Oliver Stone: Nixon

[This is the final installment of my look at the films of Oliver Stone from 1986-1995. I've placed a convenient little pole on the right side of the blog for you all to partake in. That's right, I'm giving you the power to decide what I watch and write about for the next director retrospective! Hehe. Exciting, I know. So, be democratic and vote!]

And so we come to the end of this "retrospective". Yes, retrospective is in quotes because I was only ever interested in covering the years when Stone's films were popular. I found that by looking at this output of films from 1986 – 1995, Oliver Stone was unlike any other American filmmaker during that time. He was a filmmaker, as Roger Ebert said, "that sought controversy" instead of running away from it; often explicating characters, real-life figures, and themes that always had a seething anger and disillusionment with the "system" running through them. Towards the end of his prolific run, Stone became a kind of loose cannon filmmaker; an artist who started to become more stylistic in approach, and where that style dominated substance. This caused his films to make less and less money as Stone was clearly losing touch with the audience who was paying to see Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July (by the time of Nixon's theatrical run was over, Stone's reputation and disconnect with his audience had gotten so bad that the film only made about 14 million of its 44 million budget back); however, box office success or failure isn't an appropriate barometer for how good or bad a film really is, and even though Stone was alienating his audience with films like JFK and Natural Born Killers, (causing him to become even more experimental after Nixon, and failing with films like U-Turn, Any Given Sunday, and Alexander) he was arguably making his most interesting pictures during that time, too. The perfect bit of final punctuation to this prolific era is Nixon; a film that is certainly one of Stone's most intense character studies, most stylistic (compounding upon the schizophrenic aesthetic of JFK, his other political picture), and certainly most surprising.


Why would a filmmaker as progressively liberal and antagonistic seek to make a film that better understand one of the most reviled Republican presidents? Well, because he's Oliver Stone, and he loves to stir shit up. That's the only plausible reason I can think of for this "attempt to understand the truth" – as the title card that opens the film states – as it pertains to Richard Nixon (of course, stone would explicate an even more enigmatic president 13 years later). And Nixon does indeed turn out to be one of Stone's most surprisingly poignant films. It's also a helluva an entertaining film. Stone's biopic swirls through the Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) timeline beginning with the breaking-in of the Watergate Hotel, to Nixon recording all of his wrongs by a fireplace, to attempts to fill in the blanks of Nixon's childhood (specifically how the loss of his oldest brother devastated him, and how his strong, dogmatic mother shaped him into being the man we "knew" Nixon to be), and how he seemed to try really hard to love his wife Pat (the brains and sense of their operation, and brilliantly portrayed by Joan Allen in the film's strongest role) and stay true to his word to her to stay out of politics after losing the gubernatorial race in California.

What makes the film so interesting is the almost Greek-like tragedy Stone paints Nixon's life as. Here is a man that, as a child, could never get out from under the shadow of his brother and receive the same love from his parents that his brother did, and, once in office, could never get out from under the shadow of Kennedy. The film takes liberties, no doubt, with Stone's filling in of the blanks in order to give Nixon some kind of context (he always seemed to play things close to the chest) as he, like Stone's future subject George W. Bush, was always an enigmatic figure. A lot of hatred and the things that were going wrong with the country at the time of his presidency was projected onto Nixon, however, the film looks to resolve nothing about the man in regards to how he handled everything (aside from showing Nixon's drinking problem and declining health). Like Bush, Nixon was a man who seemed to be out of his league – a puppet who just wanted be liked – as Stone seems to really think that what the driving motivation and purpose was for Nixon seeking office was not to affect change, but simply to be liked, to be approved. What Stone does, like he did with Bush, was make a most-hated figurehead elicit some empathy as he is portrayed as nothing more than a pawn, and how can one really hate the pawn more than they hate the person moving the pieces?

I mentioned earlier that the film's look compounds upon the "vertical cutting" style Stone tinkered with in JFK and Natural Born Killers. He also has longtime DP Robert Richardson play around the same kind of harsh lighting that blankets the lenses of eye glasses and smoked-filled rooms (reminding me of Casino, but more those similarities later…) that was used so brilliantly in the aforementioned films (as well as Heaven and Earth). The film is as pleasurable to look at as any of Stone's experimental exercises of the 90's, and like Forrest Gump, does a pretty decent job intersplicing actual news reel footage with actors from the movie playing major historical figures. The news reel footage helps fill in the blanks, and in a rather clever way, providing the context to Stone's massive story about Richard Nixon.

Perhaps more than any other Stone film, though, Nixon is truly memorable for the amazing ensemble cast. Great performances abound from a bevy of character actors (J.T. Walsh, John Diehl, Bob Hoskins, David Hyde Pierce, Ed Harris, David Paymer, E.G. Marshall, Powers Boothe, Paul Sorvino, and Kevin Dunn), but the real highlights here are the ones with all the screentime: Hopkins and Allen. Hopkins' body language as Nixon (Hopkins said that it was the isolation and loneliness of Nixon that intrigued him most about the role) is tremendous in the way he portrays a person who is unsure how to present himself to the public (which is why many people say that if you listen to his famous televised debate with Kennedy, people said Nixon actually won that debate, but because it was televised, people liked the way Kennedy composed himself), and a man who was always concerned with how the public viewed him. Once president, Nixon (as seen by Stone) was a man who was obsessed with being liked in the same way that Kennedy was liked, and in Stone's mind it's part of what destroyed Nixon's soul and made him such a tragic figure.

The casting for the film was interesting as like with most of Stone's films the studio never wanted Anthony Hopkins to play the role of Nixon, they wanted Stone's first suggestions for the role: Tom Hanks or Jack Nicholson. But when Stone saw Remains of the Day and Shadowlands he saw an actor who understood the isolation and solitary mood he wanted for his Nixon. Prior to Hopkins getting the role, though, the studio and the filmmaker tossed around the idea of Tommy Lee Jones, Robin Williams (!), and Gene Hackman. The filmmaker did meet with Warren Beatty about the role, and even did some line readings together and bringing in Joan Allen to read lines for Pat Nixon; however, in what should come as absolutely no surprise, the idea of Beatty playing Nixon fell through when he and Stone disagreed over all of the script changes Beatty wanted to make. So impressed though were Beatty and Stone with Allen, that they knew from there that they had their Pat Nixon. After the deal with Beatty fell through, Stone contacted Hopkins and finalized the deal for the actor to play Nixon in what would be one of the actor's best roles.

Nixon is Stone's Casino. What I mean by that is that the film was lukewarmly received by audiences, and even though the film was critically well received (mostly for its performances) a lot of people saw the film as nothing more than Stone going back to the political well and making another JFK. The reason I bring up Casino is because in 1995 when Martin Scorsese made that movie, a lot of people dismissed it as a lesser version of Goodfellas; both films were about the mob, both films were ultra violent, both films were kinetically edited and linked by their use of similar music, both films starred Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro, and both films aesthetically looked the same. However, a lot of people (me included) think that one could argue in favor of Casino actually being the better movie, and the same could be said about Nixon. In my review of JFK I mentioned that it was my favorite Stone film, and that I thought it was a masterpiece, and both of those things are true; however, I can easily see how some would think Nixon is the better movie. On the surface the two films seem similar in the way that Goodfellas and Casino seem similar, but there is actually quite a bit of differences and nuances that the two films, despite their looking the same on the surface, have that give them their own distinctions and charms.

