HIGH TIMES

When Oliver Stone made Any Given Sunday, the National Football League virtually declared war on the film, attempting to block production in any way possible. But the battle was worth it: “It hurt my health at that time, but I totally enjoyed making it – I really got into it,” Stone says.
 
Call him a warrior. Stone has directed 18 films, always colorful and raucous affairs that have rarely failed to rock somebody’s world. In JFK, he awakened the nation to the darkness of the government; in Salvador, he exposed its covert wars. Nixon and W cast a harsh spotlight on our flawed leaders, while his trilogy of Vietnam films – Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Heaven and Earth – have given world audiences an unflinching perspective on the Vietnam experience. Now he’s making Wall Street II, which promises a critical take on the 2008 financial meltdown.
 
Stone himself is a decorated Vietnam vet who volunteered for service after dropping out of Yale University. But the war in Vietnam, he claims, put him on his path. That path has been rough at times, and he has definitely taken his licks. But Stone’s brilliance behind the camera, and the uncompromising vision he’s displayed throughout his career, remain rock solid.
 
HT: You’ve been working furiously on the Wall Street II project. What is the life of a filmmaker like?
 
OS: It’s a tough life, and I can’t recommend it highly to anyone. I can say that the good moments are the process, the creativity, the excitement – the glamour, I guess … bringing it all together in that moment.
 
Film directors are worriers. They feel the responsibility of the pyramid; they’re both the architect and the cook. I operate always from studio to studio, or deal to deal, or finance to finance. I have rarely stayed at one place. I’ve never made studio deals – in other words, I’ve taken responsibility for the film. Mine is the final responsibility, whereas, at a studio, it takes responsibility. It’s a conflicted situation, because in this modern era, according to American law, the copyright belongs to the studio. I think that’s sad, but it’s the way of our business – you put up the financing, you own the copyright.
 
I struggle with the studios, since I’m trying to find ways to generate my own product without having to sell it out early. It’s become tougher. The studios are more corporate – they keep more, and there are more tentacles.
 
I always say that production is like an expansion of a dream where you go for everything you can get. It’s fraught with a thousand little things, big things … and, of course, luck, destiny also play a role. Then, when you edit, you reduce; it has to stand out. And that’s where the film comes from – the editing, the writing and the direction.
 
However, marketing is foreign to all three of the above. It’s like taking a voyage, suddenly, to another planet – because the way things are perceived often controls the value of the asset. I’m limited by the fact that I live inside my environment, but you guys, at this moment in time, may want comedies, or you may want to see sequels, or comic-book heroes – who knows? All of a sudden, they might say drama is dead: Who cares about Wall Street? Who cares about Vietnam – or Afghanistan? You get into these ridiculous categorizations of life, but you know that good movies generally come from being in the moment, and the moment is always beyond category.
 
Marketing, as I say, is another force, because it can destroy what you’ve made very easily. It can also enhance it. Certainly, to distort it or lie about it is part of the game ….
 
Your Vietnam experience is often cited as a major influence on your work. Is that true?
 
I think I had much trouble in my character before Vietnam. My parents were divorced very early, and I had no brothers or sisters. Mine was a broken family from 15 on – you have to understand that – and we were living in a different kind of world at that time: It was the 1960s, and divorce was still not that acceptable. Also, the co-existence of man and woman in America wasn’t so simple; it’s become much more fluid in recent years.
 
Vietnam was one of those watershed events in life where you change your character – you bounce off it, and you go in another direction, I guess. I had to find my way overseas. I found my persona in the Far East, and it stayed there. I forged my own identity – when I came back to America, I struggled for that identity for a long time. But I could never have been what I became without that experience. You change, is what I’m trying to say.
 
For those readers who may be contemplating the military, what can you tell them about the combat experience?
 
Well, I’m sure there are plenty of descriptions of real combat that they could find and read, but whether they would heed them is another question. I can only say it’s indescribably brutal and frightening­ – it will be with you forever. And if you’re not in a war that is a good war, it compounds the sense of frustration that Vietnam veterans, Korea veterans, Iraq veterans and Afghanistan veterans must feel, in my opinion.
 
America has been on a militaristic course, unfortunately, since World War II, and I think all of us that have served have been sickened, to a certain degree, by the disease of serving for nefarious ends. And I think that’s sad.
 
On the other hand, in the military, I did have many a great experience. And I had a ball, too – I did discover dope over in Vietnam, with the black guys and the white rockers. Maybe I would have loosened up in the States, but certainly Vietnam was like an opening. I also experienced life on another level, where it was truly a democratic, egalitarian existence. I was a private like everybody else, whereas I’d grown up in boarding school and going to Yale. It was quite a leveler for me, and it was good for me.
 
