the world's most controversial and one of the most respected directors. he's a mover a shaker a world changer and an icon of the past several decades and this time he's being on it for a different sort of history one about himself his own memoir. so please welcome the oscar-winning writer and director. oliver stone are these these microphone would have been better? oliver wants a diploma is what he said backstage. finish my college education. i expect that award to sit on oscar oliver's mantle with all his oscars. i've been to his home and i think there's a little space for that one on the tv room mantle. last night at dinner oliver turned to me and he said it's all up to the moderator. these things die when the moderators boring. so have some peck. so this is me having pep right now. we'll just dive in i got a lot of questions and then we're going to we're going to talk about the book about film and then i think 15 minutes left. we're going to do some q&a so you guys can ask questions. so just diving in this book is great this book. i read it over the last two weeks or so oliver. i love the book. the pros is amazing. it's a real tour through history. it's through the history of film through vietnam through obviously your life and the personal it really is not just a memoir of what happened when it's very personal and it was terrific. thank you. i just want to alan neglected to tell you that i i hired him years ago. that's true, and he's been my moderator since no just joking. he was the second writer on the wall street money never sleeps which was done. we did in 2012 and we worked together. i pushed him as hard as i could and got the best out of them and i had quite enjoyed it. he's very smart you wouldn't think so very smart and a bachelor though. that's i am about 52 years old. that is correct. this is correct, but let's talk about you. you wrote the book. well, i don't have a book rather have yeah, i'd rather talking about yourself is pretty tough, but i will say that. in short my life. i feel is like coming into history. it's it starts selfish your baby. you want everything for yourself you think about yourself your egocentric you go through life and you start to have experiences real experiences with other people. and coming from a small family as i did one. i was the only child it took me a bit of adjustment and the adjustment was sometimes very painful because through divorce and through war. but i feel like i've gotten closer closer and closer to the to the american experience in terms of history. and obviously i've been occupied very much with the events of our time and they've shaped me shaped me enormously and there's no way you can associate i can associate myself anymore with just the person i was when i was william william oliver stone. i'm now become part of this history, too and i hope my work can. can be remembered hello and obviously will be you mentioned in the book your diary a few times and you obviously couldn't write this from memory. so i want to start with some diary questions actually. how long have you kept diaries and how often do you write in it? when did you start doing that and well briefly when i was 17 19, i wrote i wrote outside school. i wrote a novel. this was called a child's night dream, which is very personal. and it was my big hope to justify my life because i dropped out of yale university to write this book and it it no, excuse me. that was a second time. i dropped out at the alien university the first time i went over to asia to become a teacher and i taught two semesters in saigon and then i was in the merchant marine and various other things i and i came back here and i went back to the yale and i was writing a book by the time i went back and i really was interested in experience my experience and putting it on paper so i could understand it. that's part of the reason most writers do this. to understand yourself and that led to a lifeline a lifetime engagement with writing itself. the the book was rejected and it was very painful for me. i went back partly to destroy myself. because i was i was suicidal those of you who were young at that age. perhaps know what i'm talking about. it's a very black and white. feeling about life when you're call it a teenager and you feel like you don't have any place in the world. you're dislocated. so this book reflects a lot of that. destruction destructiveness, but i couldn't do it. i couldn't go through with it. and going into the military as an anonymous infantryman. and i insisted on infantry. is this an on vietnam because i was afraid they'd send me to germany or korea. didn't want any of that. i wanted to go to the real thing. and experience it like it was i'd read about in novels and books and red badge of courage and you know, oh hemingway red batch of courage is pretty interesting it's about fear. and then after six months i went they took they brought me over in september 67 and i served for 15 months. that was the probably the worst stretch of the war and i got i got wait. i got woken up pretty fast death is not fun and it's pretty messy and drug task and all that stuff you've read heard about which led me to appreciating survival put it that way and coming back from that war? it was a whole different head on me about where i was in the world and the world itself. i knew a great injustice had been done to the in that war and was fought for very sinister reasons and not good reasons and our treatment of the of the locals had