Errol Morris Marks The Anniversary Of The JFK Assassination

Forty-eight years ago, John F. Kennedy's motorcade came down Elm Street in downtown Dallas when shots rang out.

Despite the Warren Commission finding that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for the death of President Kennedy, conspiracy theories abound.

To mark this year's anniversary Academy Award-winning filmmaker and Cambridge resident, Errol Morris made a short documentary for the New York Times, about one piece of the assassination puzzle.

Morris turns his camera on a man obsessed by the JFK assassination: former Haverford professor of philosophy, Josiah "Tink" Thompson. Tink digs into the mystery of the so-called "umbrella man," who can be seen in many of the photos and footage from that day in Dallas.

To Tink it seemed curious that a lone man with an open umbrella on a sunny day would be standing right next to the motorcade as Kennedy was shot.

When he published his observation, many others offered their explanations. One particularly enthusiastic JFK assassination conspiracy theorist published an entire book that hoped to prove that the umbrella man was the shooter.

As you can imagine, that theory did not stand up to subsequent scrutiny, as we find out in Errol Morris's short doc.

Errol Morris joins us to talk about his documentary short and the anniversary of the JFK assassination.

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