Skull And Bones Movie

The Good Shepherd is a 2006 American spy film produced and directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and De Niro, with an extensive supporting cast. Although it is a fictional film loosely based on real events, it is advertised as telling the untold story of the birth of counter-intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University, was founded in 1832. Until 1971, the organization published annual membership rosters, which were kept at Yale's library. In this list of notable Bonesmen, the number in parentheses represents the cohort year of Skull and Bones.

Page/Link:Page URL:HTML link:The Free Library. Retrieved Apr 19 2020 fromThe Good Shepherd is a fictionalized version of history which is accurate in almost every incident. But because the filmmakers are liberated from trying to be faithful to the tiny details, they've come a lot closer in many ways to capturing some essential truths about this extraordinary period of intelligence, counterintelligence, betrayal and espionage during the Cold War.There's no way to understand the present without understanding how we got there. And The Good Shepherd tells us.-Richard C.A.

Holbrooke Ambassador to the UN, 1999-2001The Good Shepherd is described on its official website as 'the untold story of the birth of the CIA.' To the extent that most Americans do not know about the strong connection between Yale's secretive Skull and Bones Society and our nation's premier intelligence agency, the movie delivers as promised in a credible way. However, not surprisingly, in 'the untold story,' as captured through the lens of director Robert De Niro, the CIA was founded as an anti-communist organization that went on to fight the good fight, though not always successfully or adeptly, against Soviet spies and designs during the Cold War. That image of the CIA fits perfectly with conventional wisdom, but it does not fit so well with the real 'untold story.'

The reviewers almost universally panned the film-but not for what the movie failed to uncover. They, like this reviewer, found the movie tedious.

De Niro, who also starred in the film, seemed more intent on teaching the American public a history lesson than in providing entertainment, making the movie's 156-minute running time seem longer than it actually was. De Niro included a few scenes of sexual activity in his film apparently to relieve its tediousness, but failed to accomplish that goal while diminishing the film's appeal for more morally discriminating viewers. Through De Niro's LensThe Good Shepherd is the product of De Niro's decade-long interest in the CIA.

A friend who knew of that interest introduced De Niro to Milt Bearden, a retired 39-year CIA veteran who ran the agency's operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Bearden became the film's lead technical adviser.The focal point of the movie is the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, when a group of Cuban expatriates trained by the United States attempted to liberate their homeland from Castro's oppressive dictatorship. From that vantage point, most of the events of the movie are depicted in a never-ending series of flashbacks through the eyes of top-ranking CIA agent Edward Wilson (portrayed by Matt Damon). Those flashbacks extend as far back as 1939, when Wilson was tapped as a Skull and Bones member at Yale University. After graduation, Wilson is recruited to work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II-era precursor to the CIA. Wilson is also asked to take part in the founding of the CIA.Though The Good Shepherd depicts the CIA as genuinely trying to safeguard U.S. Security, it does not shy away from portraying aspects of the agency's dark side.

In one riveting scene, agents cover an interrogatee's head with a garment that is repeatedly soaked with water, nearly drowning him, until the hapless man breaks free and jumps through the window to his death.The film also depicts the CIA as an all-consuming organization that requires a degree of dedication and surrender of self on a par with membership in the Mafia or the Communist Party. Wilson's marital relationship with his wife Margaret 'Clover' (Angelina Jolie) suffers greatly because his life as an agent leaves no time for being a husband and father. In two separate scenes, the Bonesmen and their wives attend formal banquets at Deer Island, the Skull and Bones private Thousand Islands retreat (which really exists), where the toast to the Order takes precedence to the invocation. Clover, whose father and brother are also Bonesmen, remarks with evident sarcasm each time the toast and invocation are given: 'Agency first, God second.' Clover's brother, John (Gabriel Macht), also seems to lump the OSS/CIA and Skull and Bones into one entity.The film's premise that Skull and Bones and the OSS/CIA are intertwined, with the former being a significant source of personnel for the latter, is incontestable. Eric Roth, who wrote the script for The Good Shepherd, is quoted on the movie's website as saying: 'I researched people who went into the early years of the CIA and where they came from.