very much a pick upset me, but i i wasn't active about it. there's a lot of racism towards the third world in that in that in that war a lot. and they took the brunt of our a lot about they took the brone of our hatred. what did you ask me? i'm just about you documenting everything in diaries and journals and using them for this book is because the details extraordinary in the book. it just couldn't be done from memory. the truth is you can't write anything when you're in their jungle because it's so wet and i couldn't there's no paper that can work. so at the end of the tour towards the last three months. when i was a better soldier and i knew what i was doing. i was i bought a little camera pentax and i took a lot of pictures so it became a visual experience beautiful country beautiful country and the colors are amazing the moods. the storms the monsoons and from those pictures came my interest in photography. so when i got back to the states i had lost my interest in writing any novels again, no more novels. because it was us it was a racket. i didn't want it. it's like theater, you know, you go to you can only score in new york. it's just impossible to it's a very limited business movies seem more democratic to me at that point. this is 1969 and they were changing movies were becoming a new kind of form and it was exciting and i eventually after being addicted for a while. i ended up at new york university film school with among my teachers. they're very good teachers. they're very smart school was marty scorsese who was my long. are nutty kind of guy talking very fast. he was my first sight and sound purdue teacher and he was great good teacher loved movies and he can he conveyed that enthusiasm to us. very strongly, so i went on in movies and of course suffered. there was no jobs after film school at all. it was it was it took me seven eight years of screenplays 11 screenplays 10 screenplays rejections, and eventually i got a couple of options from the hollywood community and broke through in 197 seven eight with the midnight express, which was i was hired to write it as a screenplay from a kid. from a book written by billy hayes who would been busted in turkey sentenced at first to five years or something and then resentenced under the turkish system of justice the 30 years in prison. there was an interesting story. of course, there was a lot of i hadn't been told all the truth, but we didn't talk about that right talk about in the book and that launched me and one thing after another still had many failures after that many failures and i talk about that in the book and then eventually in 1985 six. i made two films back to back that were really me as opposed to a construct. this was me. we're talking directly to the audience because frankly hollywood had turned it back on me again. so i went directly to my own talking to the audience direct with salvador and platoon. yeah and somehow salvador was well received not seen much but platoon went through the roof around the world. the timing was right people were willing finally to get away from the rambo's and the chuck norris's and the the false war that we had seen. and deal with it and that was quite stunning. it was a stunning moment in our history too because frankly, i think it screwed up ronald reagan. he was on his way to among other things. he was about to invade nicaragua people forget this but then we had the conjugate hearings and oliver north and six or seven people in reagan's administration resigned mcfarland. it was a whole group of people. it was a dirty dirty scandal far worse than watergate. i know you were my previous jeffrey garrett was here talking about watergate but contragate was was much much bigger because reagan was giving arms to the iranians and and sending the money to the contrast illegally, so it's quite a scandal. i will say i rewatched very recently salvador if you guys haven't seen in a few years re-watch it it's fantastic. it's just a fantastic movie politically the the monologues in there and jimmy woods the performance about him unbelievable. so going back to chasing daylight the memoir. how long did it take you to write it? did you have to put it down and bring it back up or did you go straight through? no. no, i went. i went straight through. when i i just got out of movies for about a year two years and i really excuse me. i'm wrong. yeah, i got out of movies in 1995 after nixon. i stopped for a while and that's when i wrote it. is that when i wrote it? no, i don't get confused. i'm sorry. it's just writing writing writing. he asked about a diary. i always keep a diary of writing everyone but the memoir chasing daily. yeah, he saw i'm sorry. it's just it's starting to get but jumbled sure as too old. i wrote this. i wrote this in 2017. all the way through after snowden. okay, that's just no. yeah snowden was my last feature film and then i was doing documentaries and i just basically did as much work as i could ask plus c for off and on a year two years. and it was unfortunately in my timing again not great film the book came out wonderful reviews from people who were in the film community, but covid was was with us and no books signings. no ability to go to bookstores and the book dies. i mean it did okay on its own, but there's no publicity available really so authors need bookstores and they need to sign and get out there mix with the public. that's what i it's such a great book and people are going on, you know. but i