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Any Given Super Bowl Sunday

There are two visions of the game of football in Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday." In one, the game becomes a metaphor for everything that is wrong with America -- racism, wanton violence, the commercialization of just about everything. In the other, football is an almost mystical repository for everything the director seems to believe in -- tradition, courage and self-sacrifice.

With Super Bowl Sunday dead ahead, Stone talked about a lifelong love-hate relationship with the game, including his (not-so-glorious) playing days, the evils of TV timeouts and a Super Bowl bet he wishes he'd never made.

This season in the NFL was particularly brutal, on and off the field. We saw nine stars go down with serious injuries, a player pushed a referee to the ground, another was accused of murdering his pregnant girlfriend. Is this a vision of the future of the game?

I think this has been going on in the NFL all along. What's happened is the media fishbowl got too fast for them. I mean, also you might add that Cecil Collins for the Dolphins got in trouble, breaking and entering, but this has been going on for years in the NFL. When we researched [for "Any Given Sunday"] and found out about this stuff, [the NFL] got very sensitive about that issue, especially domestic abuse situations. But that is the nature of aggression. Aggression is required to play the game. Sometimes it leaks over into the rest of life -- not in everyone. Guys have been fighting with refs for years, players have fought each other. Now, if anything, it's become more civilized.

What are the two things that most irk you about the game these days?

Defensive [pass interference] calls. I think it's impossible to be a defensive back and guard against the pass. You can easily give away 40 or 50 yards for a nothing push, with just a glancing blow -- not anything that interferes with the pass receiver in any intentional way. They have been calling a lot of that over the season. I think it's appalling that you can get 40 or 50 yards on a call.

Yeah, that's what's different about the college game: You only get 15 yards.

It changes the game. That's one of the things that really annoys me. The second thing is commercial timeouts. The intrusion of commercials is bullshit. It's part of the whole commercialization of American culture. As Jim Brown was the first to point it out to me, how many times have you seen on TV a team march down the field and get to the 20 and they take a TV timeout? The whole stadium goes quiet, waiting for the television commercial to play out, stretching the game out. The team has lost its concentration, as well as its momentum. It's a shame. The game has changed.

Who was your team growing up?

Growing up in the '50s, I was a fan of the 49ers.

Where did you grow up?

New York.

So why were you a 49ers fan?

Don't ask me, it's just the Giants got so much attention. I always liked the other guys. They had that million-dollar backfield: Y.A. Tittle was the quarterback; Hugh Perry was the fullback; Hugh McElhanny was the broken-field runner; John Henry Johnson was second halfback -- he was also a pass catcher. He was a hell of player.

Did you ever play in school?

Sure, I played at Trinity. I was a left halfback. I was in the defensive backfield as well; we played both ways back then. It was really an hour game back then: back and forth. Now with all these TV commercials it's a three-hour game.

Where you any good?

Very good. But then I went from the Trinity school in the eighth grade, in the ninth grade to the Hill School in Pennsylvania. The coach there was a knucklehead who transferred me to fullback without ever giving me a tryout as a halfback. That happens to a lot of kids in sports, which is what I hate about coaches.

So at an early age the powers that be were out to get you.

Oh, yeah. They got me. They do that with a lot of kids. Bad coaching.com, it's everywhere.

Any great achievements on the field?

Not really, we mainly lost. We were not the world-shakers. We were a small team, but we were fast, and we had some talent.

What does the game do for you now that other sports don't?

I like that it's a team sport, that you have these 11 guys in the huddle all looking downfield together. It approximates the conditions of war, in a purely abstract sense of a team unified trying to gain land against another team. It has a very primeval feeling to it.

The uniforms, the helmets. I love the helmets. When I was a child they reminded me of the Greek helmets, of the Greek and Trojan wars. That's part of the thrill a young boy feels toward it. I remember putting on that helmet and feeling like a superhero as a kid.

When you were in Vietnam were you able to follow the game?

No, I pretty much lost track, the reports came in so sporadically. I missed the Namath-Unitas Super Bowl, which was too bad.

Do you have any great Super Bowl memories?

My best Super Bowl memories would have to be the Dolphins and the 49ers over time. I loved watching Miami. They were wonderful to watch, like the Niners in the '80s and the '90s. Whenever the Dolphins got the ball in those two seasons -- they had that one unbeaten season [1972], every time they got the ball the first series they scored -- they marched down the field like a machine. No one could figure out a way to stop them. They could pass, run inside, run outside. Don Shula was a genius, and he ran that team, I guess you could say, like a war machine.

So the Dolphins wiping out Minnesota in the early '70s, the 49ers beating Cincinnati with that catch [1989 Super Bowl]. I love them beating Denver, 55-10 [1990]; that was wonderful to watch. I love them beating the Chargers [1995]. And more recently, in terms of tension, the Packers being upset by Denver [1998] was exciting. I loved that game. That was the most exciting single Super Bowl I have seen in a long time.

Basically, like most people, I love the underdog thing -- that makes it happen for me.

Where were you for "The Catch" [49ers quarterback Joe Montana's last-minute touchdown pass to Dwight Clark to beat Dallas in the 1981 NFC Championship Game]?

I didn't see that. I was in Italy writing "Scarface."

What was the most exciting thing about this season?

Well, it's funny. The Niners collapsed; bad management -- really bad management. I gave up early with them. The most exciting things about this season were the Rams and the Colts, the emergence of the Titans, the Jaguars -- all the underdogs have come up this year. Especially the Rams -- Kurt Warner is amazing -- and the Colts. It's a whole new ballgame. I think Parcells turning around the Jets was great, and this kid Ray Lucas was amazing. I mean that's what happened in our movie. I have always been a fan of Charlie Batch in Detroit. I wish he could have some better luck.

I love the idea that Barry Sanders could retire this year and everyone was predicting disaster this year for the Detroit Lions, and they did all right. It goes to my point that it's the no-names that win it -- it will always be a team game.

I love Doug Flutie. I love the idea of the little guy coming off the bench.

You spent a lot of time with old-timers like Jim Brown making your film. Do you get the sense the game has changed a lot since his day?

It was a different time. These guys were out of shape; they wouldn't train in the offseason -- they'd drink. They had to work odd jobs in the offseason.

I mean, they used to play with no face guards. Bob Sinclair told me about a time he lost his front teeth. He was rushing a punter. The punter kicked his teeth out. No call. The play was over and he was down on the ground looking for his teeth, and he couldn't find them and the ref was saying, "Come on, Sinclair, you want to call a timeout?" He said no, got back behind the line and kept playing.

Sinclair told me when face guards first came out most of the guys were against them. It was this thing of honor, this macho thing. It's amazing there weren't more injuries.

Well, it might have something to do with the fact that today they are 250 pounds of pure muscle moving at 4.6-40 speed.

Yeah, it's all relative, I guess. Now they're much more specialized. Now you have these huge linemen. I wanted to do a shot at one point, a sort of "Natural Born Killers" thing, with Jamie [Foxx, who played the quarterback in "Any Given Sunday"] dropping back in the hole and a big cartoon dinosaur with a football helmet coming at him. That's what I think it must feel like.

Do you ever bet on games?

I bet a lot when I was in my 20s. When I was a struggling screenwriter doing odd jobs I gambled as much as I could. In fact, I gambled more than I could. I was borrowing money from the Beneficial Finance Company, which in those days was charging 25 percent interest on the money, a month -- that's a lot. So I was paying purses of $10,000, $12,000 to these bookies. I was losing more than I was winning. In the '70s it was more of an open gambling atmosphere, there were more of sporting bet sheets out. Even the New York papers used to run all of the lines. Then I won on the Super Bowl. I predicted Miami would slaughter Minnesota. I took the points. But being the last game of the season, the two bookies didn't show up -- they disappeared. They closed up shop. I had bet the house on it, I lost out like $15,000.

That's a nice Super Bowl memory.

I saw the bookie on the street a couple of years later, and I felt like going up to him, but he was big, and he looked like a real Mafia guy, so I didn't want to go mess with him. [Laughs.]

You have kids. Do they play?

I have two sons and a daughter. My older son learned a lot of discipline this year. He's 15 years old, offensive tackle for the junior varsity, going up to varsity. Although he played Little League quite a bit, he prefers football. It's the first team he's been on where he has felt like he's part of a team. He takes great pride in it. It's given him a sense of selflessness, as well as confidence, and courage. It takes courage to play.

-Anthony Lappi, "Any Given (Super Bowl) Sunday," Salon, Jan 29 2000

#oliver stone #any given sunday #super bowl #nfl #nfl football #football #slate #salon

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back-and-totheleft · 27 days

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"I'm a freethinker"

Maverick American director Oliver Stone told AFP that the legal proceedings against Donald Trump are "all political" and that the ex-president was a victim of "lawfare" -- when prosecutions are used to silence political figures.

"Almost 100 indictments against the guy… it's ridiculous," said Stone.

"This is all political. They want to put him behind bars, but they're not going to be able to," he added.

However, the 77-year-old director of "JFK", "Platoon" and "Snowden" said that he would not vote for Trump in this November's US presidential election.

"Everyone's corrupt. Russia runs on corruption, so does Turkey. So does the United States. Corruption is a way of life, but they make it into a political issue now," Stone insisted.

But he said he would not be voting for incumbent President Joe Biden either.

"Never for Biden, because Biden is a warmonger," said the Vietnam veteran.

Stone spoke to AFP Tuesday during a trip to Paris to promote his documentary about nuclear energy, "Nuclear Now".

He said he has been thinking a lot about "lawfare" as he has recently completed a film about Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula, as he is widely known, was imprisoned in 2018 on corruption and money-laundering charges after several years in power.

The charges were overthrown after an investigation found the judge was biased, and Lula was re-elected president last year.

"The concept of lawfare is all over the world, and it's been used for political reasons, weaponised," said Stone.

"And so that's what they did with Lula. They put him in jail and he got out and he won the election. It was a hell of a story… but people don't know it, except in Brazil."

Stone has often focused on Latin American leftist leaders, with no less than three documentaries about the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and one about his friend the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013.

Lula, Castro and Chavez were all "humanists", he said.

"They're all great. They're all original, doing the best they can for their country. I think Chavez was motivated by love of country. So it was Castro."

There is not yet a release date for his Lula film, though he has launched previous films at the Cannes Film Festival, which takes place in May.

Stone has often been denounced as a conspiracy theorist for his views on US foreign policy and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, laid out in "JFK" and a follow-up documentary.

He has a simple response for his detractors. "I'm a freethinker."

-Jordi Zamora, Agence France-Presse (AFP), March 13 2024

#oliver stone #biden #trump #2024 election #hugo chavez #latin america #lula #afp #fidel castro

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back-and-totheleft · 27 days

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Museum of Modern Art entry for Platoon (1986)

A Yale dropout who worked as a teacher in Saigon and later as a merchant seaman, Oliver Stone volunteered for infantry service during the Vietnam War. He was wounded in combat and earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. After the war, he studied filmmaking at New York University, where one of his instructors was Martin Scorsese, and eventually made his mark as a screenwriter, most notably on Midnight Express (Alan Parker, 1978), for which he won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. These were the raw materials that went into the making of Platoon, Stone's fourth feature film and the one that elevated him to the first rank of filmmakers. Working from his own script, he told the story of the common American foot soldier in Vietnam, avoiding the larger geopolitical issues of the conflict to focus on what life was like for the war's hundreds of thousands of young "grunts." The film seesaws between the tedium of camp life's daily routine and the shock of sudden, vicious combat, and no other filmmaker has ever captured so viscerally the stark terror of such warfare. Platoon is often melodramatic, even pretentious—occasional traits of this filmmaker—yet here Stone earns the right to such extremes. Whatever the film may lack in narrative polish or psychological subtlety, it conveys the emotional truth of combat itself. It is a generous and openhearted film, one in which Stone keeps faith with his former comrades–in–arms by explaining without ever excusing, by forgiving without forgetting.

-Publication excerpt from In Still Moving: The Film and Media Collections of the Museum of Modern Art by Steven Higgins, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2006, p. 299. Producer: Arnold Kopelson Object number: W9470 Department: Film

#oliver stone #platoon #museums #museum of modern art #moma #moma film collection

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From Oliver's official website

The following is a recent Q&A from my Facebook and Twitter pages.

Q: From Jack Forbes Oliver, the Yellow Shirts in Thailand want to displace the current Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and her Administration, with an unelected "People's Council" and have gone to great lengths to disrupt elections and disrupt commerce in Bangkok to achieve their goals. They demand "reforms" pertaining to elections procedures and perceived corruption, but have little to show for what reforms they wish and what corruption they suspect. The military is, so far, taking a "hands off" approach but has not ruled out a coup. Yingluck is making her case for democracy, asking the protestors to vote and to integrate into the Thai political system to resolve political differences. There seems to be no end in sight and experts believe that civil war is possible for the near future. What is your take on all of this?

Oliver: My take is as an outsider. I’ve traveled many times to the country and admire their collective sense of harmony in all things. Makes this recent civil strife almost incomprehensible to me. I’m hardly knowledgeable about the complex interior politics of the country, but my feeling is generally ‘the majority rules’—in other words, live with it. As bad as Thaksin may have been and may be, I would imagine time has, and will, softened his impact. Things change. Do not fracture this beautiful country.

Q: From Ben Bracken It seems everyone successful in film has a connection to some rich people or a rich dad in the film business that gets them in the door. I have neither. I have no money, just the ambition to succeed everyday in a world where 20% of American males ages 25-54 are unemployed. I'm not lazy and will never collect unemployment, so I work everyday at a shit restaurant for $4.95 an hour plus tips (that you never get anyway) and work harder than anyone you've ever met. I have self taught myself to be a DP, an actor, and barely afforded to put myself in school for screenwriting. I don't know anyone famous or anyone's rich uncle to help me get my foot in the door. So, my question to you, Mr. Stone, is a simple one. Would you please hire me? I don't care if it's shoveling the elephants shit on the set of Alexander or getting you coffee. I will still be the hardest worker you've ever seen. I humbly thank you for even reading this as I know you will probably not respond to my question as I've seen the other questions people way smarter than me have posted about you and your work. Either way you're still one of my heroes. Thanks, Ben Stiller

Oliver: This is a tough question but I’ll try to answer it. Just to keep things clear, I had no strong connections to get me into this business. I wrote my way in, and it took many scripts and much rejection until some of them were read and gradually I was able to find more and more work.

