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motaman
old hand

Registered: 12/18/02
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Oliver Stone says drugs influenced his life, and he influenced Scorsese
#5880965 - 07/20/06 10:46 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/movies/bal-to.liz20jul20,0,1225940.story?track=rss
Oliver Stone says drugs influenced his life, and he influenced Scorsese Liz Smith By George Rush and Joanna Molloy Originally published July 20, 2006
Guests this past weekend at the Park Regency hotel may have been surprised to sniff some funny-smelling smoke drifting around director Oliver Stone's suite, but they shouldn't have been.
"I like ayahuasca," a hallucinogenic tea, said Stone, who's also spoken of his love of pot. "And I liked LSD, and I liked peyote."
The director of Platoon and JFK thinks tripping is so beneficial that he once spiked his father's wine with acid. The gonzo filmmaker tells Chris Heath in the new GQ magazine that he was just trying to help -- like the time his father lent him one of his favorite French prostitutes for the young director's first sexual experience.
But Stone got serious to direct World Trade Center, starring Nicolas Cage, about two Port Authority police officers trapped in the collapse of the towers on Sept. 11. "The script was very emotional -- it got to me," said the moviemaker, a Trinity School and Yale grad who served in Vietnam.
In fact, it was the uniform jacket he wore to Martin Scorsese's film class -- and Stone's angry attitude -- that he claims provided Scorsese with one of his greatest inspirations.
"Whatever it was," he said, "he certainly used it in Taxi Driver.
"I'm sure that factored in, because I was driving a cab. He may not have known about it, but the seething part, and I used to wear an Army jacket, and I looked a lot like [Robert] De Niro going to class."
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Organic
Lloyd

Registered: 04/14/02
Posts: 5,774
Loc: Overlook
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Re: Oliver Stone says drugs influenced his life, and he influenced Scorsese [Re: motaman]
#5881032 - 07/20/06 11:10 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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Oliver Stone seems like a really unique, interesting guy, but I'm betting this WTC movie will be glurge tripe. Stone's movies have been severely lacking lately... (Not to mention the Nicholas Cage factor)
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Jaxx
Random muppet.


Registered: 01/14/03
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Re: Oliver Stone says drugs influenced his life, and he influenced Scorsese [Re: Organic]
#5881103 - 07/20/06 11:38 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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Yeah, he used to much better. You must admit though that Platoon and Natural Born Killers are excellent films.
-------------------- If you were to draw a continuous straight line with a standard graphite pencil the line would stretch for 35 miles.
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Organic
Lloyd

Registered: 04/14/02
Posts: 5,774
Loc: Overlook
Last seen: 14 years, 7 months
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Re: Oliver Stone says drugs influenced his life, and he influenced Scorsese [Re: Jaxx]
#5881436 - 07/20/06 01:29 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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I do
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BigBrassBed
Stranger
Registered: 06/26/06
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Re: Oliver Stone says drugs influenced his life, and he influenced Scorsese [Re: Organic]
#5883967 - 07/21/06 09:49 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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I have a real problem with people's event connection and emotions being taken advantage of to make money for individuals. I didn't see flight whatever it was, and i won't see this.
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Papaver
Madmin Emeritus?

Registered: 06/01/02
Posts: 26,880
Loc: Radio Free Tibet!
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Re: Oliver Stone says drugs influenced his life, and he influenced Scorsese [Re: motaman]
#5887812 - 07/22/06 02:52 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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I think it's also safe to say, that Mr. Stone's ego has been a major influence Mr. Stone, as well... 
That being said, I really like Oliver Stone, and I like the fact that he has always been very open about his personal drug use. It's interesting, if you watch that documentary about "Natural Born Killers" on the DVD; there's that part where Stone's assistant/producer(?) admits that they were rally taking mushrooms while driving around in the desert scouting locations, and that an actual cop followed them for a while, and that that actual experience ended up directly in the film with Mickey and Mallory.
I really like "Natural Born Killers." I think it's one of his best films, and is also one of the best films of the last quarter of the 20th Century. For me, it worked on so many levels, and it was the ultimate big-budget/indie/film-school film coming from within the studio system (if that statement isn't too much of a contradiction).
I think part of that film's special magic was that it started with a Quentin Tarantino screenplay, which Stone then proceeded to massively re-write in the screenplay-stage beyond all recognition (much to the chagrin of Mr. Tarantino), but that uneasy after-the-fact collaboration worked, and created a hyper-real document that truly captured those heady, media-filled times in a way that no other film managed to do at that time. It is the fact that there is still much of Tarantino's original story, and his trademark, retro-cute cultural-kitsch nostalgia, underneath that film, that makes it only that much stronger -- it helps diffuse Stone's occasional political over-zealousness, which can at times make his films "preachy." In hindsight, the Stone/Tarantino collaboration in the writing department did create a superior document of the times.
I also really enjoyed his film, "The Doors." Although, I realize that there is much controversy surrounding that film, and its authenticity, and its "statement." I know it pissed-off a lot of people, but I also think one has to realize that any Oliver Stone film is "his own very special version" of the world, and hence, will have very little to do with any sort of objective, consensus, reality...
I'm not really into Stone's overtly "political films," and I probably won't really bother to see the 9/11 film, as that kind of thing just isn't my bag. However, he's free to make it, and I'm free to watch something else. I don't like all of Mr. Stone's films, and he's not one of my all time favorite directors, but when he is "on," for me, he is really on! 
PS: I also liked "Wall Street" and "Talk Radio." I thought that both of those films captured the zeitgeist of their times and specific social contexts very well. I also believe Mr. Stone wrote the screenplay (but not the story) for, "Midnight Express," which was also an excellent film!
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Edited by Papaver (07/22/06 03:11 PM)
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