Stoned
When I dared to dread Oliver Stone making a 9/11 movie, I got a generous dose of crap from various of my friends from the left, notably James Wolcott. But here’s another friend from the left who shares my view of Stone, and so I will gleefully quote David Weinberger:
At least Alexander exposes Oliver Stone for what he is: A wildly incompetent director whose subject matter has led us to excuse his embarrassingly bad productions. Find a movie of his — I’ve seen most, but not all, of them — that doesn’t have a cliche-filled script, black-and-white characters, camera-work that needlessly calls attention to itself, actors pushed into career-damaging performances, and self-righteous, unsympathetic, simple-minded political stances.
Tags: Culture
August 9th, 2005 at 8:16 am
Salvador and Platoon. David Weinberger exposes mostly his lack of taste in movies. I have not seen Alexander and do not intend to. The Doors was tedious at best. JFK took a very clear bias and made the argument brilliantly. Do I think that it the argument that takes the day, no; but that is not the point. Salvador is an excellent movie and one everyone should watch now that one of the actors in the real Salvador is not head of Homeland Security.
Platoon took me a number of years to get around to. I was not really very excited to see a movie about Viet Nam; I saw the real war. I was not in the Delta for very long and never in Saigon, so it was a different War than I saw in the Central Highlands. Yet when I finally gave in, it was very much the War I was in. The argument transcended the jungle setting. The futility of the exercise and the conflict between the pro-war and the I just want to get home alive camps was perfectly portrayed. Innocence caught in a larger struggle, that was Viet Nam in-country and at home.
You see in a movie, you have about two hours to tell a story, make an argument. Even in a movie like “Trouble with Mary” the argument is this is funny stuff. Full rich characters are important only if that tells the story or makes the argument.
In Platoon and Salvador there are no black and white main characters.
If you have not seen these movies, you should. I did not care for Fourth of July or Heaven and Earth. I think that it still to soon to really tell the story of Viet Nam at Home as it is still being written. We still live in the long shadow of Viet Nam and the good literature will be written by a generation that looks back, but at least Stone tried. Platoon is the best movie to date about Viet Nam. Apocalypse Now was not about Viet Nam but about the natural corruption of War. Full Metal Jacket, my second best Viet Nam movie was more about process. The recreation of Da Nang and Hue was absolutely stunning, and I was there for the real Tet. The movie was about the conflict of training people to kill and then expecting them to detach themselves from the process.
So give Stone a break. In our culture Art always has to find a way to pay for itself. What did you expect from a movie with Colin Farrell in it. Stone with 911 can make a conspiracy movie or a docu-drama, but lets hope he makes a movie that shows why 911 had the effect that it did. Ironically Stone is the logical Director for the movie he has visited all the elements already. Wall Street meets Salvador.
August 9th, 2005 at 8:25 am
I’d second Platoon. And while I think many of Weinberger’s concerns are on display in JFK, I enjoyed that movie for its cinematography and sense of time and place.
August 9th, 2005 at 9:28 am
Amen. I really dislike Oliver Stone movies. Flat and predictable.
August 9th, 2005 at 9:55 am
I don’t know if Hollywood will be able to leave 9/11 alone. It’s already seared into our memories. A movie lets you return, through the magic of cinema, to another time and explore the issues and people who shaped the culture. Cinema also lets us pretend to see into the future, which has more appeal to another group of movie makers and movie watchers. There were babies being born on 9/11, people going on with life and life going on. There are the movies that are inspired by life and those that confirm life and the grip it has on reality. I think Hollywood or the movie industry in general, to put a fine point on it, has created all of its own problems. Another death to America movie may very well be in the works. The real 9/11 was the day a part of America died and a part of it was born. The hope in life is life. The Hollywood artists seem for the most part to be more focused on death than life and for the studio executives I guess death puts bums in seats which means more revenue and more power. A 9/11 movie may just be the feel bad movie of the year. The anti-depressant sales should be good for the pharmaceutical industry and put more bums on couches. Don’t lose your grip on reality. Hollywood doesn’t seem to be very good a doing reality or even copying it. It does death extemely well, but doing death is easier than doing life.
August 9th, 2005 at 11:51 am
Correction: Hollywood doesn’t seem to be very good at doing reality or even copying it.
There it’s perfect now.
August 9th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
Stone wrote the scipt for SCARFACE, a coming of age classic
for many people of my generation.