Nixon opens with an apt quote from the Bible asking (in summery): "what has a man gained if he's lost his soul"? This quote resonated with me throughout the three-plus hours of Nixon as I think Stone's point of the movie –as it is said in the scene with the news reel footage – is that we never really knew who Nixon was, we only knew what he did and how he portrayed himself to the public. He was always willing to blame the press and misconceptions of him as a person rather than looking at himself and facing his obvious flaws. Oliver Stone understood this about Richard Nixon, and even if he hated the man (which I'm guessing he did) and what his presidency stood for, Stone clearly shows that he's willing to step outside of the box to give us an introspective and entertaining (and wonderfully shot and edited) story about the rise and fall of a despised president and flawed man that is, in its essence, a very human one. It just may be the last great film Stone has for us.

Oliver Stone: Natural Born Killers

After the box office failure of Heaven and Earth Oliver Stone was crushed. His final entry into his Vietnam trilogy – his most impassioned labor of love – was met with resounding apathy from the critical and commercial masses, and all he wanted to do was make a straight-forward action film with an easy shooting schedule after the grueling experience of filming on location in Saigon for Heaven and Earth. What Stone found was a script by then-plucky up-and-comer Quentin Tarantino (who at the time of shopping his script around wasn't known for Pulp Fiction) called Natural Born Killers. Stone's initial idea was to make into an action film that "Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud of"; however, O.J. Simpson and the onslaught of what is now known as "Reality TV" coverage changed the tone of the picture Stone intended to make.




Natural Born Killers is very much indebted to Bonnie and Clyde both in narrative and in style (it's essentially Stone's road movie and the filmmaker pays homage to Penn's classic film with his multiple shots/switching between slo-mo and normal speed during the final killing). The story (as if you don't know) follows Mickey (Woody Harrelson playing wonderfully against type) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) and the road they travel while on a killing spree that seems to be sweeping the nation. The killers gather somewhat of a cult following as the white trash killers are seen as a kind of anti-hero thanks to the glamorization of "Hard Copy"-esque television shows like the one run by Australian newsman Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.). Hot on their trail is another media created figure, Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore), a wannabe Serpico who has written the "how-to" book on tracking serial murderers. Throughout Mickey and Mallory's journey we become privy to their past (Mallory's abusive adolescence is filmed in the style of 1950's sitcom as her father, played by Rodney Dangerfield, hints at molestation and incest while a laugh track blares in the background), how they met, and how they came to be seen as celebrities. All of this crescendos to an intensely violent and frenetic prison exodus, and a final shot that hammers home the point of the film.

The story (which is still credited to Tarantino) was changed almost scene for scene by Stone, and instead of making his action picture, he added a whole lot of subtext to the film. However, what's funny is that the Tarantino influence is apparent in the soundtrack (the Leonard Cohen song that bookends the film is a brilliant touch) and the hyper-kinetic pop culture aesthetic, even though Stone virtually changed every aspect of Tarantino's original script, and had the film been solely that then I think I could easily call it his best film. However, the one thing that really hurts the film is the extra obviousness of the film's message that Stone places at the very end of the film. Rather than just relying on his audience to understand what he was doing (how could we not…it's not as if Stone is a subtle filmmaker) throughout the film with his message that we are a media-crazed society that will always be interested in mass murderers as long as we know the safety of commercials – or the remote – will suppress our fears of this "reality" ever becoming realty, Stone adds a superfluous ending that is so awful in heavy-handedness ("channels" are being flipped through images of Rodney King, The Mendes Brothers, Tanya Harding) so we can see how we've made celebrities out of people who understand that if they do something stupid, the media (and their audience) will not only cover it, but will make sure they get everything out of those 15 minutes of fame. The reason this ending feels tacked-on (and tacky) is because Stone has already made his point ad-nauseam with his aesthetic choices throughout the film.

The aesthetic of the film is what Stone does brilliantly, making the viewer hyper-aware that we're always watching a movie with all of these cuts (nearly 3000 were used, twice as many as a normal two hour movie); this is nothing more than a comic book on display, and it's brilliant in the way he switches aesthetics the same way many people switch from channel to channel. The intersplicing of Coke commercials and stock footage of happy families watching television is especially inspired (Coke was actually quite pissed at Stone after the fact at giving him permission to use their ads not knowing what the final product would look like), and the use of multiple film stocks and filters to evoke the characters mood slaps you right in the face (there is nothing subtle about this movie). Roger Ebert said in his initial review of the film that: "[s]eeing this movie once is not enough. The first time is for the visceral experience, the second time is for the meaning." I agree with Ebert, and in fact, I would say that seeing this movie three times isn't enough to fully understand everything Stone and his crew (again, the great Robert Richardson is his DP) are saying with the aesthetic they're employing (Trent Reznor, who wrote the music for the film, apparently watched the film over 50 times to get in the right frame of mind to begin writing the music that would match Stone's vision).

Stone and his DP Robert Richardson use different aesthetics to serve different purposes. Stone called this switching of styles "vertical cutting" so that basically every time something switches from black and white to grainy 16mm to whatever other piece of trickery Stone feels like using, the point is always to show the difference between what they see and what they're thinking. The prime example of this is in the film's opening scene as Mickey and Mallory massacre innocent victims in a truck stop diner. The scene is shot through various styles as we see the waitress asking Mickey a question (shot in color, and, as most scenes in the movie are shot, in a canted angle), and then we see the same question being asked in slow motion in black and white as we're now seeing things as Mickey sees them. While this "vertical cutting" may just be a fancy way of saying that Stone and his crew wanted to throw every stylistic technique they could think of at the audience, it actually works in displacing the viewer – never allowing us to really empathize with the characters, or make them into romantic figures like Bonnie and Clyde. During the "vertical cutting" Stone frequently flashes bits of violence before they happen (Mickey laughing at the camera with blood on his face, or Mallory dancing in the diner covered in blood before they kill anyone) to show us what the killers are thinking, and how they get off on these images of violence.

The psychedelic, almost hallucinogenic aesthetic that Stone tinkered with in The Doors, and the "vertical cutting" style (he tinkered with this, too, in JFK)come together to create a visceral experience unlike any other American film made in the 90's. I especially liked the way Stone uses projected backgrounds to tell us that Mickey and Mallory are products of a violent society. In a fascinating meta-moment, Mickey and Mallory watch Scarface (written by Stone) on a motel television while images of Stalin and world destruction are projected onto the window. They're oblivious to the type of evil in society that has created them, but they're fully aware of the type of evil and violence glamorized in Hollywood that plays out on their motel television set. It's scenes like this that show just what a fantastic filmmaker Stone could be, and it's a damn shame that he had to further punctuate (not to mention italicize and underline) his thematic points with the unnecessary footage at the end. Everything this film is about can be summed up in the motel scene. It's one of the best scenes in the movie, and proof that the visuals – the visceral nature of the film its projected background, its various tints (especially the film's use of green), fast-moving skylines, Dutch angles, and imagery of snakes and other mystic animals – of Natural Born Killers keeps it from ever becoming a dated experience.

