Oliver Stone — A Joker in the Deck

By Elliot V. Kotek
(Moving Pictures Magazine Adaptation & Awards issue, Dec. '06/Jan. '07)

Oliver Stone: What does your magazine see me as - an old establishment type?
Moving Pictures magazine: Well, I see you as being someone who takes what's going on around him and presents it in a way that makes people question the status quo.. [Stone laughs.] Is that something you don't see yourself as?
Oliver Stone: Hmmm... Do I see myself as establishment? In a way... I think it's an interesting career because so many films that I thought would come in for softer landings always had bumpy landings. There'd always be some crazy bunch of birds that would fly across the turboprop on the way down. Even with Born on the Fourth of July, the day we opened was the day Bush Senior decided to invade Panama, y'know; it's all timing. Heaven & Earth came out during a very strong anti-immigration phase in 1993.

It's interesting, because you could say I'm established - Academy Awards® and all that - but people don't know me. It's like I'm on the inside, but I feel like a joker in the deck. At least that's the way I played the game for a long time, because I always did what I wanted to do even if it wasn't financially remunerative... I followed my own star. I'm proud of certain things I did: To do Platoon and then turn around and do a f-cking financial movie was not easy, because financial movies were not popular; they were hard to sell. I used Born on the Fourth of July, the success that we had there, to parlay it into The Doors, which was an experimental movie in many ways; and also to do JFK, which is a very complex movie, a very literate, word-oriented three hours and eight minutes of cerebral stuff, but I enjoyed doing it in a way that was off the beaten path.

Each year of my life represents another movie, another mood, another atmosphere... Right now, 2006, I do feel energized. I think World Trade Center has helped me; it was a return to humble roots, working-class men, a style of life, and it's an authentic story. So many movies can get so far out; you really know you're in a reality here. You have reality to study, so you have a mirror of real people who went through this drama. It was a really authentic movie to me, and after Alexander, which was three years into a headspace fought long ago...my Star Wars, so to speak.

MPM: And the simplicity of the style with which you shot WTC.
Oliver Stone: Right, opposite. Opposite style.

MPM: Was that because you were trying to get away from Alexander?
Oliver Stone: No, it was the nature of the story - they were stuck in a fucking hole. Alexander was free to roam the world, y'know; that's a different mentality. World Trade Center was a somber, restrained piece because of the nature of it. It was more a story about lighting. To me, it was a story about light versus dark, about the balance of dark and light.

MPM: Out of all the thousands of stories that 9/11 gave life to, how did you come to focus on the tale of these two families?
Oliver Stone: It was given to me as a script. It had been researched and developed for more than a year by Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Debra Hill and a young screenwriter called Andrea Berloff. When I read that script, it was stupendous, and the only thing I cared about was whether it was true, because it seemed like a natural movie - it would have been made, in my opinion, in the '30s, snapped up by the Zanucks or the Capras, the Wylers or Fords of that time. It's a natural movie because it was so rare to survive that disaster; you had twenty survivors out of 3,000, and out of that you had two intertwining stories that took place at the same time, so you know you have a coherent narrative and you know it's not made up. They had an incredible story: How did they survive? Was it luck? Was it because of their physicality? Was it perhaps a metaphysical equation?

MPM: Did those guys, in having their lives transferred into a cinematic experience, develop a bond with you as their storyteller?
Oliver Stone: I think we got each other. They knew I was a Vietnam veteran and they had trust in me. They knew that I'd seen the other side. And there was a lot of shit on the Internet, as you know. It was all crap bullshit about conspiracy-fucking-crap. I always knew where I was going with this movie, and to read this stuff...you have to wonder: Are we insane as a society? Why do we waste so much time in making up pure bullshit?

MPM: I guess people just expect that from you?
Oliver Stone: Expectation... I did one fucking conspiracy movie called JFK. One! And because it had some impact, that's all they can remember?

MPM: You went from war to Wall Street to music to politics to serial killers to sports...
Oliver Stone: You wouldn't know it from reading some of this shit. There's no historical perspective given. And I'm being factual; it's not like I'm being defensive, I just accept it now. Before, I fought it; I said "Fuck it, there's no way they're going to get it right in my lifetime." [Laughs] Some guys do get it right, and they get it right because at least they respect the material and are looking at it. I mean, if we spend three fucking years making Alexander, you can at least see it more than once instead of coming out with some jerk-off criticism of the wig and homosexuality. It's just ridiculous, because there's so much more depth in that movie.

MPM: Do you think the DVD commentary gives you that chance to talk it through?
Oliver Stone: It's a great idea. Because when you're long dead and gone and calumnied, somebody might listen somewhere at the end of the earth at the end of time - it's like some fucking Philip K. Dick situation - and he might get your voice and say, "Heeey." Maybe in the future there'll be someone really bright who'll pick up on this shit.