It was traditionally Yale and Skull and Bones.' Indeed it was. Much of the history of the Bones-OSS/ CIA connection is covered by John F. McManus in his book William F. Buckley, Jr.: Pied Piper for the Establishment. Buckley, who was tapped for Skull and Bones while at Yale.

Was recruited into the CIA by his mentor, Yale Professor Willmoore Kendall, who had served in the OSS. In The Good Shepherd, Wilson was recruited into the OSS by General Bill Sullivan (Robert De Niro), who became Wilson's mentor. In one of the movie's most riveting lines, Sullivan cautions Wilson: 'No matter what anyone tells you, there'll be no one you can really trust.' Wilson and SullivanThe character of Edward Wilson is based on an amalgam of CIA counterintelligence chief James J.

Angleton and CIA Director Allen W. (As one example, Dulles' wife, not Angleton's, was named Clover.) The character of General Bill Sullivan is based on the real-life General William 'Wild Bill' Donovan. In the movie, both Wilson and Sullivan are 'good shepherds' trying to keep America safe during the Cold War.

In real life, Angleton and Donovan were representative of two very different factions in the CIA-one truly patriotic and anti-communist; the other subversive and pro-communist.James Angleton, the chief of counterintelligence for the CIA starting in the late 1940s, was truly a good shepherd. In fact, he became famous for ferreting out KGB agents who had penetrated the agency.'

Wild Bill' Donovan, the OSS chieftain, recruited many of the moles into the OSS. This was not by carelessness.

Harris Smith, in his book OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency, revealed that Donovan worked with Communist Party leader Eugene Dennis to recruit OSS personnel from communist ranks. When confronted by the FBI with evidence that some of his men were Communist Party members, Donovan replied, 'I know they're Communists. That's why I hired them.'

Of course, when the CIA was organized in 1947, many of the OSS agents became CIA agents.The movie gets it right by portraying Wilson/Angleton as a patriotic American who sacrifices self to protect America from her enemies. It gets it wrong by not showing that the enemy was not just in Moscow or Havana but inside the CIA itself.Bay of PigsThe Good Shepherd also gets it wrong by portraying the CIA's role in the Bay of Pigs operation as a genuine effort to topple Castro. Here again, the movie, which is supposed to tell us the 'untold story,' instead recycles the same old establishment line: the invasion failed because of incompetence, not deliberate sabotage.In the movie, Wilson's son, also a Bonesman and CIA agent, falls in love with an African woman working for the KGB. He foolishly (but not maliciously) shares the invasion plans with her, not realizing that she is in the pocket of the KGB. The naive CIA agent was not even officially privy to the information; he happened to overhear it at a-you guessed it!-Skull and Bones meeting. Thus in the movie depiction, loose lips resulted in the KGB being able to tip off Castro, who then took preemptive military action, resulting in the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion.The real story is very different. Many journalists have documented the apparent sabotage of the invasion from within the agency.

Both John Stormer, in None Dare Call It Treason, and Cuban-born American writer and intelligence analyst Servando Gonzalez, in an essay entitled Fidel Castro Supermole, noted the mismatched ammunition supplied by the CIA. Some invaders were supplied with 30.06 caliber ammunition, but with M-3 grease guns that fired.45 caliber bullets. The CIA supplied others with.45 caliber ammunition, but with Browning Automatic Rifles which shot 30.06 caliber bullets. Stormer and others concluded that incompetence alone did not suffice to explain this or the other 'errors' that occurred that day.The Good Shepherd depicts CIA-directed B-26 Bombers providing air cover for the Bay of Pigs landing party, and being blown out of the sky by jets from the Cuban air force, who-thanks to the unintended leak to the KGB-knew exactly when and where to intercept the invaders. In reality, the only B-26s involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion at all engaged in a preliminary bombing and strafing run over Cuba two days before the invasion. The B-26s then returned to their base in Nicaragua to rearm and refuel. Once there, however, the B-26 crews received a cable from Washington ordering the cancellation of all further combat missions over Cuba.Consequently, when 1,511 brave Cuban exiles were dropped on the beach of the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, the air cover they had been promised, and were still expecting, never materialized-despite the fact that that air cover was essential to the success of the invasion.

