74 Facts About Oliver Stone

1.

William Oliver Stone was born on September 15,1946 and is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter.

2.

Oliver Stone achieved prominence as writer and director of the war drama Platoon, which won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

3.

Platoon was the first in a trilogy of films based on the Vietnam War, in which Oliver Stone served as an infantry soldier.

4.

Many of Oliver Stone's films focus on controversial American political issues during the late 20th century, and as such were considered contentious at the times of their releases.

5.

Oliver Stone has frequently been critical of American foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by nationalist and imperialist agendas.

6.

Oliver Stone's parents met during World War II, when his father was fighting as a part of the Allied force in France.

7.

Oliver Stone's American-born father was Jewish, whereas his French-born mother was Roman Catholic, both non-practicing.

8.

Oliver Stone was raised in the Episcopal Church, and now practices Buddhism.

9.

Oliver Stone attended Trinity School in New York City before his parents sent him away to The Hill School, a college-preparatory school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

10.

Oliver Stone's parents divorced abruptly while he was away at school and this, because he was an only child, marked him deeply.

11.

Oliver Stone often spent parts of his summer vacations with his maternal grandparents in France, both in Paris and La Ferte-sous-Jouarre in Seine-et-Marne.

12.

Oliver Stone was admitted to Yale University but left in June 1965 at age 18 to teach high school students English for six months in Saigon at the Free Pacific Institute in South Vietnam.

13.

Oliver Stone returned to Yale, where he dropped out a second time.

14.

Oliver Stone was then transferred to the 1st Cavalry Division participating in long-range reconnaissance patrols before being transferred again to drive for a motorized infantry unit of the division until November 1968.

15.

Oliver Stone graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film in 1971, where his teachers included director and fellow NYU alumnus Martin Scorsese.

16.

Oliver Stone made a short, well received 12-minute film Last Year in Viet Nam.

17.

Oliver Stone worked as a taxi driver, film production assistant, messenger, and salesman before making his mark in film as a screenwriter in the late 1970s, in the period between his first two films as a director: horror films Seizure and The Hand.

18.

In 1979, Oliver Stone was awarded his first Oscar, after adapting true-life prison story Midnight Express into the successful film of the same name for British director Alan Parker.

19.

Oliver Stone wrote further features, including Brian De Palma's drug lord epic Scarface, loosely inspired by his own addiction to cocaine, which he successfully kicked while working on the screenplay.

20.

Oliver Stone penned Year of the Dragon featuring Mickey Rourke, before his career took off as a writer-director in 1986.

21.

In 1986, Oliver Stone directed two films back to back: the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Salvador, shot largely in Mexico, and his long in-development Vietnam project Platoon, shot in the Philippines.

22.

Oliver Stone directed Wall Street, which was released in December 1987.

23.

In 1991, Oliver Stone showed JFK to Congress on Capitol Hill, which helped lead to passage of the Assassination Materials Disclosure Act of 1992.

24.

Oliver Stone published an annotated version of the screenplay, in which he cites references for his claims, shortly after the film's release.

25.

Oliver Stone's satire of the modern media, Natural Born Killers was released in 1994.

26.

Oliver Stone went on to direct the 1995 Richard Nixon biopic Nixon, which received multiple Oscar nominations for script, John Williams' score, Joan Allen as Pat Nixon and Anthony Hopkins' portrait of the title role.

27.

Oliver Stone later re-edited his biographical film of Alexander the Great into a two-part, 3-hour 37-minute film Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut, which became one of the highest-selling catalog items from Warner Bros.

28.

Oliver Stone further refined the film and in 2014 released the two-part, 3-hour 26-minute Alexander: The Ultimate Cut.

29.

In 2010, Oliver Stone returned to the theme of Wall Street for the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

30.

In 2012, Oliver Stone directed Savages, based on a novel by Don Winslow.

31.

Oliver Stone received the 2017 Cinema for Peace Award for Justice for such film.

32.

On May 22,2017, various industry papers reported that Oliver Stone was going to direct a television series about the Guantanamo detention camp.

33.

In July 2020, Oliver Stone teamed with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to release his first memoir, titled Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game, which chronicles his turbulent upbringing in New York City, volunteering for combat in Vietnam, and the trials and triumphs of moviemaking in the 1970s and '80s.

34.

Oliver Stone made three documentaries on Fidel Castro: Comandante, Looking for Fidel, and Castro in Winter.

35.

Oliver Stone made Persona Non Grata, a documentary on Israeli-Palestinian relations, interviewing several notable figures of Israel, including Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Shimon Peres, as well as Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

36.