think it'll last i think it's a movie a book that is is worth some worthwhile. i hope you find itself. i wanted to ask about in the book and every script as we know. there's a protagonist point of narrative an anchoring moment to which the story is told in chasing the light that moment seems to be the bicentennial the bicentennial choice that you come back to that all the time in the book and it's very cool thing. why why that time why 1776 because 1976 was in the deer. i was 30 years old. we turned 30 you're supposed to have supposed to have a concretized your life. i hadn't i was grasping but failing. i hadn't succeeded so it's the book opens on the bicentennial new york city. you remember all the tall ships and all the celebration of american? the birthday the 200th birthday. yep, and i am course of feeling in the dumps completely in the dump. so i contrast that and you see this struggle to understand the american experience through that whole period from 1976 to 86. i'm in the movie business and i'm broke. go through jobs marriage. all the usual failures of life and you're laughing at me because he told me earlier that he never got married to avoid divorce. and i understand i mean a three-time man myself 26 years the one yeah, you're currently in 2016. yes, that's good. so obviously she's a keeper. i got i got a quick question. i want to go to some of the films or to some of your film career. think about which film of yours say pre 2001. do you think hollywood now would never make you just could never get me free 2001. yeah. oh probably platoon really because it's a to there were you know platoon was rejected for 10 years. in its and it's written form. it was rejected as too too much of a two realistic to grim too much of a downer. and you have to understand that you need to make those kind of films once in a while because they you need to tell the truth and it's about truth. really not that i hit all the truth, but i hit some of it because you can't say certain things. i mean there are certain conventions to a movies that you have to pay attention to such as tension such as rising climax, you know, i'm aware of that but i the movie to me is reflects pretty honestly according to many veterans what we saw over there. with some liberties taken and license taken but you don't think that gets made now i talk about three lies in the book. i talk about the damage from friendly fire which no one talks about that's ourselves killing ourselves. so many soldiers are killed that way and wounded so many i would estimate and you may not the pentagon would think i'm crazy. i would say up to 20% and that is a very tough for american people to take parents of course don't want to hear about their kid being killed by some artillery round and landed. in our midst or bomb or this or that and i talk about the the treatment of the vietnamese villagers as a a very ugly story and then the mili massacre would be the the highest example of it, but it was going on in the smaller scale everywhere in the in the field that i saw and i was in three different units. so the third thing the third lie the biggest lie of all is that we were saying from the very beginning we're winning this war. and changing the body counts lying lying lines. that's what characterizes war and to this day. the characterizes the united states government approach to war lies lies. the only way to get people involved in a war wanting to fight a war and supporting the war and to do that. they will go to know to any end. they will go to any end to calaminate to. alan you're a writer. propagandize propagandize propagandize. yes. this was what it was like when we worked together. you in the book you spoke about your father's challenges with the evolutionary evolution of wall street the sandy while and the building of bundling of financial services, and i want to ask you how do you see the challenges for old men like you and me now in hollywood with the changes with the streamers the franchise obsession in the shrinking studio system. you're jumping ahead. yeah. well that's in here. that's the end of the book. that's that's the next book. no, that's the third book. he we decided he's going to do three. frankly i'm not qualified to say because like every like many people i feel inundated by the choices. i can't follow all these shows that are being made and trying occasionally to keep up i have seen downton abbey. i told you. yeah, and i enjoy i've enjoyed many series, but i they last night you listed four or five new ones that secession and white lotus you wrote him down oliver wrote them down the teenage one before euphoria. yeah, that's really crazy one. i'm not qualified to but in terms of making movies these days. it's a changing business and in the way it was when you were making. oh, yeah and getting a movie made versus today business that i knew and you see in those days, at least they had studios where studios in the sense and the old fashioned sense. they were a patrons and they would support development development. it's crucial for screenplays writing it can be abused no question. a lot of people did abuse it they took far too much money and didn't do the work the right amount of work, but it's like an r&d for a business you have to put research and development into a business to grow it, but they stop doing that about about 2000s around the war on terror time that was terrible time and the they stopped doing that and it became the people like you would have to