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As I wrote a few days ago, I had minimal expectations of Chappaquiddick The Movie, which opened last week despite the best efforts of the Kennedy family and their various retainers and enablers. I have always been revolted by the fact that Ted, after killing Mary Jo Kopechne, did not have the decency to do a John Profumo and retire from public life for the rest of his days - and I was even more revolted by the way Massachusetts voters did not have the decency to impose that choice upon him... That combination of outsiders and neophytes may be...

Have you noticed that there’s been a word missing from all these recent stories about sexual harassment in Massachusetts politics? The missing word is "Kennedy." Talk about ignoring the elephant, or should I say donkey, in the room. There has never been a family in Massachusetts (or American) politics that's come close to the sordid record of misogyny of the Kennedys. [Snip] Chappaquiddick, anyone? Joe Kennedy II crippling a young woman on Nantucket and later his first wife accusing him of bullying her ... the list of abominable Kennedy behavior around women is practically endless. From Toodles Ryan to...

Over the years, a great many actors have taken a turn at playing one of the Kennedy brothers (in made-for-TV movies, on “Saturday Night Live,” in big-screen historical dramas). The vast majority of these performances have been mediocre, a handful have been quite good, and a few have been memorable — like Bruce Greenwood’s cuttingly terse and commanding JFK in the Cuban Missile Crisis drama “Thirteen Days,” or Peter Sarsgaard’s tender and battle-scarred Robert F. Kennedy in “Jackie.” To that short list of singular and superb Kennedy performances, we can now add the Australian actor Jason Clarke’s portrayal of Edward...

The power of the Kennedy clan seems to be fading, no longer able to prevent the production of an indie film that no only tells the truth, but which has earned the praise of the show business bible, Variety. Steven Hayward of Powerline spotted the anomaly: I paid no attention to the fact that Hollywood was producing a biopic of Ted Kennedy’s famous “accident” at Chappaquiddick in 1969, and would have assumed that it was a typical gauzy pro-Kennedy puff piece if I had known. But Variety magazine, the main trade journal of Hollywood, offers a review that not only says that the...

Variety chief film critic Owen Gleiberman, piles on: “Chappaquiddick” is a meticulously told chronicle, no more and no less, and at times there’s a slight detachment in watching it, because it’s too tough and smart to milk the situation by turning Edward Kennedy into a “tragic figure.” . . . Forty-eight years later, let’s be clear on what the meaning of Chappaquiddick is. Ted Kennedy should, by all rights, have stood trial for involuntary manslaughter, which would likely have ended his political career. The fact that the Kennedy family — the original postwar dynasty of the one percent — possessed,...

I paid no attention to the fact that Hollywood was producing a biopic of Ted Kennedy’s famous “accident” at Chappaquiddick in 1969, and would have assumed that it was a typical gauzy pro-Kennedy puff piece if I had known. But Variety magazine, the main trade journal of Hollywood, offers a review that not only says that the forthcoming movie Chappaquiddick is suitably harsh on Teddy, but that he—and the Kennedy reputation—deserve it: The film says that what happened at Chappaquiddick was even worse than we think. Kopechne’s body was found in a position that implied that she was struggling to...

Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours. ---SNIP--- Kennedy escaped the car and then dove down in an attempt to retrieve Kopechne from the sunken Oldsmobile. Failing, he stumbled back to the cottage, where he enlisted Gargan and another friend in a second attempt to save Kopechne. The three men were unsuccessful; her body was not...

Daily Beast reporter Liza Foreman tells readers in her lede that she was "not all that familiar" with Chappaquiddick, the remote island where Kennedy drove off a bridge late at night with a young woman who drowned in the car while Kennedy escaped. Kennedy failed to report the accident until the next morning and was later given a suspended sentence for leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The death of 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker to Kennedy's late brother Robert, shadowed Ted Kennedy for the rest of his life and arguably kept him from ever winning the...

On the heels of actor Will Ferrell pulling out of a planned "Alzheimer's comedy" about Ronald Reagan comes news that Hollywood is preparing a feature film about late Senator Ted Kennedy and the drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. Australian-born "Zero Dark Thirty" star Jason Clarke will portray Kennedy in "Chappaquiddick" — the film's working title — and John Curran, whose credits include "The Painted Veil," will direct, said the movie's co-producer and Apex Entertainment president and chief executive Mark Ciardi. Production is slated to begin around Labor Day with a tentative release in late 2017. Ciardi noted that...

A new film about the fateful July 1969 car crash that killed Mary Jo Kopechne and ended Ted Kennedy’s presidential aspirations has an official release date, and it looks like film executives have Oscars in mind. Chappaquiddick, which stars Jason Clarke as Kennedy and Kate Mara as Kopechne, will open in select theaters on Dec. 8, according to the Hollywood Reporter, qualifying it for the 2017 slate of film awards. The film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month, before Entertainment Studios purchased it for $4 million. THR also reported that the studio has committed $16 million to...