That said, when I actually penetrated it as a writer and then moved, after a few setbacks, onto being a director. I found that many young people and outsiders were vying for jobs as assistants and interns, but that the union rules were pretty strict on this matter, and that the best way in was through the assistant directors’ department. After the union regulations were fulfilled, the producer, production managers, and assistant director would interview new people for roles as assistants and interns. Generally speaking the job is a tough one—long hours—and often takes place far off the set around the trailer camps and various messengering jobs. Often people would be frustrated that they didn’t get enough time inside or close to the set (On the other hand, being inside the set all the time can be—believe me—quite boring and I think many people would be disappointed.).

Perhaps the best way to approach this is to work on low budget films as a production assistant, where one probably gets a lot closer to the action. I worked on a soft porno back in the early 70s in NYC hauling heavy dollies up and down staircases in New York City.

When, and if, we do start up a film, we crew up like a pirate ship or whaling expedition for the journey. At that time the producer/production manager/assistant director make their choices as to whom they want to work with. Sometimes I weigh in.

Q: Ben Norbeetz Why in many of your films do you repeat certain phrases, ideas and metaphors. "Kiss the snake with no hesitation" was in the doors and alexander and a motif in Natural Born Killers, your close up shots on a single eye was apart of both any given sunday and the doors, the "world is yours" is in scarface and alexander. is there something all of your works mean to say?

Oliver: Each motif is different and probably for a different reason. I wasn’t aware of the similarities until you brought them up, but certainly, I think the idea of the snake in “Doors,” “Alexander,” and “Natural Born Killers” represents a sensitivity to the issue of fear. That by going through the fear, one finds a courage that was not available before. Jim Morrison was writing about the snake long before we made the film. And of course the analogies of snakes and dragons appear again and again in mythology. Although I walked among many rattle snakes in “Natural Born Killers” and lived through my share of snakes in Vietnam, I’m still not comfortable around them.

As to eyes, I’ve been shooting close ups of eyes for so many years I don’t know which exact mention you have in mind. I think it’s a striking visual. The eye is the window of the soul and often speaks an inner truth to us that is beyond the word. And people’s eyes in general, if you look closely at them, reveal much. Movie stars often have blue eyes, because I think they give more access than brown/black eyes.

As to the “World is yours,” well, that’s a subjective frame of mind, and it can well be true if you believe it.

Q: Patrick Dailey Please give us some details about the new "Alexander : The Ultimate Cut" blu-ray/DVD. Will it have new features, new transfer, etc. Thanks!

Oliver: I can tell you the new “Alexander” is 8 minutes shorter and has some structural changes of significance. I think it’s cleaned up. It’s a real final to me. In the 2007 version I was trying to get out all the stuff that I wasn’t able to get out in 2004. And then I was able to look at the 2007 version in various film festivals around the world (San Sebastian, Taormina, and New York.) After seeing it in public like that, I was able to go back and see some of the things that I had added were not necessary—as well as remove some of the complexity that still existed. That’s why I trimmed it. I’m very happy with this new version and it’s definitely a final one. There is no new transfer—not necessary because everything was beautifully transferred the first time.

Q: Attila Peter Of all the empires which one would you prefer?

Oliver: Very good question. I think as a Roman it would’ve been very dangerous to stay alive. There seems to have been a poison in the air, and in the capital too many Romans were killing each other. I think in some ways the British Empire must have been perhaps one of the best, at least if you were an Englishman! But not a native. The idea of going to Eton or Oxford, joining the military, or being a businessman when most people around you are ethnocentric, you think of yourself as superior. It’s an amazing illusion—but produced some amazing results.

We’re now living in the American Empire. So you make up your own mind. Many are happy with it and comfortable. Depends on your consciousness of our history. If interested see “Untold History.”

As to the best Empire, I’m not sure, but I think the Mongol Empire of the 13th/14th centuries makes a lot of sense. Although bloody (who wasn’t at that time), they had an amazing degree of intelligence. As tribal nomads and outsiders, they brought to the sense of empire a newness and ability to see beyond parochial concerns. And because they were a small tribe they were concerned about their universality. They truly brought a modern order to feudalism and tribalism, and their influence is still strongly felt today in the East.

I also deeply respect Alexander’s Empire because of his respect for local laws and customs—as did the Mongols—and the fact that he did not loot and rape the place, as the English and Americans, in their benign way, did. So I vote for the Mongols.

Q: Matthew McKenna Is there a person or persons who have been a major influence on your life?

Oliver: Huge question. We can talk in the personal sphere or artistic sphere, but let’s say we’re talking of the American political sphere. I’d say Roosevelt and JFK. And in a negative way Reagan, LBJ, Nixon, Bush (father), Bush (son), Truman, and Eisenhower. Without a doubt the U.S. has had its share of awful Presidents who’ve really destroyed what this thing could’ve been after WW2. Please see “Untold History” to understand my feelings. These are people who have directly influenced our life in a very powerful way.

Q: Mary F. Nugent On behalf of WH Wisecarver: I was on the Capital Hill in 1991 when JFK was released. It was surprising to me the controversy and re-evaluations it provoked amongst my younger peers. In lieu of your recent post on the prohibition of being able to do your MLK movie and the rehash of contrived political thrillers in today’s films, do you see a time when real thought provoking cutting edge films can be made in Hollywood again?

Oliver: You’re asking a bit of a rhetorical question. Films don’t necessarily have to be cutting edge to be thought provoking. For example, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2011) was a beautiful film about older people that really had a point. It wasn’t cutting edge in the sense of what people normally think, but who cares as long as it move you and provokes your feelings and thoughts. I said earlier on another post I really was struck by “All is Lost,” I think that “Blue Jasmine” in its way make you think about people that I knew in New York. It’s a great character study. I think good movies are coming along all the time from abroad, from here, and I wouldn’t dismiss the industry for that. We filmmakers are always struggling to get something fresh and different done. Few of us succeed. But we try.

I think that the concentration on money, as with the rest of the culture, has hollowed out the business. I know that studios are just not developing dramas unless you’re a top of the line director, and they rarely do that without making you compromise. It’s hard to get things great things made in that way. If the directors stick to their guns and develop stuff they really believe in, I think it’s possible to get films made. I know that we have many more markets available to us, as well as different forms of financing, but sometimes you have to assume you’re not going to make much money making a film, and you’re going to live with whatever distribution you can get. So I think it’s a very harsh playing field—but good stuff does get turned out because people are ‘burning’ to tell a story. I sometimes feel we’re the like that medieval acting troupe in Bergman’s “Seventh Seal.”

Q: Nathan Paul Oliver as a filmmaker myself I come across a predicament often behind the camera. Do you ever sacrifice continuity of a shot for your vision?

Oliver: Yes, I often do. The logic of the technician is often in conflict with the heart. Especially as the sun is going down and fast decisions have to be made. Best to make those decisions early in the day.

But as you can see from my editing, it’s sometimes discontinuous, and probably far more interesting because of it.

Q: Matt Higgins How is it that you were able to turn your horrific experience of being a combat soldier in Vietnam into something productive- producing great films that brought Vietnam into the focus of the American mainstream, instead of becoming one of the many casualties of PTSD?

Oliver: Well, I probably did have my share of PTSD, but I didn’t know it at the time because it wasn’t called by that name. I think that terminology started in the late 70s (not sure). I think the fact that I met a good woman who helped me reintegrate, and I did gradually join back into a film school at NYU and was inspired. I think willpower played a role in it. There was much rejection. Remember, it took 10 years (‘76–‘86) from when I wrote “Platoon” to when it was actually filmed, as well as 10 years (‘79–‘89) for “Born on the Fourth of July.”

This is the point of the artistic journey isn’t it? To take the ordinary and the oppression that’s sometimes served up to us, and make of it something celebratory.

-Archived version here from Feb 13 2014

#oliver stone #official website #q&a #social media #facebook #twitter #jfk #alexander #movie business #film business #ptsd #motifs #themes #artistry #thailand

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back-and-totheleft · 27 days

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The Oliver Stone Collection

Long before the advent of DVD, the name Oliver Stone was already synonymous with the term director’s cut. Now, thanks to the wonders of digital technology, the voluble director of ”Wall Street,” ”JFK,” and ”Any Given Sunday” has found the perfect place to unload his vast cinematic attic: the ”Oliver Stone Collection,” a mammoth DVD boxed set loaded with extra scenes, supplemental research, and plenty of conspiracy theories. Recently, the natural born rabble rouser sat down with EW to look back (and to the left) on his collected works — including the mysteriously MIA ”Platoon.”

So where’s ”Platoon”? You know, MGM stiffed [Warner] on ”Platoon” and ”Salvador.” They had a big fight. I don’t know much, I just know there was a lot of bad blood.

Kinda nice having people fight over your work, huh? You could say I’m glad they have some library value, although a lot of people don’t remember ”Salvador.” I know this because the people at MGM said, ”What is it?” But I did a commentary for it. I think [MGM] is going to [release ”Salvador” and rerelease ”Platoon” on DVD] midyear.

Are you a big DVD fan? Any form of preservation is good. And there are so many worthy films they can’t keep up. Museums do good work, of course, but the commercial motivation is the best motivation.

So what version of ”Natural Born Killers” [the R rated version is in the set; the unrated director’s cut is available from Trimark] — and of all your movies, for that matter — do you want the public to remember? I’m not that picky about it. It’s an ongoing process. Think about books: Writers go back to them at various stages of their lives, so there are earlier editions, later editions. I’d never have released a film theatrically without having approved it. So I’ve never had a problem with a studio [cut]. I did have huge problems with the MPAA…. I was okay with the R cut [of ”Natural Born Killers”], but I prefer the director’s cut. I accept the theatrical cut because I made it — nobody replaced me.

Well, you certainly weren’t stingy with the supplements. I wanted to be thorough because my films are often criticized for accuracy, and I’m trying to point out that a lot of research went into them.

So is this the last word on Oliver Stone, or do you foresee future editions? Well, look at ”JFK.” It’s enormous [at 205 minutes]. Other people are talking, people who are very knowledgeable in [the Kennedy assassination lore], even more so than I am, and that opens up the possibility that, yeah, there ought to be [another edition]. Probably in 2010, there will be some new DNA evidence. [Pause] If they’ll let it out.

Speaking of classified information: You were a writer on the original ”Conan the Barbarian,” correct? I wrote a very elaborate script. Paramount saw it and flipped out. It [would] have cost $50 million [to make] at that time. I wanted Ridley Scott to do it. But he chose ”Blade Runner.” And that set us back. I really always strongly felt it could have been a Bond series, 12 pictures, with a great central character if they’d kept the quality up. Ah, it was an outrageous script. I always get approached about remakes.

-Scott Brown, "EW sits down with Oliver Stone," Entertainment Weekly, Feb 9 2001

#oliver stone #entertainment weekly #ew #dvd #dvd collection

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Ten Minutes with Oliver Stone

Saturday March 16. It is 1 p.m. In a little over an hour, we have a meeting with Oliver Stone. The American director kindly agreed to answer our questions. The instructions are clear: three questions maximum. At 1:40 p.m., five of us are shown to a small room filled with chairs right next to room 5 of Flagey. In an atmosphere intended to be as informal as possible, Mr. Stone spoke to us about his latest documentary, Nuclear Now, his relationship with documentaries, journalism and above all, the Original Soundtrack!

The BO: Hello Mr. Stone, thank you for agreeing to answer our questions

Oliver Stone: Hello.

In short, we are a media that deals with music and Cinema. Sometimes we try to make connections between the two. We have prepared 3 questions for you. Our first question is related to your coming to this festival, why is it important for you to be there at a festival like Millenium?

Why is it important that I'm here? Because I want to sell the idea of nuclear energy in Europe, particularly in France, Belgium and Holland. France is committed, and Holland and Belgium are favorable, but I would like to see a little more and for it to go faster. You are important countries. Small, perhaps, but you have a mind. You have a big impact on the world. It is important for the world to have nuclear energy. We don't have enough. This is really a problem. People don't think about nuclear power, they have, in a way, forgotten its existence. It's interesting, the Americans say: "Yes, nuclear power, we tried that." Saying that somehow implies that we missed. But we didn't fail, it worked. This is what I'm trying to correct: the impression that nuclear power is a failure. This is very important work, scientific work. But scientists can't do that job, so I do it, as a filmmaker, as a writer. You know, people probably don't care, a lot of people actually don't care but so what? It's important! This is what having a conscience is. If you have a conscience, sometimes you do the right things because you have to do them, right? Like going to your grandmother's funeral, for example. [Laughs] Just kidding, I loved my grandmother very much.

It's interesting that you talk to us about that, we notice that in many of your films there is this documentary aspect. What do you think is the role of documentaries? Why do them? Why are they important to you?

That's a question that would require a very long and complicated answer. I'll give you a short answer. When I make a film, I have to create everything. I have to hire actors, I have to create the set, I have to hire extras, I have to write the dialogue to some degree, light the room, shoot it, etc. Look at us now, we're talking. This is a documentary! Basically, it's much simpler. I don't have to do any of the things I mentioned. I just need to find a real person and talk to them. A documentary gets straight to the point. It goes faster. For a film, it's a minimum of a year, or even two years of time. People don't understand that.

Film critics know nothing about current events. Very few of them are aware of what is happening in the world because they never leave their cinemas! Therefore, they're stupid [laughs] when it comes to what is happening in the world. If you're doing something that requires being a little politically sensitive, they often don't understand it. They can't understand it, because they don't read anything. For example, there was a film - I won't mention the name - which came out a few years ago, which had great reviews, an Oscar nomination, everything! And it was a fraud! Everything was wrong. It was a lie from start to finish, about this certain woman. [I suspect he's referring to The Post here, Spielberg's movie about Katherine Graham].

This is something that's also true for documentaries, you know. People see 20 Days in Mariupol and say, "That must be reality." That's not how it works. That's the problem. I've never had a documentary that wasn't controversial, because I go out there and try to tell the fucking truth. It goes against the established order in my country, what we call the mass media or corporate media. Call it corporate media because corporations are the most influential. Be careful with them. You're journalists and you'll all join this type of media because that's where the money is, which I can understand. Being a freelance journalist is much harder, and even harder when you're young. So become corporate journalists for a few years. They'll try to brainwash you but don't get fooled. That's the best advice I can give you.