do things on spec and bring it into the studio and go through the whole process of selling something. right right, then i'd rather developing absolutely and now they are it's just they're making they're making less movies that type that that you made. i mean, they're just it's almost you know, exclusively marvel movies and franchises and they got exclusively marvel, but there are a lot of cheaper movies being made than there and they're some of them are very good. i cannot criticize the oscar choices, but something has changed i something has changed and i can't quite put my finger on it. i have to write about it. um, i do want to talk about some of your films quickly here. i know when people ask you. what's your favorite film? there's no answering that because it's like children, but could you speak about a few of your many children who might not be as accomplished as platoon or born on the fourth or wall street? i can throw a few out or you can choose one or two, but like what natural born killers, what do you want me to do? just speak on just speak about a few thoughts on other all different. you know, right. i never tried to repeat myself natural. born killers is is an oddball movie. it's a one-off. i'm very proud of the fact that it's got such a low rating on rotten tomatoes on rotten tomatoes. that's the best signal of all i'm serious. i mean critics have often been very unkind critics tend to judge the package what you what you say in public and you should never try to explain your film because you're dead if you say this is about and that's then they'll come back at you right so you how do you deal with the press? it's a very tough question because that's when you make a movie. not only do you have to make the movie which is monster job, then you have to go out and sell it and talk about it. that's the worst thing possible. you shouldn't talk about it, but we have to because so much money is involved, you know, so and part of the change is media, by the way. american media has become more aggressive more dominant. and setting a tone. i wanted to speak about that because i think the movie you made that was very pressing and his talk radio. talk radio. yeah, what about we'll talk radio is kind of precedent into the idea of media. yes. it was very ahead of its time for where we are now as social media talk radio is about a radio host who was outspoken and said things to deliberately outrage the public and he was he loved to be hated or loved. you know, he was he had there was the fan club the polarization was happening. there was 1988. it was a play originally a play one act play written by eric bogosian, and i we added to it and i made it into a two act story. yeah. it's amazing and it's unknown and basically an underrated film, but it's really it's very energetic very energetic and very prescient to today very presented today. now we have we have an awful media now. it's too much puritanism. there's too much political correctness, you know, everyone has to be has to tow the line everyone. there are certain words. you can't say, i mean, it's not exactly it is totalitarianism and now censorship censorship constantly big tech is doing it and government is behind and it's horrifying what's going on and it should be stopped but it's seems to be rolling up its own. you know, what do you think? i think social media has changed a lot and and mainstream media is very threatened by social media and they have to get they have to get more attention. and so they're going farther left and farther right on both sides and it's creating less. well, i get my news from other sources. i don't get my news from mainstream. is probably a good idea. i've actually had actually brings me up to a fun question, which is you wrote in the book. you wrote about your golden globe speech for midnight express where oliver got in trouble and i want to ask you do you think if you made that exact speech today you would be canceled or actually celebrated because it was because would you be canceled making that speech today? because it was it was against consideration it was it was yeah, it was at the time america was definitely moving in the direction of more and more jail time. and it was the opposite it was about giving a break to drug dealers. i mean the drug younger generation and not putting them behind bars, but it was meant i was stoned and drunk and when i gave the speech, i think my miss i was misunderstood and they were booing me. it was quite funny. i think today you would be celebrated for that speech in hollywood that that's the deep on the police is very hot in hollywood. i think i say here is my audience and i'm saying you know, you people are putting these shows on the air these cop shows and all this -- where you putting the bad guy is a typically cliche drug dealer. he looks like a monster put him in jail. put everybody in jail. that's what you guys want. i said, this is not a healthy society that way. you got to understand why people do drugs. well, the book does a great job telling that story and how in the fallout from that golden globe speech. luckily. it wasn't televised in those days. you say you said been televised. i would have been canceled. i don't know i think today you would have been celebrated for that exact speech but that's my opinion. so i want to talk the book does a great job of covering the three times in which phil mcnarrative is told the script the cut in the edit. would you speak to a little bit the differences