It was about getting it done for a price, a low-budget price. I wasn’t a director yet, but I was learning to be a director, and how to direct actors and such. … I felt like, in Platoon, that the script was written, it was there. We’re struggling here, this is the end of the line, we have to shoot this at any cost, and we have to get it right.” Sometimes it was not the most subtle direction. STONE: Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Just get it done. So, there are a lot of lessons in the book.ĭEADLINE: It is always refreshing to see that even a filmmaker with three Oscars on his mantel started with little, and you capture your desperation in recounting films like Salvador, where you bluffed your way to the finish, doing crazy explosion scenes with nervous actors, keeping the completion bond company at bay and finding money in dribs and drabs… Because they’ll tell you do it this way, and you have to learn how to say no, and sometimes that’s very difficult. I remember stopping to explain what a sound mix means to Platoon and how it’s very important not to do a certain kind of mix, and it’s very important to learn how to say no to experts, expert technical people. There is, at times, a teaching element in this book. How I got started, how I wrote my first scripts - how do you do things in the film business? I wanted to write some conclusions that I’ve come to. But this is my first real attempt at confessional type of literature since that book I wrote at 19 years old.Īnd then, over the years, people have asked me many questions, as I’ve been to different colleges, universities all over the world. So, let’s say there’s an urge in me to write, and hopefully this is not my last book.
Sometimes I co-wrote, and sometimes I directed things I didn’t write, but there’s a side of me that’s my mother, another that’s my father. I consider myself a writer and a director. OLIVER STONE: I wrote a self-confessional novel when I was 19, which was published in 1997 as A Child’s Night Dream, so I’ve always had the writing bug in me. Here, Stone revisits those days, and much more.ĭEADLINE: Why the urge to write your own coming-of-age-as-a-filmmaker story? Who is the audience you are aiming for? Stone regarded films like Salvador and Platoon as life-and-death propositions, risking much to create edgy pictures reflective of the pent-up rage he honed in the jungle patrols of Vietnam and channeled into storytelling. But the real keys are an iron will to succeed and a willingness to steamroll or find ways around those in the way. Bottom line: Sure, talent helps, and Stone had it both as writer ( Midnight Express, Scarface) and director. Chasing the Light is a gracefully written memoir with plenty of dish about the formation of a great career.
0 kommentar(er)