Finally, I've already told you a little about the concept of our site and how we deal with cinema and music. So we wanted to know what, for you, is the role of music in a film?

You asked me three good questions and they're all extremely important. They deserve very detailed answers. I could talk about this one for hours. It's a fascinating subject.

What is the role of music in films? Obviously, some directors don't want music and therefore use it minimally. Film criticism at the moment likes minimalism. People like Ken Russell come to mind. He exploded his films with music, revealing himself. Baz Luhrman too, and there are many others who like to use a lot of music. I honestly have to admit that sometimes I'm like that too.

Music is a vital part of the lives of men and women. It's really an important part of our life. I see music as another camera, a sort of secondary entry point. There's music all the time. Now that we're talking, I hear some. Although we're having a very prosaic conversation. It doesn't really seem like there is any music. Perhaps, in the third question, the idea arises: how would Beethoven have answered this question? Ta da da da da dum [laughs] Do you know what I mean? It makes a huge difference!

I can't precisely tell you how music affects a scene. Without music, of course a scene is drier, but maybe some people prefer it that way. They want it to be honest, too honest. I think a film is partly manipulation. We're trying to influence the audience to think a certain way. That's what a film is all about, influencing the audience to believe it. To achieve that, I see no problem in cheating as much as you want. I really don't see a problem there. Either way, we still cheat.

I've had the chance to work with five or six composers in my career, some of them very good. I think I was very lucky to come across them. The last one I worked with, Vangelis, was excellent. He did the music for Alexander for me and also for my latest film Nuclear Now. This is his last work, I believe. He's deceased now. It’s a very subtle soundtrack. Maybe if you see the movie, you can hear it!

While Matteo explains to Stone where the Manneken Pis is, Sam tries to speak English and Ethan greets the director's wife. So an interview ends that we won't soon forget.

-"Ten Minutes with Oliver Stone," La Bande Originale, March 25 2024 (translated from French)

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My Great Movies: Platoon (1986)

A very good friend of mine once told me that “Platoon”, writer/director Oliver Stone’s Best Picture winner (1986), an intense immersion into the Vietnam War, was held back from being a great movie solely on account of Charlie Sheen’s lead performance as Pvt. Chris Taylor, the film’s protagonist, whose performance was merely average. I could not say I agreed. “Platoon” is my favorite war film which, frankly, seems wrong to type. My favorite war film? It’s like saying “The Reader” is my favorite Holocaust film, which it is, because not only could you debate the veracity of it being a "Holocaust film" but because, well, are you allowed to have a “favorite” Holocaust film? Or a “favorite” war film? Are those sins?

The late Samuel Fuller, a maverick who directed his fair share of war movies, once dismissed the majority of them as being “goddam recruiting film(s).” This is in stark contrast to that guy named Steven Spielberg who once said: “Every war movie, good or bad, is an antiwar movie.” Really, Steve? You think so? Did you know that I once knew someone who upon seeing “Saving Private Ryan” said to me (honestly): “That’s the only movie I’ve ever seen that made me want to go to war.” I wasn’t even sure how to respond. I’m still not.

I do not mean, not in any, way, shape or form, to disparage those who risk their lives in the American armed forces. God, no. Those men and women are approximately 925 million times more brave than I could hope to be in my wildest dreams and I thank every single one of them for what they choose to do every day. But I think so many war films - and this is certainly what Fuller was driving at - glorify the entire ordeal, whether they intend to or not. And “Platoon”, more than any other movie centered around war I have ever seen, was the one I have always felt most actively and effectively de-glorified the experience while still actually being a film, a superb film, not merely a slogan.

“Saving Private Ryan” has that gargantuan D-Day re-enactment near its start, sure, that is brutal and real and horrifying but that is not actually how the movie begins, remember? It begins with a shot of the American flag flapping in the wind. “Platoon”, on the other hand, opens with Sheen’s Chris arriving in “the ‘Nam” to the sight of body bags and then that creepy guy walking in the other direction staring at Chris with that creepy smile and, like it or not, the opening to a film so often establishes its true tone and the true tone of each of these films can be found right there in those two moments. Old Glory versus Creepy Guy. Tell me, which one’s anti-war?

The Charlie Sheen of then was an actor primarily of laconic disinterest. Whether or not he was always supposed to be disinterested is another matter, but that is what he tended to project. The disinterest he displays early in "Platoon" is right on the money for the character. There is that scene where Chris and Crawford (Chris Pederson) and King (Keith David) are cleaning out the latrines and only at this point do we get any kind of handle on why Chris has ended up here. Dropped out of college. Volunteered. Asked for infantry, combat, Vietnam, “I figure, why should just the poor kids go off to war and the rich kids get away with it?” But it’s Sheen’s delivery that renders this revelation so striking. His natural disposition makes it sound so insincere, so false, so “This is what I’m supposed to say.” He knows the words, not the tune. He even smiles and laughs a little - at himself. "Can you believe that?" King calls him a “crusader” but I think that we think that Chris knows better.

Famously, Oliver Stone initially wanted to cast Sheen's brother, Emilio Estevez, who turned down the part at which point Stone offered it to Sheen. It's debatable, certainly, that Sheen is doing anything much beyond playing a part squarely in his wheelhouse. Frankly, there is not much difference between Chris Taylor and that guy in the police station in "Ferris Bueller Day's Off" (another 1986 release) who flirts with Ferris's sister. Their demeanors are very much the same. Strange as it sounds, this is a good thing. He mimics the stance of an idealist but he's just fakin' it. He's tethered to nothing.

Remember when the platoon is being sent out on “ambush” into the foreboding jungle at night and Johnny Cash is ominously strumming on the soundtrack and Chris finds himself talking with Pvt. Gardner, a “lard ass”, who shows off a picture of his “Lucy Jean” back on the home front? “She’s the one for me, that Lucy Jean,” proclaims Gardner. Sheen’s reply is classic: “Real pretty. You’re a lucky guy, Gardner.” It’s the way he says it. Total disinterest. Whatever. Whoever. You know we're about to go into the jungle, right? Chris writes his grandma at home, this much we glean from his voiceover. Why not his parents? The movie never says. The movie, in fact, doesn't say much of anything movies of this sort typically say to not only drive home points but to give the audience its normal bearings. Its intention is to disorient.

Consider that opening title card: "September 1967, Bravo Company, 25th Infantry, Somewhere Near The Cambodian Border." Key word: Somewhere. We don’t really know where they are. We don’t really know what they’re doing. They don’t really know where they are. They don’t really know what they’re doing. You want guideposts and mile markers? Look elsewhere. At base camp we find Chris digging a hole and expressing this very sensation via voiceover: "I don’t even know what I’m doing." His face shows it. Gone. Disconnected. Logistics and strategy are almost irrelevant. Reason seems useless. "I don't think I can keep this up for a year, grandma. I think I made a big mistake coming here." Yeesh. That line gives me the willies, and if the actor had gone for affect on the words, it wouldn't have been as chilling.

Chris doesn't really understand what he's doing, perhaps, until the film's halfway point. This is when platoon enters an ancient village and Chris finds a kid hiding and pulls him up and out of his hole, screaming all the while, and Pvt. Francis (Corey Glover) tries to calm him down: "Be cool. They're scared, man." Chris erupts: "They're scared?! What about me?! I'm sick of this f---ing s---!" Then he really loses it, aiming his machine gun at the kid's feet, spraying bullets, ordering him to "dance". Yet, it's almost like enlightenment. He could kill this kid (and, terribly, Kevin Dillon's unhinged Bunny will do just that) but he doesn't. He walks away. It's a crucial moment. And Sheen is scary convincing in that moment. Later, he helps a village girl being mistreated, shaking his head, disbelieving, intoning to his fellow soldiers, "You just don't get it, do you?"

For much of the film Stone has presented us the simmering rivalry between Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) and Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe) and it is here, in the village, in a sort of mini My Lai, that Stone serves up one of the intense, terrifying passages ever captured on film in which Barnes coldly, quickly, matter-of-factly makes a decision that takes the heart right out of you. Later Barnes blathers about when men don't follow orders "the machine breaks down" but, in reality, the machine breaks down right here. Elias confronts him. Afterwards, he will file a report. The movie stops paying attention to the war with the Vietnamese. That's immaterial. Now it's about Elias vs. Barnes. And Barnes will kill Elias. And Chris will kill Barnes.

Chris came to Vietnam, despite what he may have tried to claim, for no good reason. Yet his friendship with Elias, and others, helps him to figure out his reasoning and to gain ideals and so when Elias is gunned down by Barnes it is those very ideals which push Chris to retaliate and that moment between he and Barnes at the end is not one of triumph, not some cinematic precipice that has been scaled, but disillusion, all the ideals stripped away. "All the humanity goes out of you." That's what Dale Dye, an ex marine, the film's technical adviser, says at one point on the commentary track.

Perhaps "Platoon" is best summarized the morning after the last gigantic attack when Pvt. Francis finds himself alone and uninjured in a foxhole. He looks around. No one's watching. This is his chance. He takes a knife and thrusts it into his leg. When we catch up with him again he is laying on his side on a stretcher, as if it's a beach towel in St. Tropez, smoking a cigarette, calling out to the also-injured Chris across the way "We two-timers, man!" meaning that because they both have been wounded twice they get to go home. "Saving Private Ryan" ends with, again, the American flag flapping in the wind. "Platoon" ends with a guy jamming a knife into his own leg. Tell me, which one's anti-war?

I re-watched "Platoon" for the first time in many years for, I think, an obvious reason - that is, to prove to myself that this current bonkers, F-18 Charlie Sheen ("The proof's in the eyes, man!" is what Chris says of Sgt. Barnes and which might be used to describe present day Charlie Sheen) could not assuage the power of my favorite war film. He doesn't. On top of that, I still think the Charlie Sheen of then gives an above average performance and, most significantly, it still doesn't make me want to go to war.

-Nick Prigge, Cinema Romantico, Mar 14 2011

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BFI Interview

Mark Lawson: Welcome to the Guardian interview with the three-time Academy Award-winning director and writer Oliver Stone. We're going to talk about his work tonight, which over the last 40 years has dealt with America's critical emergencies, from the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam war, to Watergate and the Nixon years, to most recently, with World Trade Center, the 9/11 attacks. Welcome, please, Oliver Stone.

We'll talk about the films in a moment, but the first thing that struck me on the way here is that tomorrow, after nine years, the report into the death of Princess Diana is published in London, addressing all the conspiracy theories - was she murdered, etc. And Oliver Stone flies into London the night before? Are we supposed to believe that's a coincidence?

Oliver Stone: I believe I was told part of the revelation tomorrow. What I had to do with it you'll find out. What was more shocking to me when I arrived today was, the first thing I saw at Heathrow was a banner headline saying "Strangler loose in Ipswich". I thought, how British. Jack the Ripper, Hitchcock's Frenzy - it was kind of a throwback.

ML: I mentioned in the introduction that you've dealt with the big American political subjects from Vietnam to 9/11. There's one gap so far, which is Iraq and Bush. Probably for a lot people here, the dream next film from you would be Bush or Iraq, or both. Is it going to happen?

OS: That's a very flattering comment because I feel World Trade Center is an opening for me into this world. And I really am interested in the "post" period, the 9/12 on. I'm not sure the answer lies so much in Iraq, I think that's a result. For me the answer lies in the interim step, in Afghanistan. I think there's a lot of light to be shed on the nature of that war, how it came about militarily and politically, and also the nature of the war with Pakistan, India and Iran. It's a great subject matter. It leads to Iraq but that's the third phase. And there are already many movies about Iraq in terms of the internet and documentaries - in a sense, it's been usurped by television, as 9/11 was, to a certain degree.

ML: Before we talk about World Trade Center, do you know what the next film will be?

OS: No. It's the same thing for any film-maker who works at it. It's a period of uncertainty. We've been developing three or four things. We do a lot of work in research and development - we hire, we write screenplays or have writers write them; sometimes the screenplays take a long time, sometimes they're quicker. You need an actor, a budget, a studio. It all has to blend; it really is like an experiment. Nine out of 10 things do fail, or four out of five. So it's that period right now and it's a tough period, but we work just as hard doing nothing as when we're filming.

ML: We're going to start with the most recent thing you did, World Trade Center, the story of two men from the New York Port Authority Police Department caught in the collapsing World Trade tower.

[runs clip]

ML: I think that film surprised a number of people who've followed your career. As you know there are numerous books of conspiracy theories about 9/11: the American government did it, Israel did it, it wasn't a plane that hit the Pentagon and all the rest of it. But you've pretty much gone with the official facts of the story.

OS: We followed strictly the story of these four people - two husbands and two wives. Their story is corroborated. We also had 40-50 rescuers on the film who worked there. We're dealing with facts here, authenticity, we're dealing with what we know. Eyewitnesses would tell us, "This happened that day." I talked to John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno and their wives many times. I don't think they ever expressed to me even once any opinions about politics or Bush. It wasn't about that. In fact, John, because he'd been at the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, all he said was that in the confusion that day, he thought it was a truck bomb. It never occurred to him that it was a plane. And to the end, that's what they thought. There's a wonderful moment when Will Jimeno comes out of the hole and says "Where'd the buildings go?" They didn't know. If you're operating within the parameters of these 24 hours, you must adhere to what they know. This is a subjective movie - it's seen from within, from their point of view. But it's also from the point of view of their wives, from without, through the television, so it's subjective and objective. It would have been wrong to go to politics. Plus, we had a lot to do - there were three rescues, devastation, survival, life in the suburbs amid the worsening news, all this in 24 hours. You have to understand the tension - two wives at home realising that there would be no survivors. That's a great story in itself. Then there's the marine who rescued them, that's another great story. What time do you have to cut away to other things, much less want to?

ML: I understand that. You're entirely true to the story, but if I'd had to guess which aspect of 9/11 you would have chosen to dramatise, I don't think I would have chosen this. It's the one optimistic part of the story - that some people did survive it.

