OLIVER STONE

[Dealey Joe]

William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on contemporary political and cultural issues, often controversially. He has received three Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay for Midnight Express (1978), and Best Director for Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). The British newspaper The Guardian described Stone as "one of the few committed men of the left working in mainstream American cinema."[1] Stone's films often use many different cameras and film formats, including VHS, 8 mm film, and 70 mm film. He sometimes uses several formats in a single scene, as in JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994).In 1991, Stone showed his film JFK to Congress on Capitol Hill, which helped lead to passage of the Assassination Materials Disclosure Act[18] of 1992. The Assassination Records Review Board (created by Congress to end the secrecy surrounding Kennedy's assassination) discussed the film, including Stone's observation at the end of the film, about the dangers inherent in government secrecy.[19] Stone published an annotated version of the screenplay, in which he cites references for his claims, shortly after the film's release.Stone's screenplay Midnight Express was criticized by some[who?] for its portrayal of Turkish people. The original author, Billy Hayes, around whom the film is set, has spoken out against the film, protesting that he had many Turkish friends while in jail.[20]Stone's film Natural Born Killers (originally based on a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino), released in 1994, received controversial recognition for its portrayal of violence, along with the intended satire on the media. Before it was released, the MPAA gave the film a NC-17 rating; this caused Stone to cut four minutes of film footage in order to obtain an R rating (he eventually released the unrated version on VHS and DVD in 2001). Entertainment Weekly ranked Natural Born Killers at number 8 on their list of the 25 Most Controversial Movies Ever.[citation needed]Stone's other film The Doors, released in 1991, received criticism from former Doors member Ray Manzarek (keyboardist–bass player) during a question and answer session at Indiana University East (in Richmond, Indiana), in 1997. During the discussion, Manzarek stated that he sat down with Stone about The Doors and Jim Morrison for over 12 hours. Patricia Kennealy Morrison - a well known rock critic and author - was a consultant on the movie, in which she also has a cameo appearance, but she writes in her memoir Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison (Dutton, 1992) that Stone ignored everything she told him and proceeded with his own version of events. From the moment the movie was released, she blasted it as untruthful and inaccurate.[21] The other surviving former members of the band, John Densmore and Robby Krieger, also cooperated with the filming of Doors, but distanced themselves from the work before the film's release.Also in 1997, Stone was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested against the treatment of Scientologists in Germany and compared it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s.[22] Other signatories included Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn.[22]In 2010, Stone defended his decision not to interview Hugo Chavez's opponents during the filming of his documentary South of the Border. Stone indicated that people hear enough of those complaints already and that the movie is not intended to be a detailed examination of Chavez's record. He praised Chavez as a leader of a movement for "social transformation" in Latin America and expressed his deep admiration for him

[Dealey Joe]

Oliver Stone's son converts to Islam in IranPosted By Uri Friedman Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 12:16 PM ShareAFP and Iranian news outlets are reporting this morning that Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's son, Sean, converted to Shiism today during a ceremony in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, reciting the Islamic profession of faith and choosing the Muslim first name Ali. "The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with," the 27-year-old documentary filmmaker, whose father is half-Jewish and mother Christian, told AFP. "It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets."Earlier this month, the Iranian press reported that Sean attended a conference on "Hollywoodism and Cinema" in Tehran, which featured an address by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and focused on "Hollywood's behind-the-scenes policies and its destructive effects on family foundation," according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.What's perhaps as interesting as the conversion, however, is the backstory. Last fall, Sean, pictured above in Tehran, traveled to Iran to work on a film about the mystic poet Rumi and to help "introduce Persian culture and civilization to the West," according to the Tehran Times. After his visit, he told The Wrap that Iran had a right to nuclear weapons and defended Ahmadinejad. "Iran is ruled by law," he explained. "People don't like Ahmadinejad, but that doesn't warrant a war or an uprising."Oliver Stone -- who has courted controversy in the past by interviewing Cuba's Raúl Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez for his 2009 documentary South of the Border -- has a more complicated relationship with Iran. Some Iranians were angered by Stone's 2004 biopic about Alexander the Great (the Tehran Times claims the film depicted "ancient Persians as idiots and buffoons"), and Iranian authorities have repeatedly rebuffed Stone's requests to make a documentary about Ahmadinejad. In 2007, Ahmadinejad's media advisor, Mehdi Kalhor, explained the decision by calling Stone "part of the Great Satan." Stone, in turn, issued a statement declaring that he wished "the Iranian people well, and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours" (this was the Bush era).In an explosive 2010 interview with London's Sunday Times, Stone softened his tone somewhat, noting that U.S. policy toward Iran was "horrible." Iran "isn't necessary the good guy," he conceded. "But we don't know the full story." Now, it seems, Iran is much more than that -- a spiritual destination for his son. We wonder if Stone will get permission for that Ahmadinejad documentary after all.

[Dealey Joe]

Sean Stone, son of Oliver, seems like a chip off the old block. Fresh off the plane from Tehran, the famous filmmaker's son defended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an interview this weekend and supported Iran’s right to a nuclear program as a defense against threats from Israel. The 26-year-old is a documentary filmmaker met exclusively with TheWrap at the Toronto Film Festival, offering some unconventional views. Criticizing the Iranian government is “like someone coming to your house and saying the father shouldn’t hit the kids,” he said. “Who are we to tell them how to rule their country?” “Iran is ruled by law,” he said. “People don’t like Ahmadinejad, but that doesn’t warrant a war or an uprising.” Sean’s father, Oliver Stone, has often been a controversial political iconoclast, befriending Cuban leader Fidel Castro and anti-American Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Stone spent a week on Tehran (photo above of Stone with coproducer Melissa Carter in Tehran) launching a new co-production company to make movies based in Iranian history and culture. Meanwhile, in Tehran on Sunday Ahmadinejad gave a speech marking the anniversary of 9/11 by repeating the conspiracy theory that the attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. as a pretext for war. But Stone said that Ahmadinejad has often been misunderstood. “He did come to America to extend a hand. And there’s a lot of mistranslation, literally, I’ve seen it. Ahmadinejad will say something and it will be mistranslated,” he said. “A lot of this is bullshit, mistranslation. It’s an aggressive attitude on both parts, mostly on the American side.” Stone, who studied history at Princeton, said that Iran should certainly have the right to a nuclear program. “Israel has nuclear weapons, Iran has the right to them,” he said. “Every nation has the right to self determination for defense." Stone said he wants to make films in Iran, “because they’re the biggest filmmakers in the Middle East, I’m very international-minded” and the opportunity arose through some personal connections. Stone did not comment on the fact that Iran arrested filmmaker Jafar Panahi in the wake of the “Green Movement” street protests of 2009 and have banned him from making films because he has criticized the regime. Stone was at the film festival to launch a new online company, FilmFunds, of which he is the CEO. A spokesman for the company said Stone's political views were personal and did not represent FilmFunds. One Iranian filmmaker also at the festival expressed dismay when he heard of Stone’s views. “This is insulting,” said Mazdak Taebi, who has been banned from travelling back to Iran because of his anti-regime statements. “So many people have died. People there are shaking. They’re scared. It’s a police system.” Another Iranian filmmaker at the festival, who still lives in Tehran, declined to comment.