Platoon is arguably his greatest work after JFK.
To outright denounce him is so amateur night.
C’mon people…
August 9th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Stone is in touch with the flip side of reality.
You have war and you have the Hollywood version.
It proves that people like war. If they didn’t, war films would bomb at the box office. War is entertainment and it is good for making a buck.
It’s not my idea of a fun Friday night, but everybody has their own passion to think about. Stone is one of money makers, so people get down on him. The new thing next will be Iraq war movies. It couldn’t hurt the effort to create some new war heroes. That’s what is missing today. The war hero, the John Wayne figure and all of that blood, guts and glory that goes along with a war like butter with popcorn. The public is hungry for violence.
August 9th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
I’m not a blood thirsty type, but many of my fellow Americans are. I believe that violence is a daily way of life for many people. It’s a bad way to conduct business. I’ve seen it tried and they didn’t last long. Guys want to hard and make things difficult. This is what happened to the aviation industry. Management pitted the workers against each other, the union pitted the workers against the companies and now the pensions are busted out and whole industry is in a state of confusion. The movie had a different ending. Nobody can write a perfect ending. It’s fun to wander around in various states confusion watching a movie. Most people like a wild goose chase, as long as they aren’t the goose being chased.
August 9th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
I wouldn’t worry about offending Greasy Jim Wolcott. Today he makes common cause with Saddam on his blog; the man is obviously a junkie.
August 9th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
I was going to say I wasn’t much a fan of his until I checked him out on imdb.
I found these all worthwhile or better: Platoon, Born on 4th of July, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers. But adding screenplays for Scarface and Midnight Express–dare I say I am a fan?
August 9th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Viewing Stone’s work in context one has to conclude that his specialty is ripping-off popular movies with lower-quality stuff.
August 9th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
Blanket condemnations are really, really stupid (irony intended). Jeffo, do you think each one of your posts has the same brilliant quality? Then why do you expect every movie from a single person to have the same quality?
To write off Platoon, Salvador, Born on the Fourth of July and Wall Street is just plain idiotic, especially when none of these movies has the traits Whineburger whines about. Guess what: the world isn’t black and white.
August 9th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
Platoon, Born on 4th of July: shrieking antiwar screeds, Apocolypse Now ripoff.
Wall Street: shrieking anti-capitalist screed
Natural Born Killers: Pulp Fiction ripoff
JFK: deranged
Scarface: Godfather ripoff
Alexander: Troy ripoff
Stone’s world is black-and-white, even the hallucinations.
August 9th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
Platoon and Born on the 4th do not rip off Apocolypse Now. Just like Roy Pearson wrote above. Different stories, plots, etc.
Scarface: Stone didn’t direct, he wrote the screenplay, which was a re-work of the the 1932 Scarface. Can’t be a Godfather ripoff
Natural Born Killers came out a few months before Pulp Fiction. Somewhat difficult to ripoff a popular movie when it isn’t popular yet, yes? And while it has been several years since I viewed NBK, I don’t think there are any similarities between the two.
Just because a movie is in the same genre does not make it a ripoff.
August 9th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
If 4 out of 5 of some dude’s movies are quick-response genre flicks that get to the theaters on the coattails of smash hits, I think we can draw some conclusions without stretching the latex fabric of credibility.
August 9th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
well
I should have checked out IMDB. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110632/fullcredits#writers
Full Cast and Crew for Natural Born Killers
Writing credits (WGA)
Quentin Tarantino
anyway, if that is the way you feel about Stone, that’s ok. I’m not a fan of his work, but I have enjoyed 3 of his movies though.
August 9th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
Talk Radio
August 10th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
It’s not that Hollywood or its consumers like war movies. We human beings are fascinated with events that remain unprocessed. Like the significant memories of your own lives, these events actually grow in stature and influence in our minds with the passing of time… for as long as we refuse to deal with them realistically.
As a good friend of mine said on 9/11/2001: “Somebody is really pissed off!!”
It’s ridiculous to cling to the naive belief that terrorists are just plain crazy. If that’s true, then the European emigrates living on this continent in the 18th century were just plain crazy. There is *something*tangible* that moves people to risk their own lives and property to fight. Just as the pithy tomes published around the time of the American Revolution could not have, in and of themselves, fomented a revolution, the Qu’ran (despite its metered, rhyming format) cannot cause human beings to engage in warfare, attacks, bombings (suicide or otherwise), beheadings, etc. These people feel threatened.
