How Hope Died with RFK

In Discussion with Emilio Estevez, Writer and Director of
Bobby

by Roger Durling

Bobby re-imagines one of the most explosively tragic nights in
American history. By following the stories of 22 fictional
characters in the Ambassador Hotel on the fateful eve that
presidential hopeful Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot,
writer/director Emilio Estevez — in full career resuscitation
mode — and an accomplished ensemble cast including Demi Moore,
Lindsay Lohan, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Freddy Rodríguez,
Martin Sheen, Anthony Hopkins, and Laurence Fishburne among many
others forge an intimate mosaic of an America careening toward a
moment of shattering change. The different characters navigate
prejudice, injustice, chaos, and their own complicated personal
lives while seeking the last glimmering signs of hope in Kennedy’s
idealism. I sat down with Estevez to chat about Bobby, which opens
in Santa Barbara theaters on Friday.

Why did you feel compelled to write about Robert F.
Kennedy? I was a child of the ’60s, even though a small
child. And 1968, specifically, was in many ways the year the world
shifted, when you think of the events that transpired during that
year — starting with the Tet Offensive, then [Walter] Cronkite
going to Vietnam and saying on national television that the war
isn’t winnable, then Johnson saying, “Well, if I don’t have
Cronkite, I don’t have the American people,” and then Martin Luther
King Jr.’s assassination, the Paris riots, Bobby’s assassination,
the Chicago convention …