Parkland
Short description
Parkland recounts the events at Dallas's Parkland Memorial Hospital on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was shot while riding through the city. The film moves through the hours that followed, focusing on the medical staff who treated him, the Secret Service agents and police searching for the shooter, and the bystander whose home-movie camera captured the motorcade. Their decisions, made under intense pressure, form the core of the story.
Peter Landesman wrote the screenplay and made his directing debut with this film, which he followed with Concussion in 2015, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House in 2017, and Eleven Days in 2026. The large cast includes Zac Efron as Dr. Jim Carrico, Marcia Gay Harden as nurse Doris Nelson, Paul Giamatti as Abraham Zapruder, Billy Bob Thornton as Forrest Sorrels, Jacki Weaver as Marguerite Oswald, and Ron Livingston as James Hosty. Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Nigel Sinclair produced.
Made for a modest budget of 10 million dollars, the film earned about 1 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.4 from roughly 19,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.2 from around 400 votes. A critics' rating of 5.7 from 121 reviews places it below both audience scores. It runs 94 minutes and was released in October 2013.
What's left behind the scenes
- Parkland Hospital has undergone significant reconstruction since 1963. All the additions and improvements made over 50 years have changed its original appearance beyond recognition. As a result, a closed wing of the Austin State Hospital was used for filming instead of Parkland.
- The Kodak logo was not used on 16mm film until 1971.
- The film is based on the book “Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy” by former lawyer Vincent Bugliosi.
- The film states that Agent Forrest Sorrells died in 1993 at the age of 82, retiring after 47 years of service in 1969. He retired 24 years before his death. Therefore, he was approximately 58 years old at the time. If he served for 47 years, it means he started serving at the age of 11.
- Three identical pink suits of Jacqueline Kennedy were created specifically for the film. Their creation required 20 yards of dyed Italian wool.
- At Lee Harvey Oswald’s funeral, a 1965 Cadillac Funeral Coach can be seen, while the hearse carrying Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital is a 1964 Cadillac Funeral Coach, which is an anachronism.
- 25 cars were created for the film, including exact replicas of John F. Kennedy’s limousine and the Secret Service escort vehicles. Manufacturing took just over two months.
- Principal photography began on January 12, 2013, and was completed in 24 days.
- In the film, Abraham Zapruder stands alone on a colonnade step while filming the assassination of the President. In reality, his assistant, Marilyn Sitzman, stood beside him, helping him to keep his balance.
- A modern connection jack can be noticed on the telephone handset used by Dr. Kariko in the living room.
- During the research for the film, Peter Landesman managed to speak with the family of Abraham Zapruder, an American businessman and women's clothing manufacturer who filmed a 26-second amateur documentary on November 22, 1963, capturing the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. Landesman also spent three days with FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty before he died in June 2011. Hosty was the man who could have arrested Kennedy's assassin beforehand.
- Peter Landesman noted that one of the most valuable sources of information for the storyline about Robert Oswald was a little-known book by Priscilla McMillan titled “Marina and Lee.” The author was a young American journalist living in Moscow at the very time Lee Harvey Oswald fled to the Soviet Union. She interviewed him while he was recovering from a suicide attempt. And after he was killed, she spent many days talking to his wife.
- The President's limousine and the Secret Service vehicle in the film are 1964 Lincoln Continentals, which is an anachronism.
- Bill Paxton is from Fort Worth. He remembers seeing John F. Kennedy speak on the day of the assassination. He once visited the six-story museum on Dealey Plaza in Dallas, which preserves the legacy of President John F. Kennedy. While watching a film there about the President's visit to Texas, he was stunned to recognize a young version of himself in the background, sitting on his father's shoulders. On the same day, in an airport bookstore, he came across Vincent Bugliosi's book and subsequently became determined to find a way to tell the well-known story, but from a different, more personal perspective. He told Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman about the book, who found the project interesting for the Playtone studio.
- US Secret Service agents in the film are armed with M16A1 rifles, which were adopted in 1967. In 1963, the Secret Service used the first version of the M16 with a different-shaped muzzle brake and without the bolt carrier as found on the M16A1.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