MPM: It's like a time capsule.
Oliver Stone: I've always believed in that. I feel that films are time capsules. That is the beauty of [World Trade Center] - in its simple way, it shows you the inside to see what it was like and then jumps outside to see the widow's point of view, through the TV, of objectively what happened. And let's just go back to the day; don't go to the politics, just go back to the day, just remember the day. You need memorials for things like that, like the Titanic, like the big disasters. It's okay to do just something simple that celebrates simple people who survived it, because they are the memorials for the people who died, in my opinion. And these guys are great. John [McLoughlin] and Will [Jimeno] came back from the dead; they really, literally, came back from the dead, and they are so grateful. And they are so gracious in their demeanor.

To make a big fuss over the goddamn Marine [who found McLoughlin and Jimeno] is like taking the footnote and trying to wreck the movie... It's just bullshit. Because the guy did go to Iraq? Big deal. I'm not making a judgment. To say the movie politicizes it because it shows the Marine as a hero in this context, that [the movie implies] he was right about going to Iraq, is simplicity of the worst kind. I don't understand how intelligent people, like Frank Rich, for example, of the New York Times, can write that shit and believe it. He's lost his mind.

Politics. Politics destroys thinking. Politicization is polarization; it divides, it hardens the heart, and it denies the ability of people to come back together and unite. It's one of the most dangerous things in the world, this over-politicization, and it's what happened on September 12th... I'm sure (but I don't know; I wasn't there) it was the cause of World War I: All these people had so many f-cking treaties that they over-politicized everything and they lost track of the heart, so that they could put millions of people in jeopardy on the battlefields and kill them all. How could you do that unless you're out of your mind and you've politicized it to the point of frigidity?

Even I think the liberals are as bad now as the Republicans in some way, because, in all their hatred for Bush (and I can understand it because I've felt it at times), and Iraq (and I hate that, too)... In overdoing it and demonizing it, now it'll make it just as bad the other way.

MPM: The movie mentions the fact that there were 80-plus countries affected by the WTC bombing, and it did seem the world was united for a couple of days after 9/11, but the politics that have followed that situation... Why does it feel like it's become a U.S. problem rather than the world's problem?
Oliver Stone: Because we went to Iraq. Afghanistan made sense. It was a state-sponsored terrorist attack and we went after the nation stained, and we did the right thing and we had the support of most of the world: We cannot promote terrorism. But then focus was lost and politics intervened, and there was other agenda. Iraq was the agenda, and I was totally against it from the beginning. I thought it was insane. I saw it coming just like I saw Vietnam coming, and I went through that period. All my movies I did, did no good at all.

MPM: Did you feel that Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July were wasted?
Oliver Stone: I was very disappointed. All my movies, the effect of them, seem to have been forgotten.

I don't think movies necessarily last. I think you can make them, and they can be rediscovered, but I think that people get a certain emotion from a movie - they cry, they feel powerful - but then they go out and make the same mistakes in their life. And that's just how things are; you have to approach the success as well as failure with humility.

MPM: And the recognition, the awards? Does that speak to you at all in terms of vindication?
Oliver Stone: I don't look at it as revenge; I look at it as trial and error. If I get an award, that's great. I'd love to keep working, so whatever can help to keep working, that's always ammunition. It's nice when people acknowledge it, but you can't count on that, because there are many times they won't. You have to be strong inside yourself.

MPM: Aren't you in a position where you can keep working regardless?
Oliver Stone: "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" - let's put it that way. And I'm not saying I wear the crown, just...no one is secure.

MPM: At what point did you know that this was your career?
Oliver Stone: Probably when I was around Platoon I felt like I had a career, finally. I mean, I won the Oscar® for Midnight Express and that was really a big movie, but I had some ups and downs after that, too.

MPM: And I know there's talk that you'll be doing a film based on the war in Afghanistan.
Oliver Stone: Our business is like any good business. It's a scientific business, also: We have to R&D; we've gotta develop stuff. We go to the end on a script and sometimes it doesn't work, and some people don't understand that... I really would like to make it. I'm trying, but it's one of three things in the hopper that I'm working on hard, and so it's whichever comes up first. That's to say: budget, cast and story combine to fit...

MPM: Speaking of cast, you've worked with only a handful of actors twice. It feels like Val Kilmer got a couple of "go's"; Charlie Sheen, a couple...
Oliver Stone: There's been no rhyme or reason, and I think your question implies it, but my subject matter is radically different; it does change. I mean, I love the Marcelo Mastroianni-Frederico Fellini relationship; it lasted beautifully for a period because [Mastroianni] played [Fellini's] alter ego beautifully. He was who Frederico wanted to be: lighter, more handsome, all of that, right? That was his fantasy. I love that and I would love to find that. Colin Farrell was my alter ego; I did invest myself in Alexander to a certain degree... I invested myself in all these people. The best thing about World Trade Center is that I didn't so much because John and Will are apart from me, they're different people. It would be nice, though, to find an alter ego...a chameleon. Sean Penn was my alter ego in U Turn.

