Projects » Bobby

Production Year: 2006
Directed by: Emilio Estevez
Genre: Drama
Tagline: He saw wrong and tried to right it. He saw suffering and tried to heal it. He saw war and tried to stop it.
Rating: 7.0/10 (1,930 votes)
Runtime: 120 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Certification: Switzerland:12 / Netherlands:12 / USA:R / Finland:K-11
Awards: Nominated for 2 Golden Globes. Another 1 win and 2 nominations.

Plot Outline: The story of the assassination of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, on June 4th, 1968, which centers around 22 people who were at the Ambassador Hotel where he was killed.

Cast

Demi Moore .... Virginia Fallon
Elijah Wood .... William
Emilio Estevez .... Tim
Anthony Hopkins .... John Casey
Lindsay Lohan .... Diane
Shia LaBeouf .... Jimmy
Christian Slater .... Timmons
Sharon Stone .... Miriam
Helen Hunt ... Samantha
Joshua Jackson
Charlie Hunnam (also co-starred Elija in Hooligans)
Spencer Garrett .... David Novak
Brian Geraghty .... Cooper
Nick Cannon .... Dwayne
Freddy Rodriguez .... Jose
Martin Sheen ... Jack
Mary Elizabeth Winstead .... Susan Taylor

Trivia

A few scenes were filmed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the real-life location of the Robert Kennedy assassination, during its demolition. The wing of the hotel they were using hadn't been touched by the demolition crew yet, in order to preserve items from the pantry where Kennedy was shot.
It took Emilio Estevez seven years to get the movie made. At one point, he had such a case of writer's block that he only had 30 pages of the script and lied to people that he was working on it. His brother Charlie Sheen read the pages and convinced him to finish.
Emilio Estevez had a hard time coming up with funding for this movie. When he was on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (November 2006), he said that he had to sell his artwork and other material items just to have enough money to fund this picture.
The scene of Sharon Stone's character cutting her husband's hair (played by William H. Macy) was not in the script. Stone was to pantomime cutting the hair, but she actually snipped his hair. Macy's visibly tense reaction to the haircut was real.

Goofs

The trailer shows a subplot involving a proposed marriage in order to avoid service in Vietnam. The service exemption for marriage ended in August, 1965.
In Samantha's glasses at the pool, you can see very clearly in the reflection the 20x20 white diffusion with crew members either standing or sitting in front of it.
Samantha says she forgot to pack black shoes and must buy a pair to match her outfit. In a later scene, she buys a pair of tan shoes.

Quotes

William: Christ, Diane! I caused a rift between you and your father.
Diane: My father has a problem with you; not with me.

Elijah Said About Bobby ...

There's actually a movie that I am pretty sure will happen called Bobby, it's kind of just starting. Emilio Estevez wrote a script based on the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel and it's basically this really fantastic ensemble cross-section of people from all walks of life at the Ambassador Hotel on the day that he comes to give his speech and was shot, just a fantastic script. Great homage to the hotel, to that time and obviously to that man and kind of what happens to these characters as a result of that happening, and it ends with his speech, it's really extraordinary.

Question: Did Emilio approach you for this role specifically?
Elijah: Yeah.

Question: What will your role in the film be?
Elijah: Well, it's a man who is marrying a woman who is actually in love with his brother, but he is marrying this woman just so that he can avoid the draft during Vietnam and he ends up falling in love with her, and they end up falling in love with each other.

It's like a tiny little snippet of life, I mean all of these stories don't really relate to a greater picture, it's just these snippets of life at that time in America, in the Ambassador Hotel.

Question: And the script is just phenomenal?
Elijah: It's really, really excellent. It's an ambitious script, I mean it's a huge cross-section, it goes down to the wait staff and what's going on with them, and he gets it from all sort of classes, it's really interesting. The people that manage the hotel and what they're going through leading up to this speech, and then he gives the speech and was shot and then the aftermath and it ends with the speech kind of trailing off.

And it's really interesting because the speech is incredibly poignant for today's world, extremely relevant, I mean it was relevant than, there was obviously social and political strife then too. It was during Vietnam, coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and it was like two or three days previous that Martin Luther King had been shot, but the speech definitely echoes a lot of that, and it is all about us as Americans and as people across the world who need to stand together and to unite our visions and we can overcome this stage.

I mean, I was reading that speech and I was like... Fuck, we need to hear this kinda shit now! So, I actually think it could be a really important film to illuminate an American perspective and an American ideal that doesn't really exist anymore... very interesting.