In the Bourne series of films, starring Matt Damon, recollect the scene in the second film - The Bourne Supremacy - in India where girlfriend Marie is driving, is shot by a Russian assassin who seeks to kill Bourne, plunges off a bridge into a river, and Bourne tries hard but unsuccessfully to save her. It is dramatic, moving, and well-done.
What just struck me about that scene was that it was based at some level on Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne going off the bridge at Chappaquiddick 35 years earlier. What made the connection hard to see, I suppose, was the exotic location plus Bourne’s heroic efforts to save shot Marie, in contrast with Kennedy’s seeming failure to do the same for a healthy Mary Jo.
Was the screenwriter trying to exonerate Ted K. after the fact? Maybe show rescue efforts would have been pointless? Someone should ask Tony Gilroy who wrote the screenplay, which incidentally bears little relation to Ludlum’s book of that name. IMDb shows Gilroy as still working.
