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Oliver Stone: Misinformed

July 31, 2010 in America The Fucked

I just came across this at Salon‘s This Week in Crazy! and became so angry I had to share it with you. In a recent interview, Oliver Stone said:”Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support.”


How can a 63 year old man who works in the entertainment industry not know that Frankenstein is the doctor and that the monster is the fucking monster? What the fuck is wrong with this world? What is wrong with the goddamn education in this country? Christ, what an asshole.

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  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/baroness/ Baroness

    Because, for over 80 years, Frankenstein’s monster has become popularly known as “Frankenstein”? We all know it’s incorrect to the original text. But it’s a pop cultural vernacular shorthand. It’s incorrect but can’t be helped. When someone says “Frankenstein”, you don’t think of the doctor. You think of Gene Wilder, obviously. What knockers!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/senorwences/ Senor Wences

    And I thought Hitler was a ghost mummy, anyhow.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    Hitler wasn’t a Frankenstein. Frankensteins are eight feet tall and walk with a limp. I think that if Hitler had been a Frankenstein, the torch and pitchfork crowd would have taken him out in the Twenties.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    Besides, doesn’t it stand to reason that if Hitler was a Frankenstein, there would be scores of other Frankensteins running the Nazi high command. Other than Goering, I can’t think of any others.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/berightback/ berightback

    I love you, Vaq.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/fictionsinmotion/ Vaquero

    As long as I am loved!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/bjonston/ BJonston

    Doesn’t this asshat also think that Hugo Chavez is some sort of hero or something? I fucking hate this dickweasel. Fuck you, Stone. Also, Scraface sucked! The big ballsack. Asshole.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/belltolls/ Belltolls

    Beej: That’s De Palma. Hitler was the Creature From The Black Lagoon.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/fictionsinmotion/ Vaquero

    Hitler was Frankenstein wrapped in shreds of poisoned linen who suckled at the teat of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. When he was fifteen, Hitler was raped by a werewolf. From that point on, Hitler liked to stuff blood sucking bats up his pee hole. There. I think that covers it.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/bjonston/ BJonston

    Belltolls: Yeah. But didn’t he write Scarface? (Which sucked balls, BTW).

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/belltolls/ Belltolls

    BJ: Sorry, I always forget that. I forget Coppola wrote Patton sometimes too.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/belltolls/ Belltolls

    I’m no Oliver Stone apologist, but who else ever got a good performance out of Jim Belushi?

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    @BT: Are you forgetting a certain director by the name of Walter Hill?

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/belltolls/ Belltolls

    Chill: I have only seen one movie with Arnold and that was the original TERMINATOR; the lesser Belushi was not in it. I will take your word for it though.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/berightback/ berightback

    BT: Are you talking about WILD PALMS?!?!? I fucking LOVED that thing when it was on. I always thought I was the only one who watched it or remembered it.

    I was also obsessed with the synth-y opening by Sakamoto Ryûichi.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOjXlKBGBw8&feature=related

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/irishbreakfast/ irishbreakfast

    Did you see what he did to Colin Farrell’s hair in Alexander? The man is hideously out of touch with history–Alexander had buttery highlights with dirty- blonde underlayers.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/bjonston/ BJonston

    Oliver Stone: Moron. Putz. Dickweasel. End of story.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/belltolls/ Belltolls

    BRB: One of Ernie Hudson’s best!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/skahammer/ skahammer

    I realize this isn’t even close to being the right place for this analysis, but here goes: I think Oliver Stone’s gaffe-powered and punchline-ready persona has now almost completely obscured a run of top-drawer filmmaking that is mostly unprecendented in our lifetimes, and maybe ever.

    From Salvador (1986) through Nixon (1995), Oliver Stone made ten dramatic features, all in a distinct and consistent style, and all of which I would unhesitatingly drop everything to watch again, right now, if the opportunity came up. Which other directors would you say that about — that they didn’t make a single clinker in ten straight? Perhaps Scorsese, but I just felt embarrassed for the man while I watched his phoned-in Cape Fear remake. Lynch? Doesn’t work often enough in the dramatic-feature format. Spielberg? Still plenty of clinkers there, and I’d suggest some inconsistencies of style as well.

    I admit my personal taste makes me rate Salvador and Heaven and Earth higher than any conceivable consensus would, and I didn’t have any proprietary feelings about the Doors to be threatened by Val Kilmer’s astonishing impersonation of Jim Morrison. Plus I’ve been sufficiently prepared by Woodward and Bernstein to accept Richard Nixon as a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions.

    Thus I submit to you that at some future time when his buffoonish persona has faded from the headlines, people are going to look at Oliver Stone’s Miracle Decade and be absolutely staggered at the level of accomplishment it represents. They’ll even watch Alexander, just to try and figure out what happened to the guy. (My inexpert theory is that he simply got tired.)

    So if Oliver Stone wants to tell an anecdote that depends on Frankenstein actually being the monster, possibly married to the Wicked Witch of the West and a past winner of multiple gold medals in Olympic track events — I’ll at least hear the guy out. Probably I’ll also want to ask him why W wasn’t a better movie — but if fate is kind, perhaps I’ll manage to still my tongue and just keep listening.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    @Ska: How dare you not mention Wall Street in your comment. Remember, no matter what happens September 24, no matter how he Kingdom-of-the-Crystal-Skulls this sequel, he can’t undo the “greed is good” speech.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/mama-penguino-2-2-2/ Mama Penguino

    @BRB: Did you see 29 Palms? That was a good movie!

