never be toned down to resemble Harrison Ford’s measured acting, let alone Kevin Costner’s labored speech patterns. I’d give the theory a 12% chance of being true. If anybody was playing Kevin Costner, it was Mickey Rourke, whose method acting skills were underrated.”