CHANGE OF HEART – In ‘World Trade Center,’ Oliver Stone addresses America – without his usual muckraking
In October 2001, Oliver Stone was abducted by shadowy government agents.
The conspiracy-loving director had just appeared on a film panel, theorizing about what he’d do with the subject of Sept. 11: “I’d like to do a movie on terrorism,” he’d said.
The agents held Stone for months in a secret underground bunker. When he emerged, re-programmed, he promptly signed on to make a very different 9/11 movie – one stripped of all political nuances, celebrating American grit and heroism without questioning anybody’s motives.
The government had Stone just where they wanted him.
NOW that’s an Oliver Stone plot – or at least, the kind of outrageous, speculative potboiler he gave us in films such as “JFK,” “Nixon” and “Natural Born Killers.” He may not have been brainwashed, but today’s Stone seems to be a new man. His “World Trade Center,” opening Wednesday, is the straightforward, heartwarming true story of two police officers’ surviving that awful day.
Sgt. John McLoughlin (played by Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) were Port Authority cops who went into the World Trade Centers early on September 11 to help evacuate victims. When the first tower collapsed, they were trapped in the rubble for nearly 24 hours while their wives (Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal) waited anxiously at home.
“[The film] transcends 9/11 – it’s about people in crisis, and connections we have amongst each other,” Stone says of his film, which keeps its scope deliberately small.
Small scope doesn’t exactly come naturally to Oliver Stone, who’s best known for sprawling, scathing films like “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” both of which took a hard look at the Vietnam war and the excruciating mental and physical toll it took on U.S. soldiers.
From politics (“JFK”) to football (“Any Given Sunday”) to finance (“Wall Street”), Stone’s always been the director who takes the facts and spins them into something more – a cinematic feast with an endlessly debatable rendering of reality and the back-room deals that taint American life.
In his personal life, he hasn’t been any less controversial. Stone is known, even in ultra-liberal, grandstanding Hollywood, as a guy who speaks his mind no matter what the cost to his reputation.
One of his most scandalous offthecuff remarks was that the Sept. 11 attacks were a “revolt,” provoking a furious reaction from journalist Christopher Hitchens.
But today’s Stone seems kinder, gentler – or, at least, focused on the film at hand.
“I’m appealing to the heart,” he says. “If the world doesn’t recognize that [Americans] have a heart, that we can be these kinds of people among ourselves, and be decent to ourselves, we’re never going to get out of this mess.” The “mess” comment is about as close as Stone will come to talking politics, which he says have no role in his movie.
Could this really be the same director who stated at the 2001 New York Film Festival that he would do a sweeping, “Syriana”esque take on the Sept. 11 attacks?
“It would be like ‘The Battle of Algiers,’ in which you’d just go in and show how it works. And it would be a hunt – people looking for them [the terrorists] while they’re about to do this,” he said at the time. “And perhaps it’s an old formula, but if it were done realistically without the search for the hero, which is often required, it could be a fascinating procedural.” Looking back on that panel, Stone says his remarks were of a certain time and place.
“I’m a bit of a contrarian, and this was a certain sacred event that no one could touch,” he says. “At the time I felt like this horrible thing has happened, and what’s wrong with examining this phenomenon?
“I should do something like that [movie],” he adds. “I would love to.
But it wasn’t the right time.” Between then and now, one pivotal event happened: “Alexander.” Stone’s homoerotic take on Alexander the Great featured Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie in the campiest roles of their careers.
American critics scoffed, and audiences stayed away.
“Was I in movie jail?” Stone sums up with a laugh. “I guess you could say that. ‘Alexander’ really performed well overseas, but it was ridiculed here, and that hurt.” A major comeback effort was clearly in order. But Stone says signing on in 2004 to work with the hugely sensitive subject matter of 9/11 was hardly a sure-fire scheme for getting him back in Hollywood’s good graces.
“When I went into this I wasn’t out of the woods,” he says. “It was a big risk. It would have been safer to do an action-adventure film.”
Risky or not, “World Trade Center” would be a departure from Stone’s usual subject matter – and distancing himself from his old reputation was key, says Jeffrey Wells, editor of the film site hollywoodelsewhere.com.
“Ever since ‘JFK,’ people latched onto him as unreliable, the conspiracy fantasist,” Wells says.