In short: the anti-communist Cuban soldiers at the Bay of Pigs were betrayed-but by deliberate duplicity, not loose lips.Another aspect of the betrayal, documented in the Stormer book, is the fact that the Cuban anti-communist underground was not alerted as to the time and location of the invasion so that they could support it through simultaneous uprisings. Even worse, U.S.-based coordinators for the underground groups were rounded up by the CIA just before the invasion and then held incommunicado until the invasion had failed.

But the CIA's action to deny the Cuban underground the word they needed to support the invasion did not fit the movie's depiction of the 'untold story.'

Every once in a while, we here at Cracked like to hand over the site to a writer or animator whose work we really enjoy. It's our little way of saying 'We forgot to write something today.' This week, we have an update from Patrick Cassels's movie review site, The site gives a look at random films on the occasion of their 10th Anniversary, giving them way more consideration than they probably need a decade later.YEAR 2000 TRADEMARKS:-Concerns elderly rich perverts in robes (see: Eyes Wide Shut, The Ninth Gate)-Disc sold as 'Collector's Edition'-Stars of two WB dramas ( Popular and Dawson's Creek). Spawned numerous straight-to-DVD sequels (see: Bring it On, Wild Things, American Pie)THE MOVIE:The Skulls, released in March 2000, is the second installment of Joshua Jackson's trilogy of college-set thrillers based on the wickedness of Generation Y, following 1998's Cruel Intentions and preceding Gossip (released a month later).

It's a thriller based on the real life Yale secret society Skull and Bones, a kind of mysterious rich kids' club whose former members include politicians, billionaires and according to The Good Shepard an anti-Semitic Robert De Niro. Joshua Jackson plays Luke McNamara, a lowbrow townie enrolled at an unnamed Ivy League school who gains acceptance to the 'The Skulls,' an elite club whose members apparently spend their time smoking cigars, attending vague, swank parties in big oak rooms and engaging in other forms of WASP porn.Also gay stuff. But The Skulls is composed exclusively of rich white guys and run by politicians, so inevitably McNamara soon discovers the organization is a corrupt, murderous cabal and sets out to free himself from the society's clutches with the help of his hot girlfriend ( Popular's Leslie Bibb) and a silver-haired Southern sentator with a velvet voice played by William Petersen; easily the best part of The Skulls. He's so good, in fact, that he somehow makes the impossibly corny final line in the movie my absolute favorite, delivered so overearnestly it would make his perpetually sunglassed CSI counterpart David Caruso blush.

What's it Like 10 years Later?IT'S AMERICAN PIE MEETS THE FIRMI was 14 when 1999's American Pie arrived in theaters. God knows how I got past the ushers upholding the movies' hard R-rating (there was an entire library of cons we minors used to get into the Screams and Wild Things and South Park that every junior high schooler needed to see to remain socially relevant), but I vividly remember slipping into a Newburgh Hoyts and watching wide-eyed and slack-jawed by all the sexual escapades that the filmmakers precisely designed to widen the eyes and slacken the jaws of mid-pubescent teens like myself. Today, the Internet has made this experience of relying on R-rated films for sex and nudity seem quaint. But back in the late 20th Century, household Internet was undergoing its own puberty. America Online provided some neighborhood kids with primitive access to the X-rated offramps of the information superhighway, but for most of us the only sources of female nudity back then were late-night Cinemax and moldy Penthouse editions stashed under porches. So American Pie, with its voyeuristic shots of Shannon Elizabeth's bare chest, arrived like a rare conjugal visit to my hormonal prison.

I'm not recalling these memories because I think anyone has an interest (or isn't completely repelled) by my sexual history. I'm recalling them to highlight the 'teen titty movie,' that genre of R-rated school-bound antics that had vanished from theaters since its post- Animal House boom in the 1980s. Perhaps as some kind of 'fuck you' to the Reagan Era's family values, Revenge of the Nerds, Porky's, The Last American Virgin, Weird Science, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and a dozen other masterpieces picked up where John Belushi's boner left off. In the early 90s, however, sexually transmitted diseases made movies about horny teens engaging in consequence-free fucking seem a bit irresponsible. America traded in the teen titty flick for puritanical network shows like Beverly Hills 90210, where teenagers, after 'losin it',' were rewarded with a teen pregnancy scare instead of a bodacious high-five from Corey Feldman.

