Oliver Stone

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Oliver Stone

• Contemporary American Auteur

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Background

• Born in NYC to Jewish and French born parents.
• Admitted to Yale, but left after 1 year to teach
  high school students in Vietnam.
• Returned to Yale and dropped out a second time.
• Enlisted in the Army and participated in Vietnam.
• Ultimately graduated from NYU with a degree in
  Fine Arts, where he was taught by Martin
  Scorsese.
• Made his mark in film as a scriptwriter in the
  late 1970's.
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Quotes

• There's an electrical thing about movies.
• I'm terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get
  scared so easily.
• I do believe that movies are subject to a million
  interpretations.
• But I suppose film is distinctive because of its
  nature, of its being able to cut through time
  with editing.
• When you look at a movie, you look at a
  director's thought process.
• In any film there's always a historical
  implication.
• I study history in order to give an
  interpretation.
• I make my films like you're going to die if you
  miss the next minute. You better not go get
  popcorn.

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Filmography as Director
1995 Nixon 1997 U Turn 1999 Any Given
Sunday 2003 Comandante 2004 Alexander 2004 Look
ing for Fidel 2006 World Trade
Center 2008 W. 2009 South of the
Border 2010 Wall Street Money Never
Sleeps 2012 Savages

• 1974 Seizure
• 1981 The Hand
• 1986 Salvador
• 1986 Platoon
• 1987 Wall Street
• 1988 Talk Radio
• 1989 Born on the Fourth of July
• 1991 The Doors
• 1991 JFK
• 1993 Heaven Earth
• 1994 Natural Born Killers

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Platoon (1986)

• Received 8 Academy Awards Nominations.
• Won 4 Academy Awards.
• Received 4 Golden Globe Nominations.
• Won 3 Golden Globe Awards.
• Stars Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe,
  Johnny Depp, Forest Whitaker and more.
• Plot A young recruit in Vietnam faces a moral
  crisis when confronted with the horrors of war
  and the duality of man.
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Wall Street (1987)

• Won 1 Academy Award, the only one it was
  nominated for.
• Won 1 Golden Globe Award, the only one it was
  nominated for.
• Stars Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas and Darryl
  Hannah.
• Plot A young and impatient stockbroker is
  willing to do anything to get to the top,
  including trading on illegal inside information
  taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate
  raider who takes the youth under his wing.
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Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

• Nominated for 8 Academy Awards.
• Won 2 Academy Awards.
• Nominated for 5 Golden Globe Awards.
• Won 4 Golden Globe Awards.
• Stars Tom Cruise.
• Plot The biography of Ron Kovic. Paralyzed in
  the Vietnam war, he becomes an anti-war and
  pro-human rights political activist after feeling
  betrayed by the country he fought for.
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The Doors (1991)

• Oliver Stone's homage to the 1960's rock group
  The Doors.
• Starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison. It is
  rumored that even the surviving members of the
  band could not decipher Val Kilmer's singing of
  their material from Jim Morrison himself.
• Plot The story of the famous and influential
  1960s rock band and its lead singer and composer,
  Jim Morrison, from his days as a UCLA film
  student in Los Angeles, to his untimely death in
  Paris, France at age 27 in 1971.
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JFK (1991)

• Nominated for 8 Academy Awards.
• Won 2 Academy Awards.
• Nominated for 4 Golden Globe Awards.
• Won 2 Golden Globe Awards.
• Stars Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Jack Lemmon.
• Plot A New Orleans DA discovers there's more to
  the Kennedy assassination than the official
  story.
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Natural Born Killers (1994)

• Nominated for 1 Golden Globe Award but did not
  win.
• Based on an original screenplay written by
  Quentin Tarantino.
• Stars Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tom
  Sizemore and Robert Downey Jr.
• Plot Two victims of traumatized childhoods
  become lovers and psychopathic serial murderers
  irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.
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Nixon (1995)

• Nominated for 4 Academy Awards but did not win
  any.
• Nominated for 1 Golden Globe Award but did not
  win.
• Stone took on the film by interviewing White
  House staff, part of the intensive research and
  meticulous detail that went into the production.
• Stars Anthony Hopkins and Tommy Lee Jones.
• Plot A biographical story of former U.S.
  president Richard Milhous Nixon, from his days as
  a young boy to his eventual presidency which
  ended in shame.
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As Screenwriter

• Midnight Express (1978)
• Conan the Barbarian (with John Milius) (1982)
• Scarface (1983)
• Year of the Dragon (with Michael Cimino) (1985)
• 8 Million Ways to Die (with David Lee Henry)
  (1985)
• Evita (with Alan Parker) (1996)

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Midnight Express (1978)

• Based on Billy Hayes' 1977 book Midnight Express.
• Both Stone and Hayes expressed their regret on
  how Turkish people were portrayed in the movie.
• The film's title is prison slang for an inmate's
  escape attempt.
• Plot The true story of Billy Hayes, an American
  college student who is caught smuggling drugs out
  of Turkey and thrown into prison.
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Conan the Barbarian (1982)

• Oliver Stone recruited to draft a script.
• Starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl
  Jones.
• The film's popularity led to the sequel Conan the
  Destroyer (1984).
• Plot A vengeful barbarian warrior sets off to
  avenge his tribe and his parents whom were slain
  by an evil sorcerer and his warriors when he was
  a boy.
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Scarface (1983)

• A remake of the 1932 film of the same name.
• Stone wrote the script for Scarface while
  struggling with his own addiction to cocaine.
• Scarface was acknowledged as the tenth best in
  the gangster film genre by the American Film
  Institute in June of 2008.
• Entertainment Weekly ranked the film 8 on their
  list of "The Top 50 Cult Films.
• Empire Magazine placed it among the top 500 films
  of all time, at 284.
• Plot In 1980 Miami, a determined Cuban immigrant
  takes over a drug cartel while succumbing to
  greed.
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Source Links, Interviews More

• Oliver Stone's Official Website
• Oliver Stone on Wikipedia
• Oliver Stone on IMDb
• Oliver Stone Quotes
• Oliver Stone's America (2001 Interview)
• Oliver Stone - Satire Controversy (Interview)
• Oliver Stone (Interview)
• Oliver Stone - Untold (Interview)
• Youtube Search for Lots More on Oliver Stone