There are more than a few standout moments in the film, and to simply re-tell them would not only be boring to read about, but miss the point of the film…which is that this film must be experienced. I know that sounds cliché, but like Pulp Fiction, Stone's film will forever be chained to the 90's as the perfect symbol for the simulacrum, the copy of a copy the emerging era of television, of home entertainment, called "Reality TV". It manifests itself into "real" shows like true crime stories, or, even worse, shows that are nothing more than a generation of X'ers and Y'ers living vicariously through celebrities who are more infamous than famous (helllllooooo Kardashian's!). Of course what we're seeing is not real, it's very produced and superficial (how real is a "Reality" show when multiple cuts are used with yet they're only filming with one camera?), and Natural Born Killers is always making you aware that what you're watching was so obviously produced by people who are using film and media to manipulate your experience. I was actually struck by the shocking difference in tone found in something like Wall Street as opposed to Natural Born Killers; both, interestingly enough, acting as perfect representations (in attitude, tone, narrative, and style) for their respective generations. You had the the get-it-anyway-you-can Generation Me crowd who despite their capitalistic ways, was usually the type of person that was a go-getter. Contrast that with the generation of the 90's, the X's and the Y's, and how experiences would become more simulated. Why work hard for that sports car when you could just drive one on the latest PlayStation while sitting in a leather chair that emulates the shocks and jolts of driving while surround sound speakers installed into the chair give one the experience of actually being on the road in the car. Experiences were becoming more and more something experienced through the television screen -- something filtered through another person's point of view -- and Stone's film really has its finger on the pulse of this notion.

As I mentioned the film is filled with numerous scenes that act as brilliant visual representations for Stone's metaphors, and onne of my favorite scenes of the movie is when Scagnetti and Warden McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones in a fantastic, maniacally over-the-top performance) are walking through the prison to where Mickey and Mallory are being held. It's a fluid tracking shot that is broken up the switching of aesthetics – the "vertical cutting" – that we've seen throughout the film. What I like most about it, though, is that it's a perfect representation of the descent into hell we've been experiencing all film; the pacing of the scene is manic and paranoid (perfect seeing as how these two characters are the most unhinged), switching from black and white to grainy stock. The use of sound, too, throughout the scene is apt as we hear animalistic noises coming from the cells (Stone invited this kind of atmosphere on set as he would play African tribal music as loud as he could throughout the filming process to emulate the mood of this scene).

Natural Born Killers is a polarizing film – about as polarizing as the man who made it – and is not to everyone's taste; however, it is undoubtedly one of the most important films of the 90's. It is, perhaps, one of the most stylistically ambitious films we'll ever see from an American filmmaker in the modern age of the "safe bet" studious. The all-in aesthetic of Stone and his crew is something that felt more at home in art house theaters with French subtitles accompanying it, but here was one of the most popular and controversial of American filmmakers trying his hand at an art exercise. Entertainment Weekly named it one of the ten most important films of the 90's, and it does make one remember a time when major American filmmakers like Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese weren't afraid to try something new, exciting, and well, anarchistic in tone (seriously, Oliver, your new Wall Street film is PG-13…I sure hope it has some balls); the kind of tone where you would watch and feel exhilarated by the "anything-can-happen" mentality of the filmmakers. It's a masterpiece that upon my most recent viewing has me re-thinking my stance on JFK as my favorite Oliver Stone film.

Everything would feel "safe" for Stone after this, as he had one last great swing in him with Nixon, but completely lost touch with his audience, and himself, as he abandoned all of the talent on display during his prolific years for hack tendencies with the atrocious neo-noir U-Turn and the annoying film that tried too hard, Any Given Sunday.

Oliver Stone: Heaven and Earth

Sandwiched between Stone's two craziest and most manic films lay one of the auteur's more visually poetic and interesting films; Heaven and Earth isn't something so different that it stands out – although it's nice to see Stone stretch himself a bit here by having the film being told through the eyes of a female protagonist – and it falls too often into ridiculous melodrama to be emotionally memorable. But if you can get past some of the film's major flaws (the film, based on two books by the film's protagonist Le Ly Hayslip, feels incomplete as it really doesn't follow through with her story) you'll see a gem of a movie that lingers on moments of poetic filmmaking and voiceover narration that puts the viewer in a state of reverie; a shocking tonal shift from a director who would descend into self-parody with his ADD aesthetic a mere two films after making this one.

The film, as mentioned above, is based on two books about a young Vietnamese woman's named Le Ly (Hiep Thi Le) journey from a young girl's whose village was destroyed to a teenager who is raped and threatened and tortured by Viet Cong radicals to a woman who moves with her family – after being forced off of their land – to Saigon where she becomes a hustler until she meets an American soldirer named Steve (Tommy Lee Jones), marries him, and moves with him to California to start a new life that doesn't necessarily have the promise (at least the promise she hoped while being married to him, as she would go on to make a name for herself) she imagined it having.

Heaven and Earth is the third film in Stone's Vietnam "trilogy" which also included films about personal recollections of the Vietnam war (his own, first-hand account in Platoon, and Ron Kovic's story in Born on the Fourth of July) and how they affect those who must return from a war zone. However, where Platoon primarily focused on the jungles of Vietnam, and Born on the Fourth of July mostly focused on Ron's return to his "home", Heaven and Earth is a balance of the two settings. The film opens with some beautiful on-location imagery as Le Ly's voice guides through the Buddhist significance of Heaven and Earth. Immediately I was struck by how different this seemed than previous Stone films. The opening imagery evoked thoughts of Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line and The New World with its mix of beautiful natural photography and voiceover. It's clear from the onset that Stone is interested in making this a film unlike his previous endeavors.

Stone put a lot of heart into the production of Heaven and Earth, and was publically disappointed when the film wasn't seen as the success that Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July were; it's why he would go on to read Quentin Tarantino's script for Natural Born Killers – a film that promised a more simplistic, stress-free shoot. However, the labor of Stone's love for the material is evident in every frame of the film's scenes in Vietnam and Saigon showcasing some of the best cinematography Robert Richardson (longtime Stone collaborator) has done. I'm thinking particularly of scenes where a hat wafts through the reeds as a helicopter hovers over Le Ly (I especially liked the camera distortion used during this moment as the water washes over the lens) and instead of getting antsy with his editing, Stone stays on the images long enough for the viewer to allow the image – accompanied by Le Ly's poetic narration – to sink in and really contemplate the plight of Le Ly.

However, once Le Ly leaves Saigon for California the film turns more into a rather banal melodrama where we find out what Steve really did in the military and how that causes a giant rift between the two. The relationship turns abusive, and the film, which should have focused on Le Ly's grasping of the American Dream (which is what one of her books is heavily about) from essentially nothing, becomes nothing more than a Lifetime movie. It's too bad, too, because the performances are a lot better than what Stone gives them to do, and even Stone's crew juxtaposes nicely the California aesthetic (harsh key lighting like the kind found in all of Scorsese's 90's movies, and in Stone's own JFK, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon) with the Saigon/Vietnam aesthetic (more of a dream-like look).

The theme of living between the two worlds, heaven and earth, and living between the two times, the past and the present is executed well enough. And like Ron Kovic coming home and experiencing a different version of home than when he left, so too does Le Ly come to America and experience an alien world: a world of garish homes, large refrigerators, and Ralph's supermarkets. There's a wonderful scene that takes place at thanksgiving dinner that shows the disconnect between those that were in the war and those who stayed at home and only heard about it through the filtered news reports. At the dinner Steve's sister is hammering the point home that Le Ly should be thankful for Steve and everything she now has (specifically lots of food; and in a great bird's eye view, Richardson shows the massive table and all of the food they are about to eat) now that she's with him and in America (i.e. the sacrifices made to bring her here). Steve explains to his overbearing sister (and really this is the only good scene Jones has in the film aside from an amazingly powerful moment where Steve is teetering on the edge of sanity, and listens to Le Ly's pleas for him to come back home…Stone simply keeps the camera affixed to Jones' face and the acting he does with his always stoic face is just phenomenal) that they are more than aware of the blessings in front of them, and they didn't know what sacrifice was, proceeding to tell them about the horrors of pillaging villages and killing innocent children. It's a scene filled with anger and sadness (reminding me a lot of the tone of Born on the Fourth of July) as Le Ly simply looks on, partly horrified at seeing this side of a man who had been nothing but serene and in control around her, and partly in awe of the fact that Steve, whilst being a monster, does the honorable thing and defends her. It's one of the best scenes of the film that really showcases the talents of the actors, it's just too bad that Stone's film devolves into such heavy melodrama that the actors are unable to really rise above the California material.

