The new movie Concussion opens on Christmas Day. As you have no doubt read by now, it's hardly a Valentine, much less a Christmas card, to the National Football League. But what many people don't know is that the movie also carries a rather strong tie to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Or at least to the so-called conspiracy community, which believes that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing JFK on Elm Street in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Even our own Dallas Cowboys were caught up in the assassination aftermath, as I wrote about in this story.
One of the best performances in Concussion is by the fine actor Albert Brooks, who plays pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht. Brooks, speaking for Wecht, delivers one of the best lines in the movie, when he tells the lead character, Dr. Bennet Omalu, played by Will Smith, that he's taking on the role of David in opposing the Goliath of the NFL: "You're going to war with a corporation that owns a day of the week."
Local connection: Dallas' own Luke Wilson plays NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Wilson's character and Brooks' character are on opposing sides in Concussion. Now 84, Brooks' character Wecht is an American forensic pathologist who has served as a consultant in multiple high-profile criminal cases. He has served as Allegheny County Coroner and Medical Examiner in Pittsburgh, where Concussion is set. He also served as a consultant to the movie. My friend and colleague Chris Vognar gives Concussion a B-plus in his review.
The character Brooks portrays so well first began to challenge the findings of the Warren Commission in 1965, not long after the commission published its report. In 1978, he testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations as the lone dissenter on a nine-member forensic pathology panel that re-examined the JFK assassination. Wecht disagreed with the others, who concurred with the Warren Commission, thus endorsing the so-called single bullet theory. That's the theory that contends that President Kennedy and then-Texas Gov. John Connally were both wounded by the second of three bullets fired. As you can see on Wecht's Wikipedia page:
"Out of the four official examinations into the Kennedy Assassination, Wecht is the only forensic pathologist who has disagreed with the conclusion that both the single bullet theory and Kennedy's head wounds are mutually consistent."
Wecht was interviewed extensively in the cable documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy.
Mark Curriden, a fine writer for The Dallas Morning News before becoming editor of the Texas Lawbook, knows Dr. Wecht and emailed me this about him:
"I met Dr. Wecht when I was a young journalist writing about legal issues for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Dutton publishing asked him to write a book about the famous cases in which he had performed autopsies. As a young journalist, it was a great honor. Plus, it was a true pleasure to work with Dr. Wecht because he was able to take the most complex workings of the body and explain them in a way everyone could understand. Finally, I loved that he is fearless. Dr. Wecht tells you exactly what he believes happened, no matter what the consequences may be."
That side of him certainly comes through in Brooks' portrayal in Concussion.
Here's the official trailer for Concussion, a YouTube clip that features the Albert Brooks-Cyril Wecht sound bite:
