(A companion to Oliver Stones ten-part documentary series...)
A companion to Oliver Stones ten-part documentary series of the same name, this guide offers a peoples history of the American Empire: a critical overview of US foreign policy indispensable (former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev); brilliant, a masterpiece! (Daniel Ellsberg); Oliver Stones new book is as riveting, eye-opening, and thought-provoking as any history book you will ever read. It achieves what history, at its best, ought to do: presents a mountain of previously unknown facts that makes you question and re-examine many of your long-held assumptions about the most influential events (Glenn Greenwald).
In November 2012, Showtime debuted a ten-part documentary series based on Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznicks The Untold History of the United States. The book and documentary looked back at human events that, at the time, went underreported, but also crucially shaped Americas unique and complex history over the twentieth century.
From the atomic bombing of Japan to the Cold War and fall of Communism, this concise version of the larger book is adapted for the general reader. Complete with poignant photos, arresting illustrations, and little-known documents, The Concise Untold History of the United States covers the rise of the American empire and national security state from the late nineteenth century through the Obama administration, putting it all together to show how deeply rooted the seemingly aberrant policies of the Bush-Cheney administration are in the nations past and why it has proven so difficult for Obama to change course.
In this concise and indispensible guide, Kuznick and Stone (who Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills has called Americas own Dostoevsky behind a camera) challenge prevailing orthodoxies to reveal the dark truth about the rise and fall of American imperialism.
((Applause Books). A documented screenplay of the Oliver S...)
(Applause Books). A documented screenplay of the Oliver Stone film, complete with historical annotation, with 340 research notes and 97 reactions and commentaries by Norman Mailer, Tom Wicker, Gerald R. Ford, and many others. "It's a lesson in craft to watch JFK on video while reading along, charting what got cut, softened, and rethought." Entertainment Weekly
On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation
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In working together on two challenging new documentarie...)
In working together on two challenging new documentaries?South of the Border and the forthcoming The Untold History of the United States series for Showtime?filmmaker Oliver Stone engaged with author and filmmaker Tariq Ali in a probing, hard-hitting conversation on
the politics of history.
Their dialogue brings to light a number of forgotten?or deliberately buried?episodes of American history, from the US intervention against the Russian Revolution and the dynamic radicalism of the
Industrial Workers of the World to Henry Wallaces sidelining by Democratic Party machine insiders and the ongoing interference of the United States in Pakistani political affairs.
For Stone and Ali?two of our most insightful observers on history and popular culture?no topic is sacred, no orthodoxy goes unchallenged.
TARIQ ALI is an internationally acclaimed Pakistani writer and filmmaker. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.
OLIVER STONE has directed, among other films, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, W., World Trade Center, Alexander, Any Given Sunday, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, Heaven and Earth, JFK, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Platoon, Salvador, and the documentaries Looking for Fidel, Comandante, Persona Non Grata, South of the Border, and the upcoming The Untold History of the United States series for Showtime.
Snowden: Official Motion Picture Edition Screenplay
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A courageous look at a historic figure.
From Oscar®...)
A courageous look at a historic figure.
From Oscar®-winner Oliver Stone, Snowden is a riveting personal look at one of the most polarizing figures of the twenty-first century, the man responsible for what has been described as the most far-reaching security breach in US intelligence history. This official motion picture screenplay edition, written by Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone, includes a foreword by David Talbot and dozens of photos from the film.
In 2013, Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) quietly leaves his job at the NSA and flies to Hong Kong to meet with journalists Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson), and filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) to reveal US government cyber surveillance programs of epic proportions. A top security contractor with virtuoso programming skills, Ed has discovered that a virtual mountain of data on digital communication is being assemblednot just from foreign governments and terror groups, but from ordinary Americans.
Disillusioned with his work in the intelligence community, Snowden meticulously gathers hundreds of thousands of secret documents that will expose the full extent of the abuses. Leaving his longtime love Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley) behind, Ed finds the courage to act on his principles. Snowden opens the door on the untold story of Edward Snowden, examining the forces that turned a conservative young eager patriot into a historic whistleblower and posing provocative questions about which liberties we are willing to trade for protection.
