Jun
10

2006 David Lean Foundation Speech

This is a speech I gave in London 2006 for the David Lean Foundation. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve done and wanted to share it with you. It covers several topics—among them, the spirit of David Lean, the recognition of the search of the sacred in film, and several contemporary topics. There’s also a very interesting Q&A portion that follows. Many bright and probing questions were asked. It was one of the highlights of my recent memory.

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Delivered in Piccadilly, London on September 6, 2006


Good evening. On behalf of British Academy of Film and Television Awards, I would like to welcome you to the 6th annual David Lean Lecture. My name is David Parfit ,and I'm the Chairman of the Film Committee here at BAFTA. I'd like to start with the end credits, we’re very grateful particularly Tony Dalton for outing together the clips package. And also to Pepper for their editing and post-production support. Particular thanks as always to all the staff here at BAFTA who have done a fantastic job, particularly, Mariayah and all the events team who put together this evening in record time. Also Ruth Brenvil for a rapidly put together, but rather beautiful program - she's put it together in about two days.

Tonight's lecturer is Oliver Stone and we're delighted that he accepted our invitation. He's that rare thing in Hollywood, a hugely successful filmmaker with a genuine political edge. In a moment I'll hand you over to Mark Kamode, who'll give you a fuller, and I'm sure much better introduction. Mark's rarely off the stage these days in this building ,we're very grateful for his continuing support. Before I invite our guests to the stage I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that huge contribution made to the Academy by the David Lean Foundation. I certainly don't have to introduce the work of David Lean to this distinguished audience but some of you may be less familiar with the work of the foundation set up in his name. Sir David Lean died in 1991 and the foundation bearing his name was established in 1997 using royalty income from his films. The aim of the Foundation is to promote and advance education and cultivate and improve public
taste in the visual arts particularly by stimulating original and creative work in the field of film production. Now, that's a very formal sounding statement. But to advance those aims they provide individual grants and bursaries to those involved in film production as well as supporting the work of like-minded organizations such as BFI, the National Film and Televisual School, and us [BAFTA]. Tonight's lecture is, if you like, the public face of the Foundation's work with the Academy, but we're also provided with tremendous work behind the scenes. We're approaching our 60th year and David Lean was here on day one. When, a couple of years ago, the BAFTA council led by Duncan Kenworthy, were looking at ways to secure the Academy for the future, it was decided, with the support of the Foundation, to undertake a comprehensive, strategic review of all of our work of all of our work, here, at the Academy. This review was entirely funded by the Foundation. And we believe the changes that we've now put in place will ensure the Academy will survive at least to celebrate it's centenary. So, thank you to Trustee Anthony Reeves at the Foundation for your absolutely, essential support. Would you please now welcome to the stage, Mark Kamode, who will guide you through the rest of the evening. Thank you.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming, I'm going to be very quick, we have a lot to get through. Basically, Oliver Stone is going to come to the stage and deliver a lecture, which we're all looking forward to enormously .At the end I will ask him a few questions form the stage and then, he has very kindly agreed to take some questions form the audience - if there's anything that comes up in the lecture please wait until that moment.

The last time I was on stage with Oliver Stone was at the Empire Awards in 2000,when Empire gave JFK the movie masterpiece award. I had been in New York when JFK first played and I have a very clear memory of something extraordinary that happened in the middle of the film, which I imagine that many, if not most of you have seen. There's a wonderful speech about the magic bullet and the lead character says, 'And now we come to the moment which is the greatest lie ever perpetrated on the American public'. And I was sitting there in the cinema and about half the audience literally got up and burst into spontaneous applause. Very rarely have I seen film makers, make films that provoke such strong reactions form the audience, that demand, in fact, that audiences react right there in the cinema, rather than just waiting till they get out afterwards to have a quiet discussion. He himself has said that we need a cinema that wakes up both the heart and the nerves. I am certain that when you see his new movie, WTC, you'll feel it does that as well. Rather then me running down a list of his credits we've compiled a 10-minute series of clips and segments of some of liver Stones most well known films. So here is a brief over view of the films of Oliver Stone.

