Stone, Oliver

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Oliver Stone

Born September 15, 1946
New York, New York

American Vietnam War veteran; film director

Vietnam veteran Oliver Stone is one of America's best-known film directors. Over the course of his career, he has written and directed films on many different subjects, from the world of high finance (1987's Wall Street) to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1991's JFK). But he first became famous for two Vietnam War films that received tremendous critical acclaim. These movies—Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989)—provided movie audiences with powerful portraits of American soldiers' experiences in Vietnam.

Raised in a world of comfort and wealth

Oliver Stone was born September 15, 1946, in New York, New York. His parents were Louis Stone, a prominent stockbroker, and Jacqueline (Goddet) Stone. As a youngster, Stone attended elite schools in New York City and Connecticut and spent his summers living in France with his maternal grandparents. When he was sixteen, however, he was shocked to learn that his parents were divorcing and that his seemingly wealthy father was actually deeply in debt. "I thought they were very contented and that I was rich and that we had it made," Stone recalled in Rolling Stone. The break-up of Stone's family left the teenager feeling deeply disillusioned and rebellious.

In 1964 Stone graduated from high school and enrolled at Yale University, where he began to consider a writing career. But he dropped out of school after one year to join a teaching program. After undergoing training, he was assigned to teach English at a school in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. He arrived in the city in late 1965, just as the United States was beginning to commit American troops to the Vietnam War.

This conflict, which pitted the U.S.-supported nation of South Vietnam against the Communist nation of North Vietnam and its Viet Cong guerrilla allies, had actually begun in the mid-1950s. At that time, Communist forces began working to take over South Vietnam and unite it with the North under one Communist government. But the United States strongly opposed their activities because of fears that a takeover might trigger Communist aggression in other parts of the world.

As a result, the United States provided military and financial aid to South Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 1960s. When the South continued to struggle, American political and military leaders decided to introduce U.S. troops in hopes of wiping out the Communist threat. But deepening U.S. involvement in the war failed to defeat the joint Viet Cong-North Vietnamese forces. Instead, the war settled into a bloody stalemate that eventually claimed the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers and caused bitter internal divisions across America.

Stone in Vietnam

Stone spent six months in Saigon before returning to the United States. After returning home, however, he developed a deep desire to participate directly in the war as a soldier. This desire was due in part to his belief that wartime experiences might help him mature as a writer. But he also attributed his feelings to romantic visions of war, manhood, and adventure.

Stone volunteered for infantry duty in Vietnam, and in September 1967 he joined a platoon that was charged with patrolling a dangerous region near the Cambodian border. As soon as he arrived, Stone recalled in Time magazine, "I realized ... that I'd made a terrible mistake. It was on-the-job training: Here's your machete, kid; you cut point [lead the platoon through the jungle]. You learn if you can, and if not you're dead. Nobody was motivated, except to get out. Survival was the key. It wasn't very romantic."

During Stone's year-long tour of duty in Vietnam, he fought in several deadly battles, was wounded twice, and witnessed the war's cruelty and violence on countless occasions. By the time he returned home in late 1968, Stone was convinced that American involvement in Vietnam was a terrible and tragic mistake.

Begins career in films

After returning to the United States, Stone studied film making at New York University with director Martin Scorsese and other instructors. He graduated in 1971 and spent the next few years trying to establish himself as a director and screen-writer. In the meantime, however, Stone's memories of Vietnam continued to haunt him, and he began abusing drugs and alcohol.

In 1976 Stone managed to gain control over his destructive drinking and drug use. Around this same time, he drew on the memories of his tour in Vietnam to write the script for Platoon. But film studios rejected the script because they did not believe that the American public would be interested in seeing a movie treatment of the controversial and unpopular war.

