Oliver Stone: The Stone Age

In summing up the work of Oliver Stone, let me cite two highly autobiographical chunks of dialogue he has written for characters over the years. The first comes from the street-smart cop played by Mickey Rourke in Year of the Dragon, who tells his jaded colleagues: "I give a shit, and I'm going to make you people give a shit." This is the Stone credo in a nutshell: This is a man who gives a shit and who is going to make other people give a shit, even if they don't give a shit about the things he gives a shit about, or think that he's full of shit, or that he is a shit, or think that the things he gives a shit about are a load of shit.

The other illuminating passage comes from the mouth of Hal Holbrook, who plays a dignified old stockbroker in Wall Street (one assumes the character is based on Stone's deceased father, a stockbroker to whom both Wall Street and Salvador are dedicated). At the very end of the movie, just as Charlie Sheen is about to be nailed by the feds for insider trading, Holbrook wraps his arm around the youthful sleazeball and says: "Man looks in the abyss. There's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss."

Actually, man looks in the abyss and Oliver Stone is staring back at him. And that's what keeps him out of the abyss.

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Joe Queenan wrote "Clerical Errors" for our July issue

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