It would be 10 years before American Pie would start the year 2000 by reviving the genre and ushering in a new generation of teen titty films. Without American Pie (brace yourself here) we might be living in a world without a Dude, Where's My Car?, a Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, an Old School. And we may not have gotten The Skulls, an unlikely installment in the teen titty genre. What's it Like 10 Years Later?IT'S REVENGE OF THE NERDS, BUT NOT A COMEDY (BUT STILL WITH A ROBOT SIDEKICK)The Skulls, at first glance, seems to have little in common with any teen titty movie. It's not a comedy, it's pretty dark, and there isn't so much as a single panty raid or sunglasses raised at the sight of a bikini-clad babe.

And yet it's still a college movie. The DNA of Animal House is in its veins. And once you realize this, the movie becomes a hilariously straight interpretation of 80s college comedies. Essentially, The Skulls has the same ethos as Caddyshack's tagline: 'It's the snobs vs. But it takes that ethos absurdly seriously.

In this case the 'snobs' don't just run the country club; they run the country. There's little in The Skulls that isn't in Revenge of the Nerds: cruel preppies, losers versus rich kids, robe-clad fraternal clubs, hidden cameras.

Hell, there's even a robot sidekick in The Skulls if you look hard enough. The Skulls most egregious 80s college cliche occurs when McNamara rightfully challenges the society after finding (wait for it) an old bylaw in the university charter. But where the bylaw in Revenge of the Nerds called for a simple decathlon to dethrone the snobs, The Skulls goes much, much farther, calling for a duel. No, not like a metaphoric duel of wits. A straight-up, Barry Lyndon-style duel. With pistols.

The Skulls feels like someone who grew up without ever seeing a movie or watching TV or reading a magazine saw Porky's, didn't realize it was a comedy, and remade it as The Firm. (The result isn't as awesome as you would think.) This is a movie where Happy Gilmore's iconic snob Shooter McGavin isn't just a preppy jerk, he's the sinister minion of a nationwide conspiracy who will snap the neck of an innocent teenager without hesitation.

IT'S A PROPHETIC LOOK AT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. STARRING THAT BRO FROM FAST AND THE FURIOUSI hesitate to call The Skulls a good movie. So I really hesitate to call it a scathing critique of neo-conservatism. That said, the film does deserve a bit of 'F1RST!' Props for even attempting to say something about George W. Bush eight months before the 2000 election, and three years before the invasion of Iraq.

Both the younger and senior Presidents Bush were members of Skull and Bones, and The Skulls attempts to tackle this (when it's not focusing on robotic sidekicks or duels). There's something retroactively perfect about the vapid future Fast and the Furious star Paul Walker playing the dimwitted, privileged son of an overbearing politician and former Skulls member (Craig T. Even the following exchange between Walker and Nelson, easily the most cringe-worthy in a movie filled with cringe-worthy exchanges, feels intriguingly important 10 years and two Bush terms later. LEVRITT:Those who wish to become leaders choose the ordeal of war prove themselves worthy of the privilege.MCNAMARA:What if we're at peace?LEVRITT:There are always wars to be fought, Luke.Corny? But come on, it's a little prophetic, isn't it?

This was 2000, when most of us still thought 'al Qaeda' was a style in which you could order your pasta. The problem is that The Skulls wants to, you know, have a message, dude, but it also wants to appeal to the Dawson's Creek fans who just bought tickets to see Pacey driving a convertible and taking his shirt off. It's kind of like a Rambo movie, which all want to say something about the cycle of violence behind Vietnam ( First Blood), or POWs ( First Blood: Part II), or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ( Rambo III), or Burma ( John Rambo), but also wants Sylvester Stallone blowing faceless baddies away with and M-60 or explosive arrowheads.

The Skulls has the same problem, only instead of an M-60 it wants to satisfy its teen titty flick ancestors. So it is that just as Paul Walker and Joshua Jackson start digging away at the political subtext of the movie, they're interrupted by an arrival of TOTAL BABES and, if you replace the Creed with Van Halen's 'Beautiful Girls,' it could be SNL's 'Schmit's Gay' commercial:Go now and visit to finally learn what Scream 3, and Reindeer Games were REALLY all about. Or, find more from Pat over at.