FORTUNATELY, someone remembered that he was also Stone the two-time Oscar winner for Best Director. Paramount producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher happened to have a script in need of a director. Stone, conveniently, was a director in search of a project.
“He’s a truth teller,” says Shamberg, who says Stone’s seasoned directorial talent outweighed the riskiness of his politically edgy past.
“He made Vietnam movies that were his personal truths,” Shamberg says. “In ‘JFK,’ he’s trying to find the truth in a murky situation.
This is an objective truth, told by the guys. It’s respectful.
This is everybody’s truth and he’s telling it pretty straight up.” It was clear that Stone would have to stick to the facts, and that he would be put in the relatively unfamiliar situation of directing someone else’s screenplay. The director writes, or co-writes, the vast majority of his films himself.
“The story was approved by Paramount before he was brought in. He didn’t really have control of the script,” says Tom O’Neill, online columnist for the LA Times.
“That was a very wise approach for them.” The screenplay, by Andrea Berloff, has all the elements that traditionally appeal to the widest swath of American audiences: heroism, courage in the face of adversity, national tragedy, men in uniform, close-knit suburban families.
“It could have been a USA channel TV movie,” says Wells.
“It’s a really pedestrian thing.
And he does a really good job, in my opinion.” Stone’s been staying on message while promoting the film, returning again and again to the mantra that “this is not a political film.” But the producers insist it’s not due to any overt pressure from the studio.
“Nobody ordered that mantra to him,” says producer Sher. “He’s a person with a strong point of view, and nobody expected him not to have his positions.
“He doesn’t want to conflate his politics with the film, and he’s very clear about that. He’s proud of the fact that this is a pure story.” Taking a step back may be the best move Stone could make for his career. While his flights of paranoid fancy have always rubbed some audiences the wrong way, he’s consistently proven himself to be a director of unparalleled finesse.
“I think his screenplays don’t have the sizzle they used to,” says O’Neill, “but he still has ‘it’ when it comes to wrapping the whole package just right.” “He’s capable of doing a lot of different things,” adds Variety reporter Michael Fleming. “Maybe he’s known as someone who makes films with political messages, but he’s a filmmaker – and the only way you can make this movie is the way he did it, at this point in time.”
STONE’S idealistic about-face seems likely to make life a lot easier for the director. “For the first time, he’ll be able to go on all the talk shows and not be in an adversarial position,” says O’Neill.
“I think he’s going to be celebrated for this movie – it’s his big comeback, both with the average American filmgoer and with the Hollywood establishment.” Already, the positive feedback has been rolling in – and from the most unlikely sources. Stone, who had become iconic of the “liberal Hollywood” loathed by conservatives, has been lionized for “World Trade Center.” “One of the greatest proAmerican, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see,” raved columnist Cal Thomas.
“God Bless Oliver Stone,” crowed the National Review on its Web site.
In a highly ironic move, the publicity firm behind the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans campaign – in which Vietnam veterans denounced their antiwar brethren – was even enlisted to help promote the movie.
“I’m happy that people from all walks of life and political ideologies would relate to this movie,” Stone says simply, following that up with his oft-stated mantra. “It was never in any way about politics.
[Marine] Dave Karnes is the only political person [in the movie] who talks about going to war.” And then there’s a brief glimmer of the old Stone: “It seems to me we’re in the wrong war. But that’s outside the scope of this movie.”
OLIVER STONE: THE MOVIES
1986
Platoon
Stone’s groundbreaking drama about Vietnam examined the war from a grunt’s point of view. He stirred emotions by staging a My Lai-style village massacre.
1987
Wall Street
Indicting the go-go ’80s, Stone writes a rallying cry for driven money men everywhere: “Greed is good!”
1989
Born on the Fourth of July
Another harrowing Vietnam tale, tracing the real-life story of disabled vet Ron Kovic and America’s failure to care for the soldiers who fought.
1991
JFK
Streching facts until they resembled Silly Putty, Stone wove an astonishly vivid tale about Kennedy’s assassination.
Conspiracy theorists rejoiced.
1994
Natural Born Killers
Media hype, television violence and utter disregard for human life intersected in this tale of an incredibly bloody road trip gone bad.
1999
Any Given Sunday
Pro football took a hit when Stone looked at the money, drugs, sex and physical danger that fuel combat on the grid.
2004
Looking for Fidel
Befriending Castro, Stone travels to Cuba to make several documentaries examining the revolutionary’s contentious legacy.