Violent ambiguity of Oliver Stone

"Wait, what is this?" Oliver Stone looks up from the stack of copies of his new novel, A Child's Night Dream which he is signing for students who have been waiting in line for an hour. "Is that my film?" Stone, oblivious to the line of eager students, jostles his way through the lobby and opens the door to the Whitney Humanities Center auditorium. The light from the lobby pours into the darkened hall, illuminating the heads of two hundred students as Stone stands in the doorway apparently confused by the sounds and images emanating from the large screen. He is pleased when he realizes that it is a preview for U-Turn. "Oh, that's my next film," he says to anyone within earshot. The trailer ends but Stone does not move when the feature begins. As the opening scenes flash across the screen, Stone intermittently chuckles at his own film and wildly shakes his head. At other times he covers his eyes as Mickey and Mallory, the "heroes" of the film, massacre the patrons of a diner in the film's opening scene. Finally, as blood drips down, covering the screen, and the title "Natural Born Killers" appears, Stone gives one final shake of the head, turns and whispers, "I love that beginning."

It is a bizarre and rare experience to see a director watch his own film. Film is the ultimate public medium, providing every viewer with the opportunity to simply ingest the images or to develop a distinct, critical interpretation. Oliver Stone is a filmmaker whose work obviously falls into the second category. Yet his films consistently provoke the question of original intent--what did he mean to say? what was he thinking?

Back in the lobby, Paulina "Pav" Hatoupis, SY '00, waits in the center of all the bustle, wrapped in her trademark black velvet jacket despite the heat. She is one of the three key players in the formation of the Yale Film Society. It's actually more like a resurrection--the Yale Film Society dates back to the middle of the century but its last incarnation died in the early 1990s. The stoic Pav passes words in French to her partner, Edward McGurn, ES '00, (often clad in red velvet) who is running around furiously, trying to organize the dinner party. Donning velvet shoes, Rene Brar, ES '99, completes the trifecta. Rene remains behind as the Stone entourage heads to dinner.

At Scoozi, the director is appropriately placed at the center of a long table as 18 people huddle around, trying to listen in as Stone talks about the dire state of independent film. "So much of what is made is utter crap," he states in between sips of white wine. Stone is a strange mix of politeness and egocentricism, one minute curious about some aspect of Yale, the next engaged in a foul-mouthed monologue about the demons of the media. He is an ambivalent character, and his politics are difficult to pin down.

As we begin to get our entrees, Stone tells Pav, "Listen, I gotta lie down before the Q and A." As Stone leaves, Professor Charles Musser, one of the Society's faculty advisers, says of the director, "Not many people can provoke a conversation about what it means to be a filmmaker in America today." Given Musser's observation, the question and answer period following the screening should have been dynamite. Instead, students ask disappointing and, at times, outright uninformed questions. At one point someone asks about the appropriateness of sticking Kevin Costner into historical footage in JFK. Stone, slightly bewildered by the interlocutor's mistake, answers, "You're thinking of Gump."

The most intelligent question of the evening, which provokes the most interesting exchange, concerns the conceptualization of evil in Natural Born Killers. Stone answers, once again in his jumbled ambiguous way, that we are all genetically cursed and blessed as we enter "this artificial earth experience," predisposed towards violence. Stone asks, "Does that answer your question? Is that more or less what you wanted to know?" The student, dissatisfied, responds, "I want to hear how you actually feel."

"How I actually feel?" After a long pause ßtone blurts out, "I think we all talk a lot of bullshit but we have a lot of violence in us. That's one thing I feel."

The image of Stone which develops throughout the evening is one full of ambivalence and contradiction. At times, Stone comes across as a demonic genius, with a profound, eclectic take on society. Yet discovering that Stone intended NBK simply as his expression of disgust at violence and the media, which "has gotten worse since the '60s and was out of control by the '90s," is somewhat disappointing in its simplicity. Is someone of Stone's intelligence actually surprised by the commodification of violence? For all its exaggerations and wildness, NBK's message is pretty tame.

In fact, I would argue that Stone's best commentary on society and the media is not the exaggerated vision presented in NBK. Instead, it is in the much more nuanced and intelligent view expressed in Talk Radio, a tiny indie film Stone made with Eric Borgosian in the late 1980's. Set in Texas, the film is about a deeply problematic leftist talk radio host who becomes increasingly disillusioned with the racist, anti-Semitic, violent-loving listeners of his program. This film made no money, probably because it lacked the big-budget violence of NBK. So Stone feeds off the very elements which he hates. And whether NBK is an attempt a "satirical funhouse distortion," the fact is that film succeeded because of its violence.

Regardless of one's particular opinions of Stone and his films, one cannot deny the centrality of Stone's work in any number of debates, whether they concern the Vietnam experience or the genius of Jim Morrison. Stone is something of an anthropologist and historian--his filmography reads as a catalog of the postwar American experience, from a very distinctive and provocative point of view. The Yale Film Society pulled off an impressive feat by bringing a crucial figure in twentieth century political and cultural studies to campus.

Sites related to this article

• Sony Pictures Official Site for U-Turn
• An Oliver Stone fan page

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