Oliver Stone

William Oliver Stone (New York, September 15, 1946) is an American director, screenwriter, film producer and ex-military officer.

Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on Midnight Express (1978). He also wrote the screenplay for the famous gangster movie Scarface (1983). Stone rose to fame as a director/screenwriter for his film Platoon (1986), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director; the film was awarded for best cinematography. Platoon was the first film in a trilogy based on the Vietnam War, in which Stone starred as a Marine. He continued the trilogy with Born on July 4 (1989) —for which he won his second Best Director Oscar— and Heaven and Earth (1993). Other notable works by Stone include: Salvador (1986), based on the civil war in El Salvador; the financial crisis film Wall Street (1987) and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010); The Doors (1991), a biopic of the rock group of the same name; and the trilogy of films based on the Presidents of the United States: JFK (1991), Nixon (1995) and W. (2008). Many of Stone's films focus on the controversial political life of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

Biography

William Oliver Stone was born in New York. His father was a Jewish stockbroker and his mother French and Catholic; he would later convert to Buddhism. He studied at Yale and New York Universities. He served as a soldier in the Vietnam War, in which he was wounded twice, earning the Purple Heart award. This fact marked his life and he is the protagonist of some of his best works.

His film production is inspired by real events. His first contacts with the film industry (not counting scriptwriting and/or directing jobs on lesser-known films) were as a highly successful screenwriter. His are the screenplays for The Midnight Express, by Alan Parker (1978), Conan the Barbarian, by John Milius (1982), and Scarface, The Price of Power, by Brian De Palma (1983).

Professional career

1970s and 80s

He made two films in the 1970s, first a Vietnam short in 1971 and a horror film, Seizure (1974). The move to the forefront of cinematographic news occurs when he received the Oscar in 1979 for the best adapted screenplay for The Midnight Express, later he would film a psychological thriller The Hand (1981). Then came a very busy year, 1986, first with Salvador, but it was with the direction of the award-winning Platoon that he consecrated himself and would win the Oscar for Best Director, as well as Best Picture, with a total of four Academy Awards. In 1987 he made Wall Street , one of his best films, and in which he narrated the adventures of a financial shark, played by Michael Douglas, who won an Oscar for this role.

After a brief hiatus with the less ambitious Talk Radio, Stone returned with his second Vietnam film, which would be very different in focus and objectives from Platoon. Born on the 4th of July, starring rising Oscar nominee Tom Cruise, is the true story of Ron Kovic, a veteran of the conflict, disabled by his war injuries, who goes from being a fervent soldier to an anti-war activist. It would be the second and so far last Oscar as a director for Stone.

1990s

In 1990 he would make The Doors, a recreation of the life of the famous group, and fundamentally of its leader, Jim Morrison, played by Val Kilmer, and a year later he would make what for many is his most important film as a filmmaker: JFK: Cold Case. His account of the investigation that prosecutor Jim Garrison developed in the 1960s into the assassination of John F. Kennedy caused a huge stir due to the suggestion of a conspiracy and contributed to growing his image as a provocateur.

Two years later he released his third Vietnam film, Heaven & Earth, starring Tommy Lee Jones which, despite not having the impact of the previous two, certified his versatility and the few facilities he gave himself by narrating a love story between a veteran and a Vietnamese woman, and being capable of same time to return to the conflict with a third perspective. The following year, 1994, he freely adapted and changed a script by Quentin Tarantino, to face one of his most provocative and critically attacked films, Natural Born Killers, which narrates the adventures of two sociopathic murderers who they leave an ineffable trail of blood in their wake. Combining all kinds of camera lenses, color negatives and black and white, even animation, with crazy, insane editing, Stone tried every possible way to attract attention, achieving remarkable box office success.

In 1995 he would return to melodrama with the portrait of one of the most controversial leaders in the history of the United States, Richard Nixon, with his biopic Nixon. Solidly performed by Anthony Hopkins, the film garnered a cold response from audiences and negative critics. The year 1997 will see his return with the thriller U Turn , which included Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte and Billy Bob Thornton. Sister to Natural Born Killers, here the director relaxed the pace of the montage a bit to offer a story with a cloudy atmosphere and an almost humorous tone. In 1999 he would surprise his fans with Any Given Sunday , starring Al Pacino, about the world of American football.

2000s

In 2003 he premiered Comandante, around the figure of Cuban President Fidel Castro, in which he attends an extensive interview. The document had detractors, who reproached him for agreeing with the interviewee's answers.^{[citation needed]} The same year he released the documentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Persona non grata. In 2004 he would return to Cuba to stage a second part of Comandante, entitled Looking for Fidel, on the occasion of the execution, by the Cuban government, of three kidnappers of a boat loaded with passengers in order to emigrate to Florida.

In 2004 he directed Alexander, about the life of Alexander the Great, starring Colin Farrell, who recounts in a historicist, epic and lyrical key the emotional journey of Alexander throughout his years of conquest, explicitly addressing the conqueror's bisexuality and his relationship with Hephaestion.

In 2006, he addressed the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York at the World Trade Center, which tells the true story of two port police officers, one of them played by Nicolas Cage, who survived miraculously to the collapse of the structure that killed hundreds of firefighters and police officers. This year he made a small cameo in the Santiago Segura film Torrente 3: El protector .

In 2008 he directed a biopic about George W. Bush, called W., in which he narrates the president's controversial childhood, his relationship with his father, his struggle against alcoholism, the rediscovery of his Christian faith, his political career and his presidential term during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The film is based on a script by Stone himself and Stanley Weiser, with whom he had also written Wall Street.

