Nearly five decades after Mary Jo Kopechne died in a car driven by Ted Kennedy, Hollywood is preparing a movie about the incident that appears more sympathetic to him than to her.
Kopechne, a 28-year-old former campaign worker for Kennedy's late brother Robert, was one of several women from the RFK campaign who attended a party on the remote island of Chappaquiddick off the coast of Massachusetts in July 1969, along with Kennedy and several other men.
Kennedy and Kopechne were seen leaving the party just before midnight without telling anyone their destination. Shortly thereafter, the car driven by Kennedy plunged off a narrow bridge into a pond. Kennedy managed to escape, later claiming to have suffered a minor concussion, while Kopechne perished. Inexplicably, in a decision that shadowed him for the rest of his life, Kennedy did not report the accident for 10 hours.
News of the upcoming film comes by way of a story in The Hollywood Reporter that tells us the movie will be directed by Fifty Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson and produced by Mark Ciardi.
Three paragraphs into the story comes this jawdropper of a quote from Ciardi --
I've done a lot of true life stories, many sports stories, but this one had a deep impact on this country. Everyone has an idea of what happened on Chappaquiddick, and this strings together the events in a compelling and emotional way. You'll see what [Kennedy] had to go through.
But will we see what Kopechne, uh, went through, which was arguably even more intense?
The Hollywood Reporter story, written by Borys Kit, continues in the same tin-eared vein --
Written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, Chappaquiddick is a political thriller that chronicles the true story of what is described as the seven most dramatic days of Kennedy's life.
On the eve of the moon landing, Senator Kennedy becomes entangled in a tragic car accident that results in the death of former Robert Kennedy campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne. The senator struggles to follow his own moral compass and simultaneously protect his family's legacy, all while simply trying to keep his own political ambitions alive.
Has the word "simply" ever come across as more offensive?
This glorified press release of a story reads like the work of someone newly acquainted with the "true story" of that "dramatic" week in Kennedy's life -- as opposed to the final day in Kopechne's, courtesy of Kennedy's more strenuous efforts at keeping his political ambitions alive instead of her.
Their claim that the film will depict the true story of Chappaquiddick begs the question -- which version do the filmmakers intend to show?
For example, there were two from Kennedy in the short span of those seven days -- his written statement to police in Edgartown on the morning after the accident, shortly before he fled to the consoling privacy of the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, and his televised address six nights later after it became obvious that Kennedy's flailing efforts at damage control weren't working this time around. Both accounts were riddled with inconsistencies, as was Kennedy's testimony at a closed-door inquest six months later.
Then came the conspiracy theories, first from Time magazine reporter Jack Olsen in his hastily written book The Bridge at Chappaquiddick, released in January 1970 only weeks before the inquest into Kopechne's death was held on Martha's Vineyard.
Olsen offered an astonishing theory, one with undeniable appeal to Kennedy apologists -- Kennedy had gotten out of the car after he was spotted at an intersection by a uniformed deputy sheriff and Kopechne drove off the bridge alone. As the theory goes, Kennedy didn't report the accident until he learned of it the next morning.
Another theory placed three people in the car, with Kennedy driving and Kopechne also up front, and another of the female party-goers in the back seat. This was based on the deputy sheriff claiming that there might have been a person in the back seat of the car, and the discovery of the second female party-goer's purse inside Kennedy's car.
It wasn't until Kennedy's cousin Joe Gargan spilled the beans to author Leo Damore that the most convincing account of the case emerged in Damore's 1988 book Senatorial Privilege. Damore pulled off a dramatic coup, getting a Kennedy confidant who was at the party to reveal what actually happened that night.
In his televised statement a week after Kopechne's death, Kennedy claimed he returned to the scene of the accident that night with Gargan and former U.S. attorney Paul Markham, two of the men who attended the party. Gargan tried in vain to rescue Kopechne from the submerged car, Kennedy said in his speech.
What Gargan revealed to Damore was damning -- that Kennedy wanted to claim Kopechne drove off the bridge after leaving the party alone. Gargan talked Kennedy out of it, Damore reported in Senatorial Privilege, because it was impossible to know on the morning after if the three men had been spotted at the bridge after Kennedy brought them to the accident scene.
After pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, Kennedy received a two-month suspended jail sentence and revocation of his driver's license for six months. Later that year, Massachusetts voters pronounced their own verdict by overwhelmingly re-electing him to the Senate, where he remained comfortably ensconced until his death in 2009 at the age of 77.
Given the circumstances of the case -- Kennedy's negligence in a car accident causing fatal injury, with him fleeing the scene -- he faced a mandatory jail sentence that the judge obligingly refused to impose. The prosecutor, also keenly aware of the political influence of the defendant, declined to charge Kennedy with manslaughter, a strong likelihood if nearly anyone else had drived the car that night and reacted the same way to the accident.
Chappaquiddick may attempt to salvage Kennedy's reputation, considering how the man was "simply" trying to protect his future and the Kennedy legacy. If there's any justice still possible in the case, what filmgoers take away from this movie will be the last hours of Kopechne's abruptly ended life and not the most dramatic week in Kennedy's.
