Stone Craft

That’s the line perhaps most of the participants would have loved to repeat. In fact,during the discussion that lasted more than two hours,several directors,including Kunal Kohli,Sudhir Mishra,Zoya Akhtar,Santosh Sivan,Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and Vishal Bhardwaj,did profess their love and appreciation for Stone’s directorial genius as well as his guts — evident from his political and war films. His most talked-about political films include JFK,Nixon and W — all three based on the lives of former American presidents John F Kennedy,Richard Nixon and George W Bush respectively. Recently added to his oeuvre is the documentary South of the Border,which attempts to explain the “phenomenon” of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. It is scheduled to release in India soon. Despite such a filmography,Stone on a lighter vein,said,“I have not made it a business to chase presidents.” He also shot down the possibility of doing a film on the present US President Barack Obama.

South of the Border was screened at the Mumbai Film Festival along with Alexander Revisited,which is the final cut of his ambitious historical drama Alexander (2004). It’s Alexander that first brought him to India. “I was completely enamoured with the landscape of Ladakh during my 2003 India tour. I wanted to shoot Alexander crossing the Hindu Kush there. Since I wanted snow,we came back the next year in March,” the 57-year-old recalls.

The one Oliver Stone film that everyone loves to talk about is Wall Street (1987) and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). The question on everyone’s mind is — is greed still good? To this,Stone answered with a deadpan expression: “Gordon Gekko is still a son of a bit**.” But the filmmaker did concede that both he and Gekko,a character immortalised by Michael Douglas with his “reptile charm”,have mellowed down over the years. “I won’t make the old Wall Street now,” he says,and adds that both these films are his “love letters” to New York.

One of Hollywood’s most prolific directors,he has also been it’s most misunderstood. “I never made a film I didn’t believe in,” he said. Talking about his controversial film W,which was made when Bush was still in power,Stone clarified that his approach was more empathetic and not sympathetic,like in the case of Nixon. “In W,when actor Josh Brolin walks in the shoes of Bush,it’s more like understanding his problems,” explains Hollywood’s most famous political filmmaker.

About being prolific,he said,“In the ’80s,I did 10 films in as many years. I was crazy.” Such madness is not surprising,if one takes a look at his “rough childhood”. Watching movies helped him escape from it. He recalls running away from home to watch an Anthony Quinn movie. “It was smy The Catcher in the Rye moment.” However,at times the fate of his films suffered due to the narrow time gap between their release dates. Both Salvador and Platoon were released in 1986. The Doors and JFK too hit the theatres in the same year. Stone admits that it is Platoon — which is the first of his famous Vietnam War trilogy that includes Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven and Earth (1993) — that “scored” while Salvador became a successful video watch. In 1991, JFK enjoyed “tremendous amount of attention” while The Doors “shocked the audience for being too radical”.

The making of a film often involves extensive collaboration for Stone — with actors,cameramen and others. “The story is twisted and turned as it’s developed for a movie. You have to have a good screenplay before you change the structure.” After a pause he adds,“It is like lighting a match. You don’t know where the fire will go.” If you go by the response Stone’s India visit is garnering,the fire seems to have travelled far and wide.