Oliver Stone

"I am not trying to be a historian; I'm a dramatist -- and sometimes one who does a dramatic interpretation of history."
~ Oliver Stone

About Me

Prior to my film career, I worked as a school teacher in Vietnam, a Merchant Marine sailor, taxi driver, messenger, production assistant, and sales representative. I served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Vietnam in 1967-68. I was wounded twice, and decorated with the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning from Vietnam, I completed my undergraduate studies at New York University Film School in 1971.

Beyond filmmaking, I’ve written a novel, published in 1997 by St. Martin’s Press, entitled “A Child’s Night Dream”, based on my experiences as a young man. I am a contributor of some 200 pages of essays on movies, culture, politics and history to the book “Oliver Stone’s USA”, edited by Robert Brent Toplin and published by the University Press of Kansas (2000).

Advice for aspiring filmmakers:

"I think you have to look within to your heart, soul, to your experience, and render that. Out of the specific come the universal. A poet is a man or a woman, who can write about anything; it could be a butterfly or an ashtray. It doesn't matter as long as it has a strength and a truth and that it means something to other people universally." ~ Oliver Stone in an Interview with John Phelan

“I’d done three or four short films. They were terrible. They just had no meaning to them. They were just silly exercises in trying to be a Keystone Cop or something that I shot in lower eastside lofts with the typical villain and the heroine – one’s idea of movies rather than one’s idea of life. Which is always the problem that people always do movies about other movies. Marty [Scorsese, one of his teachers at NYU] gave me criticism once and said that you’ve got to do something that you just feel, that you’ve lived, something that’s personal.” ~ Oliver Stone in “First Works”

“As a filmmaker I have always responded as a dreamer, not as a doer. I don't build houses, I don't make the waters run, pump electricity, explore the universe, doctor people ... all I do is dream. I make some semblance of those Hindu wall paintings that I hope people like because it reflects a dream of theirs. I try to go to the secret heart we all have, the collective unconscious.” ~ Oliver Stone in a May 10th, 1994 Commencement Address at Berkeley

“…what is important is that you lived a life. I would vote for the man who's lived life, who's done different occupations, who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living, struggled to raise a family, struggled with life as it exists.” ~ Oliver Stone in “History and the Movies -- A Discussion with Stone at Berkeley”

“You do the best job you can. You take it step by step. It's hard enough to make a movie. If it works, that's great. If it means something beyond the moment to somebody, they can take it and it lasts through the years, we'll see.” ~ Oliver Stone in “History and the Movies -- A Discussion with Stone at Berkeley”

“There is the magic that occurs, very Frankensteinian, actually. The director is Dr. Frankenstein, if he's a good director. He is the doctor, playing, experimenting with the chemicals, and trying to bring them into some kind of collusion where they match, where they complement one another. You can have everybody very talented in your chemistry set, you can have the best cinematographer, the best designer, the best actors, the best script, and miss. I do think the scientist can screw up the experiment by misapplying the chemicals in the wrong quantities.

So we have the chemicals and the body parts, but there is that indefinable electric spark that transfers the gluten into life. When, where, angle of attack, trajectory, and just plain luck control the spark and whether it does or does not come to full, blooming life.

There is this magic thing, but based, I believe, on fundamental basics of good writing, drama, and character.

Among the body parts and chemicals: social breadth; galvanic excitement; burning commitment; a well-written script; tolerant yet urgent direction; lighting that is both body and shadow and brings forth a rounded humanity; a camera that sees with the eye of someone, the god in the tapestry; actors that bring that added dimension of popping it off the page, making the audience feel they care more about these particular faces than people in their own life; and finally, a presence in time, a rightness to your moment, which is part marketing but mostly an indefinable moment of the zeitgeist -- which in other words is "destiny." Each filmmaker has a destiny, each filmmaker of merit, I believe, has in him a few films that will strike that chord with destiny.”

Lastly and above all, it is like sperm getting up the uterine canal and making it -- that is to say, the odds are long, but if the desire for life is powerful, it will somehow emerge.” ~ Oliver Stone “History and the Movies -- A Discussion with Stone at Berkeley”

“People who are dramatists, at least I can speak for myself, tend to be rebellious, tend to go against the grain.” ~ Oliver Stone “History and the Movies -- A Discussion with Stone at Berkeley”

“Movies can really be a creative machinery. They can evoke a spiritual life, a higher ideal, models that are both negative and positive, or a paradigm for society to function by. That is, not just a comic book, but a mirror. I always think that life is more complicated than any movie. Life is chaos. I'm always waiting for the dramatists who will really capture the complexity of life.” ~ Oliver Stone “History and the Movies -- A Discussion with Stone at Berkeley”

FILMOGRAPHY
W
(2008)
World Trade Center
(2006)
Alexander
(2004)
Any Given Sunday
(1999)
U-Turn
(1997)
Nixon
(1995)
Natural Born Killers
(1994)
Heaven and Earth
(1993)
JFK
(1991)
The Doors
(1991)
Born on the Fourth of July
(1989)
Talk Radio
(1988)
Wall Street
(1987)
Platoon
(1986)
Salvador
(1986)
Year of the Dragon
(1985)
Scarface
(1983)
Conan The Barbarian
(1982)
The Hand
(1981)
Midnight Express
(1978)
Seizure
(1974)