between each which you have the production and yeah, that's that's three sections the parts that are that's heavy duty and work and it changes along the way if you're a writer. or a cow rider you would understand that what you write in that first phrase is crucial. it's very much important to how to get the movie made attract. the actors attractive financing and it's a lot of work. the screenwriters are the coal miners of the business. they're in their deep and they don't get anywhere near the celebration that they should have. i agree. i was there too when but as you and the production is another thing it grows in production. there's a lot of contributions from the crew from the cast. actors can be crucial to developing the concept into a living body and they take the dialogue and sometimes they do things with it that are shockingly different than what you intended. so a lot goes on in production. you have to be awake. it's exciting, but it's exhausting time in those 60 days or 50 some days. you have to really be on your toes and your exhausted most of the time so it's a tremendous experience, but it's over and then you're stuck with what you did and that's the editing process. now. the editing process is very very special to me. it's i was i'm very involved in the cut. but i try to leave the editor editors because i started to use multi editors at in my because i was trying to move faster. and i liked having alternatives. but i try to leave the editors alone for a bit and then come in so you they're not you're not cramping their style. they all have their own style but in the edit you have a chance to redo some of the writing that may be problematic. you can rewrite in so many ways. i discuss it in the book, you know, you can dub you can you can there's so much trick you can do trickery optical illusions. you can put lines of dialogue in that you never dreamed you would have written about before so editing can be very very creative and i've changed structure in editing a movie is structured a certain way and then change it all around take the third act and put it in the first take the middle act put it somewhere else. you have to take you have to go with the flow. i made mistakes doing that. certainly i have. and i regret that but often i've it's gotten better. is any of them more vital than the other are they all just completely vital the script the production and the edge? no, they're all vital right? it's a process because without paying attention that process, you know, no you no film was succeed if unless those three sectors are to some degree successful. how are we on time? i want to make sure we cut for the q&a. when do i oh yeah, okay one more question and then we can do q&a. i believe we're 40 minutes in so one more question. let me see. what's my favorite phase that he i didn't miss selling the film. that's the most difficult most miserable phase of all and i talked about that before. um, i guess this one well no, this is the most important question, i believe because the book ends in 1987. so and we talked about this last night. we've got a long way to go to get to 2022. maybe have you have you started working on the next installment first of all to get to 1987 is a huge story 40 years. yep in which there's a complete narrative. it's these where ultimately success is the ism is the goal and it so it's very much a horatio algor story because there's so much failure in there and heartbreak. you really feel a heartbreak. i hope as a writer. yeah. yep, so that when you have this you see platoon was this enormous success it worldwide. it came out very little money was spent on it six million dollars orion pictures was a distributor. they were not particularly strong at all. they didn't have record of believing in their movies. so they put it out in six theaters and christmas time six theaters in the new york la toronto six theaters, and it took off like a like a comet that's to say at 10 am that morning vietnam veterans were lining up around the block in all these locations. it was stunning stunning. turnaround a cinderella story and the film kept going for two three four months and every country in the world every single country did well. so that's so rare and it's it's a fairy tale. and i'm very grateful for it was a very special moment. and that's where they i have to that's my natural end for that story. there's no more. i'd already written 400 pages. so this was there's no better ending, but the next book will start. the next one has to have a wall street different things and that's part of the mystery. i made a deal with another publisher because i think they did a -- job these guys did well they had covid too, but they didn't. i made it. i made a deal with a much bigger company simon and schuster. which is better company for this and they're going to do the next book. have you gotten started on it? it's in my head. okay, the book is called chasing the light. it's a fantastic book and this is oliver stone. anywhere. >> it's my great pleasure to introduce today, , but it does with first my friend mary but also professor sarotte for discussion of her latest book "not one inch" and it's true in this case that the author needs to introduction of all give one in a moment. i think we can send this case this book needs of introduction at the moment because it's been for all the right reasons splashed across reviews and op-ed pages and public conversations and discussions of the contemporary moment on the