Creatives with big buck paint boxes go were the money is. Think of Leonardo, hawking his ideas around the tyrants of renaissance Italy. Posterity remembers the genius who painted the Mona Lisa. Orson Welles spent far too long trying to get projects off the ground, approaching some very dodgy people out of necessity, because Hollywood hated him and didn’t trust him to make good use of their money.
Wagner was a total sycophant, sucking up to Ludwig of Bavaria, encouraging his
fantasies, desperate for money and patronage.
Most great lives don’t survive too much scrutiny. Their utter devotion to their craft is what drives them. We consume the culture but disdain the grubby means by which it is achieved. I think Oliver Stone is a great auteur, like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, that doesn’t preclude criticism and sensure. Samson’s riddle of the decaying lion seems a good analogy, “out of the eater something to eat, out of the strong, something sweet”
For many creative people the ends justifies the means, only because the alternative is a recipe for creative impotency.
I think there is a balance here. Ludwig II was not a tyrant, and Wagner’s art was worth something. Stone is not a great auteur anyway, his political films were always mendacious, but at least done with style. Now he is plumbing the depths in a truly embarrassing way.
Last edited 2 years ago by Andrew Fisher
rick stubbs
2 years ago
It is apparent to me that Stone’s recent docudramas idolize fellow travelers, eg, those he aspires to emulate and once thought he had become. These sad, simpatico portraits are merely the “dictatorial” delusions of a sidelined Hollywood director.
And his big movies are genre pieces that the test of time and competition have eroded. After all, Platoon and 4th of July portrayed exactly how an emerging boomer elite needed to view the VN war, post hoc, to validate avoiding service in it. Both Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket easily transcend it in every way. I say this as one who served as VN infantryman but harbors no illusions about that war.
I also doubt Stone’s experience lends his US foreign policy critique credibility, but first of all, what is that critique and which experiences?
Stone is an interesting character and well worth examining. I wish this article had provided a longer form discussion of the author’s take. Perhaps that is forthcoming??
Oliver Stone was criticized by Billy Hayes, the author of Midnight Express, upon which Stone based his script for the movie of the same name.
Hayes complained Stone demonized the Turkish people in the film when the book made efforts to show that there were decent Turks to be found in his prison experience.
Stone was also lambasted by at least one expert on his J.F.K assassination movie. Rotten Tomatoes said, ” As history, Oliver Stone’s JFK is dubious”
Stone who likes to show himself as a political justice advocate focused on righting America has made no comment on the invitation by Donald Trump of anti-Semties, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes (also White Supremacist) to Mar-a-Lago.
This dangerous turn in American racist politics was of no concern to him apparently.- he whose father was Jewish.
Cherry picking about what’s wrong with America or advancing old age responsible for this , ….or cowardice?
Oliver Stone was criticized by Billy Hayes, the author of Midnight Express, upon which Stone based his script for the movie of the same name.
Hayes complained Stone demonized the Turkish people in the film when the book made efforts to show that there were decent Turks to be found in his prison experience.
Stone was also lambasted by at least one expert on his J.F.K assassination movie. Rotten Tomatoes said, ” As history, Oliver Stone’s JFK is dubious”
Stone who likes to show himself as a political justice advocate focused on righting America has made no comment on the invitation by Donald Trump of anti-Semties, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes (also White Supremacist) to Mar-a-Lago.
This dangerous turn in American racist politics was of no concern to him apparently.- he whose father was Jewish.
Cherry picking about what’s wrong with America or advancing old age responsible for this , ….or cowardice?
David McDowell
2 years ago
For all that he’s a bigger man than his critics.
LCarey Rowland
2 years ago
The man is a true artist, willing to stick his neck out to explore what is true and what is not.
But truth, writ on a global scale, is too large a beast to tame. Perhaps Oliver has, like Van Gogh, cut off his ear (to the ground) to spite his face, as he strives to depict the world as it really is, rather than as it ought to be.
Gosh, that really is ‘the art matters more than anything’ stuff. His films are now hagiographical rubbish, the subjects appalling and in the case of Nazarbayev, a latter day petty Stalin (but not too petty for his victims).
