Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, and Jacki Weaver will all be in Tom Hanks' JFK movie

By Sean O'Neal | October 31, 2012 | 5:05pm

Aux Features Film

Producer Tom Hanks has begun assembling the cast for his upcoming JFK assassination drama Parkland, dismaying those who might have hoped that Hanks would just assume all the roles with the help of various wigs and prosthetics, Cloud Atlas-style. As this is a serious, if likely very sentimental film—in which Hanks will return to the Dallas hospital where John F. Kennedy died, to reexamine another dark day in American history and see if maybe Tom Hanks being there can fix it—he's cast very serious actors Paul Giamatti, Billy Bob Thornton, and Jacki Weaver in a trio of as-yet-unspecified roles. If we had to guess, we'd wager that Jacki Weaver will play a nurse, Paul Giamatti will play the Magic Bullet, and Billy Bob Thornton will play Air Force One.

"I just traveled through the President and the Governor to come out fucking pristine on this gurney, and nobody believes in me!" a red-faced Giamatti will splutter to Weaver, as whoever plays Lyndon B. Johnson somberly takes the oath of office aboard Billy Bob Thornton. Anyway, announcement of the casting also clarifies that Parkland will take as its basis Vincent Bugliosi's Warren Commission-supporting, conspiracy theorist-razzing doorstop Reclaiming History, so anyone expecting to see, say, Jack Ruby skulking through the hospital halls should probably look elsewhere.