OS: There were times in the 90s when things were so prosperous… I mean, when Reagan was still around, I made Salvador attacking the Reagan administration in Central America. Perhaps I'm a contrarian. It seems to me 2006 is a far darker time than 2001. Those of you who remember that day would have seen how united the world was - the world was with America, had great empathy with America, and did again, maybe not as much, for the war in Afghanistan. But that has all changed. Now we have serious problems - more deaths, more terrorism, more constitutional breakdown in my own country. It's a disgrace, what's happened. And that's much more serious to me than the 2001 was-there-a-conspiracy-or-not. I don't know enough about it and I'm sure there's a lot of leaks and messy stories, but I've been through these arguments. But al-Qaida claimed they did it, over and over again. They claimed the credit, and the motive is very clear. They succeeded in creating a panic, a mental instability in the world and that had tremendous consequences because it was fuelled by George Bush's administration's reaction. So they've won. It's the opposite of the JFK killing - there you had a man, an uneducated, single guy who said, "I didn't do it. I'm a patsy." He disappears with the Dallas police for almost 48 hours, all his transcripts are destroyed, or are missing, and he's killed. It is the opposite of this story. It's a Reichstag fire kind of story. There's no motive, and who benefits? This is the key question and never gets addressed by the press. They always follow the scenery - that's what Ruby and Oswald were. I always say follow the money. Who benefited, what was the motive to get rid of John F Kennedy? I think there's a big difference. So why waste time with conspiracy theories? If you're going to politics on this issue, go now. But we don't know everything. If I'd made a movie in 2004 about the politics of the Bush war, I'd be shamefaced today because there's so much new information that we didn't have in 2004. Every month in the US there are about 10 books - [Bob] Woodward['s Bush at War, etc], The 2% Solution [by Matthew Miller], The Looming Tower [by Lawrence Wright]; every book has deepened my awareness of what really happened and it's not so simple as going after Osama bin Laden. If I make a movie - and we're not journalists, we're film-makers and dramatists, we have to look for the overall meaning and pattern of an event. That takes time.

ML: But it seems to me you are moving towards that film.

OS: Don't rush in where angels…

ML: The reason why I chose that clip from World Trade Center was that another surprise for me when I saw it was that, when I think of an Oliver Stone film, I think of the huge expansive camera movement, reminding us how wide the screen is. This was very, very different.

OS: This was a very tough picture to do, as hard as I've ever made. The lungs alone took a beating. But then you're working with two men in a hole. You have two actors - Nic Cage hasn't been this quiet in a long time. You basically have half a body and a head - it's a pickle in a jar. It's not easy. And Seamus McGarvey, our Irish-Scottish DP, lit this thing - you could see the expression on Jay Hernandez's face, but this was a very dark hole. It's basically a conversation between light and dark, because then we'd cut to the suburbs. We timed it so that you had 10 minutes in the hole the first time -very dark, very cold - then out to the suburbs where it was a really beautiful day, then back to the hole; eight holes with diminishing time periods from 10 minutes down to about two or three minutes. But our biggest problem was the third act, because once they're rescued by the marines - I don't know if you've all seen the movie…

ML: You've just given the ending away.

OS: There are three rescues in the movie - the marine, Will and John, and each one was a big number in itself. It took five hours to get Will out. People think that when you see somebody it's easy to rescue them but on the contrary, it's even more difficult; people can get killed because the spaces are so dangerous and narrow. We wanted to show the heroism of the first responders - it was their job but they went into those positions and risked their lives. And it becomes more than a story of two men, it's the story of collective effort.

ML: Let's take a look at a second clip. We're now going in chronological order, starting with Platoon.

[runs clip]

ML: I'm interested in the shape of your career because there had been work before Platoon - there were screenplays and some directing. But in 1986, when you were 40, that's when your career really seemed to begin and you became a director. Was there something that happened?

OS: Yeah, I think I got angry and fed up. I had done Midnight Express, Scarface and Conan, but I really was a director at heart, and I wanted to break through. I'd had two failures up to then, two horror films. They were similar in theme, actually, and I vowed never to do a horror film again. Jamais deux san trois. It would be a disaster for me to do a horror film - I'm not a natural born sadist, actually, and I think you have to be to do a good horror film. You have to scare the shit out of the audience, you have to really want to. I don't know if I could. 86 was a banner year.

ML: You'd served in Vietnam. Had you always known that that would be a big subject for you as a film-maker?

OS: It wasn't made, you know. It had been written 76 and turned down for 10 years. It was a bit of a stale joke. Frankly, when I got the opportunity from an English producer called John Daly… he actually read both scripts, Salvador and Platoon, and asked which one I wanted to do first. Which of course to a young film-maker is like a dream. I picked Salvador first because I was so convinced that Platoon was cursed - it had been started so many times but not got made, so I thought it was not going to happen. It was [Michael] Cimino on The Year of the Dragon, which I wrote with him, who convinced me to pull it out of the closet and go with Dino De Laurentiis, who reneged on his promise. I got another lawsuit but I got it back by the skin of my teeth. And then John Daly walked into my life. God bless the English for making those two movies - they were made illegally, almost fraudulently in Mexico. Salvador was made on a letter of credit issued to an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie - on our slate on Salvador, you can read the word Outpost, which was supposed to be the movie he was doing. Years later, of course, for other reasons, the banker was indicted, the letters of credit were questioned and so forth. But I do think you need government tax help - Britain benefited enormously from this. I don't know what's going on now…

ML: It's in the balance at the moment.

OS: You had a great system for a while.

ML: One of the subjects of Platoon and also Born On The Fourth of July is the number of people who were destroyed by the Vietnam war - the suicide rate being higher than the death rate for example. Did you ever come close to being destroyed by it?

OS: I'm very lucky that I got to make three movies about it - I think that helped enormously. I think there are a lot of successful Vietnam veterans in civilian life who are doing very well on the surface but are very bottled up inside. People who killed people, who killed civilians…Vietnam was a charnel house, there was a lot of indiscriminate killing, probably more so than in Iraq. But that's the nature of war. Platoon is fundamental, it's almost biblical. I was in three different combat platoons, and looking back I have to say there were people who were predisposed to kill anything, and other people who are predisposed to restraint, and it's not an easy equation because there are times when you are under pressure and you kill. It was a bit like a western. And of course, there are the kids who fall in the middle, like my character, the Charlie Sheen character in Platoon. Sometimes life is that way. And the kids in Iraq - who I hear are better soldiers than we were, and there are more Christian-trained and born-agains - they're all encountering this fundamental problem now. Their hatred of the enemy has reached the point where many of them hate the civilian population and they don't know the difference any more.

ML: Do you get angry when you look at people in America, from the president downwards, who got out of the war?

OS: I am beyond it. 2002 was the year I got upset. He was moving troops to the Middle East before the UN resolution. Now they're re-examining that whole period and the Colin Powell speech, but there were troop movements before Powell's speech. Once they moved there, you knew something was going to happen. And [former White House anti-terror adviser Richard] Clarke and various people have verified it, that Bush had the thing on his mind, he wanted to go to war, it was a given. It angers me greatly because when Bush went to Vietnam just four weeks ago, they asked him, "What did the Vietnam war mean to you?" And of course, this is the guy who sat out the war, draft dodged, as did Cheney, six or seven times. And he said something to the effect of, "I think it proves that if you stick in there, you'll win." That was his lesson from Vietnam.

ML: We move now to an earlier president, John F Kennedy. This clip I've chosen, it's part of a very long scene, and is my favourite Oliver Stone scene. It's a speech which I think is one of the great speeches in cinema and I want to talk to you about the writing and the directing of it. But here it is, from JFK.

[runs clip]

ML: The reason I chose that is I want to get at this business of getting what's on the page to what's on screen. It's an enormously long and complex speech, and it's exposition, which is what people always say you can't do in movies. So can you talk a bit about planning that visually?

OS: It was a 12 to 18-minute speech. I offered it to Brando, and I'm glad he didn't do it - it would have taken 30 minutes. It's actually two scenes, it was really complicated editing. Jim Garrison sees Fletcher Prouty in the middle and at the end. We ended up collapsing that in the middle. The secret, I think, to why many people have liked it is not only John Williams's music, but it's coming at the end of the first half. In Holland, there was an intermission after this scene so it gives you time to absorb this. Really, it's about Garrison going from this small, local investigation in New Orleans and jumping up another level - a quantum level leap. He never met Fletcher Prouty but he met a man similar to Prouty, who told him a similar story. But the man vanished. He's no longer operative. Fletcher was somebody I met separately. He'd written several books about it, including The Secret Team. He was chief of special ops, one of the key guys in the cold war. He was involved in at least 25 to 50 CIA missions in Tibet to Guatemala, everywhere. He supplied the hardware - the CIA didn't have the military weapons at the time. Something smelled bad to him that year and he quit, and he was discredited by the administration and by journalists, not for any correct reason. They spread the usual disinformation about him and Garrison. He told me the story from his point of view. I'll never forget that day.

ML: How carefully was it planned in advance?

OS: This was shot on the fly. We did it in two, three days. It was the last scene in the film. [Donald] Sutherland is the fastest talking actor in the world, he's very authoritative at that speed. It was a hell of a lot of dialogue, but I wanted to get it all in. Because Garrison is learning it as we learn it. And Garrison's jaw is dropping, "This is much bigger than I ever thought, how can I go on?" Garrison was the only public official who did anything. It is as a result of his beginning something that we have some records, and those records are invaluable. He also attracted the attention of the private community and they gave him a lot of help. But he could not get all the facts together. I didn't change what Prouty told me - this is based on what he said.

ML: That account in the film is very exciting. Do you believe that that account is what happened, that it's correct?

OS: I don't know who did it but I believe it was a military operation. The shooting, the autopsy, the brain, the Zapruder film - you shoot the guy coming towards you so you get the second shot, the third shot. You don't shoot him going away from you. The pressure's enormous, the sound's enormous and Oswald was not a great shot. And the [6.5mm] Mannlicher-Carcano was a piece of junk. I mean the story was just so ridiculous. The Zapruder film is evidence enough - there are two smoking guns. His head flies backwards, he was shot from the hedge. And they talk about this bullet that hits Kennedy and [Texas governor John] Connally 11 times - it's the most ridiculous bullet in the history of the world. In fact, a British audio group did a test a year ago - this is the English saying this - and said they're 99.9% sure that there were four shots. And the Americans came back a few weeks later and said, "The British are off on this." They always do that. This is a contentious thing, but bottom line: I don't know who, but I know it could not have been one man because too much went wrong at a high level. It was planned, there were a lot of red herrings and misdirections. As Prouty said himself, that whole thing about the military group is typical of a misdirected operation. All this stuff had been worked out in the 50s - you saw this time and again in assassinations in Latin America and everywhere. This is black ops. Who did it? Somebody with military capability. Why? I presented several motives in the film but I can't tell you the answer. But I would say Cuba and Vietnam and the détente with the Russians, with whom Kennedy in 1963 signed this historic agreement on nuclear weapons. That really was potentially the beginning of the end of the cold war. All this had occurred after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The Fog of War, as good a film as it is, never mentions why the Cubans were so paranoid about an American invasion in October 1962. Why did they have Russian missiles coming into Cuba? Because they were frightened of our 1961 invasion. There is always cause and effect. Cuba was a big issue and Kennedy was backing off. He was making this new relationship, partly with De Gaulle, with Khrushchev. The world balance was changing. He did announce that he was coming out of Vietnam, whatever contrary evidence is presented. He had no intention of running for re-election on Vietnam, he knew it was a dead duck. So out of these factors, the military-industrial complex, as described by Eisenhower at the beginning of the film, was threatened. This guy was going to win the election in 1964 and the nutcase, his brother Bobby, looked like a 68 potential. This was a serious business, to stop the Kennedys.

ML: You mention Bobby Kennedy. There's a recent book, endorsed by Gore Vidal and others, suggesting it was a mob killing because Bobby went after the mafia.

OS: I know Gore, and I've talked to him about it and we just cannot agree. The mob has no history of doing this kind of thing, except for one time, maybe, with Roosevelt. They seem to be close order killers - they do The Godfather style shootings. This was an organised thing. The mob did a lousy job in Cuba - they missed Castro how many times? The good work they did was with Lucky Luciano in the second world war, when they were called upon, with the labour unions and strikes and stuff like that. But the mafia has never been a very successful ally of the CIA, unless they have some involvement with drugs, with I don't know enough about.

ML: We move on from Kennedy, missing out Johnson, to Nixon.

[runs clip]

OS: The reason I chose that scene was because, certainly in this country when people wrote about it, the blood on the plate was seen as a metaphor that you'd imposed. But I happened to have read The Haldeman Diaries and it was there: there is a scene where Nixon tucks into his steak and he sees the blood. And most of that, those exchanges, is documented.

OS: Anthony Summers actually followed up the movie with a wonderful book [The Arrogance of Power] which never got any publicity in America. Nixon as far crazier than I thought. Anthony, who's a very sound journalist and double-sourced everything, documents these six or seven occasions when, in the middle of the night when he was loaded, he'd declare war. He'd call up Henry [Kissinger] and say, "Send the battle ships to Syria or to Lebanon. We're going to blow them up. I've had it with these people." "Yes, Mr President, they're on their way." And then around eight or nine in the morning, he'd call and say, "Did you send those ships?" And Henry would say, "Well, there was a bit of a malfunction and they're still there." In other words, they humoured him. He got really aggressive at times, especially when he'd been drinking. I'm not saying he was a big drinker but I do think he could not take drinking. But you can't underestimate the man's brilliance. His concept, or Kissinger's, whoever takes the credit, of triangular diplomacy, for instance. In 1950 the smart people knew that China and Russia had a big problem. But we persisted in my country for 20 years to believe in this China-Russia alliance that was going to destroy us, when in fact they were fighting far more amongst themselves.

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ML: We've talked about the camerawork and the visuals, but that's an example of acting. Do you work closely with actors in rehearsal for a scene like that?

OS: We rehearsed it and rehearsed it - I believe in rehearsal - and then we got out. It was one of the last scenes in the movie, so we got out one night on the Potomac on a boat. I think Hopkins is great. He embodied to me the spirit of the man, the irritation. I wish the movie had been released in 2006; it would have had much more success with the Bush administration as a contrast. I think Bush makes Nixon look like St Augustine.

