Oliver Stone

Someone was interviewing Oliver Stone for The Times; he thought his new film "W" was poor and that he considered Stone's "masterpiece" to be "Wall Street". I would agree on "Wall Street" being his best film but I'm not sure about "masterpiece".
He seems to me to have had a great big chip - if not a boulder - on his shoulders as regards Vietnam. This is not surprising since he served there in the war. When he came home he made a series of films which condemned in various ways the American involvement in the war. His bitterness probably would have consumed him entirely if he had not been able to contain it within the body of those films. A psychiatrist once said "If you have problem then tell it in the form of a story." That's what, it seems to me, Oliver Stone did. Otherswise he might have gone mad.
Then, when he had got that out of his system he turned his bile on "the establishment" in the form of Wall Street, Nixon, the forces against Kennedy and now George W. Bush - his new film "W".
When he was thinking of making "Nixon" he wanted Anthony Hopkins to play the lead; Hopkins dithered and wondered if he would and dithered some more like Caesar refusing the crown.... until Stone said "If you don't want the part I'll see if Gary Oldman will do it." "I'll do it," Anthony Hopkins instantly said.
Pauline Kael, the New Yorker film critic had a particular dislike of two film makers, Clint Eastwood and Oliver Stone. When she eventually retired she wrote how sorry she was to give up her job but that one thing she'd be looking forward to was "not having to sit through another Oliver Stone movie".
I think I know what she means. Though "Wall Street" is good.