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WITH SUBSTANTIAL MATERIAL NOT INCLUDED IN THE DOCUMENTAR...)
WITH SUBSTANTIAL MATERIAL NOT INCLUDED IN THE DOCUMENTARY
Academy Award winner Oliver Stone was able to secure what journalists, news organizations, and even other world leaders have long coveted: extended, unprecedented access to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Putin Interviews are culled from more than a dozen interviews with Putin over a two-year span?never before has the Russian leader spoken in such depth or at such length with a Western interviewer. No topics are off limits in the interviews, which first occurred during Stones trips to meet with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow and most recently after the election of President Donald Trump.
Prodded by Stone, Putin discusses relations between the United States and Russia, allegations of interference in the US election, and Russias involvement with conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere across the globe. Putin speaks about his rise to power and details his relationships with Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump. The exchanges are personal, provocative, and at times surreal. At one point, Stone asks, Why did Russia hack the election?; at another, Stone introduces him to Stanley Kubricks 1964 Cold War satire "Dr. Strangelove," which the two watch together.
Stone has interviewed controversial world leaders before, including Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Benjamin Netanyahu. But The Putin Interviews, in its unmediated access to one of the most enigmatic and powerful men in the world, can only be compared to the series of conversations between David Frost and Richard Nixon we now refer to as The Nixon Interviews of 1977.
The book will also contain references and sources that give readers a deeper understanding of the topics covered in the interviews and make for a more robust reading experience.
Oliver Stone's harrowing movies about life in an era bereft of morals have earned both lofty praise and stern condemnation. Stone is a pioneer writer-director of films that show the direct human consequences of national policy, whether it is set in the halls of government or in the board rooms of corporate financiers.
Background
William Oliver Stone was born September 15, 1946, in New York City, the son of a French woman named Jacqueline (née Goddet) and Louis Stone (born Louis Silverstein), a stockbroker. He grew up in Manhattan and Stamford, Connecticut. His parents met during World War II, when his father was fighting as a part of the Allied force in France. His American-born father was Jewish, although non-practicing, and his French-born mother was a non-practicing Roman Catholic.
His childhood years were marked by all the privileges of wealth—private schooling, summer vacations in France, and most importantly, a sense of patriotism born of comfortable circumstances. "My father was right-wing; he hated [President Franklin] Roosevelt all his life, " Stone told Film Comment. "I grew up in that Cold War context that we all did, from the Fifties on, learning to fear Russians and hate Communism like cancer. " Stone was in his junior year at the Hill School, a Pennsylvania college prep academy, when his parents announced their decision to divorce. In the subsequent family skirmish, Stone discovered that his father was in fact deeply in debt and that the values on which he had founded his life were quite thin.
Education
He graduated from The Hill School located in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in 1964. By the time he was seventeen, he began to work at the Paris mercantile exchange in sugar and cocoa.
He then enrolled at the Yale University, from where he dropped out after his first year to take up a teaching position at the Free Pacific Institute in South Vietnam. Serving the same for just about six months, he took up employment as a wiper with the United States Merchant Marine ship.
He enrolled at New York University, where he began to study filmmaking with Martin Scorsese. Suddenly Stone had definable career goals: he wanted to write screenplays and make movies. Stone graduated from New York University in 1971 and within two years had sold his first project to a small Canadian film company.
Career
From September 1967 to November 1968, he served in the 25th Infantry Division of the United States Army. He was posted to combat duty in Vietnam. For his heroic efforts and bravery, he received numerous awards and medals.