[Clip 1 - overview of the career of Oliver Stone]

Platoon
Born on the 4th of July Nixon
JFK
Images of the Director.


Mark: Ladies and Gentlemen for the David Lean lecture please welcome to the BAFTA stage, Oliver Stone.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the clip too, it's very nice of you. It's hard to live up to it for me, but I am honored to be invited to speak here, under the aegis of a historical filmmaker who we all deeply respect. I feel especially fortunate in the sense that I was
not raised for this line of work. My father expected me to work to make money, and I harbored secret desires to be a physicist, or possibly a Greek shipping tycoon. Instead I found, as my father might say, 'legitimacy' in this strange twilight dream we call 'movies'. There are times I'm frankly ashamed of what it is I do, because it seems so indulgent in a world riven with desperation and need. But then on days such as this one, I feel there is a reason, and preparing these notes, I found my mind instinctively going back to those giant wall murals I've seen throughout southeast Asia, particularly SE Asia, in Buddhist and Hindu cultures, which tell these great stories to vast populations of giant battles and kingdoms and love affairs filled with suspense and fear and death and danger and heroes and elephants; and the birth of children, and new Kings and dreams all one giant panoply of glory mixed with wrenching pain. Or, for that matter, I think of the cave paintings of ancient tribes long ago in the south of Europe, telling their tales of the great hunt, the birth, the death, the migration. Or the verbal traditions, in dialogue form, of Homer's poetry, which was a way, I believe, of uniting the warring Greek mini- kingdoms of the time -- around common legends of Iliad and Odyssey.

What are the great visions but a dream of meaning here on Earth --- and I think a bringing together of the tribe from a collective unconscious to share a conscious purpose, passion, meaning. I believe movies can similarly serve a spiritual purpose, in that they can bring together our modem tribe. Great stories inspire us forever, and sometimes they heal. David Lean was very mush that teller of tales. His vision was big, his execution complement to it. He seemed to me to be a man who would do practically anything to make his vision real, including legendary tales of shutting down the company if the sun were not shining; or not touching the editing until principle photography was finished (such ruthless luxury now!); or in the end giving-himself over entirely to the wanderlust at the heart of his filmmaking. A man who gave it all up in his prime, because, I think, he’d seen and done enough.

"Enough" -- the cry of most filmmakers at some point or other in their careers. Either they're retired from the field, sometimes against their wishes, or they retire, but they must always wonder, 'did I -- or did I not -- do what I was meant to do? Did I fulfill my character?'.

It's in this spirit, that I've approached this illusory world; I remember very well when I first arrived as a struggling screenwriter in Hollywood in 1976, I read a very fine book about famous novelists who had worked in Hollywood, most of them without great success, people such as Chandler and Fitzgerald,,_ The book's title was fitting ---poetic-- it was called 'Some Time In The Sun'. I don't even remember now who exactly was in it or who wrote it, but I remember that expression because I thought to myself then, in my poverty and struggle, if only I could have some, some little time in that sun, I would be satisfied forever.

Well, I was more than satisfied! I was given, as chance would have it, a great deal more time in that sun that I ever bargained for! And I was able to go further than I ever dreamed. I've since traveled the world many times and met so many interesting people, and I can say I owe it all to this dream of film.

Yet, it is also, we all know, a treacherous slope. There have been times of bitter failure. Those who make films know it too well -- the little detail we manage, with either great effort or pure accident, to find; that shot we strained every sinew of our cast and crew to get, or not get. “A mess, a disaster, a turkey" --- fond words of criticism to those who do not know this pain, who do not walk the trail of 500, 1000 or 1500 set ups, meticulously built day by day and over long nights; or the sad process of separation from a crew and cast after the most intimate sharing of ideas and hearts -- and then the film which edits into something else again, and the distributor waxes and wanes with enthusiasm as the critics sour and salt the wounds of birth, and the audience inevitably diminishes week by week upon release, and finally your child, long the difficult labor of your loins, recedes into the collective memory, like any child I suppose who leaves home for school that first time. It's all gone. And I think even the greatest of films are forgotten at one point or another.

So why do we do it?

