Oliver Stone

Stone was born in New York City and later briefly attended Yale University. In 1967, Stone enlisted in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. He then served from 1967 to 1968 in the 25th Infantry Division and was twice wounded in action. For his service, he received military honors such as the Bronze Star with "V" Device for valor, the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with one Silver Service Star. His service in Vietnam would be the basis for his later career as a filmmaker in depicting the brutality of war.


Stone started his film career writing the screenplays for Midnight Express (1978), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Scarface (1983). He then rose to prominence as writer and director of the Vietnam war film drama Platoon (1986), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) for which he received Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for the former and Best Director for the latter. He also directed Salvador (1986), Wall Street (1987) and its sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), The Doors (1991), JFK (1991), Heaven & Earth (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Nixon (1995), Any Given Sunday (1999), W. (2008) and Snowden (2016).


Many of 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. Stone has been critical of American foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by nationalist and imperialist agendas. He has approved of politicians Hugo Chávez and Vladimir Putin, the latter of whom was the subject of The Putin Interviews (2017).^[4] Like his subject matter, Stone is a controversial figure in American filmmaking, with some critics accusing him of promoting conspiracy theories.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

Other work[edit]

On September 15, 2008, Stone was named the artistic director of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.^[75]


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.^[76] Skyhorse has published numerous other books with forewords or an introduction by Stone,^[77] namely The JFK Assassination,^[78] Reclaiming Parkland: Tom Hanks, Vincent Bugliosi, and the JFK Assassination in the New Hollywood,^[79] The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US is orchestrating a coup for oil, Snowden:The Official Motion Picture Edition, The Putin Interviews and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy^[80] which features a quote from Stone on the newest edition's cover: "Blows the lid right off our 'Official History.'"^[81]


In 2022, he appeared in Theaters of War, discussing the role of the military in Hollywood.^[82]

Directorial style[edit]

Many of 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. They often combine different camera and film formats within a single scene, as demonstrated in JFK (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994) and Nixon (1995).^[83]