Oliver Stone is an Idiot

Behold undeniable proof:
http://mrshowbiz.go.com/news/2001/10...lak101501.html

You say this as if there were some doubt, or as if it were a startling revelation and breaking news. Ollie Stone's been an idiot for years and will likely continue to be an idiot for the rest of his days.

I love the comment about the Presidential election and the thirteenth month. What the HELL!? LOL

yeah, i've heard that guy was out of his freakin' gourd for a long, long time now, but for me, this article really proves it. i think he's crossed the line in a big way and should keep his wacko mouth closed. that's just my opinion, though.

I'm coming to Mr. Stone's defense. Say what you will about his politics, but he is (on occasion, he has made some crap) an undeniably brilliant filmmaker. And that Mr. Showbiz article didn't tell the whole story. Stone wasn't tying the corruption of Hollywood in with the attack, he addressed the attack as a revolt against American society, with an emphasis on the American media. From there he started talking about how there's 6 men who own the world, and how all the mergers are limiting artistic license, etc etc. I'm not saying some of his ideas aren't wacked out, but this is starting to look like an anti-Ollie Stone thread and I had to speak up. Watch JFK and Natural Born Killers - they're genius, JFK especially.

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i love oliver stone's movies, don't get me wrong. but the fact is, he's obviously way overboard with the whole conspiracy theory thing. did you ever see the snl sketch with phil hartman as oliver stone? i mean, he's a little (or more than a little, depending on your perspective) whacked out, and i don't think he should be an authority on world politics. oh and for the record, we all liked platoon, but he's made some real stinkers. i like val kilmer, but the doors is inaccusably inaccurate. i read ray manzarek's autobiography (because i'm a rock trivia buff and i do stuff like that ) and he totally lambasted stone's oversensationalization of jim morrison's life. those guys deserve more respect than to have their lives turned into vh1 fodder.

Sorry, but I still think reality has to play a role. Despite what you've said in the past Steve, there's no real excuse for making up ridiculous crap and putting it forth as a valid theory. The fact that it's "just a movie" doesn't matter, because when you make movies out of these ideas, you're asking people to believe it, basically. Every movie has a degree of reality in it...so you can't really say it's not important, because if someone made a movie full of flying blue monkeys stating that "it could happen," you'd probably be annoyed. Ditto for Planet of the Apes, of course.

Anyway, Stone is a friggin' moron. Does he have some talent? Sure. But I think he's crazy, and ridiculously paranoid. That's all I'm really saying...you can call someone an idiot and not actually mean that they're a stupid person with no good qualities.

That becomes the thing with Stone, though. He doesn't come up with wacky theories for movies. He comes up with wacky theories that he thinks are the actual truth and often presents them that way. His JFK is full of factual inaccuracies, but ask Stone and he'll claim many of those false things in the film are total truth.

Steve keeps claiming that he's merely trying to offer possible theories to get people to think about things. In reality, Stone is trying to pass movies like JFK off as the truth. He's Jim Marrs with a movie camera instead of a typewriter.

Ryan, sometimes you say the most intelligent things.

Stone has never claimed that JFK was the total truth, but he HAS validated my theory, that he wants people to think about things. Plus, many of theories in JFK are completely contradictory. We see different versions of how things COULD have happened; that's the essence of the movie.

And let's say for a second that Stone DOES think all of these things are true, and he's trying to pass them off as fact. The movie still works because it remains so watchable. So what does it even matter? Fact doesn't belong in movies, I'm sorry. No one complains about how there's no such thing as a 30 foot shark in Jaws, or how Indiana Jones couldn't possibly climb all over a moving truck on the highway.

That's because it's fiction. When you make a movie about a real event, though, it's different, Steve. Like I asked you before: are you saying you wouldn't be mad if someone made a movie that depicted the Nazis as loving people, and the Jews as deserving of the Holocaust, just because facts have no place in movies? Would you ignore such a gross offense simply because it may be well acted?

The worlds in movies exist outside reality. Borrowing from "real life" to make movies is like painting things from "real life". You can see something different than how it exists, and you can take creative liberties in expressing yourself.