Prepare a new foray into the old Vietnam theme with Pinkville, starring Bruce Willis, and taking a close look at the My Lai massacre, where hundreds of Vietnamese were killed by US soldiers. At the same time, he made the documentary called South of the Border, this time about the resurgence of the left in Latin America, especially in Venezuela with its president Hugo Chávez.

2010s

In those years, Stone dedicated himself in particular to directing and producing documentaries with a political background. In 2010, she returned to the Wall Street theme for the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. In 2012, Stone directed Savages, based on a novel by Don Winslow, and his third documentary on Fidel Castro, Castro in Winter. That year his documentary series The Untold History of the United States premiered on the Showtime TV channel, with ten episodes of one hour each, a project that he described as "the most ambitious thing I've ever done." made. Certainly in the form of a documentary, and perhaps in the form of a fiction, a feature film".

In 2014, the Telesur channel premiered his documentary My friend Hugo, about the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. The following year, he co-produced the documentary by Ukrainian Igor Lopatonok Ukraine on Fire, which analyzes the origins of the 2014 Euromaidan. In 2019 he produced the sequel to this documentary, Revealing Ukraine., about the Ukrainian crisis, in which he also acts as an interviewer.

In 2015 he received an honorary award at the Sitges Film Festival. His film Snowden, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden completed filming in May 2015 and was released on September 16, 2016.

On May 22, 2017, several industry newspapers reported that Stone was going to direct a television series about the Guantánamo detention camp. Daniel Voll was credited with creating the series. Harvey Weinstein's production company is financing the series. It was reported that Stone was scheduled to direct all episodes of the first season. However, Stone announced that he would be leaving the series after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against Weinstein in October 2017.

In that same year, he released several hours of interviews with Vladimir Putin, The Putin interviews condensed into a four-part documentary broadcast on the Showtime TV channel.

Years 2020

In July 2020, Stone partnered with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to publish his first memoir, titled Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game, which chronicles his turbulent education in New York City, volunteering for combat in Vietnam, and the trials and triumphs of filmmaking in the 1970s and 1980s. The book, which ends with its Oscar-winning Platoon success, was praised by the New York Times, who said: "The Oliver Stone portrayed in these pages, vulnerable, introspective, stubbornly tenacious and heartbroken, may be the most sympathetic character ever written...it perfectly sets the stage for the possibility of rarest of Stone's productions: a sequel”.

In June 2021, his documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, sequel to JFK, was presented in the new section Cannes premiere from the Cannes film festival.

Controversies

In December 2007 Stone traveled to Colombia to participate, as an observer and as a documentary filmmaker, in the release of three hostages of the FARC guerrilla group, in a humanitarian operation called Operation Emmanuel. The FARC group has been included in the list of terrorist groups by the US government and the European Union, after the failed process of handing over the hostages, due to the impossibility of handing over a minor, the son of Clara Rojas (one of the hostages) and the fact that he was conceived in captivity, and that he was already in a protection institution of the Colombian state. Stone makes references to the possibility that the Colombian government is responsible for the failure of the mission, which generated the disagreement of it, as well as that of certain sectors of Colombian society.^{[citation required]}. Stone's statements came before the guerrilla group acknowledged that it did not have the child in its possession, or before Colombian authorities confirmed his identity. The text of the complete interview can be found on the Internet.

In June 2010 Stone declared that he considered the Colombian guerrilla group the FARC to be heroic. In the same month, he also declared that "The coup in Honduras was an embarrassment to the United States" and criticized that US President Barack Obama "did not lift a finger" during the events.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, he declared in 2010 that his documentary series The Untold Story of America was a reaction to the "Jewish media domination". These words were denounced as anti-Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League. Stone, who earlier that year had stated that "Hitler is the scapegoat of history", apologized for these statements.

On May 12, 2014, Stone, along with Mairead Maguire of Ireland and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina—both Nobel Peace Prize winners—and a hundred professors from the United States and Canada, asked Human Rights Watch that it take "concrete measures to strengthen the independence" of the organization, since its highest managers had direct relations with the Democratic Party, with the United States government and also with the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The letter was addressed to the director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, and called for an end to the "revolving doors" between said institutions and Human Rights Watch.

Filmography

Oliver Stone at the premiere of Alexander the Great in Cologne, Germany.

• 1971: Last year in Vietnam (Last Year in Vietnam), short)
• 1974: Queen of evil (Seizure)
• 1979: Crazy Martinique (Madman of Martinique, short)
• 1981: Hand (The Hand)
• 1986: Salvador
• 1986: Platoon
• 1987: Wall Street
• 1988: Talking to death (Talk Radio)
• 1988: Born on 4 July (Born on the Fourth of July)
• 1991: The Doors
• 1991: JFK: open case (JFK)
• 1993: Heaven and earth (Heaven & Earth)
• 1994: Killers born / Assassins by nature (Natural Born Killers)
• 1995: Nixon
• 1997: U-Turn, turn to hell (U Turn)
• 1999: Any Sunday (Any Given Sunday)
• 2003: Commander
• 2004: Alexander the Great (Alexander)
• 2004: Looking for Fidel
• 2006: World Trade Center
• 2006: Torrente 3 (I walk as an actor.)
• 2008: W.
• 2009: South of the border (South of the Border)
• 2010: Wall Street 2: Money never sleeps
• 2012: Savages
• 2012: The Uncounted History of the United States
• 2014: My friend Hugo (started by Hugo Chávez and in tribute to the first anniversary of his death).
• 2016: Snowden
• 2017: The Putin Interviews

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Sant Jordi Awards

San Sebastian International Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival