d
WITH HIS FUTURISTIC--AND CRITICALLY PANNED--WILD PALMS, STONE JUMPS
OUT OF THE '60'S AND INTO THE FIRE.
He's been called a tyrant and a bully and accused of everything
from living in the past to rewriting it. And though he disavows an
obsession with the Sixties, he doesn't shy away from railing against "the
establishment" and advocating legalized drugs. After JFK, The Doors, and
Born on the Fourth of July, is Stone our last working hippie, the voice
of our national conscience, or just a rebel with too many causes?
Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D., for PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: You went from angry
young man with no potent way to ventilate to angry adult who can play
beastmaster with movies. What sense of self does that provide for
you?
OS: I know you're going to have a hard time believing this, but I
was one of the shyest guys in school and in the army I could barely talk.
I was extremely hidden and wanted to be anonymous, which is one of the
reasons why I went to Vietnam. I just wanted to be a number. I didn't
want to have any identity, and part of the reason I became a filmmaker
was my perception of it--a filmmaker stays behind the camera and he's
anonymous, although that's not the case anymore.
So I think there is a push/pull thing going on; I want to be one
thing but somehow my subconscious self wants to be another. But don't ask
me to define myself (laughter).
PT: I'll try to avoid that one. You predicted that "the
establishment" would ferret out all sorts of dirty stories about you to
assassinate your character in order to neutralize the potency of your
film JFK. Did they try to do it and how effective were they?
OS: I thought the media were partially effective. My feelings were
hurt numerous times and I thickened my reactions as much as I
could.
I felt that the film brought up a lot of facts that weren't dealt
with. But more space was devoted to saying that I was distorting history
than in getting to the specifics of exactly where I was distorting. There
was not a keen desire to debate the questions that were raised about the
assassination, and that's what amazed me about the whole episode. I
thought that cheap shots were being taken.
PT: Was there an attempt to sully your reputation?
OS: Oh yeah! Many critics wrote that I had a huge ego, that I love
controversy. I never started the controversy over JFK; I just wanted to
get the film out there and get it judged on its own merits. I wrote
letters to newspapers and magazines and often would not be published. So
much for the right of fair play. But on TV at least I could say my piece;
then I was criticized for being on TV too much. "Oliver Stone is an
egomaniac, a loud mouth and a blabbermouth."
I was really hurt by that because I felt very strongly that I was
defending the attacks against the film. And I was trying to be fair and
logical and low-key about it. But it was interpreted as being
egomaniacal, as having a love of controversy, a love of argument, which I
don't really have.
I'm not that argumentative in my personal life and I try to veer
away from arguments on the sets of my films. I very rarely have
confrontations. It's been overreported that I'm some kind of angry
filmmaker. I think you'd find that many people say I'm pretty soft-spoken
on the set.
PT: I think you just eliminated one of my questions.
OS: (laughs) Except for one or two incidents in seven or eight
films, there's really been no--I'm not a confrontational director.
Michael Douglas said that I confronted him on Wall Street and told him he
was a lousy actor. But it was a little bit different in reality than in
the way he told the story, which is funny. He makes it sound
funny.
PT: Is it?
OS: It sets the wrong tone. The reason I confronted him early in
the movie was, to be honest, he was doing a terrible job in the first two
scenes and I thought he was not up to the levels which the movie had to
be. So I confronted him quietly and said we have a problem, we've got to
deal with it. Either you're going to get better or I don't know what
we're going to do. Something clicked off in him--I guess no one had
criticized him in a while. 'Cause people are not used to criticism
sometimes in our business. They get fawned on a lot; a lot of directors
are always reassuring the actor, sort of trying to coax it from him that
way.
Well I felt it wasn't a coax job anymore. He just wasn't giving me
what I wanted and by shocking him with criticism he went into a retreat.
Then he came back the next day or two days later and I tell you there was
a tremendous difference in the man. He was on the money. He was angry, he
was angry at me, but it was a good anger that he took out on me and I
tell you there was a tremendous difference the third day as opposed to
the first day.
PT: Did he sustain this anger throughout the whole movie?
OS: He got the Academy Award.
PT: But did he still resent you?
OS: Well, that's what he said. He resented me at the time. But now
he's my friend. You see, I'm trying to make the point that sometimes
confrontation, if it's done well, can be a shock, and a shock can be a
stimulus to change.
PT: Are people afraid to confront you now?
Tags:
angry young man,
born on the fourth of july,
drugs,
ferret,
filmmaker,
fourth of july,
hard time,
hippie,
jfk,
media,
movie,
Oliver Stone,
politics,
potency,
push pull,
railing,
sixties,
stuart fischoff,
tyrant,
wild palms