ML: To ears in this country, Hopkins sounded a bit Welsh for Nixon. He doesn't do an impersonation, does he, in the film?

OS: No, but it's about the spirit of the man, and I think he gets it for me. He gets the anger, the love. Nixon was a human being. People expected me to do a hatchet job - I'm not sympathetic to Nixon, I think his policies were bad for America, but I'm empathetic to him. And I feel he did suffer greatly from his inferiority complex and from his mother and father and the Kennedy thing. He was the used car salesman in this situation, and I find it very moving sometimes.

ML: One of the visual decisions you made in that movie is that you have switches of style, so that sometimes we have CCTV footage, black-and-white, etc. What was the thinking behind that?

OS: Much less so than in Natural Born Killers and JFK. I think this film was more reserved. It was a tough film to make - you're dealing with 15 white guys with bad haircuts in suits. There's not much to attract a big audience on this movie, and it didn't. It's mostly talk. To me it's one of my favourite films because it's got so much going on inside. It's a psychobiography of a man. I loved it but it was not meant to be a success. But it still holds up for me.

ML: Apart from Nixon, the modern American president most written about is Clinton. Were you ever tempted by Clinton?

OS: Was I what?

ML: Tempted. I don't mean sexually. I mean as a subject?

OS: Frankly, I think Mr [Mike] Nichols did a great job with Travolta in Primary Colors. It was a hell of a job - it doesn't tell you the whole story but it does tell you part of it. I look at the Clinton administration as a lighter leaf in the storm. I suppose the third one, if I ever did it, and if I survived it to see the pattern, would be Bush Jr. This is a true Richard II or perhaps Richard III story.

ML: But also, Bush Sr would be a good character in that. The relationship between them…

OS: I wanted to do the remake of the Manchurian Candidate. The producer did not want to because it was already under way, it was a conventional script, and it was a remake. And I'd done Scarface as a writer and I'd done it completely differently from the original, tried to anyway. I wanted to make Barbara Bush into the Meryl Streep character, when it was Angela Lansbury. Barbara Bush is the key, she runs the family, and this guy George is the Manchurian candidate. He's basically a very shallow, brainwashed person. And ideologically motivated, the most disastrous thing of all in a political leader - you might as well be Khomeini.

ML: The fifth clip we're going to show now is from Any Given Sunday.

OS: In England?

[runs clip]

ML: As you said, we have no idea what's going on in that and we couldn't tell you the score. But I chose that scene as an extreme contrast to the one I started with. What fascinated me, watching it originally and seeing it again tonight, is how you get to that? How much do you know of what it will look like before you shoot it? And how much emerges in the cutting room?

OS: That scene is what I feel like as a director when I walk out on the set. Sometimes, there's so much pressure and there's so much going on. This is a cut film, very much so. When you have huge infrastructures - you have the stadium, huge amount of extras, the football team who are beasts and have to be fed. You have two teams, you have to do this like a military operation, so you shoot a lot more footage. Platoon was a low-budget film where you picked it out, you shot as much as you could in your head and the scenes were very precise - almost minuets. There were only eight or 10 scenes in Platoon. This is the opposite. This has at least 10 characters and perhaps 50 scenes. So this is the other end of the spectrum - it's definitely an attempt to tell multilevel stories at the same time.

ML: Thousands of cuts in it.

OS: Natural Born Killers was the most I made. That was maybe 3,200 cuts, which was a record I believe. But that was prompted by the style of the movie, it wasn't imposed. This also requires a frenetic style to match the pace of football, which is a rough game and about egos, too. World Trade Center is a quiet film because it's a life and death issue, it's about those two men and how close they come to death, and what makes them survive. Why do they stay alive? Most people would die.

ML: There's one part of the equation that we haven't mentioned at all, which is critics. When you've had a bad time, which you did with Alexander, did it affect you?

OS: Oh, I suppose so. It all goes in and goes somewhere. That was a very tough film. But I'm not a quitter. I went back and did a third version, which is coming out in America in February. And Warner Bros is very excited about it. I changed the structure and I went back to what it should have been. It should have been a road show. They don't make them anymore but this is for video, not for theatre. So it's three-and-a-half hours, two hours to the intermission, then a break and then it goes to the last hour-and-a- half. To me, because it starts with the Battle at Gaugamela instead of later, it changes the perspective of the entire movie. It was always a road show but I backed off it because it wasn't doable in America. So I took advantage of DVD and I hope you like the new version. It's the best, the clearest and it allows you the time to immerse yourself in that world.

ML: So is the fact that you went back to it an admission that you got it wrong originally?

OS: Not wrong, but trial and error. It only gets better. I mean, the director's cut is better than the theatrical cut, but I backed the theatrical cut because I had seven months and I thought we'd go with it. I just don't think it clarified to enough people what we were after. Some people loved it and that's what gave me the right to do three cuts. It's only because of the success of the director's cut - they shipped a million copies of that in America. Plus, we did very well theatrically with Alexander - it was one of the top 20 films of the year. So that allowed me to go on to this third version, which I hope you'll like. I just think he's too important a man to forget. It's so important to get it better because he deserves it.

ML: We'll take some questions now.

Q1: You said earlier that we're not journalists, but I perceive you as a social commentator. How did making Natural Born Killers, which had the impact on society that it did in various extremes, affect you as a director? Did it influence your choices later either thematically or aesthetically?

OS: It's ironic you mention Natural Born Killers - it's a fictional movie, therefore there were no restraints. I was able to really let loose. I was also going through some personal turmoil at the time, so I really put a lot of passion and chaos into that movie. But I did think it reflected the OJ Simpson mentality of that time. America sold out to television big time in the 1980s, when the news was made for profit. Television, when I was growing up, was a public trust, or it was supposed to be. They didn't give licences to these people unless there was supervision. So there was a concept of quality. But when Reagan came to office, that line eroded very quickly. In 1982, I believe, Laurence Tish at CBS said, "I'm going to make the news division for profit." That changed the news in America. Not that it was ever great, but it was the end of any serious news. So what you have now in America is celebrity news, soundbites, and every major issue is reported but so superficially. It's the "he said, she said" school of journalism. That's not a serious debate. So Natural Born Killers grew out of anger and chaos, and it cost me deeply because it was coming out close after JFK. And between those two films, I took a major hit. Warner Bros was really upset with it. Americans took it really literally - they saw it as a pro-violence film. It was never intended as such. It was clearly to me a cartoon of violence, but it was perceived as violent and aggressive and castigated by the mainstream press. It did well with young people in spite of that, but Warners was never really behind that movie, and the DVD was not really sold. And it was the end of my relationship with Warner Bros after three great experiences. And there was also a major lawsuit for five years, instituted by John Grisham, who was a lawyer whose friend was killed by a couple of teenagers who claimed to have seen the movie and acted upon it. These claims were repeatedly made and never proven. We were sued for accessory to murder - it took six years and went to five different courts before the supreme court. It cost Warners at least two million bucks, it cost me quite a considerable amount of money to defend myself also, and at the end of the day, it was basically a product liability. Grisham was saying a movie is a product - if your vacuum cleaner comes out and it's defective and someone blows up with it, you're liable to pay insurance to the person. Can you imagine, if you can say a movie made me kill someone, then you could also say "Beethoven's music drives me crazy and I had to kill my neighbour" or "I read Dostoevsky and decided to do something about it". It would have been the end of movies, and that lawsuit came so close.

ML: So you won't be making a John Grisham film any time soon?

OS: I can honestly say that I would not have made it before the lawsuit.

ML: Just briefly on that point, the fact is you say that the film was misunderstood. Did that make you rethink or affect the way you made films?

OS: Yeah. I mean, how many times do you get burned? It does burn, it singes. Nixon was controversial, but it was a different kind of controversy. Again I was accused of lying and defrauding the public and miseducating young people. And this gets tiring after a while - it would tire anybody. It's been going on for 20 years. Does it change you? If you let it. You get wiser, smarter, try to figure out ways to do it without… For World Trade Center I was accused of being too far to the right. I don't think I can ever make an Oliver Stone film, whatever that is, because every time I make one it's not like an Oliver Stone film. If I made an Oliver Stone film about the World Trade Center, they would have been deriding me as a conspiracy nut. So I don't know. Who can you be except yourself?

Q2: Do you get a lot of problems with ratings boards, because of the subjects that you deal with?

OS: I'm very pleased to announce that World Trade Center was the first PG13 I've ever had in my career. And it did very well all over the world, enormously well for this kind of movie, where you have two men in a hole, it's not easy to look it. But it made $165m. The other films, like Natural Born Killers, I went through 155 cuts - it was a hassle. There was an unrated version that I managed to release through Lions Gate in America, but it's no longer available. But the licence ran out and it's now with Warners, and they won't release anything unrated. I thought they were very stupid cuts. There was nothing specific - it was always, "Mr Stone, this is too much chaos. Just take the chaos down." But that's the whole point, the whole world gets turned upside down. The riot at the end was what got hurt most - we really shot this in a state federal prison in Illinois, very serious violent prison with a lot of gangs, and we used them as extras. So it was quite a nuthouse, quite a scene.

Q3: Do you have any plans to direct in French or in France in the near future? Have you ever contemplated asking Brigitte Bardot to make her long awaited comeback, maybe for a film of penguins discussing Marcel Proust and The Remembrance of Things Past on an iceberg?

OS: My mother is French and met my father in the second world war. So I love the French language and I love the French movies of the 50s and 60s, 40s and 30s, more so than the more recent movies. It's a wonderful place to shoot. I would do it but it would have to be on a smaller budget and with lesser ambitions because French cinema, the subtitling alone is a problem. If I could do something very personal about my own boyhood there, I would. I just don't want to do the Ridley Scott movie, because I loved the landscapes better. I'd get my own vineyard if I could.

Q4: You've worked with some incredible actors in your career that have been hugely inspirational to young actors starting out. You must see so many people, so in your opinion, what is it that makes the difference between a good actor who gives a good performance and a great one that brings it to life and communicates with people the world over?

OS: If I could put it in a saltshaker… it's worked on, it's magic, it's a combination of things. A good actor with great charisma can be in a bad piece but still be charismatic. The ideal is to give an idea that inspires the actor, that raises him, so that he goes and takes his natural born charisma and does something with it that no one's ever seen before. That's the goal of most directors. It's a marriage, and it's luck, it's incidence and timing, and you cut the actor. Brando, as great as he was, didn't cooperate with his directors after a certain point and I think he got hurt by that. I think it's really a collaboration, and a good actor and a good director knows that. You all depend on each other, it's organic. But it doesn't happen all the time. You work and you work, and then it does happen. There are those moments that shine. I hope you get a chance to see World Trade Center because Nic Cage, he doesn't have much to operate with, and here plays a sour man who very rarely smiles, but towards the end of the movie, when he lets the light into his eyes and he goes to the edge of death and fights for life, he just flickers back. He sees the spirit of his wife and then he meets her in the hospital - I'm just so moved by that, that's one moment where Nic becomes transcendent. But he worked on that very hard.

Q5: For films like JFK and Nixon, there seems to have been a lot of research put into them. How long does the research process take before you write the scripts? And how were you able to pummel out so many films between 1986 and 1996?

OS: That was 10 years, 10 films. Yeah, that was quite a push. I really was hungry, I had been denied making films for so many years. I was 38 when I got the ability to go ahead, so I really had the attitude that this thing could end tomorrow, so I just kept plunging. I burned out by Nixon. I see that in hindsight, I was tired. And I wrote a novel the next year, and I just did not want to see a camera and I did not want to be around films for a while. I did documentaries, small films, tried different things. As for research, we do as much as possible. That's not to say you can't burn it out. You have to get it right but so much is unknown about Nixon and Kennedy. You go as far as you can and then you go behind closed doors. That's when your instinct comes into play. There are two books about Nixon and JFK - they're available with the entire screenplay and footnoted. Footnoted! We never tried to pull the wool over the public's eyes. It was always there; the press knew it and they never gave any coverage to those books.

Q6: You often talk of Godard, and the master finally honoured the disciple because there's a shot of Nixon in Notre Musique. The question is, what could America learn from Alexander?

OS: Alexander was a great frontline commander - he was in the frontline. Mr Bush never went to Vietnam. If you fight a war like Alexander did, you win it. Whenever anyone betrayed Alexander - and he made alliances all the way through, he was a smart guy and would prefer to negotiate - but if you screwed him on a negotiation, the first thing he'd do was go back. He was famous for going back and he punished the bandit tribes, the armies that revolted. He never left anything behind. He ran into problems all along the way - and in India… exhausted army, edge of mutiny, too many elephants, too much rain. He got as far as he could. But he never lost a battle. At the battle of Multan, that's his finest moment. At Multan [battle against the Mallians], he was about to lose, but he jumped into the enemy - him and three men. And that made his entire army turn around and charge the walls and save his life by this much. But an arrow through his lung was probably the most dangerous wound that he had. That's the kind of man Alexander was. That's a great leader.

Q7: You've taken a lot of hits for a lot of what you've done in your career and you continue to do it, you've persevered . So what I'm trying to understand is, what is it that you're trying to do and what makes you want to continue to do it?

OS: I don't have an easy answer to that. I've done what I've done as I felt it over the last 20-some years. And I've gotten to a place where I've achieved a lot of what I wanted to do. I have to be grateful for that, I mean, I get to do three versions of Alexander. And Nixon, Kennedy, Castro - I've really got a lot done. The next thing I do, I want to make it count. I don't want to just make films, it's just too tough to just make films.

ML: That seems like the perfect final speech to me. I'm sorry we couldn't get more questions in but the British Comedy Awards need him. Thank you very much to you and to Oliver Stone.

-The Guardian interviews at BFI with Oliver Stone, Dec 15 2006

#oliver stone #mark lawson #bfi #the guardian #london #british film institute

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back-and-totheleft · 1 month

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"I have children, so of course I worry about climate change"

Oliver Stone is late. The 77-year-old director has come to the Netherlands to promote his latest film. But until the last moment, the American, known for Wall Street (1987) and JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994), left his Dutch distributor nervous. Would he show up?

At previous European screenings, Stone sometimes canceled at the last minute. But on Monday morning the moderator reassures the room of waiting journalists: Stone is now really on his way from his hotel to the press conference at the Tuschinski Cinema in Amsterdam. Half an hour later than planned, Stone arrives – blue shirt, checked jacket, laborious walk – and takes a seat behind the microphone together with his producer.