Heaven and Earth isn't one of those gems that is so hidden that is has become a kind of forgotten masterpiece; however, it is one of those gems that finds itself nudged between a filmmakers two most ambitious projects, and because of that has gotten lost in the shuffle. It's a little too long, but damn are those opening moments and on-location imagery impressive. On those terms alone the film deserves a new audience, but the film also deserves to be rediscovered because of its place in Stone's oeuvre: here's a film that feels out of place with the type of filmmaker Stone was throughout the 90's; it's a far more elegiac film than anything the controversial director had made, and it definitely has more deliberate, poetic undercurrent running through the first hour of the film. It's such a noticeable difference from a director who was always so angry and specialized in showing claustrophobic and chaotic worlds and point of views; with Heaven and Earth, though, he wisely slows things down and delivers a film that – even if it is wholly uneven – deserves to be rediscovered whether or not you're a fan of Stone.

Next Stone famously bastardizes a Quentin Tarantino script (although to Stone's credit, successfully makes into something that is his own) to create a film that intended to be nothing more than a straight action movie, but thanks to O.J. became Stone's most ambitious, batshit insane project; and it all comes together to create what is, for lack of a better expression, a freaking masterpiece.

Oliver Stone: JFK

After the lukewarm reaction to The Doors, Oliver Stone needed to rejuvenate the quiescent angst that had been on display in his earlier films like Salvador and Born on the Fourth of July. Stone wanted to fashion a film – what he would call a "counter-myth" – about what he perceived as the conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy. Molding his screenplay in the style of Z and Rashomon, Stone created JFK; a procedural unlike any I've ever seen. Thanks to Stone's amazing ensemble cast (as Craig pointed out about a week ago in the Wall Street thread Stone is an underrated director with his actors, and reminds one of the way Altman always handled his large casts with ease) and the film's insanely kinetic aesthetic (once again shot by Robert Richardson, and edited by Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia), JFK is indeed another angry movie from Oliver Stone, and it's my favorite film from the controversial director.




There isn't enough space on the blog to talk every point of the film, so the gist of it is: New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), notorious for bringing corrupt Louisiana judges to justice, feels that something isn't right with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the subsequent arrest and murder of the so-called lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman). After reading the Warren Report, Garrison's investigation focuses primarily on the involvement of New Orleans businessman Clay Bertrand (Tommy Lee Jones in a great, smarmy role) in a conspiracy to attempt a coup d'etat with high-ranking politicians in Washington, including Lyndon Johnson.

This last point is what struck such a chord at the time of the film's production. Numerous newspapers were on the set of the film, reading the first draft of the screenplay, and writing reports about how Stone had gone off the deep end, essentially accusing Lyndon Johnson of having a hand in the murder of the president. Whether or not I agree with Stone's politics and conspiracy theories, I find myself riveted by the film every time I watch it. It's one of those rare films that has the ability to suck me into its story, into the investigation, and before I know it 40 minutes has passed. I intended only to watch specific parts of the film for this review (since I've seen the film at least 20 times), but as I was watching it I lost track of time, and before I knew it an hour had passed. That's the amazing thing about this film: here is what is essentially amounts to 206 minutes of people talking; searching for answers and relaying stories. It's uncanny in how the film maintains a level of suspense that is comparable to Alan J. Pakula's All the Presidents Men – another film that makes people talking (usually on the phone) suspenseful.

Upon the most recent viewing of JFK I noticed a few lines that really get to the heart of the film's visual and narrative theme: "You're a mouse fighting a gorilla" and "Dave's mind was a mess…". These two lines, the first spoken by David Ferry (Joe Pesci, in one of his craziest performances) and the second about Ferry are perfect encapsulations of what JFK's aesthetics and narrative are all about.

The first line brings us back to the Blakean themes we've seen in every Stone film aside from The Doors. Here it's the boyscout in Garrison as played by Costner (who is perfect in these clean-shaven, All-American boyscout type roles), who plays the District Attorney much in the same way he played Elliot Ness. However, Garrison is only like Ness prior to reading the Warren Report – an activity that acts as the catalyst for his Blakean progression from Elliot Ness-like Boy Scout to world weary whistleblower trying to bring down corruption in the government. It seemed like a natural progression most people made at the time as the idealism of Americana and 1950's Values were giving way to the counterculture; not only that, aside from the assassination of Kennedy other important leaders were dying – chaos reigned. It only seemed natural that people started to question their government and the world they inhabited, and that's what Garrison begins to do as he goes from a DA who took down nine corrupt New Orleans judges to a man trying to take down backroom political puppet masters. The idea of Garrison being a mouse that's fighting a gorilla is an apt metaphor for what the counterculture was experiencing by the time Nixon took office; in fact, you could change the spelling of the word and it would still be apt: they were all guerillas fighting their own little war against the establishment. Once again this idea of the squelched voice fighting a war you can't win fits nicely with the anger found in Stone's previous films (especially Born on the Fourth of July), and it shows an interesting progressing by Stone going from the more hopeful ending of July to the more frustrating ending of JFK where moral victories are no longer something to be valued.

The second line perfectly matches the aesthetic of the film: a mess of points-of-view visualized by a manic pace and kinetic editing – flashing back and forth between past and present and various recollections using grainy 16mm, shaky hand-held, and stock footage to give the film a faux-documentary feel. After experimenting with this style in The Doors, Stone and his cinematographer Richardson pull the trigger on what would define their aesthetic in the mid-90's with films like Natural Born Killers and Nixon, until it went overboard and became eye-rollingly awful in films like Any Given Sunday. The film's look definitely has its detractors, but I love it; I feel that it makes the film even more intense and interesting as all of these varying points-of-view swirl around the viewer in an array of styles. The aesthetic perfectly matches the feelings of the characters and the mood of America at the time, and I think it's one of the most ambitiously made American films of the 90's.

I've already mentioned that JFK is one of the most methodical procedurals I've ever seen; that the countless scenes of people simply talking and recounting stories and experiences makes the film as tense as any thriller or mystery. One moment in particular showcases what a masterpiece in editing JFK is: Garrison and his investigative team are discussing the history of Oswald, all while being cross-cut with Lucy (Laurie Metcalf) telling her colleagues what kind of information she dug up. Meanwhile we see photos of Oswald in Russia (it's actually Gary Oldman) flash up on the screen, that's cross-cut with black and white footage of Oswald with his family, and that's cross-cut with shots of someone's hands cutting out an image of Oswald that would appear on the cover of the infamous Life Magazine issue that apparently shows Oswald holding the rifle he killed Kennedy with (although Stone suspects it's Oswald's head pasted on someone else's body, based on the shadows in the picture). It's a long scene, but you hardly notice it because of the pacing and the editing (not to mention the sound editing, which is fantastic) and the way Stone and the actors brilliantly show that this is interesting information; edge-of-your-seat type entertainment – regardless whether or not you think it's all a bunch of crap – that reminded me of other great procedurals like the aforementioned All the Presidents Men. In JFK Stone makes conversations in offices, around dinner tables, and at restraints interesting; far more interesting than those events have any right to be.

