Murder and Zapruder: Who Should Own the Rawest, Most Valuable Home Movie?

Because the President's limousine passed almost exactly in front of Dallas clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder on November 22, 1963, as he was playing with a brand new film camera, precisely at the moment that Lee Harvey Oswald fired his rifle from a nearby books depository, Zapruder's 26-second home movie has become the focal point of America's collective memory. For many of us, especially those who weren't alive when it happened, in our heads, we're all watching that event through Zapruders lens.

Other footage from the scene turns up (skip to the bottom for an extensive list of links to the other films), and becomes fodder for documentaries (like this new one disproving the "second shooter" theory). But Zapruder's film is still the canonical urtext of John F. Kennedy's assassination, the most complete and most chilling visual record.

Without those 486 frames, or 26.6 seconds, of Kodachrome II 8mm safety film, our understanding of JFK's assassination would likely be an even greater carnival of conspiracy theories than it already is. Of course, the film has stoked many of those theories too. But the story of the film's journey from camera to public release is rife with its own controversies and questions. Why, for instance, did the U.S. government pay the Zapruder family $16 million for possession of the film, but not of its copyright? Who has a right to control such a crucial piece of history, and what does that control look like? And why didn't Dan Rather punch Zapruder in the face?

Abraham Zapruder being interviewed after the assassination in Dallas.

• Before Life had acquired rights to the film, CBS News's Dallas bureau chief, a young Dan Rather, had informed 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt that "a guy named Zapruder was supposed to have film of the assassination and was going to put it up for sale." The best approach to acquiring the film, Hewitt decided quickly, was a bit more violence. "In my desire to get a hold of what was probably the most dramatic piece of news footage ever shot," Hewett wrote, "I told Rather to go to Zapruder's house, sock him in the jaw, take his film to our affiliate in Dallas, copy it onto videotape, and let the CBS lawyers decide whether it could be sold or whether it was in the public domain. And then take the film back to Zapruder's house and give it back to him. That way, the only thing they could get him for was assault because he would have returned Zapruder's property. Rather said, 'Great idea. I'll do it.' I hadn't hung up the phone maybe ten seconds when it hit me: What in the hell did you just do? Are you out of your mind? So I called Rather back. Luckily, he was still there, and I said to him, 'For Christ's sake, don't do what I just told you to. I think this day has gotten to me and thank God I caught you before you left.' Knowing Dan to be as competitive as I am, I had the feeling that he wished he'd left before the second phone call."

• After developing three copies of the film, Zapruder immediately gave two copies to the Secret Service and on the morning of November 23, sold the print rights to Life magazine for a total of $150,000 (equivalent to $1 million in 2007 dollars), beating out a bid from CBS News. (The magazine had paid $500,000 just a few years earlier for the exclusive story of the Gemini astronauts and their wives.)

• Zapruder gave the first $25,000 to the widow of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, who had been killed confronting Lee Harvey Oswald following the assassination.

• Life magazine published 30 frames of the Zapruder film in black and white. Frames were also published in color in the December 6, 1963 special "John F. Kennedy Memorial Edition", and in issues dated October 2, 1964 (a special article on the film and the Warren Commission report), November 25, 1966, and November 24, 1967. Fearing public horror, Zapruder demanded that frame 313, showing the fatal shot, would be withheld.

A close-up of the Zapruder film.

• In the Warren Commission report, which reproduced 158 frames of the Zapruder film in black and white, a series of frames were missing, a splice was visible in other frames, two frames had been switched, and two frames repeated. FBI's J. Edgar Hoover explained in 1965 that frames 314 and 315 were switched due to a printing error, and that the error did not exist in the original Warren Commission exhibits. Critics saw a significance to the omission. In early 1967, Life released a statement that four frames of the camera original (208–211) had been accidentally destroyed, and the adjacent frames damaged, by a Life photo lab technician on November 23, 1963. But Life had an intact copy, made earlier (and the Secret Service had two). To settle the matter, the magazine released for publication frames 207 through 212 in January, 1967, in order "to end what has become an irrelevant discussion."

• On May 15, 1967, Life registered the Zapruder film in the Copyright office as an unpublished "motion picture other than a photoplay," along with the three issues of Life and the Memorial Edition, each of which contained Zapruder frames. Together, these had a total distribution of over 23,750,000 copies.

• That year, Josiah Thompson – who had briefly worked as a consultant for Life – included reproductions of key frames in his book Six Seconds in Dallas. Perhaps because his knew he would be violating copyright, Thompson had the frames copied by an artist in charcoal. In an introductory note, the publisher argued that the Zapruder film, as a "crucial historical document", should not be "sequestered from the eye through an accident of private ownership." And whatever attempt he was making to avoid copyright infringement, he insisted how how accurate the book's charcoal copies were – executed, he wrote, with "care and fidelity,"

• Time Inc., the parent company of Life, filed a lawsuit against Thompson and the publisher for copyright infringement. A U.S. District Court ruled in 1968 that the Time Inc. copyright of the Zapruder film had not been violated, under the doctrine of fair use. The court held that "there is a public interest in having the fullest information available on the murder of President Kennedy. Thompson did serious work on the subject and has a theory entitled to public consideration … [I]t has been found that the copying by defendants was fair and reasonable." Even if the way he procured the film to begin with was suspicious: in the office at night with his own camera.

