Oliver Stone Rewrites History - Again
By ANDREW GOLDMAN
November 22, 2012
"Come on, that's such a canard, you know that," Oliver Stone said. "
'The Greatest Generation?' That was the biggest publishing hoax of
all. It's to sell books." This seemingly sacrosanct term was coined
by Tom Brokaw for his 1998 book of the same title, in which he
recounted the lives of ordinary, World War II-era Americans. "I was
in Vietnam with the Greatest Generation. They were master sergeants,
generals, colonels. They had arrogance beyond belief. The hubris that
allowed Henry Kissinger to say North Vietnam is a fourth-rate power
we will break. The hubris of that!"
We were discussing Stone's latest project, a 10-part Showtime series
and a 750-page companion volume called "The Untold History of the
United States," which begins with World War I and ends with the first
Obama administration. It's an Oliver Stone version of a History
Channel documentary, one guaranteed to raise the ires of both left
and right and where all roads lead to Vietnam. From where Stone sits,
World War II begot the cold war, which landed us in Vietnam, a
manifestation of American imperialism, which led inexorably to our
current battle in Afghanistan. We have, Stone says, been sold a fairy
tale masquerading as history, and it is so blinding it may ultimately
undo us. "You have to understand what it was like to be a Roman
empire and to find some barbarian tribe riding into Rome in 476
A.D.," Stone said. "It's quite a shock. And that's what will happen
to us unless we change our attitude about what our role in the world
is. Every story out of most newspapers is 'the Americans think this,
the administration thinks this.' It's always about our controlling
the pieces on the chessboard. I think what the Arabs have shown us is
that we don't control the chess pieces. And this is a shock to many
people. But it's definitely in 'The Greatest Generation.' And it's in
Spielberg's World War II film, and it's in Ridley Scott's 'Black Hawk
Down.' These are wonderful-looking films, but the message is
perverted."
It was a late September morning, and Stone was sitting on the terrace
of his hotel suite in St. Sebastián, Spain, where his latest film,
"Savages," was being screened as part of the city's 60-year-old film
festival. The sun was peeking through some late-morning clouds,
glinting off the river below, and Stone shielded his eyes with a pair
of sunglasses that could have been part of Kevin Costner's wardrobe
in "JFK." At a news conference he gave the day before, he suggested
that the former Spanish president José María Aznar should be tried at
The Hague on war-crimes charges for his participation in Bush's
Coalition of the Willing during the Iraq War. The remark presumably
only enhanced his status in St. Sebastián, where he was presented
with the Donostia, the festival's lifetime achievement award. Before
the premiere of "Savages," Stone walked the red carpet with John
Travolta and Benicio Del Toro, waiting, a bit impatiently, as
Travolta, Bill Clinton-like, shook the hand of every fan reaching out
to him from behind the barriers, kissed old ladies and posed for
innumerable cellphone pictures; Stone shook some hands, too, but
demurred when asked to kiss a small dog. "Allergies," he explained,
pointing to his nose.
"Savages," based on a popular 2010 novel by Don Winslow about a
couple of boutique marijuana growers who are drawn into battle with a
brutal Mexican drug cartel, covers terrain that is near to Stone's
heart. To promote the film, he appeared on the cover of High Times,
puffing on a thick joint. I mentioned to Stone that the reporter who
interviewed him for Playboy in 1987 later wrote that the drunkest
he'd ever gotten was with Stone, in Southampton, where Stone was
filming the beach house scene in "Wall Street." The reporter
remembers several bottles of bourbon, and then little else until he
woke the next morning, soaking wet. He'd passed out on the hotel lawn
and was roused when the sprinklers started up. Stone chuckled. "That
is funny," he said. "Because we've all had moments on lawns where we
passed out. One time I was in the Bel-Air Hotel. I woke up in the
bushes, and I couldn't find my way back. And my new wife was waiting.
It was kind of a honeymoon. I remember stumbling in and her face when
she saw me." Was the look on her face one of horror? I asked. "Well,
it was like she was in for something with the marriage here," he
said. This was his first wife, Najwa Sarkis, he clarified (he has
been married to Sun-jung Jung, his third wife, since 1996).
But Stone isn't a kid anymore. He's 66, sometimes wears hearing aids
and can't shake off hangovers the way he used to. ("Two vodkas or two
tequilas and a few glasses of wine, that's the edge for me," he
said.) It has been more than 25 years since his greatest critical and
commercial success, "Platoon," an autobiographical retelling of his
Vietnam experience, which won best director and best picture and
harvested almost $150 million at the domestic box office. And now
he's at the age where he's considering his legacy. "A lot of people
when they get older they write autobiographies or memoirs," he said.
"But my priority would be to ask, What did the times I lived through
mean? And did I understand them?"
Stone modeled his new series on the landmark 1973-74 BBC series "The
World at War," which, at 26 episodes, is considered as exhaustive and
authoritative a study of World War II as could be offered on
television. Stone's "Untold History" jams almost 75 years of American
history into just 10 hours, so that may kill the exhaustive angle,
but Stone is certainly hoping for the authoritative bit. "This," he
pronounced, "is truly the meaning of these events."
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/oliver-stone-rewrites-history-again.html
_______________________________________________
Please be sure to include a URL to the article. Reply to the sender with a
"Thank you" if you like this post.
_______________________________________________
Medianews mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