It's hard to ignore the cultural impact JFK had on society at the time (it was brilliantly parodied on an episode of "Seinfeld") creating a buzz for conspiracy theories (a lot of crazies came out of the woodwork because of this movie); I would argue that "The X-Files" – even though it appealed to a totally different audience – wouldn't have resonated as much as it did if JFK hadn't made the idea of conspiracy theories somewhat mainstream. As mentioned earlier the film's style and narrative structure owes a great deal to the great 1969 Algerian film, Z. Stone has also been quoted as saying that he was interested in the plot structure of Rashomon and how it showed the same story through different lenses; however, Z is really the film you can see that had the most influence on Stone's film (it's why Stone titled the film JFK, making it one word, instead of adding the periods in between each letter so that it would look like initials) as both films deal with the assassination of a president, the conspiracy theories about the assassination, and the way different people relay their stories about the assassination. Perhaps one of the greatest things about JFK is that it reminded me of how brilliant Z is; both films play off of each other really well, even if Z's message was more immediate for its time (1969) and Stone's message was more the sound of a crazy man screaming on the corner of the street begging you to listen to him…a kind of wake-up call to the masses who have become too complacent (something that can definitely be associated with society in the 90's).

Oliver Stone would get locked in to the manic style of JFK with four of his next five films (Heaven and Earth being a nice breather between JFK and Natural Born Killers), but I don't think he would ever top what he did here with JFK. JFK was not just an aesthetic revelation for Stone, but it was also the vehicle for what is perhaps Costner's greatest performance (his near 40 minute long monologue at the end of the film is pretty amazing, and he would suffer a pretty big fall in the face of the public after this role), and it was the last time an Oliver Stone film from the ever-prolific era of his would be nominated for Best Picture of the year and losing favor with Hollywood (he's two films away from being seen as a complete nutjob); however, like a lot of his earlier work, JFK shows a filmmaker in complete control of his amazing ensemble cast, controversial narrative, and kinetic aesthetic. I think it's a masterpiece.

Oliver Stone: The Doors

I remember seeing tons of shows as a teenager where I would gladly be packed shoulder to shoulder with other sweaty music fans – packed like sardines – waiting for a band or musician to come on stage and give us a show. I was always adamant about seeing bands that did something different live than what they would do on their albums; after all, if I wanted to hear the same thing I would save my money and just listen to the album. Standing there for hours with complete strangers, swaying back and forth and sometime getting rowdy in mosh pits or circle pits, and emulating the antics of the band's frontman was all part of the experience. I'm fond of those memories; memories that are likely never to fade, and memories that always arise when I spin a particular album. One thing is always clear when I remember those times when I had the stamina to hop from venue to venue in Portland, OR to see a variety of bands: I was feeding off the energy of the band, and most specifically the frontman (aka the lead singer). This person was the avatar for a scene, a niche or subculture that we all sought to assimilate with our band t-shirts and hightop Converse (or Vans). These frontmen could single-handily make a band watchable; they were all energetic, they could all belt a good tune, and they all had an undeniable hypnotic quality about them. The band needed to be good, too, and I'm not shallow enough to say that I didn't enjoy watching people jam, but it was always the frontman that kept me going back whenever that band would come through town. Fans became acolytes to these kinds of icons, and it dawned on me while I was watching Oliver Stone's flawed biopic:  there may have been no greater – or more influential – frontman than Jim Morrison.

Oliver Stone's lazy biopic gets one thing right: it understands the aura and energy of Jim Morrison. The Doors is at its best when it acts more as a concert film than a biopic as Stone and his DP Robert Richardson film the concert scenes with the appropriate energy and wide shots so the viewer can get a sense of the mania involved in going to see a figure like Morrison play with his band. A lot of the concert scenes in the film reminded me of the fun of going to see some of my favorite bands as a teenager, and how everyone in attendance fed off each other's energy. The best example of this is the infamous final concert of the Morrison-led Doors where he supposedly exposed himself on stage (though numerous accounts claim it was just his finger). What people not realize about this concert – and Stone is helpful in pointing this out – is that it was a big deal for a band of the caliber of The Doors to play a show with no seating on the floor. This very well could have been the first show with a mosh pit as Morrison (Val Kilmer) – bearded and haggard – marches through the crowd in an insane conga line singing "Break on Through". It's one of the film's best scenes (thanks also to Kilmer's performance, but more on that later) and is a reminder of just how banal, claustrophobic, and awful the rest of the film is.

Despite what I've said about Morrison's influence and aura (and he was insanely influential for the kind of frontmen to the bands I listened to growing up…hardcore/metal/punk bands, to be specific) I really dislike The Doors. I think they're perhaps one of the most overrated bands in the history of rock and roll; however, you can't discount their influence on the genre, and specifically Morrison's influence. Perhaps that is why I found the film so incredibly tedious and boring when the actors (the aforementioned Kilmer playing Morrison; Kyle MacLachlan as Ray Manzarek; Frank Whaley as Robby Krieger, the man responsible for keeping The Doors myth alive; and Kevin Dillon as John Densmore, rounding out the band) aren't playing music. I think part of that is because Morrison was an aggravating and annoying person; a manchild who would grate on anyone's nerves. He constantly no-shows to recording sessions and live shows; and he famously began to get into witchcraft while he began to get more heavily involved in drugs and alcohol causing him to become even more unbearable as a person. So, why would I want to watch a film about this kind of person if I don't like the band at all? It's a question I kept coming back to as I watched The Doors, and every time I considered The Doors an utter failure, Kilmer would change my mind into thinking that the film was simply just a failure.

Kilmer's performance is one of the best of his career, and not simply because he looks like Morrison. This isn't merely an impersonation or mere aping; this performance is more like he's being possessed by the ghost of Morrison, and it's truly eerie to watch Kilmer sing these songs (he practiced for months getting every little nuance down, and making sure every inflection in his voice was like Morrison's) and take the form of Morrison in a way that it does truly feel like we're watching documentary footage at times. However, Kilmer's performance (the only memorable performance as the rest of the actors are wasted, especially Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson) isn't enough to save the odd pacing of the film which jumps around from bullet point to bullet point as if Stone knew that he wanted to hit all of the major points in The Doors mythology, but didn't want to fill in the blanks. Which boggles my mind because one watches a biopic to not just see a dramatization of famous events, but to see the little things that fill in the blanks of the subject being explicated. And unfortunately

The deification of Morrison begins early in the film as he drops out of films school, finds some musicians to jam with, creates a hit in "Light My Fire", and becomes the reluctant icon of the counterculture. It seems to happen that quickly as Stone rushes through these early parts of Morrison's career. His band, perhaps the one group of people that brought out the best in Morrison, begins to become marginalized. Morrison was one of the first frontman to a band that drew so much attention that people started to pay more attention to the frontman than to the band as a whole. This deification of course led to his infamous "Lizard King" phase, and his drug abuse and alcoholism as well as his dabbling in witchcraft which caused him to miss countless recording sessions and live performances; all of which are covered here by Stone who employs for the first time the aesthetic that he would be known for in the 90's. Stone uses hallucinogenic camera trickery for Morrison's famous trek into the desert with full-on Koyaanisqatsi like imagery. However, after about an hour Stone settles into a more classical aesthetic that we attribute to biopics, and it's an choice, too, because it becomes evident that the film was at least exiting and watchable with the unpredictability of the desert scenes, as opposed to the monotonous and repetitive scenes of Morrison stumbling around drunk and pissing people off with his immature antics. What we definitely don't get with The Doors is any kind of context to the enigmatic Morrison (I understand that Stone wanted to stay faithful to the Morrison mythology) or why he chose to leave film school and become a musician; or, for instance, how he ended up in France after being convicted in an American courtroom for indecent exposure. The film just skips around from major event to major event and it really just boils down to the fact that this film is not just a film for The Doors fans, but it's a film for fans of The Doors who want to see things through the eyes of Oliver Stone's fandom. It just makes for a paint-by-numbers biopic that is one of the only real failures of Stone's great run of films from 1986 – 1995.