It is not surprising that many journalists from various media come to his visit. Stone not only won three Oscars, he has also been quite controversial in recent years. He interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin for 20 hours for a four-part documentary series in 2017. He also spoke to former Kazakhstan leader Nursultan Nazarbayev for an eight-hour documentary released on his 81st birthday. In both films, Stone was criticized for being too nice to the autocrats and not addressing alleged human rights violations.

Stone's recently released documentary on nuclear energy is also not without controversy. The director came up with the idea after reading the book A Bright Future (2019), a plea by two scientists for nuclear energy as the main solution to the climate problem. Studios and Netflix saw no interest in a film adaptation, so the filmmaker himself looked for investors and released the film on streaming services in 2022.

Thanks to the Dutch pro-nuclear energy organization WePlanet, it will still come to 13 Dutch cinemas for a one-off screening. The founder of WePlanet found Nuclear Now 'very impressive' and managed to convince a distributor to release it. Anti-nuclear energy environmental organization Wise is very critical of the film. “It is an advertising film for the core lobby, in which no critics have a say,” the organization says.

Stone appears not to be an easy man at his press conference in Tuschinski. He becomes irritated when a TV journalist admits that he had not seen his film beforehand. When the moderator cuts off Stone's long answers because she has promised the journalists present that she can ask two questions each, he barks at her. “You made up those fucking rules! Bad rules.” Stone sighs. “Fuck, these Dutch people.”

When Trouw meets the director an hour later for a one-on-one interview, the filmmaker fortunately appears milder. “Have you seen the movie?” he asks. After agreeing, he nods friendly. "Well done."

Stone delved into the Vietnam War for his films, had conversations with Putin and asked who 'really' murdered John F. Kennedy. Why a documentary about nuclear energy now? The director has been fascinated by the subject since Al Gore's climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006), he says. “That was a powerful film. And I have children, so of course I worry about climate change.”

But while the former vice president extensively discusses the need for much more wind and solar energy in his film, he is less vocal about nuclear energy as a solution. “I wondered why,” Stone says. When Stone read A Bright Future, he got the idea that people are far too negative about nuclear energy. “That fear is because people confuse nuclear energy with nuclear bombs,” Stone thinks. While nuclear energy is relatively safe, he says. Only a handful of major accidents have occurred worldwide throughout history, with Chernobyl being the worst. Fukushima often comes second, “and that wasn't even a nuclear disaster, but a tsunami and an earthquake.” No one died directly from radiation from the Japanese nuclear power plant, says Stone. (Fukushima was indeed a nuclear disaster, caused by a tsunami and earthquake. Although no one died from nuclear radiation, cancer patients from the region later demanded compensation, ed.)

Stone became increasingly amazed while reading A Bright Future. Because people are concerned about nuclear waste, while fossil fuel emissions cause more damage, he says, for example in the form of countless deaths due to air pollution from coal-fired power stations. Stone wanted to do for nuclear energy what Al Gore did for climate change. “I wanted to put it back on the agenda. Not as the only solution, but as part of the energy mix.” Solar and wind energy are on the rise worldwide, but 80 percent of energy still comes from fossil fuels. “I am in favor of any way we can reduce CO2.”

A common thread through all his films, he says, is that he doesn't like it when "governments hide things and lie, especially when it comes at the expense of people's well-being." Just as he does not believe that John F. Kennedy was murdered by a loner, Stone also sometimes leans towards conspiracies in Nuclear Now. Nuclear energy became much less popular after a boom period in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. According to Stone's film, major oil companies would have played a significant role in this, by financing and disseminating research on the dangers of radiation to human health.

He also explains why, in his opinion, companies such as Shell do not invest in nuclear energy, but do invest in wind and solar energy. Because nuclear energy always works, unlike solar and wind energy which are dependent on the weather, allowing companies to continue offering their oil and gas as a backup.

Stone is quite skeptical about solar and wind energy. “After twenty years and trillions of dollars spent on the renewable craze, we're still nowhere. That is depressing: as if you are going to war without results.” Global energy demand is still growing, which means that the absolute amount of fossil fuels burned is not falling sufficiently. Joel Scott-Halkes of pro-nuclear energy organization WePlanet, who also attended the interview at Stone's request, provides additional criticism. “If you wanted to run the Netherlands on wind energy, you would have to fill up the entire country,” he says.

The environmental organization Wise criticizes Nuclear Now because the film is selective in its criticism of renewable energy and leaves undiscussed disadvantages of nuclear energy, such as the high costs. “That's the worst argument!” Scott-Halkes breaks in. “These high costs are due to years of opposition from environmental groups!” It is believed that it is due to the many protests that it now takes so long to build a nuclear power plant.

Other criticism from Wise, for example, is that solar and wind energy take up too much space, according to Stone's film, but he does not mention that panels and wind turbines can be built on roofs and the sea. “We only show facts in the film,” says Stone. And also: “We only have an hour and 45 minutes." Addressing all the critics with all the technical objections would make the film 'too tiring' for the audience. And the negative voices about nuclear energy have been discussed enough in recent decades, he believes. “Why let the same people speak again who have been making the same arguments since the 1970s?”

It is no surprise that Stone's film is warmly received by the core lobby. This week the American travels to Brussels to tell MEPs about the need for more nuclear energy. But what about the financing of the film?

In an earlier interview with the American magazine Jacobin, Stone denied that energy companies had contributed in any way. Even now he denies this. The film was paid for by “rich individuals,” says Stone, “people from Silicon Valley.” Yet one of the “executive producers” (an honorific end credits term, often used for backers) is Stefano Buono. He turns out to be the CEO of Newcleo, which develops nuclear reactors. Newcleo appears large with its logo at the bottom of the credits, and Bueno writes on LinkedIn that he is 'proud' that his company has 'financially supported' the production and distribution of Nuclear Now.

“Yes, he became involved in the film later,” Stone admits when Trouw asks about this. A producer, who is also there, now joins the conversation. “Buono joined when the film was already finished.” Stone says his money was 'more for the distribution side', and not for the manufacturing process. Isn't something like that still a conflict of interest - creating a journalistic story for which the industry itself helps pay? “You're right,” says Stone. He acknowledges that he was also surprised when he saw Buono's name in the credits, and places the responsibility on his other producer. The CEO of Newcleo has had no say in the content, promises Stone again.

When asked, Buono says that he did indeed become involved when the film was already finished. But his share was not small: his company is said to have paid about 20 percent of the entire film budget.

This financing raises questions about the integrity of the film. These are reminiscent of Qazaq, the documentary about the former leader of Kazakhstan, which showed a financing trail of five million dollars linked to the government. Stone now says that he was only an interviewer on this film, and had only limited involvement. “The director denies [the government money trail] and says there is no evidence.”

During this confrontation, Stone remains surprisingly calm – much calmer than he did to the moderator an hour ago. He himself says that his films about Kazakhstan and Russia are important now. “The war in Ukraine needs more explanations, all we have is the standard American explanation.” But didn't his controversial documentary about Putin also lead to significant damage to Stone's image in the West, making it difficult for him to finance his films, as the British newspaper The Independent states? Nonsense, says Stone. In any case, money would not influence his choice of which films to make. “I don't need money – I'm a successful director. I'm going to go out and do what I think is right.” He is still 'very proud' of his Putin film.

But Stone is most proud, looking back on his entire career, on his feature films and not on his documentaries. “Those are my children.” And then the director hints that it is not easy to get such a really big film off the ground.

Yes, there is a documentary about Brazilian President Lula in the pipeline. But Stone also wants to make at least one more feature film. He has the subject, but he does not reveal it. It has to become – again – something he 'worries about'. The question remains whether Hollywood will support the controversial filmmaker for one last time. “I might not get the chance to make it.”

-Interview with Oliver Stone by Maarten van Gestel, Trouw, March 19 2024 (translated from Dutch)

#oliver stone #nuclear now #dutch #the netherlands #clean energy #trouw #nuclear energy #brussels #climate change

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back-and-totheleft · 3 months

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Putin, Trump and a Sydney love-child

Oliver Stone is an American film and documentary director, producer and screenwriter. His work includes Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon, JFK and Any Given Sunday. I spoke with him on Thursday.

Fitz: Mr Stone, I’m not going to waste too much of your time by burbling compliments. Let me just record my deepest admiration for almost your entire body of work.

OS: Thank you, Peter.

Fitz: In your long and storied career, have you had much to do with Australia or Australians?

OS: I’ve been there, I don’t know, a dozen times, often to open my films. Before that, as a soldier in the Vietnam War, I would go to Sydney on R&Rs, which were quite exciting.

Fitz: In that case, you must know Kings Cross and our once-famous Bourbon & Beefsteak bar?

OS: [Pause.] Yes. I had a whole story at that bar with a charming hostess later claiming she was having my child. I sent some support. She never really followed up, and I assumed it wasn’t true. Thirty years went by, and one fine day in Sydney, it was quite some shock for me to answer the door to my hotel and see an attractive, young, tall woman saying, “Hello, I’m your daughter.” That turned into some few days, naturally, trying to get to know this sincere young woman who’d lost touch with her mother. Eventually, we sorted it out with a DNA test, and she was not my daughter.

Fitz: Moving on! Having watched all 12 episodes of your documentary Untold American History, I was absorbed by your theme that what we think is actually happening in the world isn’t what’s really happening – a theme that runs through all your work. Is it fair to say that it was specifically your experience in the Vietnam War that made you see the world entirely differently?

OS: The Vietnam War was certainly a strong influence. The world seemed to be full of lies, and going into Vietnam – serving and seeing the way we were lied to – was formative. They tell you that this is the truth and it’s not. So my military experience pretty much started to repeat itself. I would get into a subject matter, such as a JFK film, and the deeper I went, the more it became apparent that there was a lot of lying going on. So yeah, I had a deep suspicion, a deep distrust of the official narrative. We all should know by now that governments often lie to cover their arse.

Fitz: I loved your film on JFK and your documentary on his assassination asserting it wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald who shot him. But given your experience with Australia, I’m hoping you won’t mind if I put this next question in Australian vernacular?

OS: Go on.

Fitz: So who the f--- did kill JFK?

OS: [Pause.] I don’t know, but you can start with the CIA and its great interest in Kennedy in the Cuban operations, and how Kennedy – by not going through with the desire of the warrior class to attack Cuba in 1962, after the Bay of Pigs debacle – really made serious enemies. There were people who really thought he was a traitor. We kept hearing the word “traitor” used by certain of these people, some of whom worked with the CIA; in fact, there are several suspects inside that agency who we’d like to know more about.

We can start at the top with Allen Dulles, the CIA director who was fired by Kennedy. And there are other suspects from the CIA, but it’s certainly not the whole organisation. No, it’s always about some key men who operated on their own terms because they had been given so much leeway by president Eisenhower over the previous eight years. They had operated “off the shelf” – that was part of their charter. In 1947, under the National Security Act, they were given that vague right to do so on a covert basis as the president saw fit. That part of their charter was a huge mistake. Hundreds of covert operations have followed.

Fitz: Through your whole career, you’ve taken turns that nobody saw coming, with one of your most recent being your advocacy of nuclear power in your documentary Nuclear Now. I would have positioned you as a strong liberal, but the position you take in this documentary is we need to go back to nuclear which, at least here in Australia, aligns with some notably shrill conservative voices.

OS: Nuclear energy was one of the great discoveries of the last century, actually the late 19th century, and it was developed. Of course, it was given a stimulus by WWII and the chase for the atomic bomb, but people have not understood and they haven’t distinguished between a bomb and the uses of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. To make nuclear energy, you only need approximately 2 per cent enriched uranium, as opposed to approximately 95 per cent enriched for a bomb; there’s a huge difference in making and producing that kind of energy. So nuclear energy is very usable, it’s been proven safe for many usages over the years, and we should be employing more and more of it in the mix with hydro and renewable energy to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

Fitz: We both hope you live for another 30 years and can keep working for 27 of them. But is it fair to say you’d rather live, surely, next to a wind farm than even a small nuclear facility in your backyard?

OS: I’d have no fear. Because there’s going to be a lot of new small SMRs – small modular reactors – built for many purposes, and with updated safety measures. It’s the next step, especially for the Americans who are developing that form of it. The Russians and Chinese are way ahead of us in nuclear development. They’ve been doing it consistently, whereas we stopped building in the 1970s after the Three Mile Island supposed disaster. No one died, and no serious radiation was released. This was a shame because it was so misunderstood and hyped as a disaster. America can’t build a nuclear reactor any more on that scale as we did from the 1950s to the ’70s. We gave up, but now we’ve started building again to some degree with scientists and researchers, with more than 50 different companies pursuing original research, including small divisions at Westinghouse and General Electric. But these are smaller reactors. Meanwhile, the world, especially the less developed regions, are going to need a lot of nuclear energy, a lot. We’re going to need not just a little, we need a lot.

Fitz: Another surprising turn that you took, at least for me, were your interviews with Vladimir Putin, in The Putin Interviews. I take your point that he’s not just a cartoon character dictator, but a man of flesh and blood beset by forces that are around him, navigating the best he can. Nevertheless, are you shocked, as I’m shocked, by the brutality in the invasion of Ukraine, with Putin at the base of it?

OS: I’m sorry, there has been a great deal of awful new propaganda about Russia ever since the turn of this century. It’s coming from a neoconservative Washington, which is seeking to destroy the so-called Russian Empire and use it as a rich base of natural resources to be exploited by the West. We’ve made Putin into the major villain of our time because he’s invaded Ukraine, whereas the United States – with NATO – illegally invaded Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria with impunity. This is a war that’s been very misunderstood, especially the stakes. If you remember correctly, the United States staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014, which exiled the elected president and brought in a vehement and strongly anti-Russian government. They have a long history in Eastern Europe of fighting Russia. Donbas, which is the eastern, Russian-minority part of Ukraine, never joined this new government, nor did Crimea, and they were identified as “terrorists” by the government. The Russians, however, saw them as “separatists” who wanted no part of this unelected government.