MPM: Do you still get involved in the screenwriting process? Do you like to write?
Oliver Stone: I love to write. There are so many good, young screenwriters now that I feel less of a need to write. In the old days, a couple of scripts here and there, they would all get the attention of the town. Now I notice there are a lot more good scripts so there are a lot more people jaded about it. I disagree with the film critics about movies being poor; I think they've gotten steadily better since the '80s. I don't think you can go back to just the '60s and '70s and watch those movies. If you look, for example, at Universal or Paramount - whatever studio puts out those DVD libraries - and they run the images through and you see what they did in the last 30 years, it's amazing shit, tremendous volume and original work. There are more good screenplays than ever, in my opinion, so I should take advantage of it.

MPM: Can you go back and watch your films, and see them as more than just documentaries of those times in your life when you made them?
Oliver Stone: I think it's a necessity to do that. And I think you should do it in order, too, because it's a good psychological evaluation for yourself. You should do it as objectively as possible... Step outside, see it, be curious, and remember where you were emotionally all through those years. You see I was married here, divorcing there, having children here; I was there, there, there; I was out of my mind here. I'd like to do it more and more. It's good; it's what they call bio-feedback.

MPM: Scorsese taught one of your classes back at New York University. Were you enamored of his talent back then?
Oliver Stone: Marty was clearly a star. He was the guy in the film school: He'd been there before us, he was a graduate, he'd done his films and he had done a feature, and he was a rising star. He was a very dynamic teacher; he taught production, how to make film. He was a very good teacher, learned a lot. He was a great inspirer.

The tradition was, "Watch old movies." It was a tradition that we were passing on, and that was clear not just from Marty but from all the teachers, that we were part of something here; we were standing on the shoulders of those who came before us.

MPM: When you were at school, what films inspired you to go out and tell some other story?
Oliver Stone: At film school it would have been the French New Wave; and Buñuel; and the Italian school of Bertolucci, Fellini, Antonioni.

MPM: What did you think when Paramount sued the kid at Yale who'd made a short film based on pages of your World Trade Center script?
Oliver Stone: From what I gather, he just shot our script. I don't think that's right, because he didn't do the work on the script. And furthermore, I'm very uncomfortable with stealing; I think kids are downloading anything and they're stealing. We all steal a little in our lives, it's true; I'm not going to say we're all perfect. But there's the heavy weight of stealing: What's the point of making a movie if you can't make any money back? These things cost money, and I think these people are devaluing the image. They take it for granted and I think that's a shame, because they're going to lose the image; the image is going to be basically digitized, and basically animated and maybe manufactured, and it will have lost its integral authenticity as a human product, as a human-being dynamic.

MPM: How important to artistic expression was the failure of the lawsuit brought against you and the studio for the murders allegedly inspired by Natural Born Killers?
Oliver Stone: Are you kidding? That suit was a very dangerous suit to the concept of creation. It lasted so long I couldn't believe, again, how something so silly could have such a long life through the courts. It did go through five different jurisdictions; it was turned down by the Supreme Court; it bounced around. It must have cost Warners two million bucks; it cost me considerable money just to protect myself. Y'know, it was a frivolous suit. It was basically saying that movies were an industrial product - if something went wrong, if there was any kind of reaction by any member of the audience, that we would be industrially responsible. There wouldn't be one drop of music ever written, because you could sue that Beethoven drove you mad. It's a "Twinkie defense." "Picasso's distortions drove me insane and I had to kill my wife." This is all nonsense.

The frivolity of American lawsuits, it's destroying this country. If there's one thing I agree with Bush on, it's we've got to do something about the bullshit legal system. There are too many protections...it's lost its meaning to me. The average American man doesn't have any sense of responsibility - he's not given it by society; he's denied it. You can't raise your kids because they might sue you; you can't divorce your wife because she'll sue you to death; you can't do anything, you're a eunuch.

MPM: Are filmmakers similarly restricted now?
Oliver Stone: It's up to the filmmaker, frankly. Depends on his mode, his angle of attack, and how he sells it. I think you can be very creative in the mainstream. We did Natural Born Killers, which is regarded as insane, playing right in the mainstream.

MPM: Do you get inspired, as a director, from any particular source? From music?
Oliver Stone: Sometimes. I've always loved music. I've always felt music has a good place in my films. I'm not a buff; I can barely keep up with the new music...[Laughs] There's some very good new music, I'm not going to say there's not, but there's nothing quite like the '60s in terms of its impact on the mind and the mental consciousness. There was such an insane stretch of great songs. There's good stuff now, but it seems more fragmented to me; it's not like a central mainstream. [Vietnam is] when it hit me hard. I grew up in a more restricted environment, so I discovered Motown as well as psychedelic rock - and classic rock, too - in Vietnam.

MPM: Is it all serious viewing at the Stone house?
Oliver Stone: I love comedies, y'know; I'm a big fan of Meet the Fockers and the Wedding Crashers. Depends on the mood. -MPM