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William Oliver Stone
(born September 15, 1946), known simply as Oliver Stone, is a three-time Academy
Award-winning American film director and screenwriter.
****
Born 15 September 1946
New York, New York, USA
Occupation Film director
****
Biography
Stone was born in New
York City. His father was Jewish and his mother a Roman Catholic of French
birth. He was raised an Episcopalian as a compromise.[1]
At the age of 14, Stone's
parents sent Stone away to attend high school at The Hill School, an exclusive
college-preparatory school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. His parents divorced
while he was away at The Hill School, and only then did Stone learn of his
father's extramarital affairs with the wives of several family friends. Stone
graduated from this boarding school in 1964, the same year as former JP Morgan &
Co. CEO, Douglas A. Warner III. Stone then attended Yale University and New York
University. He attended Yale, dropping out after one year. He then taught
English at the Free Pacific Institute in South Vietnam for six months after
which he worked as a merchant marine, and traveled to Oregon and Mexico, before
returning to Yale, where he dropped out a second time.
A veteran of the Vietnam
conflict, Stone served with the United States Army from April 1967 to November
1968. He specifically requested combat duty and was assigned to the 25th
Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, and was wounded twice in action.
His personal awards include the Bronze Star with "V" device for valor for
"extraordinary acts of courage under fire", and the Purple Heart with one Oak
Leaf Cluster.
He has made three films
about Vietnam —Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and Heaven &
Earth (1993). He has called these films a trilogy, though they each deal with
different aspects of the war. Platoon is a semi-autobiographical film about
Stone's experience in combat. Born on the Fourth of July is based on the
autobiography of Ron Kovic. Heaven & Earth is a true story of a Vietnamese girl
whose life is drastically affected by the war.
Stone has won three
Academy Awards. His first "Oscar" was for Best Adapted Screenplay for Midnight
Express (1978). He won Academy Awards for Directing Platoon and Born on the
Fourth of July. Other films whose screenplays he participated in are Conan the
Barbarian (1982), Scarface (1983), Year of the Dragon (1985), 8 Million Ways to
Die (1986) and Evita (1996). In addition, he has written or taken part in the
writing of every film he has directed, except for U Turn (1997). The very first
film that he directed professionally was the obscure horror picture Seizure
(1974).
A distinct feature in
Oliver Stone's movies is the use of a multitude of different cameras and film
formats, from VHS to 8mm film to 70mm film. He sometimes uses several formats in
a single scene, as in JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994).
Controversy
Stone's films often deal
with political matters and are sometimes critical of the US government. JFK, for
instance, hypothesizes about many high-level government officials having a hand
in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1991, he showed the film
to Congress on Capitol Hill, which helped lead to passage of the Assassination
Materials Disclosure Act of 1992. The film was discussed by the Assassination
Records Review Board created by Congress to end the secrecy surrounding
Kennedy's assassination, and Stone's observation at the end of the movie, JFK,
about the dangers inherent in government secrecy.[2] The film was widely
criticized in the media as being a mixture of truth and fiction. Stone published
an annotated version of the screenplay, in which he cites references for his
claims, shortly after the film's release. Similarly, he published an annotated
version of his screenplay for the film Nixon, nominated for four Academy Awards,
but which was also criticized for its portrayal of President Richard M. Nixon.
Stone has been rumored to
use drugs while making films. On the DVD of Natural Born Killers: The Director's
Cut, one of the producers recounts stories of taking psilocybin mushrooms with
Stone and some of the cast and crew and almost getting pulled over by a police
officer—a situation which Stone later wrote into the film. Natural Born Killers
is filmed and edited in a frenzied style where animation, grainy black and white
8 mm film, color 35mm film, and VHS are intercut and juxtaposed in a psychedelic
montage of images showing not only the story's action, but also conveying the
thoughts and feelings of the characters. The film was criticized by some for its
apparent glorification of violence. Stone refutes this claim, saying that it is
a satire of the American media's glorification of violence and violent people.
