Oliver Stone: Stoned Again

Q: On the issue of historical responsibility, you've pointed out that directors Bob Zemeckis in Forrest Gump and Ron Howard in Apollo 13 have not exactly met theirs. What disturbs you about those films?

A: I like Ron Howard and Bob Zemeckis, they're really good guys. I don't want to make any sub-headlines here. Gump was brilliantly done, but I do fault the historical message. It was an avoidance message. An avoidance of our past. It's brilliantly conceived, but it bothers me, the moral essence of it. There was no responsibility for Vietnam, and, also, Vietnam was rendered in a very pictorial, romantic way, as a baptism by fire for poor Forrest. Apollo 13 was very well done, but again, at its essence it was a blind celebration of America. There was no critical standard applied to American consciousness. It works at the box office, but what are the moral consequences of that? These directors make a lot of money, but they are promoting, especially Apollo 13, a surefire brand of patriotism that I don't think is correct. We have to move beyond that to a higher consciousness to save this planet.

Q: At the Academy Awards, gay protesters yelled "Shame, shame" at you because of how you portrayed gays in JFK. Do such protests annoy you?

A: They said the homosexuality was gratuitous, but it was not gratuitous. And I got the same thing again with Larry Flynt, from women against pornography. By now I would imagine that there are very few people left who can go see my movies. [Laughs] I need a new generation.

Q: Did you go after Marlon Brando to play the mysterious character Donald Sutherland ended up playing in JFK?

A: Yeah. He first called me because he liked Platoon. He wanted to meet me. I came to his house, but he wouldn't talk there--he felt the government was picking up the airwaves. So I had to follow him in his car down into this canyon next to his house. He was bare-foot and he walked over to some bushes and he sat there, and I had to sit in the bushes with him. We started to talk and people would walk by in this park and they must have looked over at the two of us in the bushes and wondered, Who is this guy, is he crazy?

Q: Joe Pesci, who gave such a memorable performance as David Ferrie, one of the gay characters in JFK, said he would never work with you again. "He's a terrific director," he said, "but..."

A: "...he's a piece of shit as a person." I was sad to see that.

Q: He said you beat up your crew and actors. Does it hurt you to hear this?

A: Yeah, sure. I like Joe, he's a good guy, I enjoyed working with him. I think I got a great performance from him.

Q: Did he call you to deny saying what he said?

A: No, he wrote me a note of apology for saying it publicly. Joe's a strange guy. In his own way he probably felt threatened, but I didn't pick up on it. You know who else [bad-mouthed] me recently, out of the blue? Gore Vidal was all over the goddamn newspapers saying he hated my work and that he had blown me off when I tried to get him to do Alexander the Great for me, which was bullshit. I was shocked to see that, because we had been at a private party, so somebody leaked it. It might have been Gore. He said I had no talent at all and that he didn't want to work with me. It was an embarrassing, violent, angry, aggressive quote. I've very rarely seen that degree of hostility. I've known Gore Vidal for years, off and on. When he offered to write _Alexander the Great _for me in 1990 at his villa in Ravello, Italy, I turned his ultra-homoerotic suggestions down. It's festered for years.

Artists are very jealous, angry people. They're the most envious people in the world. I don't like to hang out with them. When some new fad happens, they all run in that direction like sheep off a cliff. Most of them don't stand for anything. Most of them are whores. Joe Pesci, Gore Vidal--their opinion is their opinion. Gore has never written a good movie. He's at best a fair novelist. So he's probably jealous. He wants the power of imagination that my films have had on history, and there's an envy, perhaps, because he views himself as having failed in that historical mission. His hatred may be based on the fact that he hates himself in some way. Personally I don't think he knows me at all. Joe Pesci doesn't really know me. He probably had an image in his mind of: "Fucking director, he's making me do this fucking faggot, I hate fucking faggots. I am not a faggot. And all this fucking guy wants me to do is blow this fucking sleazy faggot. I've got to wear this fucking hairpiece and I feel like a piece of shit." I called him up a year or two later and asked him to play Hoover in Nixon. [As Pesci] "All you want me to do is suck somebody's fucking dick!" So I'm tying in, in some fucking way, to his fucking image of some fucking faggot in New Jersey that he hates right from the age of 11! [Laughing]

Q: You've been interested in another victim of assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. What are your thoughts on that murder?

A: I'm probably going to cut my own throat, but I know a lot about the case. I just met recently with James Earl Ray. We approached the King people three years ago about a movie we wanted to do called Memphis.

Q: I heard you wanted to use Cuba Gooding Jr. long before he won his Oscar.

A: Yeah, how'd you know that? We talked to Cuba before he was famous, but we couldn't get financing for it. We didn't have a script, either. I turned the project over to my Nixon cowriters, and they just didn't solve it. It's in redevelopment now with Warners.

Q: Primetime Live did a story indicating King's assassination might be linked to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

A: I can't say that, because Jack Valenti will kill me. Johnson was a bastard, man. The King thing may have come from the top. I think it had to. Because I don't think military people, who I believe are involved, would do something of that nature unless they had a hierarchical OK.

Q: Think your future includes more political films or do you worry about being attacked or burning out?

A: I was at dinner the other night with some of the older denizens of Hollywood and I had a wonderful moment with Jeanne Martin [Dean Martin's second wife]. She's a tough old dame, not intimidated by anybody She was telling me her perceptions of Dean's self-destructiveness. She said to me, "Don't do that. You've still got another 10 or 20 years. You've got to do like John Ford, you've got to go the distance. You can't feel sorry for yourself now." She read some stuff about me and she said, "Because they are pissing on you, don't hurt yourself as a result of it. Don't destroy yourself. You've got to make Part Two of your life."

Q: Do you feel you are self-destructive?

A: Sure. Haven't you seen that yet? Maybe you don't because you're seeing me in a productive place, working. But I've had a strong self-destructive streak my whole life. Going to Vietnam was very much that--and it continued in many ways: self-flagellation, destroying my confidence in myself. In the weirdest way, I've backed into this position. [Laughs] I know I project confidence, perhaps because I didn't have it when I was young.

Q: Your self-doubt is surprising.

A: The worst thing that can happen to a filmmaker is to have doubt. Filmmakers need to feel the wind behind them. You have to be a pirate ship captain. Filmmaking is like hitting different ports. We don't belong to any flag. And you need confidence to do that. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm losing it.

Q: One of the sharpest criticisms against you is that you portray women one-dimensionally in your films.

A: I disagree. Heaven & Earth has flaws, like every other film that I've made, but I think it's one of the most beautiful films that I've done. It makes me cry. I don't know why the critics got on that film so badly. It really deserves some notice. Not only was I white doing an Asian experience, but I was also a male doing a female experience. A lot of angry feminists didn't give it a chance. I've worked with women all through my career. I worked with Joan Allen on Nixon. I love Juliette Lewis's performance in Natural Born Killers. Sissy Spacek as Elizabeth Garrison delivered what I asked, because it was a character who I had met and knew a little bit about. And I like Kathleen Quinlan in The Doors, and Meg Ryan got some decent notices.

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