The question is not “Why are they doing this??” Nor is it “How can we make them stop?”
It is, “For how much longer are we going to keep subscribing to the idea that there is an ‘us’ and a ‘them’?” For the time being, we are doomed–no, committed to warfare.
The US of A’s status as the biggest and the best is no justification for bullying the rest of the world. Just this morning I heard Rick Santorum say that terrorists are wrong because they want to impose their will on certain parts of the world.
What, we can do that, but they can’t? We’re right and they’re wrong?
Believe me, this is much deeper than “Can’t we all just get along”. There are clearly people interested in waging war, and not for ideological purposes–other than the idea that they’re entitled to wealth and power simply because their lineage has always had money and power.
See also ROYALTY.
–
“Why don’t presidents fight the war?
Why do they always send the poor?”
~”BYOB”, System of a Down
August 10th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
We’re right and they’re wrong?
Well, actually, now that you mention it, yes.
And moreover, they’re attacking us because they’re bored and depressed, like teenagers looking for “kicks”.
August 10th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
Of the stone flicks I’ve seen, I only thought Any Given Sunday enjoyable. I liked the story, I liked the characters, I liked the action ( as it were ).
I’ve seen Platoon once in full, and swaths of since. I found it a fairly flat story that seemed like a production of one person’s bitterness than a relation of real events. Despite the problems of Hamburger Hill ( poor dialogue, poor characterization ), I saw something that seemed more gripping than a collection of drug addled homocidal psychos bitching at each other for two hours.
Where Platoon seemed to revel in the worst stereotypes of the Vietnam War, Hamburger Hill seemed to suggest that the experience was more than being malevolently toyed with by fate, the US, and each other.
In that way, Platoon really does seem like a sequel to Armageddon Now, complete with the first person monolog.
One thing I like about another vietnam movie, Once We Were Soldiers, is that it at least suggests that there were real world considerations and policy desicions beyond the tactical level that directly affected the war effort. Issues that movies like Platoon ignore.
I’ve focused on just one movie, but it seems to be the popular one here.
August 10th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
Funny how all the comments in the previous thread that criticized Mr. Javis were deleted. What is this, Jeff? Stalinist-style revisionism for the dissenters?
August 10th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
I think you’re right aodhan, color film is wasted on Stone.
August 11th, 2005 at 2:02 am
Just a few comments on Platoon: First, I am sorry that war, real war is most often rather flat. Stone was not a chicken hawk. He was there at the same time I was. You can see the detail in this movie that comes from having been in Viet Nam. One of the reasons for the drug problem in Viet Nam and, now in Iraq, is the pervasive boredom. The war itself was drug like, quick rushing highs followed by long tortured downs until the next high, the highs being the patrols.
It was exactly this “collection of drug addled homicidal psychos bitching at each other” that makes the movie real. Again you may not like that reality, but it was a very real part of Viet Nam. Also, as with Iraq, Viet Nam was about “being malevolently toyed with by fate, the US, and each otherâ€. How can Hamburger Hill say anything else, it was about a bloody battle for a hill with no significance in any larger sense than to win, when winning had no meaning. At its best, killing each other for the sake of killing each other.
There was a lot of heroism and honor in Viet Nam, but it had nothing to do with the war, it had to do with the men who actually set foot on the battlefield. Two movies, “We Were Soldiers†and “Gardens of Stone†tell us about the stateside experience very well. “We Were Soldiers†is really about a different war than Stone and I experienced. At that point the build up was just beginning and we were treating the war as more conventional at war. That effort failed. By 1968 the war had devolved into another futility – Search and Destroy – the failed tactic that is getting our troops killed in Iraq today. (That and the arrogant lack of material support by DOD and the White House).
It was the fate of the common soldier then and now to be placed in a position by their country to fight for no clear cause, and without support. In Viet Nam the population did not support the troops, but in Iraq we, the people, have learned. This time the population is in agony attempting to differentiate between the magnificent men and women of the US Military and the Leaders who fail, with dogged defiance, to support those troops with adequate men and material. It is beginning to look like they are sorting it out.
There is nothing “glorious” or edifying about war. It is a thing that has no winners, only the dead and the survivors. It is never a policy option, only the last resort, as Secretary Rumsfeld said, but did not do.