REVIEW: ‘Chasing the Light’ by Oliver Stone
Image courtesy of HMH / Provided by official site with permission.
Oliver Stone, the prolific filmmaker who has won multiple Academy Awards, had a string of hit 1980s films that dissected recent history, and the lessons from those cinematic days are now the subject of his new memoir, Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game, out now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
The new book, running more than 300 pages, is not a soup-to-nuts tale because Stone decides to end these autobiographical stories right after Platoon’s win for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Even though the development of Born on the Fourth of July is described in detail, how he got that long-gestating script off the ground is likely fodder for a sequel one day. Also, his takes on JFK, Nixon and Jim Morrison are not covered. None of Stone’s recent documentaries are referenced — documentaries that have proved controversial and earned many detractors (just Google his Stephen Colbert interview on The Putin Interviews).
This fine focus on the pivotal 1970s / 1980s movie scene is actually much appreciated. Scenes and situations that would have been relegated to anecdote treatment in a much longer memoir are actually given time to breathe and develop. Within these pages are intricately woven tales of movie funding, rejections, guerrilla-style filming in Mexico and the Philippines, days spent in editing bays, and one awkward Golden Globes speech for winning Best Screenplay for Midnight Express.
Interwoven with these professional stories are personal insights about Stone’s first and second marriages, his relationship with his divorced parents, his French-American heritage, and house-hunting in Los Angeles, Manhattan and Long Island, New York. Of course, where personal and professional connect is when the filmmaker details his own experience in Vietnam, which inspired him, devastated him and shaped him. In fact, Platoon seems to be his most autobiographical movie, with the Charlie Sheen character a stand-in for Stone himself, and the others in the film based on real people during his time of service.
Chasing the Light is at its best when the odds are stacked against Stone and he’s actually filming these movies, in particular Platoon and Salvador. He is pounding the pavement in Mexico (for Salvador) and the Philippines (for Platoon), trying to stay one step ahead of the financiers who are after him to cut some corners and finish up his epic shoots. He’s employing the help of locals as extras and assistants. He’s trying to work with the actors on their characters, and some of these actors (James Woods) are being quite difficult to this director with a vision.
There’s also a lot to enjoy from Stone’s memories at the awards ceremonies for these films. He casts himself as a Hollywood outsider who was one flop away from calling it a day, so the gold that he received at year’s end for some of these pictures is especially satisfying and made him an “It” name overnight. Stone also doesn’t pull punches when talking about the reviews for his films, many of which he quotes. It seems that his movies are at first trounced by critics and then gain durability with time (Scarface and Salvador particularly).
It should come as no surprise that Stone is effective as a long-form writer, given that his screenplays are fascinating word games (more than a few indelible lines from 1980s cinema can be traced back to a Stone screenplay). Throughout the book he tries to reference Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad as much as possible, and for the most part, the references work. The psychoanalyzing of his relationship with his mother and father doesn’t fit perfectly into the narrative fabric, and some of his political beliefs at this pivotal time in his life are sketchy to figure out.
Much of what Stone covers here is a coming-of-age story — growing up in a complicated, but not uncommon family, and then eventually serving in the military and finding a creative spark to tell visceral stories of what was happening in the world. He succeeds more times than he trips up, even if the story is begging for a sequel.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game by Oliver Stone. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 352 pages. Click here for more information.
P.S. This reviewer actually appeared as an extra in a Stone movie.