Concerning this fictional Holocaust picture, this all goes back to my argument that movies are about emotions and feelings. I would be offended by the movie not because of its subject matter, but because of how the subject matter makes me feel. I wouldn't be offended because of the lack of fact, I would be offended because of how the movie depicts its story.

That's one and the same, though: the story and the feelings you get from it are the same thing here. The story would uspet you...therefore the movie would upset you. And rightfully so! I think the key here is whether or not the filmmaker is looking to make a historically accurate movie or not. If they are, and they fail, I have no qualms about criticizing them for it, unless the failure is small, and perhaps inevitable.

I can't think of a reason not to be offended by a movie that misrepresents an important situation to the public...because they're reducing education, for one. Like it or not, some movies are all about fun or entertainment, and others are about education to a degree. Because of "Braveheart," many more people know about William Wallace than before. It's a great movie in it's own right, but it has also taught others. "Titanic," however, teaches people things that are incorrect, despite Cameron always spouting off about the detail and accuracy they put into it all. They spent a month on getting the right kind of wood, but didn't bother with important things, like the behavior of the passengers and crew.

I'm rambling...I'll try to put it better: some people use their imagination and create a story/world. Others use their skill (and some imagination) and bring an existing story/world to life...so where's the excuse for someone taking an existing story and twisting it around to try to make it more dramatic? Am I the only one who sees some kind of dishonor in taking real people and real events, and putting them onscreen, doing bad things that they didn't actually do?

I'm a very emotional person, believe it or not...but I just can't fully enjoy myself if the person behind the movie is making things up when depicting an actual event just to try to make things more interesting. You hate it, Steve (and several others here, I believe), when some movie has to be edited so it will appeal to the public and hold attention spans...well, I hate it when a movie has to embellish the truth to sell more tickets.

lol.. i KNEW this was gonna turn into a duplicate of the titanic thread. this time though, i agree partially with steve and partially with twtcommish. i think if a movie pretends to be historical, it should follow through. movies like titanic don't really seem to have clear goals, it's almost as if they want to be historically accurate and then wind up failing. i think oliver stone, however, is a great filmmaker dispite the fact that he obviously is crazy. i mean he is. didn't he think anyone would be deeply offended by what he said in that interview? it's like i said before, i don't think this guy should be the source for any believable news. he's just somebody who happens to work in a creative field, the fact that his movies involve politics do NOT make him any kind of authority. i wouldn't even listen to his ramblings.

Does this mean that you'll watch his movies and be subjected to hidden messages??? You never know, he may know that he is shunned for some of his interviews so he throws messages into his pictures he directs and get's your attention that way.

On "Titanic", I think James Cameron did his damndest best on getting everything down to the carpet to be a replicated match of what was on board on the maiden voyage. So, historically accurate, "Titanic" didn't fail, it rose up above those who have tried and just couldn't cut it. Story wise, it wasn't bad either, but we're not talking about Cameron or "Titanic" in this thread are we?? We're talking about Oliver Stone's odd interviews. He doesn't just do Political films either. Ever hear of "Any Given Sunday"?? Which sucked, but still, he directed it.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

That's just the thing, Spud: he got the fabric of the carpet and type of wood in the guest rooms right, but he missed major inaccuracies. He agonized over things no one would notice, while ignoring major falsehoods. IE: he can't just say that no movie is perfectly accurate, because he spent time on other, more precise, less obvious accuracies.

I guess so. It was totally crazy in the first place. I mean he just took that whole movie way too far.

Yeah. He went way over budget, too. It made it's money from repeat viewings and raw hype for the most part. I don't think it made most of it's cash from movie buffs or anything like that. Quite frankly, I don't think it was a great movie. And yes, I felt the same way before I discovered just how whack it's story was.

Well, everyone knew the basic story to Titanic. It wasn't some mystery. They tried sugar-coating a tasteless product

I think the better question would be whether Steve would be cool with it if we went out and made a movie that depicted Steve N as a Nazi child molester who hated Stanley Kubrick and then went on talk shows, etc. talking about the truth in our movie.

Clearly, he'd have no problem with that (based on his argument that truth has no place in movies, even movies that claim to depict truth) even if a large number of people saw that movie and believed that the real Steve N was like that based on that portrayal in the movie.