Because it matters. In ancient tribal culture, these murals of which I speak performed a crucial function. I think movies do the same for our tribe, or could. They revive the tribe to share its collective history, and in so doing they bring tears, pity, horror, joy -this entity the Greeks called "katharsis", which come to exist as a bond between performer and onlooker. They unite the tribe. Our ritual film, or 'entertainment' as it is called, in this sense assumes a therapeutic meaning that can become, to my mind, deeply sacred to our society. Such filmmaking becomes a spiritual occupation but also a deep hazard destroying the minds of people who enter the temple to be driven mad by the modem forces. I shall always remember Mr. Lean as one of the great priests of that temple.

But priests can sometimes bad-boys be too. I've tried in my way to tie my concepts of film to my societal concerns, but often in this regard I've been disappointed. I sometimes think that the modem society that I've grown up with is tom with too much division, too many opinions, divided into a quarrelsome Athenian society, where spiritual and artistic achievements are suspect as attempts to enrich the artist or as political propaganda statements, or simply put: politics. I find in our culture the spiritual is often denied and the concept of catharsis is secularized. Meaning is literal and over-analyzed. The collective consciousness necessary to bring meaning to events and interpretations of them is lost. A young working class boy, who loses his legs in Vietnam, who is angry about it, or a young President being assassinated for a viable motive, or an insecure President driving himself to self-destruction, or two serial killers confronting the taboos of society, are just too controversial for our time. And thus very rarely in my experience can a movie, the most fragile of creations so dependent as it is on the illusion of perception, can break this movie through this secularization of thought, this barrier of repression in our culture. The news must be made by journalists, history must be interpreted by historians. Drama, I find, is reduced and ridiculed to a political weapon. Hitler taught us how with his mass theatrical lies. And as a result we have confused the spiritual basis of art with media. I said in "Natural Born Killers", media was "man-made weather”. And as such it is the skin of event only. But how strongly it shapes our modem lives! Was it called "rumour" in those days when they put Socrates to death?

I think we've taken those Hindu and Buddhist wall paintings and stripped them of spiritual meaning for our propaganda purposes. And as a result, in our society we have become so opinionated, so divided and quarrelsome, that we are no longer in touch with one another, and finally not really in touch with our own hearts. Since reactions are sentimentalized and doubted, love suspect, and the meaning of the heart itself put into question. The logic, the reason, the fashion of the time overwhelm the spirit.

So, in order to combat this recurring doubt, which, I believe, we all possess in some way in our waking selves, I find myself time and again coming up against that question of what is true, how do l know it's true, what is a test of truth, what is worth fighting for. What is worth portraying anymore?

I think a valid response to this question is that we ask ourselves, "What do we really know, in our lifetime? What is this stuff of experience? How does it mold us? “I smile when I remember Jim Morrison in "The Doors’’, when he puzzled, "This is the strangest life I've ever known". In other words, how can we know any other life but our own?

What is the sound of one hand clapping? We are all inside our own experience ultimately, we are lonely, and we shall never know for sure what we are here for, floating round in this watery atmosphere of an orb lost in space.

In my lifetime alone, I've seen countless examples of mass delusion on a huge social scale. So many times now that I think I've lost count. Whether it was the great conspiracy and fear I grew up with in the 1940's and 1950's that Russia and China were united together to destroy the West, or the lies of Vietnam, the untold pieces of the Kennedy assassination puzzle, so blatant in it's disregard for logic. I saw that same vast deception used again in my lifetime in Bush and Blair's march to their false war in Iraq; and I saw the media support it on a giant scale; the Kennedy assassination cover-up; and the Vietnam War and the Iraq War; and each time I saw people fall for it all over again
I’ve made three films about Vietnam, two of them had great impact, but I saw Vietnam become Iraq by another name. I saw the lies of the Reagan administration in Central America where I did "Salvador". I saw it most blatantly in Nicaragua, but it was no less evil than our policy under different presidents in the 60's, 70’, and 80's in Guatemala, in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and many, many other countries.

