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William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946), known simply as Oliver Stone, is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director and screenwriter. He is also a popular JFK conspiracy theorist.

Biography

Stone was born in New York City. His father was Jewish and his mother a Roman Catholic of French birth. He was raised an Episcopalian as a compromise.[1]

At the age of 14, Stone's parents sent Stone away to attend high school at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. His parents divorced while he was away at The Hill School, and only then did Stone learn of his father's extramarital affairs with the wives of several family friends. Stone graduated from this boarding school in 1964, the same year as former JP Morgan & Co. CEO, Douglas A. Warner III. Stone then attended Yale University and New York University. He attended Yale, dropping out after one year. He then taught English at the Free Pacific Institute in South Vietnam for six months after which he worked as a merchant marine, and traveled to Oregon and Mexico, before returning to Yale, where he dropped out a second time.

A veteran of the Vietnam conflict, Stone served with the United States Army from April 1967 to November 1968. He specifically requested combat duty and was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division, and was wounded twice in action. His personal awards include the Bronze Star with "V" device for valor for "extraordinary acts of courage under fire", and the Purple Heart with one Oak Leaf Cluster.

He has made three films about Vietnam —Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and Heaven & Earth (1993). He has called these films a trilogy, though they each deal with different aspects of the war. Platoon is a semi-autobiographical film about Stone's experience in combat. Born on the Fourth of July is based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic. Heaven & Earth is a true story of a Vietnamese girl whose life is drastically affected by the war.

Stone has won three Academy Awards. His first "Oscar" was for Best Adapted Screenplay for Midnight Express (1978). He won Academy Awards for Directing Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. Other films whose screenplays he participated in are Conan the Barbarian (1982), Scarface (1983), Year of the Dragon (1985), 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) and Evita (1996). In addition, he has written or taken part in the writing of every film he has directed, except for U Turn (1997). The very first film that he directed professionally was the obscure horror picture Seizure (1974).

A distinct feature in Oliver Stone's movies is the use of a multitude of different cameras and film formats, from VHS to 8mm film to 70mm film. He sometimes uses several formats in a single scene, as in JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994).

Controversy

Stone's films often deal with political matters and are sometimes critical of the US government. JFK, for instance, hypothesizes about many high-level government officials having a hand in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1991, he showed the film to Congress on Capitol Hill, which helped lead to passage of the Assassination Materials Disclosure Act of 1992. The film was discussed by the Assassination Records Review Board created by Congress to end the secrecy surrounding Kennedy's assassination, and Stone's observation at the end of the movie, JFK, about the dangers inherent in government secrecy.[2] The film was widely criticized in the media as being a mixture of truth and fiction. Stone published an annotated version of the screenplay, in which he cites references for his claims, shortly after the film's release. Similarly, he published an annotated version of his screenplay for the film Nixon, nominated for four Academy Awards, but which was also criticized for its portrayal of President Richard M. Nixon.

Stone has been rumored to use drugs while making films. On the DVD of Natural Born Killers: The Director's Cut, one of the producers recounts stories of taking psilocybin mushrooms with Stone and some of the cast and crew and almost getting pulled over by a police officer—a situation which Stone later wrote into the film. Natural Born Killers is filmed and edited in a frenzied style where animation, grainy black and white 8 mm film, color 35mm film, and VHS are intercut and juxtaposed in a psychedelic montage of images showing not only the story's action, but also conveying the thoughts and feelings of the characters. The film was criticized by some for its apparent glorification of violence. Stone refutes this claim, saying that it is a satire of the American media's glorification of violence and violent people. In fact, the original screenwriter of Natural Born Killers, Quentin Tarantino, was unhappy with the end result of the film because of the attention Stone gave to the aspects of the story involving the media, and asked that his name be removed from the credits. Tarantino was credited with "Story By" on the final film.

In 1999, Stone was arrested and pleaded guilty to drug possession and no contest to driving under the influence. He was ordered into a rehabilitation program. He was arrested again on the night of May 27, 2005 in Los Angeles for a small amount of marijuana possession.

Other work

In 1993, Stone produced a mini series for ABC Television called Wild Palms. In a cameo, Stone appears on a television in the show discussing how the theories in his film JFK had been proven correct (the series took place in the future). Wild Palms has developed a moderate cult following in the years since it aired, and has recently been released on DVD. That same year, he also spoofed himself in the comedy hit Dave, espousing a conspiracy theory about the President's replacement by a near-identical double.

In 1997, Stone published A Child's Night Dream, a largely autobiographical novel first written in 1966-1967. After several unsuccessful attempts to get the work published, he "threw several sections of the manuscript into the East River one cold night, and, as if surgically removing the memory of the book from my mind, volunteered for Vietnam in 1967." Eventually, he dug out the remaining pages, rewrote the manuscript, and published it. The book is an almost stream of consciousness telling of his experiences as a child, in college, and in Vietnam.

In 2003, Stone made two documentary films: Persona Non Grata, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Fidel Castro: El Comandante, about Cuban president Fidel Castro. In 2004, he made a second documentary on Castro, titled Looking for Fidel. Stone has called himself a friend and an admirer of Fidel Castro.

Recent work

In the past decade, Stone has directed U-Turn (1997), which he describes as a small film that he would enjoy seeing as a teenager, Any Given Sunday (1999), a film about power struggles within and surrounding an American football team, and Alexander (2004), a biographical film about Alexander the Great.

He later said he was stung by the critical pans of Alexander, which (despite being one of the highest-grossing films internationally in 2004) was a financial failure; production and marketing costs were not recovered.[3]. He re-edited the film as the Director's Cut, which was shortened from 175 minutes to 167 minutes. Now, he is currently working on a 3 hour and 45 minute extended cut of the film, which is rumored to be released in late 2007.

After Alexander, Stone went on to direct a movie about September 11, 2001, called World Trade Center, through the eyes of two PAPD cops. The main undercurrent of the movie is hope, through times of test. The movie did not do as well as it was expected, raking in a gross of $70 million (as on 17 Oct 2006), though the movie was made on a budget of 63 million.

On September 30th Stone received the Honorary Patronage of the University Philosophical Society, Trinity College Dublin.

Filmography

• Last Year in Viet Nam (1971, short)
• Seizure (also known as Queen of Evil, 1974)
• Mad Man of Martinique (1979, short)
• The Hand (1981)
• Scarface (screenwriter)(1983)
• Salvador (1986)
• Platoon (1986)
• Wall Street (1987)
• Talk Radio (1988)
• Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
• The Doors (1991)
• JFK (1991)
• Heaven & Earth (1993)
• Natural Born Killers (1994)
• Nixon (1995)
• U-Turn (1997)
• Any Given Sunday (1999)
• Persona Non Grata (2003)
• Comandante (2003)
• Alexander (2004)
• Looking for Fidel (2004)
• World Trade Center (2006)

Bibliographies

• Oliver Stone Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• A biography of Oliver Stone

External links

• Oliver Stone: Our Greatest Film Director an excellent look at the man and his movies.
• Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board concerning the JFK assassination
• The first chapter of "A Child's Night Dream" by Oliver Stone at the New York Times site. Registration may be required.
• Article on how Mimecom, fictional company from Wild Palms, became real.
• Discover The Networks' entry on Oliver Stone
• World Trade Center Interview with Oliver Stone From IGN FilmForce

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