Bill Paxton Gets Hanks' Help With JFK Documentary

Texas native Bill Paxton's next project is a documentary on the assassination of JFK, but don't look for any wild-eyed conspiracy tale.

Paxton is producing the film along with Tom Hanks in time for the 50th anniversary. Interviews are already underway for the project, which will be a straightforward telling of documented events.

"I went to Tom and said no one has really told this story," Paxton told Popcorn Biz, referring to his efforts to bring Hanks onto the producing team. "We're not going to go fantasy, we're going documented."

"It's a story that's always been told with a conspiracy angle," he said, indicating projects such as Oliver Stone's "JFK." "We're not going to dramatize stuff we don't know about."

As a child, Paxton saw Kennedy give his last speech in front of the Hotel Texas and the events that followed have haunted him his whole life. "I was 81/2 when I saw the speech," he says. "After that it was an embarrassment to say you you were from Texas much less Fort Worth or Dallas."

At the end of this multi-part documentary, he hopes it will answer a lot of questions.

"I can understand how conspiracy stories started," says Paxton. "Things people point to as complicity to me were gross negligence that was covered up. I do believe there were other plots to kill the President."

"But in the final analysis on that particular day, it was Lee Harvey Oswald all the way."

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