A number of interviewers have questioned Stone about his decision to fight in Vietnam. He could have missed the war entirely by staying in college, but instead he not only joined the service but insisted on infantry duty in the war zone. "I thought war was it; it was the most difficult thing a young man could go through, " Stone told Interview magazine. "It was a rite of passage. And I knew it would be the only war of my generation, so I said, 'I've gotta get over there fast, because it's going to be over. ' There was also a heavy streak of rebelliousness in the face of my father, and I think I was trying to prove to him that I was a man, not a boy. " Stone was not long in discovering that the realities of combat were a far cry from his romantic notions about action, manhood, and adventure. "Vietnam completely deadened me and sickened me, " he told the Washington Post. Assigned to a unit patrolling the Cambodian border, Stone was involved in several deadly skirmishes. He was wounded twice, once by gunshot and once by shrapnel, and he often witnessed the brutalization of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers. "There was such a dog-tired, don't-give-a-damn attitude over there, such anger and frustration and casual brutality, " he said in Interview. "I remember being so tired that I wished the North Vietnamese Army would come up and shoot me, just to get this thing over with. "
Stone was discharged after one tour and returned to America "very mixed up, very paranoid and very alienated, " he told the Washington Post. He has since said that he might have succumbed to despair had he not felt a spark of optimism—perhaps he had survived Vietnam in order to "do something" with his life.
His writing and directorial debut was Seizure, a horror story about a writer whose fantastic creations come to life.
Seizure received lukewarm reviews and very little play at the box office, and its author-director entered a stagnant period marked by heavy drug and alcohol use. Stone finally pulled himself together during the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976 and decided to write a screenplay about his experiences in Vietnam. Between 1976 and 1978 Stone scripted two monumental stories on the war, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, based on the autobiography of crippled war veteran Ron Kovic. No studio would touch either property; the screenplays were deemed too violent and too negative. Stone's writing talents were recognized, however, and he was invited to work on other, less controversial themes.
In 1977 Stone was hired to write the screenplay for Midnight Express, a drama based on the true-life imprisonment of Bill Hayes. The film offers a sensational depiction of Hayes's capture and incarceration in a Turkish jail, where only the most brutal and powerful could survive the tortures inflicted by the guards and other inmates. Midnight Express created a critical firestorm when it was released in 1978. Many reviewers decried its gratuitous violence and its racist implications against the Turks. The controversy helped to create an audience for the movie; it turned a neat profit and garnered five Academy Award nominations. Stone himself won his first Oscar for best screenplay adaptation, and Hollywood's doors began to open to him.
Still Stone could not find backing for Platoon. Instead he wrote and directed a low-budget horror movie called The Hand, starring Michael Caine as a writer whose severed limb takes on a life of its own and begins to kill people. Although critics praised the stylishness of the work, it did little box office business, and Stone was reduced to the role of mere screenwriter again. In 1982 he wrote a script for John Milius's Conan the Barbarian, but the finished film bore little resemblance to his original idea. He then worked on the sensational Scarface, the story of a ruthless cocaine dealer. The violent and profane film also provoked controversy, but for Stone it was a very important project. Having suffered from the effects of drug abuse himself, he used his work on Scarface as his own farewell to drugs. In between these projects he continued to try to sell Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, often meeting with last-minute frustration as financing would once again fall through.
Two more Stone projects, Year of the Dragon and Eight Million Ways To Die, were filmed in 1986. Both suffered at the hands of Hollywood "committees, " and Stone became determined to exercise more control over his work. He became an independent filmmaker, and with the backing of a small British production company, finally saw his pet projects come to fruition. First he filmed the low-budget drama Salvador, based on the violent tactics of the American-supported Salvadoran army. The film did not receive wide distribution, but it was praised by critics, especially those with left-wing sensibilities. Hemdale, the British firm that produced Salvador, then gave Stone the money to do Platoon.