And I've seen it in other countries as well -- whether it was French collaborators with the Nazis in World War 2 that my mother's family made me privy to, or in the 1980'swhile researching dissidents in the old Soviet Union, the self-delusion of a population in denial
of Stalin and the unofficial history of their country. And then again in China when I see a new generation crippled with amnesia, unable to gain access to its own history. Or the older Chinese generation, those my age, who've lived certainly a Lewis Carroll life with it's 180 degree turn in the middle, from collective Communism and worship of the god 'Mao' to a brutal, competitive individual consumption and corruption in the name of the god Money...We all lie to ourselves in some way during the course of our lives; we have to, in order to keep going. Even Gunter Grass lies. We have to--- to be generous. We have to forgive ourselves for our mistakes. I am not a moralist on this issue of self- delusion, I' m only trying to be a realist, and as life goes, I'm trying to undo these knots of perception so as to allow myself a more truthful view of the world and my own place in it.

But when you see the self-deception of societies on the level of China, Russia, France, or my own country in its recent debacle in Iraq, one cannot help but wonder at the sinister perspicacity of Hitler's dictum from 'Mein Kampf, "the greater the lie the more readily it will be believed."

Already I've seen so much evidence of our own history being re-written. And what's more 'I've come to accept what I could never have accepted as a young man -- that history itself belongs to the victor , and that we can never underestimate the power of corruption to change history. As a society, I’ve come to find out, it's still very much the third grade- and we behave like a lynch mob. We pile on. I've seen this again and again--whether it's in a combat platoon in the grip of fear and wild rumor, or a student revolution without rules, where the strongest rule through intimidation, or Wall Street stock madness, or 2001 hysteria and an immature president who divided an unsettled citizenry for political advantage. Nor should we forget that many liberals in America --
John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and respected magazines such as 'The New Yorker' -- also felt stampeded, as a result of that fear and terror of 9/11, to grant Bush his war powers. That too was a conformist mob. In the name of not being hated for our dissent, we the American people signed off, through our legislators, on our essential liberties without knowing it. I would say to you we don't even have these rights anymore, they’re gone. Because every American I know, of any sensitivity, has some innate understanding and fear that each and every one of us can be listened upon: our email and bank accounts, our medical records, our sexual priorities known, and that at the end of the day we can be destroyed financially, reputationally, or physically by our own Government and Media, if they so wanted. The right to any privacy at all has been sacrificed on the altar of our "national security".

And it has happened, as s much does in evolution, unseen, quietly, in the middle of the night. It comes not as a 'coup d'etat' but as a 'fait accompli'. And we find ourselves now in a perilous and dark time, darker than anything I've known in my 60 years. "What are we to do? Are we to acquiesce? Do we have a choice? Are we to die terrified as individual slaves? Is it possible, like Spartacuses, to resist? To join others in an assembly of honesty and goodness and find ways to restore decency to this terrifying world?

What are we to do? Can we heal, not only ourselves, but in the process can we heal our planet -- can we legislate clearly and collectively an end to carbon emissions into the atmosphere? We know only too well we can, but it takes a collective will, and we all, like lost children, look to the leader who will take us to that will.

We want it, and yet we don't seem to need it enough. And it's need, that one need, and it's through the sweat and toil of needing it that we will get it!

We know our movies, our dreams, can help -- a little, a lot, to point out this will. In the movies we can -almost subversively -- approach the individual in the dark and revive the memory of how things can be --and sometimes, though rarely, these films can create a collective action. But as in my experience of making Vietnam movies, or Salvador movies, or JFK movies has taught me, we must accept our limitations with humility and with even deeper understanding. To paraphrase Carlos Castaneda of Don Juan fame, ‘we must undertake every one of our actions with all the ardor we have, and at the same time must be able to walk away from the result of our action with detachment.'  I won't give up believing that movies can help in some way by expressing the best in us to help others to connect, to light a candle in the darkness to our memory and to our imagination.

I wish, in my daily life, to struggle to keep my consciousness growing and not to fall asleep, which I've done many times in my life, I want to teach my children by broadening their minds as best I can, by traveling them to other experiences in the world, by teaching them where I can my own tolerances and appreciation of what freedom is, and reminding them by example the price at which it comes, by which I mean not only silver.

