Oliver Stone On Wall Street Then & Now

COMMENTS (14)

• I just wanted to come in here and say that Wall Street is the best film ever made.

  That’s right. You heard me.

  Wall Street. Is the best film. Ever. Made.

  That is all……..

  Comment by Warner Borg — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 5:14am PDT  Reply to this post

• Stone should do a film on how we got into this financial crisis, including the greed on wall street, house flippers, “mortgage specialists”, Fannie/Freddie, politicians, etc. I think would be an amazing story.

  Comment by splinter — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 5:37am PDT  Reply to this post

• Stone is an America-hating piece of doo-doo.

  Comment by TJ — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 6:08am PDT  Reply to this post

• This was really interesting, thanks for posting. Stone is a wise and patriotic man and his observations on the combat films of the late 1990s and early 2000s are fascinating to consider.

  Comment by toby — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 7:42am PDT  Reply to this post

• Stone is a good guy

  Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 8:19am PDT  Reply to this post

• I thought i heard al pacino talking….

  Comment by Josh — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 8:27am PDT  Reply to this post

• Stone, for all is failings, is a master American filmmaker. Not all this films are successful of course. But he is fearless in his approach. Thank the gods for that. I hope to see more of his stuff in the future.

  Comment by Alex — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 9:11am PDT  Reply to this post

• If he could only make another film as prescient and entertaining as “Wallstreet”. Unfortunately, it represents a high watermark in his career.

  Comment by Johnny Marshall — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 11:53am PDT  Reply to this post

• @TJ
  Hardly surprising someone with your views has such a phenomenal vocabulary. Ironically, you probably want everyone to speak English.

  I have to say, many of my favorite artists grow less interesting as they get older (especially those rewarded with great wealth by their thirties). And Stone is no exception to this.

  But Stone was great in his time and I would consider Wall Street up there with Polanski’s Chinatown.

  A difficult story made clear. A super specific place and time period. Real human lives brought to the screen and actors motivated to giving some of their finest performances.

  Stone accomplished all of these things in Wall Street. He made an important time accessible to everyone, and that is no small feat.

  Comment by Tad — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 12:44pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I like a lot of Stone’s earlier movies, they are entertaining and have a message that makes one think, but to see him sit there and pontificate on, and spin his vision of world events, is sickening – especially to a group of future journalists who are probably assuming their role now IS one of advocacy not straight reporting. We can’t afford a compliant media no matter what side of the political fence. [When asking the crowd if they knew about the My Lai massacre, only two hands went up in that audience. Yup, our future journalists]

  To hear Stone say that he knows all of what George W. Bush was about and the media is now controlled by, and leans to the right, was truly laughable. Is he still taking acid hits? He even said Hollywood now leans to the right! I just about fell out of my chair on that one!!!

  I loved “Salvador”, “Platoon” and “Wall Street” but what bugs me about Stone is that his politically overt stuff like “JFK”, “Nixon” and “W” are consumed by most people with the assumption they are historically accurate when they are really an interpretation. For the people that won’t do their own research and rely on “easy info” from movies, the knowledge base dwindles fast.

  Lastly, the best “zinger” he had from this event was in stating that the media has gotten Hugo Chavez all wrong and that all of the past South American presidents just love him.

  I guess I will wait for the movie before I make my judgment call.

  Comment by ordinaryjoe — Wednesday March 11, 2009 @ 3:34pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Oliver Stone should make a movie about the Hollywood players behind the Pellicano Investigation Agency. From New York to Los Angeles cronologically. A story from the victim’s point of view and expose all the real criminals.

  Comment by Ronnie's mom — Thursday March 12, 2009 @ 8:42am PDT  Reply to this post

• Hey TJ- Please shut up about Oliver Stone hating America. Look, he served his country in two tours-I’m sure you haven’t!I bet you’re sitting on your couch preaching about a lot of things but doing very little. Yawn!

  Comment by Duncan — Thursday March 12, 2009 @ 11:28am PDT  Reply to this post

• Stone: “….my father used to hit me upside the head and said, ‘You don’t know anything.’ I was not economically inclined, whereas my cousin became a multi-millionare at the age of 26-27, and my father preferred him in many ways because I was trying to write screenplays, which was not his idea of success.”

  Wow. Is it any wonder this guy has such a love/hate relationship with George W. Bush? The portrayal of the father-son relationship in “W” is Oliver Stone channeling his own demons with his father.

  Comment by Gordon G. — Thursday March 12, 2009 @ 11:40am PDT  Reply to this post

• Some additional information on this clip: It is part of a series of interviews we’re doing at Truthdig (www.truthdig.com) in conjunction with the Annenberg School for Communication. There is another half of this interview available at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090305_oliver_stone_101/

  –> Also featured in the clip are Kasia Anderson, Associate Editor and Robert Scheer, Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig.

  Comment by Kasia Anderson — Thursday March 12, 2009 @ 3:20pm PDT  Reply to this post