Still, the live-show presence of Morrison as portrayed by Kilmer is something to behold (perhaps you can YouTube it?), and I don't want to end this review without giving credit where it is due: The Doors, and again Morrison specifically, were one of the first American bands to be something different live (their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show is famous for not bending to Standards and Practices demands to change a lyric, as well as being something radically different than what bands were doing with live performances at the time). In an era when you knew what you were getting when you saw a band or an artist live, The Doors were a shock – even to the counterculture that lapped up all of Morrison's "poetry". Morrison's improvisational skills and onstage antics would act as a template for countless bands that would follow. Prior to The Doors people would get stoned and space out to the sounds of their favorite band/artist, swaying back and forth, knowing exactly what that band/artist was going to do: the beats, the timing, when the lyrics were coming, etc. You basically paid to see what you could hear on a record. The Doors, however, were a completely different entity, and despite my initial comments about the band being the most overrated band of all time, it is amazing to think about the impact they had on the possibilities of what a live show could be. Think about the backlash Bob Dylan faced when he decided to change things up from his typical folk sound to the angrier and electrically charged sounds of Highway 61 Revisited. The same jolt is provided to the counterculture when Morrison breaks from the almost comatose, shaman-like chanting of his lyrics to a song, to uttering "fuck" over and over while twirling around on stage. This is why The Doors struck such a nerve because even the counterculture they were catering to weren't expecting the kind of shock to the system that Morrison provided.

There's a great scene where they clash with the stiffness of Ed Sullivan and his employees, and you can see how Morrison differed from the band when the producer of the show asked them to change a lyric from "Light My Fire" where the band sees it as simply changing "just one lyric", but Morrison sees it as changing the very thing they are. And Morrison punctuates the moment by not just saying the line, but shoving it right into Standards and Practices face by over enunciating the line into the camera (followed by a shot of him thrusting his hips). Later, after much turmoil in the band, Morrison hears "Light My Fire" on a TV commercial. Outraged at the fact that his bandmates would do this without consulting him he throws the TV across the room. Manzarek and Krieger see it as part of the bigger picture for the band, but Morrison sees it as nothing more than a whoring-out of their ethics. These were the scenes that interested me; however, we unfortunately get too many scenes of the same old, same old with Morrison getting high or drunk, and stumbling around like an idiot. It's amazing that anyone would want to be around this person, and I certainly didn't want to watch him – despite how good Kilmer's performance is – for two-plus hours.

It's a shame this film couldn't have been more. Perhaps I'm being a bit prickly because of my dislike for the music of The Doors. However, I couldn't help but think of better biopics about musicians who died too early; films like The Buddy Holly Story, or one of my favorite films a few years ago, Control, about the premature death of Ian Curtis (he was 23), a frontman to the band Joy Division who influenced the very bands I was speaking about in the opening of this review. But despite my reservations about the music of The Doors, Morrison is a great subject for a film, especially when you have an uncanny performance on your hands such as the one delivered here by Val Kilmer.

One does wonder, though, how different Stone's initial screenplay was. He bowed to the pressure put on him by the Morrison estate to make sure that Morrison and his longtime companion Pamela Courson came off smelling like roses; which apparently, depending on which Doors mythology you subscribe to, was definitely not the case and many believe that Morrison's cause of death ("heart failure") was perhaps caused by Courson, who died herself of similar "heart failure" three years later. One also wonders what this film would have looked like had it been made ten years earlier (the film was notorious for going through a hellish developmental process) when directors like Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, and Brian De Palma were attached to direct. However, much like Stone did with Wall Street and with Born on the Fourth of July he shows he has a knack for finding the right talent for the role. When the film was initially being shopped around the studios wanted Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, John Travolta (!), or Richard Gere (!!) to play Morrison. I can only think that Stone saw Kilmer's performance in the musical farce Top Secret! and knew he had found his man. So, kudos to Stone for once again finding the right leading man for his film; however, that doesn't make for the disastrous direction that is on display throughout most of the film; a film that is only saved by its lead performance and some wonderful concert footage shot by the great Robert Richardson. Stone can do better. And despite this botched attempt at a biopic, Stone would in fact redeem himself with his next film: his most (arguably) controversial and ambitious project to date.

Oliver Stone: Talk Radio and Born on the Fourth of July

Talk Radio is perhaps Oliver Stone's angriest film; an apt designation considering he teamed up with an even angrier man in playwright Eric Bogosian (who also stars as the lead). What they're angry at is more arbitrary than what Ron Kovic, the subject of Stone's 1989 hit film Born on the Fourth of July, is angry at. For Kovic the focus of that anger is clear: disillusionment and betrayal from those he trusted most (his government, his parents, American ideals); however, the anger directed by Barry, the subject of Stone's 1988 film Talk Radio, is more at society in general. Both films, though, have an angry director behind the camera; crystallizing his frustrations by using others' stories as source material. In Talk Radio it's the story of 'shock jock' (before Howard Stern popularized such a term) Barry (played by Bogosian who also co-wrote the play the film is based on which is also based on a book about Alan Berg, a radio host from Denver who was murdered in 1984…whew, did you get all that?) who has a popular late night talk show that caters to all kind of right-wing nutjobs and conspiracy theorists, not to mention the usual talk radio listener who seems to only exist to continuously irk the radio host with their clichéd philosophies on life. In Born on the Fourth of July it's Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), a once baby-faced Midwestern high school wrestler who dreamt of making his mark in the Marines the way his father and grandfather (not to mention John Wayne in all of those WWII movies) did. Both films have similar themes about people being disillusioned with the culture that surrounds them, and both films have an angry undercurrent running through them.




After the pretty benign (thematically speaking) Wall Street it's interesting to see the fire back in the belly of Stone with 1988's Talk Radio. The film is a tightly shot (Stone once again uses DP Robert Richardson) 110 minutes where it's almost as if we're listening to Barry's radio show and getting all wound-up while Barry slaloms his way through asinine call after asinine call. It's an intense, claustrophobic movie experience that once again shows a filmmaker in Stone who doesn't get in the way of his actors.

The film essentially centers around Barry and one night after having the promise national syndication pulled from him because of his unwillingness to conform to the rules set by the suits (his boss is played by Alec Baldwin). We're given some context as to why Barry is the way he is, and what makes him the kind of radio host that he is (read: why he's such a loud-mouthed prick), but that's really the most interesting part of the film; it's the one part that Stone obviously felt he needed to add to get the film out of the radio station and feeling like a film rather than a filmed play. But the context is pretty unnecessary in the grand scheme of the film because we don't really care why Barry is such a prick, we're more concerned about being entertained by his rants.