The script Stone used was essentially the one he had written in 1976, based on himself and composites of other soldiers he had known. The movie, Stone told People, is "heightened reality. " He added: "I pushed beyond the factual truth to the spiritual … no, to a greater truth. This is the spirit of what I saw happening. " An ensemble cast performance, Platoon follows a young grunt (Charlie Sheen) into the brutal arena that was Vietnam. Its violence and pessimism notwithstanding, the film won a number of important Oscars, including best picture and best director. "Platoon, " wrote Pat McGilligan in Film Comment, "takes the futility of the war and the rape of Vietnam for granted, and instead focuses on the searing intimacy of fear and hate; on the psychology of the battlefield; on the civil war-within-thewar, the left-wing versus the right-wing (as it were) of the soldiery and the command…. Platoon is an ugly, painful, doom-laden film, with much that is honest and beautiful and, yes, good. Apart from its intrinsic historical value as the first feature film directed by a former vet, I believe Stone when he says his goals in making it were in part modest and private. Rather than affecting a grand, universal statement about men in war, he is content to exorcise his own ghost from Vietnam. "
Stone followed Platoon with his first big-budget project, Wall Street. Another critical and commercial success, Wall Street explores the seduction of a young stockbroker by an older and completely ruthless business tycoon. Following Wall Street Stone was finally able to find the money to film Born on the Fourth of July. When he tried to have the movie made in the 1970s he planned to use Al Pacino in the lead; in the late 1980s he turned to another Hollywood superstar, Tom Cruise. Cruise gives an affecting performance as the raging Ron Kovic, who endures not only the horror of battle but the humiliation of helpless paraplegia. "Although Mr. Kovic's personal ordeal and Tom Cruise's fiery performance occupy center stage in the movie, and although the film addresses every intimate aspect of Mr. Kovic's struggle, " wrote Maslin, it isn't this private story that makes the film such an emotional power-house. It is Mr. Stone's ability to surround his central figure with huge, vivid tableaux that wrenchingly depict the progress of a nation; his chilling vision of the forces that shape American notions of manhood, and the consequences they may bring; and his way of grafting sights, sounds and sensations together so breathlessly, making the whole film hurtle forward at such a breakneck pace. "
Born on the Fourth of July brought Stone yet another Academy Award for best director. The early 1990s find him hitting his stride as one of the most important writer-directors in Hollywood. He next explored 1960s counterculture with his psychedelic rock opus The Doors. This film was something of a preamble to his most controversial feature, JFK, in which Kevin Costner portrayed Jim Garrison, the Texas Attorney General who battled what the film views as a conspiracy to cover up the real circumstances behind the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The film's mixture of hallucinatory sequences and historical details infuriated many, but even his detractors had trouble denying the power of Stone's cinematic vision; as a result, many reviews ended up calling JFK brilliant claptrap.
After JFK, Stone's alleged paranoia and fondness for conspiracy theories was the source of a million show-business jokes; the cable comedy network Comedy Central even offered "Oliver Stone's Paranoia Web Site. " The filmmaker demonstrated he had a sense of humor about the matter when he played a conspiracy nut in the political comedy Dave.
Stone returned to the Vietnam nightmare for 1993's Heaven and Earth, this time dealing with the war's impact and aftermath from the point of view of a Vietnamese woman. Though a good-faith effort on Stone's part to trascend the male-centered, American perspective he'd previously emphasized with regard to Vietnam, the film was pounded by reviewers.
Stone came raging back, however, with 1994's wildly experimental and brutally violent Natural Born Killers. Loosely based on a script by Quentin Tarantino, the film chronicles the murderous odyssey of two disturbed young lovers, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, and the twisted opera of celebrity that grows around them. Cinematographer Robert Richardson told Time, "the making of the film resembled throwing paint at the canvas—you don't know if you're making art. The only rule was that you could change your mind. " The film was a sensation, and inspired condemnation from Dole and others about its brash treatment of violence, which was portrayed as a sickness spreading through popular culture—thus serving as a handy tool in an election season.