Stone's inability to gain financing for Platoon frustrated him, but he continued to build his reputation in the film industry. In 1977 he earned an Academy Award for his screenplay for Midnight Express, a dark and controversial film about a young American's imprisonment in Turkey for drug smuggling. He also wrote the screenplay for Scarface, a violent but popular film that was released in 1983. And in 1986 he wrote and directed Salvador, a critically acclaimed movie that the story of a photojournalist who reports on the civil war that engulfed the Central American country of El Salvador during the early 1980s.

Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July

In the mid-1980s Stone finally was able to gather enough money to begin filming Platoon. The story concerns a young American college dropout who volunteers to serve in Vietnam. Once he arrives, however, he is stunned by the violence, brutality, and confusing nature of the war. As the weeks go by, the young soldier works to maintain his morality and decency within a platoon that struggles to survive enemy attacks and internal disagreements.

Stone shot the film in the Philippines in less than two months and released it in 1986. Platoon was immediately popular across America when it appeared. A great commercial success, the movie also drew widespread praise. Reviewers and Vietnam veterans alike hailed the film for its realism and its powerful emotional impact. "For a long time after I saw Platoon the first time and then again after I saw it a second time, I wondered why I found the movie so powerful, so genuinely authentic," wrote the famous Vietnam War correspondent David Halberstam (see entry) in the New York Times. "Part of it is the acting and directing. One scene after another seems stunningly real. But the movie transcends all the individual scenes, no matter how good they are. Then finally I realized what it was. What Mr. Stone has captured and put together is the special reality of Vietnam, the loneliness of these men, how isolated they are and how on this terrain they are always foreigners." Stone's film ultimately won numerous prestigious awards, including Academy Awards for best picture and best director.

Stone followed up Platoon with Wall Street, a 1987 film that harshly attacked the greed and corruption of America's business world. He then turned his attention to another Vietnam film called Born on the Fourth of July. This movie is based on the autobiography of Ron Kovic (see entry), a young man who was crippled in combat in Vietnam. Stone's film begins by showing how Kovic's deep sense of patriotism convinced him to volunteer for military duty in Vietnam. It then details his horrifying experiences during the war and the firefight that left him a paraplegic (paralyzed from the chest down). The movie then tracks Kovic's experiences after he returns to the United States as he struggles to cope with his injuries and a deep sense that he has been betrayed by his country. But he eventually emerges from a haze of alcohol and self-pity to became a respected writer and antiwar activist.

Born on the Fourth of July proved to be another critical and commercial success for Stone. Reviewers praised actor Tom Cruise for his performance as Kovic. They also applauded the director for creating another gripping examination of the Vietnam War and its effect on the American men who fought in it. In 1990 Stone received his second best director Academy Award for his work on the film.

Becomes known for making controversial movies

Since Born on the Fourth of July appeared in 1989, Stone has become one of America's most controversial movie directors. In 1991 he released JFK, a film about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy (see entry). Stone was condemned by many reviewers and scholars who saw the film who charged that he altered basic historical facts surrounding Kennedy's death in order to support his own conspiracy theories about the assassination.

In 1994 Stone released Natural Born Killers, an extremely violent movie about a murderous young couple who become celebrities after a long killing spree. Some people viewed the film as an insightful commentary on American popular culture. But many reviewers, politicians, and ordinary Americans strongly criticized the movie for its twisted characters and bloody storyline.

Stone's next film examined the life of President Richard Nixon (see entry), who served from 1969 to 1974 before resigning as a result of the Watergate scandal. Nixon drew praise from many critics for its intelligent and sensitive portrait of the disgraced president, but the 1995 film performed poorly at the box office.

Examines the war from Vietnamese perspective

Stone made his third film about the Vietnam War in the mid-1990s. This work, called Heaven and Earth, is based on the memoirs of Le Ly Hayslip (see entry), a Vietnamese woman who came of age as war raged across her country. Released in 1994, Heaven and Earth failed to generate much excitement among American moviegoers. It also received poor marks from reviewers, although they gave the director credit for examining the war from the perspective of a Vietnamese woman.