The aesthetic really isn't anything more than a filmed play, though, but that's alright because when in the studio Richardson's camera swirls around Bogosian as he delivers his lines with a ferocity and conviction that exudes the appropriate aura for the kind of self-righteous, overtalker Barry is. There's something incredibly interesting and intriguing about being holed-up with Barry in his bunker as many moments (especially when Barry invites a stoned-out caller onto the show, much to the behest of his boss and screener), and what's even more surprising is that I didn't notice being holed-up; I never enclosed or suffocated by the aesthetic of the film, and much credit must be given to Bogosian for always keeping Barry an interesting character, but a lot of credit must also be given to Stone and Richardson for keeping the camera fluid – and not just by shaking it and getting all hand-held or zoom-happy, but the camera ushers the viewer through the studio and moves to the beats of Barry's cadence. It's a subtle thing because our focus is always on Barry, but when you shake yourself from the trance you notice that camera is almost always moving, keeping things from becoming stale without drawing attention to it.

Barry is what I imagine Bud Fox, the character from Wall Street, would be at an older age: grown up and a little wiser to the world that he so desperately wanted to tackle with vim, but was slapped with reality when his hero, Gordon Gekko, pulled the curtain back and showed him how life as a major player on Wall Street really works. Barry seems like all of the Stone characters we've talked about so far: both green and wide-eyed (think Platoon or Wall Street), and cemented in their jaded philosophies about how the world works (Salvador), but an event makes them re-examine their outlook on life. Since we enter the film with the already-jaded Barry we don't see the Blakean progression of innocence to experience the way we do with Platoon and Wall Street, but we do see a bit of a change to a hard-assed purveyor of truth a la the photojournalist played by James Woods in Salvador. And so far this seems to be the underlying theme with all of Stone's films, and most prominently displayed in Stone's follow up to Talk Radio, 1989's Born on the Fourth of July.

-------------------------------

Born on the Fourth of July is the second film of Stone's unofficial "Vietnam trilogy", and is a lot more subjective and angry than the first installment, Platoon. Where Stone's popular, Oscar winning war film was more of a anecdotal retelling (with some melodrama mixed in with the Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe characters) of Stone's own experiences during the war, Born on the Fourth of July – based on the bestselling book by Ron Kovic – is a film with a wider scope and more poignant and heartbreaking conclusion considering the journey we follow Ron Kovic on. It was one of Stone's most successful films at the box office and earned him a bevy of Oscar nominations; it also cemented Tom Cruise as a legitimate actor who could handle the load of being the lead of a heavily dramatic film.

Born on the Fourth of July is definitely remembered for its lead performance in the same way Wall Street is: you have suave, Hollywood leading men playing against type. Here, Tom Cruise is perfect in embodying everything about the Blakean prototype Stone has been so fascinated with in his prior films. As the film begins with John Williams' beautiful score we see kids running through the woods playing war. The theme for the film is being stated clearly enough within a matter of seconds: we're going to see how one looks at war through an idealized lens, but comes back more jaded at those who are blind to what war us really like. The opening is an interesting moment, too, in how it reminded me of Platoon: Stone wonderfully juxtaposes the woods of the opening of this film – with its beams of sunlight bursting through the trees – to the claustrophobic and confusing jungles of Vietnam in Platoon. This idea of playing war in the backyard was exactly why Stone wanted to make Platoon. Stone wanted to get rid of the misconceptions about war as most boys thought it based upon John Wayne films. We see this ideal and this mentality in young Ron growing up in the 50's where parades, flag-waving, baseball games, ice cream socials, and enthusiastic American pride was at its height following WWII, and with Kovic's source material Stone found something angry and pointed to attach his Vietnam experience to; creating a film with a much wider scope than Platoon, and far more effective, too.

The opening borders on tongue-in-cheek; a parody of a "simpler" time, meant to drive the point home further once we see the adult Ron come back in his wheelchair. It's an odd mix: the beginning has the ironic veneer of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, and the rest of the film has the seething anger boiling beneath a la Hal Ashby's Coming Home. And even though the film doesn't work as a whole, the opening 30 minutes and the final hour where Ron comes back home are some of the most powerful moments Stone has ever filmed.

Kovic's story is an interesting, if not familiar, one: young man growing up wants to emulate those that fought before him, so he enlists in the Marines and heads off to Vietnam. Once there the horrors of war are a shock to someone who thought it was going to be as exciting and visceral as playing guns in the backyard. Confusion reigns in Vietnam and Kovic feels that he is to blame for shooting a fellow soldier. Shortly after Kovic is shot and loses feeling beneath his waste. Now obviously this is an over-simplification of Kovic's story (which is a powerful one), but I only over-simplify to show that the arc of the film's narrative is rather ordinary, and that's what makes it so great because this could have been just "another" movie about Vietnam directed by a one-not director; however, along with Cruise's performance, Stone makes the film so much more than what it appears to be on paper.

Despite a soggy middle where Kovic retreats to Mexico for booze and hookers – kind of a Land of Misfit Toys for Vietnam vets – the film remains a powerful experience thanks in large part to Cruise's performance as Kovic. At this point in his career Cruise had really only been in two "dramatic" roles: Rain Man and The Color of Money. Both of those films were flawed at best, and there was nothing to really write home about in regards to Cruise's performance. Prior to those roles Cruise was a college kid throwing a party while his parents away, a cocky bartender, and a fighter pilot. There was no doubt he was a huge movie star and could do whatever he wanted.

Unlike the studio's need to press Stone into casting an actor he didn't want like in Wall Street (Stone, obviously, won that battle) there seemed to be no backlash with Stone wanting to cast Tom Cruise as Kovic. It was about this time that Cruise was starting to mature as an actor and seemed the perfect fit for the idealistic Kovic that opens the film, the soul-searching Kovic of the middle of the film, and the pissed off Kovic at the end of the film. Cruise was certainly playing against type, and in the modern era of the blockbuster film it may be the first example of a huge star doing a very serious dramatic turn (in the vein of what Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler would do nearly two decades later). Cruise's performance is layered, something not previously seen from the actor whose prior idea of being dramatic was simply to yell a lot (like in Rain Man), but here as Ron Kovic he does a lot non-verbally, and makes the performance resonate with the viewer long after the film is over. Perhaps the greatest compliment to Cruise is that he makes Kovic a person one wants to learn more about once the film is over. I remember when I was about 13 I went to the library after seeing this movie so that I could check out Kovic's book and learn more about him. A lot of that was because of Cruise's performance and how he portrayed Kovic as the kind of person you may have known that was deeply affected by a horrible experience.

It's not just the theme of innocence to experience and Cruise's perfect encapsulation of that theme, but it's the way the Kovic's story really seems to echo Stone's own experience. Both came from a place of American Conservatism where young men went into the war with a rah rah attitude that was drummed up by countless war films and war stories from parents and grandparents. However, once soldiers started returning from home – soldiers whose ideals and preconceived notions about war were completely destroyed once they stepped foot in Vietnam – with no limbs and jaded attitudes about the government a new kind of Americanism was being drummed up, and Kovac was at the center of that, and it's clear that Stone wanted to attach his experience to Kovic's because Kovic was able to articulate his anger at the war better than Stone could. The two together have made one of the best anti-war films.

Both Talk Radio and Born on the Fourth of July show an angrier Oliver Stone; however, he would put that anger on the back burner for his next film: a generic biopic that (surprise, surprise) contains a great lead performance.

Oliver Stone: Wall Street

Taking a break from traditional war zones, Oliver Stone decided to move from the jungles of El Salvador and Vietnam to the jungle of Wall Street. The major difference is that Stone isn't as serious here as he was with his previous movies Salvador and Platoon. There's something charmingly campy about Stone's tale of 80's excess and greed in Wall Street. Most of what makes it work is the performance of Michael Douglas – a star at the time not known for these kinds of roles – and Charlie Sheen, who once again plays the wide-eyed optimist who gradually becomes more and more jaded, just like his character Chris in Platoon. The most interesting thing, though, about Wall Street is that how it shows Stone as a filmmaker stretching his legs a little bit, and showing the ability to make a different kind of picture. It would have been easy for Stone to follow up his Oscar-winning Platoon with another message movie about the war, but instead the oft-angry Stone decided to make a statement about the ridiculous ethos of the 80's, and how people in skyscrapers buying and selling companies like they're nothing are just as "lost" as the people in platoons who wandered through the jungles of Vietnam. Wall Street isn't nearly as serious as Stone's previous two films, but there's an undercurrent of anger at the Me Generation running through the campiness of the story.