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/skahammer/ skahammer

    Precisely my point, Chillpunk. The man has simply made too many outstanding films for one person to list them comprehensively — even in an absurdly long (if painstakingly crafted) online comment.

    I’ve never met anyone who convinced me they truly didn’t like Wall Street. Even if they claim to hate it, their evident familiarity with the plot tends to suggest that they’ve watched it three or four times anyway.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/spiralbetty/ spiralbetty

    @Ska: Yay, strong feelings about movies, but seriously? That ham-fisted parade of bad wigs? Admittedly, I haven’t seen them all but watching an Oliver Stone movie is like being cornered at a party by that kind of beefily hot guy who is a little too drunk on booze and self-regard. He might have been the most fuckable man at the party, but he’s tone deaf and pissed off and can’t stop telling you how smart he is, so it’s not really worth it.

    But your premise is interesting. Other directors with a string of 10 amazing movies? I can think of two right off:

    Woody Allen: 1977 – ’87, Annie Hall through Radio Days.

    Stanley Kubrick: 1956 – ’87, The Killing through Full Metal Jacket.

    Extra credit: John Ford. Doesn’t quite count because I haven’t seen them all and my favorites are not sequential, but he directed 17 movies between 1946 – ’56 including My Darling Clementine, The Quiet Man, Mr. Roberts and The Searchers.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/skahammer/ skahammer

    @Betty: Allen and Kubrick are the proper comparisons, I agree. Excellent analysis.

    Although you’ve really sat through Stardust Memories and Interiors multiple times? If so, I’m impressed. And I’ll defer to you on Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and Spartacus — I’m just not a costume-drama person. As you can tell by my tolerance for the wigs in The Doors.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/spiralbetty/ spiralbetty

    @Ska: Heh. I never said I loved them all, but I maintain that if I follow your premise on Stone, none of the 10 are “clinkers”. Also for your consideration: the first 10 Cohen Bros and Soderberg between SLaV and Traffic. I’m willing to bet on Almodovar starting with Women on the Verge but I haven’t seen all 10.

    I just watched Barry Lyndon again a few weeks ago. It was llllllllooooooooong but so well composed and photographed. As for Ryan O’Neil, all I can say is that he was lucky he was pretty.

    If you think that Stone’s wig problems are confined to The Doors, I point you to Tom Cruise in BotFoJ, everyone in JFK (even the characters who aren’t Joe Pesci) and Talk Radi—oh wait no, that’s just what Eric Bogosian looks like.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/baroness/ Baroness

    @Ska : Stardust Memories and Interiors are both pretty great films. Or at least, both have multiple arresting scenes and themes. But tastes really do differ. What interests you.

    @SpiralBetty: I always got the feeling that the loooong sequences of Barry Lyndon seemed a way almost of trying to immerse the viewer in what life was like, then. Very sloooow. That pre-modern age, before films or recorded music or radio or television, on a vast estate. That’s why they stayed up all night drinking and gambling and flirting and dressing up for it. They were bored out of their minds. It was the only novelty and stimulation they had. Like Kubrick’s insistence on filming the night scenes by candle-light with special NASA cameras, he really wanted to relay a sense of what life was like, I think. Really dull. No, I’m not in a hurry to see that film again.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/chillbearlatrigue/ Chillbear Latrigue

    @SB: What a great run for Woody Allen. However—and I’m dead serious about this—I want you to start the list six earlier, for a sixteen movie total, at Take the Money and Run. While his earlier movies were really different from the ones on your list, Woody Allen was kind of like a one-man, American Monty Python in those days. There is brilliance in ever one of those films.

    From Love and Death:

    Woman hygiene class: Goodbye. I hope you had a good time.
    Soldier: I did. I had a good time. Oh, what’s this sore on my lip? I better see the doctor.
    [He steps to his right and another actor stands up]
    Soldier: Doc, I have this sore on my lip.
    Doctor: You have a social disease my friend.
    Soldier: Oh my God!
    Doctor: If you do not treat it, you will go blind… Or insane!

    Case closed.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/spiralbetty/ spiralbetty

    @Baroness: Yes. Those long slow takes where someone on horseback approaches the static camera forever. I kept thinking, “This is what waiting feels like.” And then the great joy of something happening: listening to someone play music, a card game, a witty or pointed conversation, making out with some hot creature, silence then someone shouting or shooting. Oh god something is happening.

    @Chillbear: I hate that Woody’s reputation has tanked, though I understand why, because his early to mid career did something very very good to this nation. His ’60s stand up is awesome on road trips. The ejaculation scene in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex still kills me. Oddly, the movie I have perhaps watched more than any other is Take the Money and Run. In late elementary school/junior high, my best friend’s dad somehow had a lot of random movies. Us latchkey kids watched TtMaR and the Ramones’ Rock n’ Roll High School over and over, every day after school.

  • http://wordsmoker.com/help/members-3/notwavingbutdrowning/ notwavingbutdrowning

    VAQUERO : I understand your outrage. It is also a pet peeve of mine when people get Frankenstein and his “creature” mixed up. I’m a big Mary Shelley fan. Read the book people. It is only a novella. That said, I think that the 1931 film directed by James Whale (and starring Boris Karloff) is brilliant even if it may be to blame for some of the common confusion today. However Oliver Stone should know better.

    Since the conversation moved on to Woody Allen I’ll just say that he made some hilarious films. He made some brilliants films. He made some just okay films. But I can’t say that he ever made a truly bad film. I have a soft spot for his films — “especially the early, funny ones.” Purple Rose of Cairo may be his best, but Stardust Memories is my favorite.