Stone is in any ordinary moral terms an appalling individual.
Creatives with big buck paint boxes go were the money is. Think of Leonardo, hawking his ideas around the tyrants of renaissance Italy. Posterity remembers the genius who painted the Mona Lisa. Orson Welles spent far too long trying to get projects off the ground, approaching some very dodgy people out of necessity, because Hollywood hated him and didn’t trust him to make good use of their money.
Wagner was a total sycophant, sucking up to Ludwig of Bavaria, encouraging his
fantasies, desperate for money and patronage.
Most great lives don’t survive too much scrutiny. Their utter devotion to their craft is what drives them. We consume the culture but disdain the grubby means by which it is achieved. I think Oliver Stone is a great auteur, like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, that doesn’t preclude criticism and sensure. Samson’s riddle of the decaying lion seems a good analogy, “out of the eater something to eat, out of the strong, something sweet”
For many creative people the ends justifies the means, only because the alternative is a recipe for creative impotency.
I think there is a balance here. Ludwig II was not a tyrant, and Wagner’s art was worth something. Stone is not a great auteur anyway, his political films were always mendacious, but at least done with style. Now he is plumbing the depths in a truly embarrassing way.
It is apparent to me that Stone’s recent docudramas idolize fellow travelers, eg, those he aspires to emulate and once thought he had become. These sad, simpatico portraits are merely the “dictatorial” delusions of a sidelined Hollywood director.
And his big movies are genre pieces that the test of time and competition have eroded. After all, Platoon and 4th of July portrayed exactly how an emerging boomer elite needed to view the VN war, post hoc, to validate avoiding service in it. Both Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket easily transcend it in every way. I say this as one who served as VN infantryman but harbors no illusions about that war.
I also doubt Stone’s experience lends his US foreign policy critique credibility, but first of all, what is that critique and which experiences?
Stone is an interesting character and well worth examining. I wish this article had provided a longer form discussion of the author’s take. Perhaps that is forthcoming??
Oliver Stone was criticized by Billy Hayes, the author of Midnight Express, upon which Stone based his script for the movie of the same name.
Hayes complained Stone demonized the Turkish people in the film when the book made efforts to show that there were decent Turks to be found in his prison experience.
Stone was also lambasted by at least one expert on his J.F.K assassination movie. Rotten Tomatoes said, ” As history, Oliver Stone’s JFK is dubious”
Stone who likes to show himself as a political justice advocate focused on righting America has made no comment on the invitation by Donald Trump of anti-Semties, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes (also White Supremacist) to Mar-a-Lago.
This dangerous turn in American racist politics was of no concern to him apparently.- he whose father was Jewish.
Cherry picking about what’s wrong with America or advancing old age responsible for this , ….or cowardice?
Oliver Stone was criticized by Billy Hayes, the author of Midnight Express, upon which Stone based his script for the movie of the same name.
Hayes complained Stone demonized the Turkish people in the film when the book made efforts to show that there were decent Turks to be found in his prison experience.
Stone was also lambasted by at least one expert on his J.F.K assassination movie. Rotten Tomatoes said, ” As history, Oliver Stone’s JFK is dubious”
Stone who likes to show himself as a political justice advocate focused on righting America has made no comment on the invitation by Donald Trump of anti-Semties, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes (also White Supremacist) to Mar-a-Lago.
This dangerous turn in American racist politics was of no concern to him apparently.- he whose father was Jewish.
Cherry picking about what’s wrong with America or advancing old age responsible for this , ….or cowardice?
For all that he’s a bigger man than his critics.
The man is a true artist, willing to stick his neck out to explore what is true and what is not.
But truth, writ on a global scale, is too large a beast to tame. Perhaps Oliver has, like Van Gogh, cut off his ear (to the ground) to spite his face, as he strives to depict the world as it really is, rather than as it ought to be.
Gosh, that really is ‘the art matters more than anything’ stuff. His films are now hagiographical rubbish, the subjects appalling and in the case of Nazarbayev, a latter day petty Stalin (but not too petty for his victims).
Stone is in any ordinary moral terms an appalling individual.