Stone's next film assayed the story of another American President. Though many expected his biopic of Richard Nixon—who resigned in disgrace after being implicated in the controversy known as Watergate—to be a hatchet job on an easy Republican target. After all, many reasoned, Nixon prolonged the war in Vietnam; it would be easy enough to lay the pain of the filmmaker's whole generation at the late leader's feet. But Stone preferred to tell a more complex tale. As he told Entertainment Weekly, "the character [of Nixon] is so fascinating. He's this contradiction of idealism and corruption. He saw greatness and understood the meaning of it. But the weapons that allowed him to rise to the top were also the weapons that destroyed him. " Casting British actor Anthony Hopkins in the title role, Stone earned near-unanimous praise for his emotionally deep and even-handed portrait of Nixon. The film earned numerous Academy Award nominations, and—perhaps more satisfyingly for Stone—the recognition that he could transcend his political agendas to make universally appealing cinema. "You have to make films as an idealist, " he told Film Comment some years earlier. "You've got to make them to the greater glory of mankind. Then, even if you fail, even if the film doesn't work, you do not have to be ashamed, because you tried. " Stone added: "I've grown with each of my films…. None of them has been a waste of time for me. That's important. I've educated myself. I've gotten better. I've learned more about my craft. I'm just at the beginning of a road. I'm learning how to make movies. "
Stone's next film, 1997's U-Turn, depicts the story of a drifter (Sean Penn) who encounters a town's strange inhabitants in a plot that involves sex, murder, and betrayal. Filmed in Superior, Arizona, the cast also includes Nick Nolte, Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Voight, Claire Danes, and Jennifer Lopez. The director opted for a small budget for this project, making the film in six weeks. Although it is based strictly on fiction, U-Turn, like many of Stone's films, contains very controversial material.
In 2004, he made the epic historical drama film titled, ‘Alexander’, which was a failure at the American box office. The film was also criticised for factual errors.
In 2006, he directed the drama film, ‘World Trade Center’, which was based on the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center in New York. The film was positively reviewed by critics.
In 2009, he made the documentary film, ‘South of the Border’, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The 102-minute documentary was well received.
In 2010, he directed the American drama film, ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’, which was inspired by the 2008 financial crisis in the United States of America.
In 2012, he directed the crime thriller film, ‘Savages’, which was based on a novel of the same title. The film was an average at the box office and received mixed reviews.
Achievements
He has received three Academy Awards for his work on the films ‘Midnight Express’, ‘Platoon’, and ‘Born on the Fourth of July’.
In 1992, he was the recipient of the Golden Globe for the category of ‘Best Director - Motion Picture’ for ‘JFK’. Additionally, he has in his kitty Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film, Independent Spirit Award for Best Director and BAFTA Award for Best Direction.
Stone was raised in the Episcopal Church, and now practices Buddhism.
Politics
Stone has been described as being anti-American, "unpatriotic", and having leftist political views. He has also drawn attention for his unique opinions on controversial world leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Hugo Chávez. In Showtime's The Putin Interviews, Stone called Joseph Stalin "the most famous villain in history, next to Adolf [Hitler]", who "left a horrible reputation, and stained the [Communist] ideology forever. .. it's mixed with blood, and terror. "
Views
Quotations:
"One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that. "
"Anybody who's been through a divorce will tell you that at one point. they've thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn't that major. '
"A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she'll appear in film and it won't work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don't know. "
"I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter. "
"When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process. "
"Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. "
"Hell is the impossibility of reason. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
New York Times critic Janet Maslin observed that Stone "isn't one to regard moviegoing as a passive experience. Part of his method is to make audiences squirm. "
Connections
Stone has been married three times, first to Najwa Sarkis on May 22, 1971. They divorced in 1977. He then married Elizabeth Burkit Cox, an assistant in film production, on June 7, 1981. They had two sons, Sean Stone/Ali (b. 1984) and Michael Jack (b. 1991). Sean appeared in some of his father's films while a child. Sean Stone currently works for the Russia state media company Russia Today. Oliver and Elizabeth divorced in 1993. Stone is currently married to Sun-jung Jung from South Korea, and the couple have a daughter, Tara (b. 1995). Stone and Sun-jung live in Los Angeles.
Spouse:
Sun-jung Jung
Spouse:
Elizabeth Burkit Cox
Spouse:
Najwa Sarkis
Son:
Sean Stone
He is an American actor, film director, producer, cinematographer and screenwriter with an extensive filmography. He converted to Islam in 2012.