Did you find drugs useful?
 
I can only say they really kept me human, because that was a brutal experience – fifteen months in combat. I noticed, after about three months in, that the black guys were doing okay – not everyone, obviously, but they were mixing amongst themselves and keeping it together. I ended up inside a group, and I really felt like that was home … a new home for me. I had no home, really, in the States, so it was sort of like a rebirth. I tried to show that in Platoon.
 
We didn’t smoke in the field, because that was dangerous, but we smoked in base camps, which is often the hardest part of combat – because when you’re in base camps, you harden, too. The details, the duty, the pecking order, the bitching … it’s an ugly experience in base camp while you’re waiting to go out. This was 1967-68, but for a large group of us, led by the blacks – and many whites joined – we were finding ways to stay sane through dope.
 
Are you talking specifically about marijuana, or were other drugs being used?
 
Mostly weed … I don’t remember doing anything else. I know there was heroin coming around later – an unfortunate side product of the war. It certainly makes sense, considering it’s an opiate … and heroin is a pacific drug.
 
The War on Drugs has been going full swing since the ’60s. You yourself have been a victim.
 
Yeah, I was busted in December 1968 in San Diego. I’m not sure it was called the War on Drugs then, but Nixon’s border war had started, and I happened to be one of the early casualties – coming back from Mexico with Vietnamese dope on me. How stupid could I be, right? That’s really dumb.
 
Anyway, I was facing five to 20 on a federal smuggling charge. It was very scary, and I was in for a while. Finally, I got out because of my father. It was the beginning of the Drug War, which was obviously not working – most of these kids in prison should not have been there. They were young, they were facing long sentences, and it was very arbitrary. That really soured me quickly. With Morrison and Hendrix and Dylan leading the charge in those days, there was a whole new feeling about authority. We questioned it, we fought it – and, frankly, I’ve had my lapses, but I’ve never stopped questioning it.
 
How would you describe the marijuana experience?
 
I’ve found it to be very enlightening. Some people don’t – they find paranoia and worry. I think if you can control your mind, if you contain it, you can make marijuana be a friend, an ally. I wouldn’t do it all day, all the time, because I think you should try to balance your states – but certainly it’s been creative and opened me to new ideas. I’ve abused it at times, there’s no question, but I’ve always tried to be moderate throughout my whole life with everything, trying not to overdo it. Because abuse and excessive use can come quick, especially with substances like cocaine.
 
Peyote has been valuable, too, in the same way as marijuana. Also, ayahuasca and mushrooms.
 
Do you continue to use these substances?
 
Well, I’m older now. It’s tiring to do these trips – it’s exhausting. To do a peyote trip, it takes two, three days out of you.
 
It takes time to be high.
 
It’s also a journey. I did a major LSD trip not too many years ago. It was supervised by very competent, psychological people – doctors, scientists – and they observed me eight, nine hours. I took 700 mg and had a blindfold on. I did it, really, for exploratory reasons. I remember that it was exhausting – a very powerful trip. I learned a lot.
 
But meditation and Buddhism have opened up new realms for me. In 1993, I did Heaven and Earth, which is a movie about Buddhism. It is a Buddhist movie. I’ve followed that way since then.
 
Marijuana has never been as popular as right now. What’s your take?
 
It’s a good thing. I think it’s so sad that so many people are in jail and suffering lifetime curses for having done this. So wrong … so clearly wrong. Marijuana, as well as many other drugs, should be legalized and taxed and regulated by the states. It’s a great source of income. It should be sold like it is in liquor stores, and there should be no social stigma. It’s an insane hypocrisy. The Drug Enforcement Agency is really the precursor to Homeland Security – it’s really problematic once you start a bureaucracy rolling like that. And having been a victim of the bureaucracy in the Army and in various other organizations, I’m totally on the side of the individual.
 
Your films have demonstrated that. But they’ve stirred controversy, and you’ve often been ripped by critics. How does this affect you?
 
It’s happened 10,000 times. There is such a thing as “repetition works” – in other words, you have to absorb it. But you have to stay sensitive: If you become too callous and indifferent, you hurt yourself. At the same time, if you allow your skin to be flayed every time, it’s very difficult to function.
 
I’ve done 18 films, and I have a philosophical approach at this point, which is: “Easy to destroy, hard to build.” I believe the best critics are loving critics, who are constructive. Which is to say: “I don’t care what your subject matter is – this is what I think of what you’re trying to achieve.” That would be an honest interpretation.
 