In 2009, Oliver Stone completed a feature-length documentary, South of the Border about the rise of leftist governments in Latin America, featuring seven presidents: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Cuba's Raul Castro, the Kirchners of Argentina, Brazil's Lula da Silva, and Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, all of whom are critical of US foreign policy in South America.

37.

Oliver Stone hoped the film would get the rest of the Western world to rethink socialist policies in South America, particularly as it was being applied by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

38.

Oliver Stone defended his decision not to interview Chavez's opponents, stating that oppositional statements and TV clips were scattered through the documentary and that the documentary was an attempt to right a balance of heavily negative coverage.

39.

Oliver Stone praised Chavez as a leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, a movement for social transformation in Latin America, and praised the six other presidents in the film.

40.

Oliver Stone was interviewed in Boris Malagurski's documentary film The Weight of Chains 2, which deals with neoliberal reforms in the Balkans.

41.

Two years later in 2016, Oliver Stone was executive producer for Ukrainian-born director Igor Lopatonok's film Ukraine on Fire, a documentary written by Vanessa Dean.

42.

In 2019, he released Revealing Ukraine, another film produced by Oliver Stone, directed by Lopatonok and featuring Oliver Stone interviewing Putin.

43.

In 2021, he produced and featured in Qazaq: History of the Golden Man, directed by Lopatonok, an eight-hour film consisting of Oliver Stone interviewing Kazakh politician and former leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

44.

On September 15,2008, Oliver Stone was named the artistic director of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.

45.

Oliver Stone contributed a chapter to the 2012 book Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK by Mark Lane and published by Skyhorse Publishing.

46.

Oliver Stone listed Greek-French director Costa-Gavras as an early significant influence on his films.

47.

Oliver Stone was in the tradition of Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers and was the man in that moment.

48.

Oliver Stone has been married three times, first to Najwa Sarkis on May 22,1971.

49.

Oliver Stone then married Elizabeth Burkit Cox, an assistant in film production, on June 7,1981.

50.

Sean Oliver Stone has worked for the Russia state media company RT America since 2015.

51.

In 2003, Oliver Stone was a signatory of the third Humanist Manifesto.

52.

In 1999, Oliver Stone was arrested and pleaded guilty to alcohol and drug charges.

53.

Oliver Stone was arrested again on the night of May 27,2005, in Los Angeles for possession of an undisclosed illegal drug.

54.

Oliver Stone was released the next day on a $15,000 bond.

55.

Oliver Stone drew criticism for his comments on Harvey Weinstein himself, saying.

56.

Oliver Stone alleged that Stone told her to get on her hands and knees and say, "Do me baby".

57.

Oliver Stone has drawn attention for his opinions on controversial world leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin.

58.

Oliver Stone served as a delegate for Jerry Brown's campaign in the 1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries and spoke at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

59.

In September 2016, Oliver Stone said he was voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president.

60.

On November 22,2021, Stone penned an op-ed on The Hollywood Reporter, criticizing both former president Donald Trump and president Joe Biden for not declassifying all records on the assassination of John F Kennedy.

61.

Oliver Stone's words conjure up some of the most stereotypical and conspiratorial notions of undue Jewish power and influence.

62.

Two days later, Oliver Stone issued a second apology to the ADL, which was accepted.

63.

Oliver Stone is a vocal supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

64.

Oliver Stone signed a petition in support of Assange's bid for political asylum in June 2012.

65.

Oliver Stone called Saudi Arabia a major destabilizer in the Middle East.

66.

Oliver Stone has had an interest in Latin America since the 1980s, when he directed Salvador, and later returned to make his documentary South of the Border about the left-leaning movements that had been taking hold in the region.

67.

Oliver Stone has expressed the view that these movements are a positive step toward political and economic autonomy for the region.

68.

Oliver Stone supported Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and admired the Colombian militant group FARC.

69.

In December 2014, Oliver Stone made statements supporting the Russian government's narrative on Ukraine, portraying the 2014 Ukrainian revolution as a CIA plot.

70.

Oliver Stone rejects the claim that former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was responsible for the killing of protesters as claimed by the succeeding Ukrainian government.

71.

Oliver Stone said Yanukovych was the legitimate president who was forced to leave Ukraine by "well-armed, neo-Nazi radicals".

72.

Oliver Stone said that in "the tragic aftermath of this coup, the West has maintained the dominant narrative of 'Russia in Crimea' whereas the true narrative is 'USA in Ukraine'".

73.

Oliver Stone accused the CIA, FBI, and NSA of cooking the intelligence.

74.

Oliver Stone took the Russian Sputnik V vaccine for the COVID-19 virus while filming in Russia.