While pretending to follow a peace process in Minsk I and Minsk II, the US and European Union betrayed Russia, significantly building up the Ukrainian army from 2016 on. One hundred thousand of these troops were poised to retake Donbas in February 2022. At the same time, the Ukrainian government was making quite a bit of noise about getting nuclear weapons into Ukraine. This was a huge issue for the Russians because, as you may remember, Gorbachev, Reagan and Bush negotiated in the 1980s and ’90s for a new, peaceful Europe. East Germany was reunited with West Germany on the basis that NATO would not move beyond Germany one inch to the east. That vow was broken repeatedly by the United States. NATO, with our blessing, added 13 countries to its treaty, and grew into a monster on the borders of Russia in a major movement to supposedly “contain” Russia.

There’s no point going into the history of this enormous violation to Russian national security, but it would be similar to Mexico or Canada suddenly declaring they have put a hostile army on the Mexican or Canadian border of the United States, and were, with nuclear weapons, minutes from all our major industrial centres. Nor should it be forgotten that it was the United States who reignited the Cold War in 2002 when Bush abruptly abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. So, between using NATO to expand and breaking several other nuclear agreements, the United States and NATO began the process of encircling Russia, which became increasingly suspicious of the motives of the West.

To put it in another way, if Putin had not reacted to the build-up on his borders by invading Donbas and annexing Crimea (which occurred, interestingly, without violence, because most of the population was pro-Russian), he would have lost the trust of the Russian people, who were not blind to what was going on. That’s when Putin, after giving us several warnings about the West crossing Russian red lines, reacted and sent some 120,000 Russian troops into Donbas, which had already become a bloody war by 2022 with some 7000 to 8000 “separatists” murdered by the illegal Kyiv gangster government. It was certainly not in Putin’s interest to destroy the Donbas. To the contrary, he wants to have it back in the Russian sphere of interest and keep it productive, which it once was. So one wonders where all this alleged brutality propaganda is coming from? Motive is necessary, and perhaps when this war is over, there’ll be a more rational reporting of the news.

Fitz: We can talk about this one for three hours, and I’d love to, but I’m aware of your time restrictions. Do you just despair for the current state of the movie industry with the endless Marvel franchise stuff?

OS: I don’t despair because there’s always good movies made, and there are ways to make them. I despair at the lack of depth of the theatrical movie in the United States, because the distribution system rewards essentially only blockbusters and crucifies the less lucrative releases. As a result, it’s very hard for independent and less popular productions to get made and distributed, which is a great loss to the art of cinema. It’s not just a circus business.

Fitz: Of all your movies, the scene that I most loved is in Any Given Sunday, with Al Pacino’s as the ageing Coach D’Amato talking to his team before the big NFL match: “We’re in hell right now, gentlemen, believe me. And we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell, one inch at a time. Now I can’t do it for you. I’m too old … but the inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch!” It’s a classic. When you shot it, and Al Pacino delivered it, did you recognise it at the time as that, or only when you saw it at the cinema?

OS: We never know what’s going to hit or not, or connect with an audience. You never know. Yes, that happened to be taken up, and it’s been used by numerous coaches across the country, and possibly on some Australian rugby teams, as a model for rah-rah speeches.

But, nonetheless, that movie called for it, not only because the team was losing, but also because the actor, Al Pacino, was in a mental hole too. He was having problems with ageing. If you remember, the movie is based on his being edged out of his NFL club, which goes on all the time. People get too old. So there was a lot of personal identification with it. At that point, I had been in the movie business a long time. And there were new executives coming in and a lot of them were women. And so that Cameron Diaz character, the team owner, was based in large part on a couple of the cut-throat executives I met in the film business who were young women in their 20s and 30s. That’s not to say there weren’t cut-throat young men also emerging from colleges and entering the film business without much love or understanding of cinema.

Fitz: But did you have any experience in a dressing room with a coach saying stuff like that in your background? Or anything where a coach had spoken like that?

OS: I played tackle football in elementary school, but the speech was created for the film.

Fitz: You wrote that?

OS: Yeah. Because I believe football most embodies warfare – you win or you lose. It’s tough, gritty, people get hurt, and key decisions have to be made. And you have to recognise that, often, the outcome is a matter of inches.

Fitz: Allow me to say, as somebody who was sort of raised in dressing rooms like that, across several countries, it is extraordinary to me how well you captured it. We’ve all heard the theme of that speech a hundred times, except our coaches were never quite so eloquent as that. I mean, that was extraordinary!

OS: Thank you, that’s what movies are made for, I believe. Movies are bigger than life. And those are the kinds of movies that I especially like. Unfortunately, so many movies now are smaller than life. Times change. I miss the old movies, the spectacular shows.

Fitz: Last question, if I may. Most of us in Australia don’t understand Trump. We sort of understand how he might have been elected once, but after everything that happened, finishing with January 6, we cannot understand how Americans could look at him and go, “Yeah, let’s have four more years of that.”

OS: And if you look at the Biden administration, you can say the same thing. It has gotten America into three wars, if you really think about it: (1) Ukraine, which is really a proxy war to weaken or destroy Russia, which is the most extreme strategy any American president has ever attempted; (2) the Middle East war continued in Israel, with America’s full support of Israel; and (3) now we’re bombing Yemen ourselves.

Biden is a simple-minded, old-fashioned Cold Warrior of the first degree. As mad as [WWII US Air Force] General Curtis LeMay was in his way. He’s extremely dangerous. Trump might not be a solution to this madness, but he’s nothing compared to Biden or to the damage that George W. Bush did to my country by declaring the “War on Terror”, which was wholly unnecessary. He provoked this new world that we’re living in of extreme violence and militarism.

From Bush, it grows to where we are now in a most dangerous position. Obama, then Trump, now Biden, have provoked China as well by declaring a “pivot to Asia” and sending American marines and so forth to Australia, building up the Pacific Fleet … The US is brokering a major war in the Pacific. This is a very incendiary position. I hardly see what’s so wonderful about Biden.

Fitz: He is not Trump, is the first thing that’s wonderful about Biden!

OS: That’s your way of putting it, but I don’t think you fully understand that Biden has truly split the world into two scared camps and abides by the outdated imperial notion that the US can still dominate the world. It cannot. It must accept a multipolar world that can exist economically without war.

Fitz: OK, thanks. It has been one of the privileges of my professional life to speak to you and I seriously thank you.

-Peter FitzSimmons, "Trump, Putin and a Sydney ‘love-child’ … I’d chat to Oliver Stone on any given Sunday," WAToday, Feb 11 2024

#oliver stone #australia #sydney #watoday #peter fitzsimmons #trump #biden #putin #ukraine #israel #gaza

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Chapman University Masterclass

After returning home from serving in the Vietnam War in 1968, director Oliver Stone found himself unable to deal with reality. He called himself “another person” after his experiences. Out in the field of battle, the wet biome of Vietnam jungles proved too difficult of an environment to pen his thoughts, so he relied on memory in order to process his experiences into a screenplay.

The first draft, titled “Break,” was an abstract impression of the war — the main character dies in the first quarter of the film, travels to the Egyptian underworld and magically ends up in prison. But following 18 years and some major revisions, Stone would turn “Break” into the visceral 1987 Best Picture winner “Platoon” — a tall task by the standards of 1980s cinema.

“There’s been so many war films since 1986. It’s almost like (science fiction) now. It seems relatively easy to make these explosions and have these men running around under fire,” Stone said. “Believe me. Back then, it was really difficult to do this. It was seen as groundbreaking… The Vietnam thing had certainly never sunk into the American public… When they saw this film, I think it really shook them. It wasn’t ‘Apocalypse Now.’ It wasn’t ‘Deer Hunter…’ It was something else — unsettling — and that’s what I’ve been doing since then.”

On Nov. 13, the three-time Academy Award winner joined a Chapman audience in the Folino Theater following a screening of “Platoon.” He was introduced by Stephen Galloway, the dean of Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, as one of the few directors whose personality stamps his work. Throughout their conversation, Stone brought a wealth of filmmaking wisdom, an honest outlook on his past and a cornucopia of blunt assertions regarding media propaganda, foreign politics and American history.

Prior to completing his abstract war screenplay, Stone was arrested in San Diego for smuggling marijuana from Vietnam before being bailed out by a lawyer his father had hired. He made his way back to New York for a proper homecoming but little clarity on his future.

“All I knew how to do was kill people and to camp out in the jungle… I wanted to further my education,” Stone said.

Stone had previously dropped out of Yale before the war, where he was classmates with George W. Bush, or as Stone likes to call him, “the dope who ran this country into the ground.” He would later film “W.” about the 43rd president. With a fresh start, Stone enrolled in New York University where he took an introductory film class from director Martin Scorsese.

Following talking on his writing process, his regrets and an excerpt from his book (Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game), Stone acknowledged his reputation amongst viewers and critics who consume the violence in his films.

“That’s what they always say about me, ‘I’m crude, or I’m vulgar and I’m not subtle.’ I think there’s a theater of cruelty. You have to show them. You have to shock them. People get awards for not showing… but sometimes you just gotta show (John) Kennedy’s fucking corpse and what they did to him and the holes they put in him.” — Oliver Stone, three-time Academy Award-winning director, referring to his film "JFK"

Stone is best known for his films “Platoon,” “JFK,” “Nixon,” “Snowden” and much more.

He also provided advice on how to bring out authentic performances from actors who may not have the same connection to the subject matter as he does — the key being pressure.

“You have to bring pressure on the person who’s not living that life unless he’s totally dedicated to method acting,” Stone said. “You gotta get them to a level where he understands the intensity of that experience… You put the idea in their hearts that they’re going to this place.”

Questions were opened to the audience for a Q&A session, during which Stone spoke on his views of American history. His ideations have manifested into films such as “Nixon,” “World Trade Center,” “Wall Street,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Snowden.”

“American history is full of lies… That’s what’s depressing. People forget that they’ve been lied to, and they just move on and they buy the next lie,” Stone said. “We’ve got to change that paradigm. We’ve got to change the way we think and address this government. Governments lie.”

When asked about off-the-record moments from “The Putin Interviews” — a four-part documentary series in which Stone interviews Vladimir Putin — Stone claimed that the Russian president is modest and misunderstood. He said that Americans need to understand that the Russian people also have a love for their country and want sovereignty to control their fate.

“Of those who are interested in knowing who this so-called villain is, it’s important you know who he is and how he thinks and how he behaves…” Stone said. “People in the United States, because they hate him so much from the propaganda, have turned their eyes away. They don’t even want to listen. This is horrible. This is what causes so many problems in the world. We have to listen. We have to empathize… The only way to preserve peace is to understand each other.”

A later question about the documentary “Navalny” — centered on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — prompted Stone to respond, “I know the Navaly story, and I know what propaganda is. He’s an American hero — a Western hero. We’ll leave it at that.”

The evening was capped off with a message from Galloway, who said that no matter whether he agrees or disagrees with Stone’s declarations, he admires his courage for voicing his opinions with the world against him.

Freshman television writing and production major Ross Corman-O’Reilly attended the event because of Stone’s cinematic legacy and his love of the film “JFK.”

“This was the best master class I’ve been to. It was so off the walls. It was great to see Stone. I respect him very much as a filmmaker.” — Ross Corman-O'Reilly, freshman television writing and production major Junior film studies major Karthik Davuluri describes the evening as the Master Class he’s been waiting for.

“He’s made some legendary movies. We don’t get a lot of directors who are from that era. He’s a truly unique guest to get, and I was really interested in learning about his perspective on film and politics and how he combines the two… I really thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing hearing his perspective on everything. He’s a casual guy who isn’t afraid to say what he thinks and speak his mind even if it is controversial, which is something I’ve been waiting to see from a Master Class.”

-Nicholas de Lucca, "Oliver Stone keeps it candid at masterclass," The Panther, Nov 22 2023

#oliver stone #stephan galloway #chapman university #masterclass

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"Oliver Stone Says Hollywood Movies Are ‘Jingoistic’ and ‘Pro-American,’ So He’s Stopped Trying to Make Them,"

Ten years ago, Oliver Stone‘s “W.” cast a critical eye on the second Bush presidency while Bush was still in office. With Josh Brolin as the charming, reckless naif at its center, “W.” fit right in with Stone’s ongoing look at the corruptive power of American government, and the complex network of mistakes that its leadership tends to make. Of course, in retrospect, the dysfunction portrayed in “W.” looks downright quaint compared to today’s climate — but Stone thinks that’s a misnomer. With the newly reissued 10th anniversary DVD of”W.,” he spoke to IndieWire about the impact of the Bush presidency, his relative ambivalence toward Donald Trump, and why he can’t make movies at the studio level like he used to.

Bush was still president when this movie came out. How would you say the context of “W.” changed since then?

We made the film in the last year of his presidency, but the film ends in 2004 when he goes into Iraq. We know it’s going to be a disaster and a tragedy. Certainly nothing changed. From my viewpoint, this whole 18 years since Bush has gotten elected has been a massive tragedy for the country, an endless global war on terror, a confusion of identities, an overbudgeting of the military, the militarization of the country, the police force. Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong in 2000. Frankly, it’s eating away at the country in a big way.

A lot of people say they miss Bush in the age of Trump.

Of course, the media changes like the wind. I called it “man-made weather” in “Natural Born Killers.” Frankly, the media may have softened on W., but I don’t agree at all. I think he has been the root cause of this overall national failure.

I guess you’re not a fan of his paintings, then.

I don’t buy it. That doesn’t matter to me, that he’s a painter or that he comes to national events as an ex-president, and is respected. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just pomp and circumstance, parading around. The truth is that he was a disaster. He put this country into a deep hole. He’s put us in a national emergency basis, he had no experience to do that. We’ve completely lost our perspective as to what’s dangerous. Our national security has become an emergency as opposed to being the strongest country in the world, militarily.

We should not be scared, but we’ve operated out of fear, and our imagery has been manipulated to create constant fear. I don’t see any positive. The media is not going to change my view of Mr. Bush. I know that Mr. Trump is supposed to be far worse, but I just find that’s distraction. The macro forces are much more important here. We should be getting along and partnering with people — China, Russia, Iran — but instead, we’re making enemies. It’s not good.

What do you make of the speed of today’s news cycle? It seems like a lot of the controversial acts on the part of the presidency could fill one of your movies, but they’re here and gone in a day.

