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The Cinema of Oliver Stone

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The Cinema of Oliver Stone The cinema of Oliver Stone The cinema of Oliver Stone Art, authorship and activism Ian Scott and Henry Thompson MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © Ian Scott and Henry Thompson 2016 The rights of Ian Scott and Henry Thompson to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, thanks to the support of The University of Manchester, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9916 8 hardback ISBN 978 1 5261 0871 5 paperback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third- party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Out of House Publishing Contents List of figures page vi Preface vii Acknowledgements ix List of abbreviations x Introduction 1 1 War 28 2 Politics 77 3 Money 120 4 Love 160 5 Corporations 197 Conclusion 231 Interviews 243 Bibliography 293 Index 299 Figures 1 Lou and Oliver Stone, Hong Kong, February 1968 page 29 2 Oliver Stone, Vietnam 34 3 Oliver Stone, First Cavalry Unit, Vietnam, August 1968 41 4 Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, Hiroshima, 2013 66 5 Michael Douglas and Oliver Stone on the set of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) 128 6 Shia LaBeouf, Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas on the set of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) 130 7 Benicio Del Toro and Oliver Stone on the set of Savages (2012) 142 8 John Travolta, Taylor Kitsch and Oliver Stone on the set of Savages (2012) 151 9 Colin Farrell and Oliver Stone on the set of Alexander (2004) 179 10 Protest against US military installation, Jeju Island, South Korea, March 2013 239 11 Oliver Stone, Sun- jung Jung and their daughter Tara, Berlin, February 2000 241 All figures reproduced by permission of Ixtlan Inc., 12233 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90064 Preface From the outset, the research and writing for this book have ben- efited from an ongoing and intimate collaboration with the film- maker. On one level, this depth of engagement from Oliver Stone should come as no surprise. All through his career, Stone has shown willingness – and indeed a deep interest – in engaging with academic and journalistic debate about his films and their contex- tual significance. For him, being actively involved in the afterlife of a movie and the discussions that it generates is part and parcel of the filmmaker’s responsibility. For example, he directly accepted an engagement with the American Historical Association concerning its debates over the merits of JFK and Nixon, recorded in Robert Brent Toplin’s Oliver Stone’s USA. He also was involved in detailed discussions about the academic commentary on Alexander out- lined in Paul Cartledge and Fiona Rose- Greenland’s Responses to Oliver Stone’s Alexander. However, Stone went even further with our project. He gave his time and energy over a significant period, thus committing his life and work to the long- term and sustained investigation of him and his films. He provided hours of interview time over many meet- ings, roughly within the space of five years of his working life. To assist with this process, we wrote up pre-interview notes outlining the issues to be covered at each session. In response, Stone never arrived unprepared. Invariably, he had read the notes and had his own written summary of what he wanted to cover by way of reply. His spoken responses were rich in detail – more than we could make full use of in this text – and so we have taken the decision to publish the full transcripts verbatim. In addition to this personal commitment, Stone provided full access to all of his production files, enabling us to spend many weeks working at Ixtlan’s offices in Santa Monica, California, where all of the files were retrieved from storage and reviewed. In view of the degree of access, it is a legitimate question to ask how a critical distance between authors and subject could be main- tained. No doubt, Stone’s previous work with scholars helped here. He understood that there would be – and always have been – dif- ferences of opinion on topics, and he seemed to rather embrace that fact, almost as though it was borne of a career where disagree- ment from critics had become so instinctively second nature that he welcomed it back like an old friend. His only concern was that we should work with the facts and tie any conjectures firmly back to that factual base. Stone never sought any editorial input to the project. He understood from the outset that our independence as authors would strengthen the book. The unwritten contract – such as it was – was that the faith implied in such openness and dis- closure would be answered with a professional assessment done to the best of our abilities. We have sought to honour that aspira- tion, but leave it to the reader to judge. Stone took up the invitation to read a final version of the manuscript, which allowed him the opportunity to highlight any factual errors and to respond further on any of the debates if he wished. E C A F PRE viii Acknowledgements This research and the writing of this book was enhanced in no small part by the help given by Richard Heffner, Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers University, USA, and one- time chair of the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA). Sadly, Dick died in December 2013, but his professional advice and knowledge of the inner workings of the film industry, as well as the personal friendship he offered, were all crucial com- ponents in the progression of this project. Several people at Oliver Stone’s production company – Ixtlan Inc. – in Santa Monica, California provided invaluable assistance with the progress of the research. Thanks are due to Morgan Marling, John Cooper, Evan Bates and Janet Lee. We owe a particu- lar debt to Evan Bates, who supported and facilitated the project from the outset, arranging interviews and set visits; and to Janet Lee for her help with materials, permissions and seeing things through to conclusion. A number of Oliver Stone’s present and former associates were happy to give their time for interviews both on- and off- set, for which we are very grateful. Thanks are due to Bob Daly, Eric Kopeloff, Moritz Borman, Tod Maitland, Paul Graff and Christina Graff. Abbreviations ARRB Assassination Records Review Board BAFTA British Academy of Film and Television Arts CARA Classification and Rating Administration CDO Collateralised Debt Obligation CDS Credit Default Swap CIA Central Intelligence Agency CTE Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy DEA Drug Enforcement Agency (US) FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation FPI Film Packages International GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters (UK) HBO Home Box Office ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement IMF International Monetary Fund ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria MPAA Motion Picture Association of America NFL National Football League NSA National Security Agency NVA North Vietnamese Army PCI Paramount Communications Inc. UA United Artists WGA Writers Guild of America WMDs weapons of mass destruction Introduction ‘Oliver Stone is still a mystery – to me too.’1 ‘I don’t want to make a silly movie. I don’t want to make it for the wrong reasons. I have a storytelling sense and a sense of drama, and I want to continue.’2 Oliver Stone: the remaking of a maverick filmmaker To examine the welter of publications about writer- director Oliver Stone over the last thirty years is to enter a netherworld where the divisions between fact and fiction, and truth and objectivity often blur, if not break down. Assessments of Stone populate the entire spectrum of writing – academic, popular, critical and journalis- tic – and run from near- deification to outright denunciation. The details reveal a filmmaker who has been exposed possibly more than any other artist in Hollywood’s history to a spellbinding mix- ture of praise, speculation, conjecture, criticism and downright denigration. The titles alone tell their own story: Oliver Stone’s America: Dreaming the Myth Outward; Oliver Stone’s U.S.A.: Film, History and Controversy; and Stone: The Controversies, Excesses and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker.3 Stone is not just a director, not just an artist, not even just an auteur. Rather, he has come to represent an adjective that says something about the era of Hollywood film- making that he has worked in, and even more about late twen- tieth and early twenty- first- century American history that he has repeatedly visualised and constructed on screen. All of it has been accompanied by a running commentary virtually unheard of with regard to other filmmakers. ‘[H] e has attracted greater controversy and more passionate criticism than any of his contemporaries. The plaudits and condemnations come in almost equal measure,’ confirm Andrew Pepper and Trevor McCrisken in their work on Hollywood’s historical movies.4 Therefore, very few analyses of the man or his films begin without the words ‘controversy’, ‘inaccuracy’ or even ‘outrage’ and ‘exploitation’.
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