• During the 1969 trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw for conspiracy in connection with the assassination (Shaw was the only other person to be prosecuted for the crime, and was acquitted), the film was shown in public for the first time. Conspiracy theorist Mark Lane managed to have several copies printed at a local lab. These low quality bootlegs began circulating among assassination researchers and journalists through secret screenings, adding to the film's mystique and reinforcing the idea that the rare footage contained a secret. In Underworld, Don DeLillo includes a scene in which a bootleg copy of the Zapruder film is played over and over on multiple televisions at varying speeds.

• In 1970 Zapruder died, from natural causes.

• In March 1975, on the ABC late-night television show Good Night America (hosted by Geraldo Rivera), assassination researchers Robert Groden and Dick Gregory presented the first-ever network television showing of the Zapruder home movie. The public controversy and outrage that followed quickly led to the forming of three Congressional committees, including the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation. Here's the clip:

The Zapruder film's first television appearance.

• In April 1975, in settlement of a royalties suit between Time Inc. and Zapruder's heirs that arose from the ABC showing, Time Inc. sold the original film and its copyright back to the Zapruder family for the token sum of $1. Time Inc. wanted to donate the film to the U.S. government, but the family refused until 1978, when it transferred the film to the National Archives and Records Administration for safe-keeping, while still retaining ownership of the film and its copyright.

• During the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation, the film quickly became fodder for cultural critics and conspiracy theorists, and raised questions about the possibility of a second assassin. Some have credited the unusual violence and shock of the film for giving rise to a new way of representing violence in 1970s American cinema. And the conspiracy speculations continue: the once mysterious "Umbrella Man" is the subject of a new short film Errol Morris just posted at the Times, featuring Josiah Thompson. The film's not embeddable here, but here's another one, found on YouTube:

• Although claims that the film had been doctored still circulate, a product engineer from Kodak, who led the team that invented Kodachrome II, studied the film in 1998 at the behest of the National Archives and concluded that the film was an "in camera original" and that any alleged alterations were not possible.

• In 1991, director Oliver Stone paid around $85,000 to the Zapruder family for use of the Zapruder film in his motion picture JFK.

• On October 26, 1992, when President George H. W. Bush signed into law the John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act of 1992, the National Archives began a President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. Because the Zapruder film was automatically designated an "assassination record" it became official property of the United States government.

• When the Zapruder family demanded the return of the original film in 1993 and 1994, National Archives officials refused. In 1997, the film was digitally replicated and restored under license of the Zapruder family, which retains copyright to the film. Finally, after arbitration with the Zapruder heirs, the government purchased the original film in 1999 for $16 million, or $615,000 a second.

• In December 1999, the Zapruder family donated the film's copyright to The Sixth Floor Museum, in the Texas School Book Depository building at Dealey Plaza, along with one of the first-generation copies made on November 22, 1963, and other copies of the film and frame enlargements once held by Life magazine. The Zapruder family no longer retains any rights to the film.

Like the film of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, the copyright of which is owned by the King family, the Zapruder saga raises big questions about what counts as historical record, and whether such records are even entitled to copyright protection. While the 1968 federal district court case involving Life magazine called the film copyrightable, its great public interest and the fact that the event cannot be properly understood without public access to the film would seem to suggest otherwise. For now, those who wish to use the film can take some solace in the establishment of its "fair use" in that case, provided that its used in "good faith and fair dealing." And advocates for copyright reform like Lawrence Lessig might take a different kind of pleasure at the absurdity of the film's arduous $16 million saga.

The question of who owns a photograph and how first came before the Supreme Court in a case over a studio photograph of Oscar Wilde. The argument was made that a photograph was "merely mechanical" and involved no "novelty, invention or originality." The Court declined to say if copyright could constitutionally be granted to "the ordinary production of a photograph," but it found that the photograph in suit had involved the posing of the subject and a choice of costume and background. The photograph, the Court determined, was like a piece of writing, of which the photographer was the author and which was thus subject to copyright. This left open whether an ordinary photograph of a real life object could constitutionally be a proper subject of copyright.

Later, Judge Learned Hand cited another Court case in writing that "no photograph, however simple, can be unaffected by the personal influence of the author, and no two will be absolutely alike." Justice Brandeis dissented: "The mere record of isolated happenings, whether in words or by photographs not involving artistic skill, are denied [copyright] protection." The question is then one of artistic skill. No one could own a copyright on an event, one court found in a lawsuit involving the Associated Press. But articles, even blog articles, require some skill:

The only legal use of the Zapruder footage to those who do not own the copyright remains in cases of fair use. Whether or not "fair use" leaves legal wiggle room for the use of the Zapruder film in an endless stream of conspiracy videos on YouTube, in parodies, or, one hopes, in a future Errol Morris documentary, the film has already moved far beyond the jurisdiction of a copyright court. For those of us who've ever seen it, it can easily become a permanent fixture in the screening room of our heads. And, in spite of all the theories and debates, the attempts to own the narrative of those events, the best, if imperfect evidence of what happened on that morning still sits on 486 frames of 8mm tape.

Its voyage onto the pages of Life, and later into public archives and across the Internet, foretold a world in which citizen video, incentivized with Flip cams, high-speed internet, cash rewards, and Youtube hits, would become an increasingly central part of journalism. It would also announce a world in which brutality is on offer with just a few clicks. Debates over desensitization (and decency and copyright) will rage. But the Zapruder film is also proof that no matter its familiarity or commonness, no matter how many times we may play it back in our heads, the rawest footage never gets easy to watch.

A version of this article ran on November 22, 2010. .

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