I’m not an expert on time, but it does seem ridiculous that it just goes faster and faster. I think we dealt with that on “Natural Born Killers” in 1994. If you look at the film closely, you’ll see the media is partly to blame for the sensationalization of violence. The same is true now. It’s superificializing most issues. It’s impossible to have a serious media. Of course, there are all these charges of fake news. I have to say, Trump has been pretty great at it. He’s like teflon. It just bounces off him. He’s been able to absorb the news cycle completely. It’s a trivialization, unfortunately, because nothing gets dealt with. The forces of economic change, like the ones suggested by Bernie Sanders, were ignored.

You made “W.” during the last year of the Bush presidency. Could someone make a similar movie about Trump?

Yes, but it’s too early. W. ended in 2004. I do think you need some perspective. There will be documentaries about Trump and so forth. I haven’t even seen a book that’s really intelligent about him. It seems like the books are more about the scandalous things he does. I haven’t read them all, but I think he’s a black hole. Everything goes into that hole. Our society is extremely image obsessed. I saw it in 1994. I thought the country was losing its marbles when the O.J. Simpson trial was going on. Remember when Clinton was being scandalized with all the impeachment bullshit, the sex trials? Meanwhile, we were bombing the shit out of Yugoslavia and no one cared. It was a disastrous mistake.

What do you make of the situation with Saudi Arabia right now?

We’ve always had the worst alliance with Saudi Arabia. It binds us with Israel. One of the most nefarious goals we have in our foreign policy is the destabilization of the Middle East. It’s a completely disaster. If Trump goes to war against Iran, or economic war, it’s going to lead to even more disaster.

What was your take on the Kavanaugh hearings?

Hearings are completely image-obsessed. I don’t think they’re healthy. They talk about details. It’s true that many of us get drunk and pass out. That’s not the issue. The bigger issues were what Kavanaugh had done as a human being — that he’d worked for Bush for so long and promoted the drone warfares, the torture programs. Everything that was illegal under Bush was also passed through him in some way. The papers were buried by one side, the Republicans. That’s what I found far more disturbing. Why can’t we air out this war on terror bullshit that we started under Bush? Why can’t we get to the bottom of it? Why couldn’t Obama end Guantanamo and torture? So much happened during those years, and American’s not looking at it. They’re looking at how the guy blacked out while he was drunk.

You made a whole string of politically themed movies at studios. How feasible is it for you to do that now?

It’s very hard to do. From 2000 on, I’ve had this obsession with national security, which I find sickening. In the Bush movie, you saw a lot of mentions of national security. In its name, you’re allowed to cover up anything. That’s not the right America. This country has lost its perspective in that sense. We’re the richest, most militaristic country, and yet we’re constantly scared that someone’s going to creep up on us and do us in. This is very sick.

I’ve done documentaries, but frankly, I probably couldn’t do films like I used to do because the climate has changed. Most of the films have to be pro-America, as opposed to being honest. Certainly all the military films have to get Pentagon approval. It’s very jingoistic. You can criticize, but you have to go lightly — you can show things, but you can’t show the basic mission being fucked up, you have to show that we can control the world and police it. I don’t agree with that.

You must have had some awkward studio meetings.

Yeah. Look at the corporate order we have. Clinton did us no favors by signing the Communications Act in 1995. He put into play this monopolization of media, so essentially corporations control what we think and say on television. The news we know is corporate news. But on the deeper level, it goes to all our culture, what PBS or Frontline puts their money into. You cannot go against the grain of American thinking. That’s wrong. There are other ways of doing business. There’s a Putin way, there’s a Chinese way, there’s an Iranian way. It may not be the American way, but that doesn’t make it evil.

But Putin jails journalists. That was the issue a lot of people had with your Showtime documentary about him.

It is what it is. It wasn’t media, it was a documentary, a Q&A. It was fresh for us to hear what most people didn’t want to hear. I’m glad I did it. It’s a document in time. I think it was prejudged. They cut me off on some of the networks, like NBC, because they just didn’t want to hear about it. I also did “Untold History of the United States,” which I put 12 years of my life into. That was a 12-hour documentary on Showtime that finally got onto Amazon and Netflix. But it’s a point of view that’s not aired in America, a history of the United States that goes back to 1896. It’s pretty radical. I think Howard Zinn would’ve liked it.

If American classrooms all had Howard Zinn on their curriculum, young people would have a very different impression of this country.

That’s true. It’s very hard to get into the education system, because again, it’s corporate owned. Corporations control the books that are allowed to be studied. They order those books. You can show a series like “Untold History” in the classroom, but as a book, you can’t get it out there.

What is your impression of “Vice,” the Dick Cheney movie coming out this year?

Who’s making that?

Adam McKay.

Oh, Adam McKay. He’s a good filmmaker. I hope he can tell the truth. I know that Sy Hersh is working on a book about Cheney. He can’t get it out now because there’s so much classified information. Cheney is a bad man. I put him into the “W.” film. I thought Richard Dreyfuss did a great job of creating that characterization. Everything that stinks about the Bush administration, you can go to Dick Cheney to get to the heart of it. I haven’t seen the Adam McKay film. Who’s playing Cheney?

Christian Bale.

Oh. Well. Adam did some good work with “The Big Short.”

How do you think the midterms will go?

I’m not a prognosticator. I try to think long-term. I would hope that it goes Democrat. I think the Democrats have provoked so much anger from the so-called base that they’re really fighting mad. Attacking Trump is not the right way to go. We have to have a measured response. It doesn’t really matter who wins unless we change our policies. We’ve supported terrorism. We’ve created this tremendous divide, with Russia, China, and Iran, that’s very dangerous. It won’t end well if we try to get our way.

That’s a very grim prediction.

That’s one of the reasons I was voting for Jill Stein. I thought that Hillary was going in the direction of backing Iran, and Russia, and being pro Israel, and we’ve gone too far with Israel. We’re following a madman with this fellow, Netanyahu, who has been a real disaster for the world — in the same sense of the Saudi Arabian prince Salman. He’s the same kind of monster. They’re two sick people, and they’ve got ahold of Trump now. I’m scared about it. Trump does not want war, I don’t think. He’s a businessman for whom making money is more important. But when he surrounds himself with people like Bolton and Pompeo, I get worried.

Meanwhile, your next narrative project, “White Lies,” sounds more like a personal project than anything with a political context. So are you taking a breather?

That is personal, yes. I don’t consider myself only a political dramatist. I consider myself a dramatist. You have to work inside a system to try and survive that system. I have some hopes to make more documentaries, but I really have no plans now.

Do you feel like you’re getting the financial resources for the projects you want to make?

No. “Snowden” was difficult. That was made with mostly German money, some American. “W.” had Lionsgate pre-“Hunger Games,” but it was also foreign money. But I’ve been here before. I’ve done 20 movies. Maybe I’ll make one or two more, but it’s tough. The climate has changed radically since corporations have become bigger and more powerful.

-Eric Kohn, "Oliver Stone Says Hollywood Movies Are ‘Jingoistic’ and ‘Pro-American,’ So He’s Stopped Trying to Make Them," IndieWire, Oct 19 2018

#oliver stone #indiewire #w.#trump #israel

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back-and-totheleft · 3 months

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On Leadership

What works for film directors isn’t necessarily going to work for other leaders, says three-time Academy Award winner Oliver Stone.

“Purity works for film but is not necessary for making toothpaste,” he told the World Business Forum in Sydney in May.

But at least one thing remains key whether your business is in the arts, manufacturing or services.

“The leadership has to be authentic,” Stone says.

“You are trying get different groups working together — bringing it all together without fighting each other,” he commented in an interview with Chartered Accountants ANZ Chief Executive Lee White FCA.

Making a movie is like leading a business with multiple divisions and multiple goals. The challenge is to galvanise all the stakeholders into a cohesive operation working towards a shared vision.

“It’s very difficult. Actors have egos. Sometimes he won’t do what you think he should. Production designers often go off on their own – you see the set and you say ‘this is not what we talked about’.”

So how do you get everyone rowing in the same direction? Stone’s advice is simple.

“You start with a script.”

Think plan on a page. Think strategy summary. Think mission statement. It doesn’t matter what it is called. But it matters greatly that everyone in the business buys into it.

“There has to be something greater than yourself. People respect that. If they don’t respect you as a director the script still stands as a shining light. That works for people.”

Stone’s first major film success was as a scriptwriter. His screenplay for Midnight Express (1978) was turned into a hit film, earning Stone his first Academy Award. He also wrote crime hit Scarface (1983) and the less critically successful Conan the Barbarian (1982).

His directorial breakthrough came with Platoon in 1986. The realistic depiction of the life of a GI in Vietnam was controversial for showing violence by American troops against civilians. Stone, who served in the Vietnam War, says it is important for a country to understand the truth of its history.

But his script was not initially popular and sat on the shelf for a decade.

“The directors and actors who made the first Vietnam War movies had no realistic assessment of what war was like on the ground. When I saw Rambo and all those films I gave up.

“I got the chance to make it [Platoon] ten years after I wrote it. I never thought I would end up directing it.”

Stone says Vietnam was a tremendously ugly war.

“We went into the villages, like My Khe [a hamlet associated with the infamous My Lai killings], and messed with them constantly.

“I tried to tell what I thought was the truth. I got myself in a lot of hot water for doing it.”

But while some criticised the depiction of violence by American troops, others found in Platoon an opportunity to celebrate Vietnam veterans — although Stone says the film was never meant as a celebration.

“Generally, popular films are a result of a misunderstanding between the public and the director,” he chuckles wryly.

“I was fired by my first accountant because I didn’t make any money,” says Stone.

That wouldn’t happen now. Celebritynetworth.com estimates his personal fortune at US$50m. Not bad for a kid who rejected the opportunity to take up a career in finance because he didn’t have a head for figures.

“It takes a certain kind of mind to wrap itself around bonds and dividends. I just couldn’t do it.”

Nevertheless, money, and the pursuit of it, has been a recurring theme in his movie career. Not least in the hit movie Wall Street (1987).

The film, in part inspired by Stone’s stockbroker father Lou, was a critique of the culture of excess in the financial markets of the 1980s. It struck a chord with audiences grossing US$4.1m on its opening weekend.

Stone’s father worked for Sanford Weill, who later formed Citigroup. Stone notes that after a highly successful career in the financial sector Weill now says it was “a bad thing” to deregulate Wall Street. Weill has also advocated reform of the banking industry.

“We know now, in the Reagan era many got rich, but many got poorer. But the 1980s have influenced America. We got more conservative in our politics.”

You can’t make movies without money and Stone has extensive experience dealing with sources of funding.

Producers in particular have an important role in the financial side of the movie business and are crucial, he says, for gaining funding. Stone has 28 production credits — including films such as JFK (1991) and The People vs Larry Flint (1996) — alongside his 29 credits as a director. And he is fairly cynical about where his funding comes from.

“Corporate boards have always been a problem in my life [in terms of getting funding for projects]. Boards take money out of companies to line their own pockets, not grow the company.”

Funding issues gave him advance warning of the GFC when money for a project was pulled as the crisis unfolded.

“Merrill Lynch was one of the funders and shooting was cancelled at the last minute. We knew something was happening on Wall Street but who knew it was one of the worst crises?”

His response to the GFC was Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), the follow-up to his 1980s smash hit.

“The crisis motivated me to do it. It was clear to me that Gekko had become the bank. I grew up when banks were banks but that’s no longer the case. There’s no way to save money, there are no interest rates, there’s nothing.”

Banks have distorted themselves, he says, and that’s difficult for people to understand.

“At the time I made Wall Street, talking about figures like 100 million dollars was a shock. Today it’s a billion or more, the scale of money is staggering.”

Talent Success in filmmaking, as in other business spheres, often comes down to how you manage your staff, he says.

And the big risk in movies is with the actors.

“Sometimes an actor is wrong. To say no is the key. If you get the wrong actor you are screwed.

“Sometimes you cover it up, as a lot of good directors have done. Otherwise you let the person go. Hopefully in the first two weeks before it is too late.”

There is a talent shortage in Hollywood just as there is often said to be in finance.

“You don’t have too much choice. You have availability issues, budget issues.

“Sometimes they give you a list and you can get the movie made with this list.”

Having got the talent in, the next challenge is how to get the best out of them.

“Sometimes you push an actor, sometimes you badger him. You might say ‘you do what you want’. Then one day he says ‘tell me what to do’. It’s a delicate balance.

“Some of them don’t even know what they are saying, but they are saying it well. They argue about it — I just think ‘that’s okay, if that is what they think it is about. You don’t even know what you are saying but you are giving a great performance’.”

Stone has made three biopics on US presidents — JFK (1991, two Academy Awards), Nixon (1995, four Academy Award nominations) and W. (2008). They weren’t equally successful.

“Kennedy [JFK] was a surprising hit worldwide. Part of that is because it is Kennedy, but it has good tension and thrust,” Stone says.

“A lot of people don’t like Nixon and his face on the poster didn’t do us any good.”

George W Bush was even less popular and this influenced the impact of W. at the box office.

“This fellow was one of the most hated presidents of his time. Nixon was three dimensional but Bush was two dimensional. Unlike Nixon, he was so confident he got up in the morning and looked in the mirror and liked what he saw. So he goes out and sells himself.

“He was the worst president the US has had.

“The movie came out at exactly the wrong time. When his popularity was about 30 per cent.”

While he does not try to hide his disdain for the former presidents, Stone is adamant that neither Nixon nor W. were political hatchet jobs.

“I’m a dramatist. Shakespeare didn’t like Richard the Third but he certainly did a good job. Both presidents I did not like but I made the movies not to show my political viewpoint, but to show theirs.”

It’s part of his desire to educate Americans about their history, something he has pursued through movies, documentaries and the television series Untold History of the United States.

He is evidently proud to relate that W. was considered bang on by some Bush supporters.

“Nancy Reagan, who knew him from his youth, said the movie was great. People say I’m a political filmmaker, but I’m a storyteller first and foremost.”

And as a dramatist he rates integrity and authenticity as keys to success. These are vital to motivate people, to convince people and to tell a good story.

“Authenticity sells itself if you know what you’re doing.”

-Aaron Watson, "Movie director Oliver Stone offers his leadership tips," Acuity, Jul 2015

#oliver stone #world business forum #sydney #australia #acting #methods #filmmaking

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