In fact, the original screenwriter of Natural Born Killers, Quentin Tarantino,
was unhappy with the end result of the film because of the attention Stone gave
to the aspects of the story involving the media, and asked that his name be
removed from the credits. Tarantino was credited with "Story By" on the final
film.
In 1999, Stone was
arrested and pleaded guilty to drug possession and no contest to driving under
the influence. He was ordered into a rehabilitation program. He was arrested
again on the night of May 27, 2005 in Los Angeles for a small amount of
marijuana possession.
In December 2006, Stone
shocked audiences at the British Comedy Awards by making a joke in reference to
the Suffolk Strangler, a serial killer of prostitutes still on the loose. He
said "It's great to be back in England. I feel like Jack The Ripper days are
back. Nothing ever changes here." When he realised his joke had gone down badly
he said "you're a lovely crowd". [3]
Other
work
In 1993, Stone produced a
mini series for ABC Television called Wild Palms. In a cameo, Stone appears on a
television in the show discussing how the theories in his film JFK had been
proven correct (the series took place in the future). Wild Palms has developed a
moderate cult following in the years since it aired, and has recently been
released on DVD. That same year, he also spoofed himself in the comedy hit Dave,
espousing a conspiracy theory about the President's replacement by a
near-identical double.
In 1997, Stone published
A Child's Night Dream, a largely autobiographical novel first written in
1966-1967. After several unsuccessful attempts to get the work published, he
"threw several sections of the manuscript into the East River one cold night,
and, as if surgically removing the memory of the book from my mind, volunteered
for Vietnam in 1967." Eventually, he dug out the remaining pages, rewrote the
manuscript, and published it. The book is an almost stream of consciousness
telling of his experiences as a child, in college, and in Vietnam.
In 2003, Stone made two
documentary films: Persona Non Grata, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
and Fidel Castro: El Comandante, about Cuban president Fidel Castro. In 2004, he
made a second documentary on Castro, titled Looking for Fidel. Stone has called
himself a friend and an admirer of Fidel Castro.[citation needed]
Recent
work
In the past decade, Stone
has directed U-Turn (1997), which he describes as a small film that he would
enjoy seeing as a teenager, Any Given Sunday (1999), a film about power
struggles within and surrounding an American football team, and Alexander
(2004), a biographical film about Alexander the Great.
He later said he was
stung by the critical pans of Alexander, which (despite being one of the
highest-grossing films internationally in 2004) was a financial failure;
production and marketing costs were not recovered.[4]. He re-edited the film as
the Director's Cut, which was shortened from 175 minutes to 167 minutes. Now, he
is currently working on a 3 hour and 45 minute extended cut of the film, which
is rumored to be released in late 2007.
After Alexander, Stone
went on to direct a movie about September 11, 2001, called World Trade Center,
through the eyes of two PAPD cops. The main undercurrent of the movie is hope,
through times of test. The movie did not do as well as it was expected, raking
in a gross of $70 million (as on 17 Oct 2006), though the movie was made on a
budget of 63 million.
On September 30th Stone
received the Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity
College Dublin.
Filmography
Last Year in Viet Nam
(1971, short)
Seizure (also known as
Queen of Evil, 1974)
Mad Man of Martinique
(1979, short)
The Hand (1981)
Scarface
(screenwriter)(1983)
Salvador (1986)
Platoon (1986)
Wall Street (1987)
Talk Radio (1988)
Born on the Fourth of
July (1989)
The Doors (1991)
JFK (1991)
Heaven & Earth (1993)
Natural Born Killers
(1994)
Nixon (1995)
U-Turn (1997)
Any Given Sunday (1999)
Persona Non Grata (2003)
Comandante (2003)
Alexander (2004)
Looking for Fidel (2004)
World Trade Center (2006)
Preceded by
Sydney Pollack
for Out of Africa Academy
Award for Best Director
1986
for Platoon Succeeded by
Bernardo Bertolucci
for The Last Emperor
Preceded by
Barry Levinson
for Rain Man Academy
Award for Best Director
1989
for Born on the Fourth of
July Succeeded by
Kevin Costner
for Dances with Wolves
****
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URL of Original Article:
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