The story concerns Bud Fox (Sheen) who plays an eager stockbroker who is always looking to bag the big account. He has a tradition of pestering major player Gordon Gekko (Douglas) every day in hopes that Gecko will take five minutes out of his busy schedule to hear his pitches on some ideas for interesting investment opportunities. Fox rehearses his speech daily, and when the time comes to meet with Gecko he is slapped with the reality of the situation that his ideas are nothing new to a guy like Gekko. And so Bud must resort to giving inside information about an airline his Dad (played by Martin Sheen) works for; setting off a chain of events that leads to Bud becoming everything he hoped to be as works for Gordon.

The problem with Bud's plan is that he is too naïve to realize that Gordon is a man who has no need for someone like him, and even though Bud represents everything wrong with the 80's (an era of coveting and assimilation) you kind of feel sorry for him because his ambition gets the best of him, and he's just too stupid to realize that he's out of his league hanging out among Gekko's circle of friends. The plot of the film unfolds in a rather conventional manner, but that's kind of the charm of the film as Stone breezes through the plot so that he can focus on the characters. The aesthetics (this film is competently shot by Stone stalwart Robert Richardson) act as more of a supporting character, an appropriate backdrop showing what these characters value and covet.

Stone uses some interesting editing techniques here to show the maddening pace of the profession (an always-moving camera and breaking up the screen into quadrants during a scene where Bud begins spreading the word about his Dad's company) giving the film the appropriate amount of energy and sense of urgency that these character expend on a daily basis; and he again, much like he did in Platoon and would do in his follow up film Talk Radio, gets out of the way for the most part and lets his actors do their thing, and they are more than up to the task of matching the kind of energy Stone is going for. The aesthetic doesn't become the star, but rather, it enhances what his stars are doing and saying, and because of that the audience becomes more interested in what is unfolding on screen. Stone understood in his earlier films that you didn't have to sex-up scene after scene of people talking with unnecessary aesthetic touches (again, think of when characters talk in movies like JFK or Nixon) and he just leaves it all on the screen knowing that his actors can make the dialogue interesting. The supporting cast is strong here: John C. McGinley (a Stone favorite) is great as the smarmy, cocky Marvin, a co-worker of Bud's; Hal Holbrook is serviceable as the veteran stockbroker who has made a career (and has a corner office) by playing it safe with people's money, and warns Bud about some of his practices, showing that he's a dinosaur in the land of the Me Generation; Daryl Hannah is Darien Taylor, the sexy, materialistic blond who is in love with Bud for all the wrong reasons; Martin Sheen, Terrence Stamp, and James Spader round out the cast as important moral compasses that swirl around the film's two stars: Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas.

Much like his character, Chris, in Platoon, Charlie Sheen plays Bud Fox with same kind of appropriate naiveté that shows a greenhorn who has no idea what he's getting himself into. Either this shows how good Sheen was at playing this character, or these were merely the limitations of Sheen's acting, which is lifeless to say the least. Stone saw how he could use Sheen's limitations, his stiffness, to his advantage with the characters of Chris and Bud Fox, and wanted to use Sheen from the onset as opposed to the studio's desire to cast Tom Cruise as Bud Fox. Sheen's "stiffness", as Stone called it, is perfect for the role as we follow Bud's maturation much like we did Chris' and we begin to see a boy grow up into a cynical player of the "game" who really has no identity because all he's ever done is ape the feelings and attitudes of those surrounding him. In Platoon we saw Sheen play Chris as that wide-eyed, rah rah type who was gung-ho for the war and couldn't wait to fight for his country; however, as he started sharing in experiences with the more experiences veterans he began to take on their personalities and their feelings on the war. So too does Bud Fox model himself after others: as a stockbroker he looks up to the aforementioned veteran of his office played Holbrook, and when he's ready to become a mover and shaker, a big player, he looks up to Gordon Gekko, and we begin to see Bud Fox become Gordon Gekko 2.0 as he really doesn't make any kind of name for himself; he merely assimilates everything about the greed culture, the Me Generation, that he sees in Gordon and reads in magazines. I think this is the most fascinating bit of commentary about Stone's film; a film that I don't think is trying to be anything more than what you see on the screen: an entertaining, almost Capra-esque fish-out-of-water movie (Stone likened it to Pilgrim's Progress), that is entertainment with an underlying message.

The real star of the film, obviously, is Michael Douglas as Gekko. It was a big deal at the time for Douglas to play such a heelish role as he had really only been a suave action star in films like Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile. The studio initially wanted Richard Gere or Warren Beatty to play Gekko, warning Stone that Douglass was more of a producer than an actor. But Stone saw something in Douglas and decided to cast him as the evil, greedy Gekko. Douglas researched the life of T. Boone Pickens to prepare for the role, and created a character that is one of the memorable of all of 1980's film. His famous speech in front of a group of share-holders where he says "greed is good" perhaps sealed the Oscar for him, and guaranteed him all kinds of roles for the future that definitely played against the type he was known for in the early 80's. Douglas plays the role with the kind of confidence and bravado needed for a role like this; he not only looks the part, but he has an aura about him that is absolutely right for Gekko. Douglas' nuances as Gekko are what make the role memorable: side glances to other characters that show he's one step ahead of Bud, and that Bud is falling right into his trap; a smirk that says a lot more than a simple wrinkle of the lips; and ferocity that shows that this man means business…perhaps a bit of the producer he was coming out in his performance. It's one of the performances of the decade, and like many people say when they look back upon performances with the hindsight of knowing who the studio initially wanted, one can easily say that it is hard to imagine anyone else playing Gekko.

Some detractors of the film claim that the film isn't serious enough. Jonthan Rosenbaum claimed that "[T]he sensibility of this movie is so adolescent that it's hard to take it as seriously as the filmmakers intend us to." I have to disagree with the esteemed Mr. Rosenbaum; you see, I don't think Stone intends for the film to be serious at all. Sure, the film has a message to it in the same way Frank Capra films had a message, but I don't think it's meant to be an indictment of the times in the same way something like Natural Born Killers would be. The film has an ease to it, and the tone doesn't strike me as super-serious in the same way the tone of something like Born on the Fourth of July or Platoon does, and I think the performances are just campy enough to make the film more of an example of how silly these Generation Me-ers were more than anything.

Revisiting the film recently I was struck by how entertained I was by the film. It's as good and entertaining a two hour film Stone has ever made. Sure, it's pretty benign, but I don't think Stone intended for this film to have the same kind of bite as his earlier films (or some of the films he would follow with this), and I think that had he taken this approach to some of his later films his fall might not have been so great. Wall Street shows a different kind of Oliver Stone, a filmmaker who doesn't always need to make a heavy-handed message film or be super-serious, but could make a Capra-esque film with a little more of an edge to it. Sure, the film follows a rather cliché plot structure and has an all-too-familiar story thread, but the performances – especially Douglas' – and the confident, Blakeian tone of innocence to experience make it one of the most entertaining films of Stone's career. Wall Street remains one of my favorite of Stone's films.