~*~Oliver Stone: A King~*~
Here you'll find a lot on the KING of directing!!
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Unlike the hordes of young men who sought refuge in the nation's
universities in order to escape the draft, Oliver Stone dropped out of
Yale and enlisted to serve in Vietnam. He worked first as a teacher and
then as a combat soldier, and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple
Heart. Like many who survived Vietnam, Stone hasn't let it go without a
lot of therapy, which in his case translates to big-budget pictures
depicting the war and its aftermath. He studied film at N.Y.U. under
Martin Scorsese and began his film career as a screenwriter. He wrote
the scripts for Year of the Dragon and Scarface, and he earned an Oscar
for his screenplay for Midnight Express, in 1978.
Stone's 1986 release, Salvador, was the first of what would become his
signature directorial subject--the political picture. Platoon, released
that same year, provided a personal account of a war the country had
tried hard to forget. The success of the film (Stone earned his first
Academy Award for directing) helped to focus attention back on the war
and its veterans. Several other well-received films followed, including
the nasty, "greed is good" flick Wall Street, and a somber Tom Cruise
film, Born on the Fourth of July, for which Stone received his second
Best Director Academy Award. The Doors was D.O.A., despite Val Kilmer's
brilliant portrayal of Jim Morrison.
All hell broke loose with the release of JFK. The film revolved around
Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner), the New Orleans D.A. who
believed there was a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and a cover-up
that stretched to the highest levels of government. The film not only
compelled Congress to open previously sealed files on the shooting, but
it rekindled the country's interest in the Kennedy case and the events
surrounding it. The overblown Heaven and Earth (another Vietnam picture)
received a mixed response, as did an ultra-violent "satire," Natural
Born Killers, but with 1995's Nixon, Stone offered a complex and
sensitive portrait of the rise and fall of the beleaguered former
president. Proving he has a sense of humor about his reputation for
being a fervent conspiracy theorist, Stone appeared as himself in Ivan
Reitman's mistaken-identity comedy, Dave, to advance his hypothesis that
the president is an imposter. The year 1997 witnessed the release of
Stone's pulpy U-Turn, a film that followed antihero Sean
Penn's accidental visit to a hick town in Arizona; the year
also marked the release of Stone's autobiographical novel, A Child's
Night Dream.
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~*~His Films~*~
Seizure (1974)
The Hand (1981)
Salvador (1986)
Platoon (1986)
Wallstreet (1987)
Talk Radio (1988)
Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
JFK (1991)
The Doors (1991)
Heaven and Earth (1993)
Natural Born Killers (1994)
Nixon (1995)
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