Is there a conscious effort on your part to rattle America’s cage?
 
No, I don’t think you ever set out to rattle this gorilla’s cage … it’s a big cage! I think what you want to convey is: “Attention must be paid.” So you try to bring thunder and lightning and make the subject gripping. Then, perhaps, they’ll pay attention.
 
Did the reaction to JFK surprise you?
 
Coming off of the Vietnam movies and Wall Street, I could do no evil, I could do no harm. With JFK, that all changed – I crossed into a no man’s land. I didn’t quite foresee the land mine I was stepping onto.
 
I’m proud of the movie – I think it’s one of my best. I think we did justice to Kennedy. We started the process, started the wheels rolling. And he has been historically reassessed. There are new books – JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass is great, as is David Talbot’s Brothers. A lot of the work has substantiated JFK: that Kennedy was in the process of tremendous change in the world – in Cuba, in Vietnam and Russia. It was a world-changing moment, and I think historians have been divided on that, but at least they’re starting to recognize it. Historians are conservative, but we started a process of moving people. Many young people come up to me and say, “I really have studied this now and love it. And I get it – I see what Kennedy was up to.”
 
But some complain that JFK is the sole basis for young people’s knowledge of Kennedy.
 
They can’t complain about that. That’s their problem if they don’t offer an alternative; it’s a free marketplace of ideas.
 
I have a responsibility to the history. We were one of the few entities that ever really interviewed so many people who were in Dealey Plaza that day [the site of JFK’s assassination in Dallas]. It’s easy to make fun of it, but my gosh – it was just a tremendous compendium of work. I stand by the conclusion that he was not killed by one single sniper, and I stand by the conclusion that someone inside the government system had to have done it. Because it was too well staged an ambush – it was very well thought out and carried through.
 
If you look at the case, there are several dozen examples of acute inversions of logic. You have to say: “This is crazy. How can people buy the single-bullet theory?” … plus the autopsy, plus the witnesses, plus the motive – which is the key to the whole thing – plus the cover-up. We did our homework.
 
Does it bother you, being a whipping boy for the political right?
 
I was one of the early poster boys for Reagan-era attacks on people. They make straw men out of us, attack us and knock us down. It’s easy to do, and they perfected it with Clinton. Certainly, they carried it on right through with the Bush people.
 
Still, your portraits of Nixon and Bush were somewhat sympathetic.
 
They weren’t intended to be sympathetic; I would call them “empathetic.” I didn’t like Nixon, I didn’t like Bush, and I didn’t intend for you to like them – I meant for you to understand them.
 
Well, certainly you explored their tragic aspects.
 
I see the limitations of Bush, but I’m not sure I’d call it a tragedy, because he has never displayed that third dimension that would allow him, as a hero, to acknowledge his errors. I do see the humanity of the man, and I see the limitations of his education and upbringing … whereas Nixon had another depth to him. To me, Nixon was a three-dimensional man who was extremely dark. But both Nixon and Bush had tremendous character deficits that were interesting to me, which propelled those movies forward. If you’re a dramatist, if you’re empathetic, you try to walk in their shoes.
 
When you were promoting Nixon, an interviewer compared you to him – mercurial, suspicious of the press, all-controlling. You didn’t disagree. Why?
 
I wouldn’t have done Nixon unless I felt some empathy for him. I never liked Nixon – perhaps it’s a part of myself that I don’t like. But my father was certainly a fan of Nixon and was a very strong Republican, so I was paying homage to a certain section of my life. He was part of it.
 
Nixon was an amazingly interesting character because he was so bright. But he was so demonized … anyone living with doubts about himself is living a Socratic life. Not Bush – I don’t think Bush has those doubts. But I think Nixon, despite being a tyrant and prolonging the war and doing all of the bad things he did, gave one of the most loving, moving speeches when he resigned that I’ve ever heard from a politician. And it came from a place of tremendous pain. So here he is – this, so to speak, monster – being extremely sensitive. That’s what made the movie fly for me.
 
So, yeah, definitely, I’ve got a monster in me, too – I’m not kidding myself. You may wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and think you’re the greatest guy in the world, but I don’t. I see myself as a mixed bag, like most people. I think if you accept that, you can get past a lot of the bullshit hypocrisy we go through – like blaming somebody else first before you blame America. Why don’t we look to our own actions before we start blaming others for attacking and threatening us?
 
THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN THE NOVEMBER 2009 ISSUE OF HIGH TIMES MAGAZINE:

High Times-Nov-09