I hope then people will leave our movie theatre renewed and made sacred again, that movies can heal the tribe and not tear it apart. I really want to believe there is something beyond the physical, that there is within us a great metaphysical. A reaching to the stars to survive, an ability to overcome all obstacles, even the greatest of all -- the warming of our planet. Theodore Roethke wrote,   "In a dark time the eye begins to see". In that vein we must remember we all drink the same water, we all struggle under that same sun, we all sleep, eat, love, hate with a similar passion and hurt, and as stupid as we often are, we all understand that it is in our interest and to our profit to survive together as a species.

How can we help? Let's start thinking a little more about the positive, and not give in so quickly to the negative. It is so easy to criticize, it is so hard to build. Let us through our movies pay homage to the glory of that spirit, as Mr. Lean once did in one of his greatest movies, "The Bridge on the River Kwai". "Colonel Bogie's March" plays now in my mind, as I watch our whole species, ragged, worn, starved near to death. I see them now, closer and closer, coming through the jungle -- a company of men and women marching to that whistling music in their tattered rags in some fading semblance of order -- and that great narrow bony English face of Alec Guinness calling them all to a halt and attention, with trembling, weakened arms, I watch as they snap out their soldiers' salute to the inherent dignity in each and every one of us.

Thank you David Lean. And thank all of you for this honor. [Applause]

[Mark Kermode and Oliver Stone seat themselves]

MK:     I'm just going to very quickly ask you some questions, obviously the lecture you just gave us was very eloquent and moving and I'm sure the audience have things that they'd like to bring up. Just a couple of things in relation to what you said and the World Trade Center, that played here at BAFTA over the weekend, so many of the audience will have seen it. One of the things you talked most passionately about was the idea of films and collective unconscious and it's role as a healing force. Now clearly with WTC you're dealing with a subject that has ripped a hole in society but it seems to me that the primary theme of the movie is to find whatever positive can be found from that wreckage. Particularly, at one point we hear a voice oversay, 'I saw terrible things that day, but I also saw the best of people. ‘I wonder if you could say something about what you felt your role was in bringing that movie to an audience, bearing in mind just how sensitive an issue it has been seen to be.

OS:  I think the 9/11 event has changed the world, and since that day, that Tuesday, it's been politicized so much that the mention of it is political and the reaction to it is Political, we’ve forgotten that things happened that day that are very physical and very emotional. I think, as with Platoon, which cam after films, large, metaphorical and beautiful films such as Deer Hunter, Apocalypse, that Platoon was apolitical in the sense that it just concentrated on the men, the participants, the survivors and history of that event, as with the men at Ground Zero. I think this 9/11 is a huge story and is perhaps the basis of another film for me, if it's possible. But to start I would go very quietly into that night, I would start with the basics: it can't get much more basic than these two men who were at the heart of the darkness, the two buildings fell on them and they survived at the very center. It's almost like a Greek metaphor of Prometheus Bound, and when they come out there at the end, it's shocking: there's only 20 survivors out of 3000, and these two were at the very center. It’s like Noah's Ark and then out of that flood, the species known as man returns. I felt great awe when I read the story, I felt great reverence for that feeling. I wanted to pay homage to it.

MK:     There is an interesting issue in relation to the politics, or lack thereof in dealing with September 11th. There is a character in the film who is called by God, he's an ex¬ marine, to go to the Trade Center to look for survivors, which indeed he does, and he then says ominously, 'Someone's going to have to pay for this/do something about this'. The interesting thing about it is that considering just how forthright the politics of some of your other films, like JFK, have been, that in WTC it seems that you have specifically excluded any political belief. It's much more universal, as in you couldn't grab it and say, 'That's a film in which Oliver Stone is saying this is the case', do you think that's right?

OS:       That is right. It's definitely apolitical. Dave Karnes'  statement is filtered through the emotions of that day, which reflect accurately the emotions of many Americans who wanted revenge and were very angry. I think the same would be true here in England, or Spain, at a bombing, the natural desire is to lash out. I think we did so by invading Afghanistan, and that we did the right thing -- but that we failed to finish what we started. Unfortunately, the patriotic Dave Karnes went to the wrong war, and as I said in my talk, I felt that war has been and is a disaster. But he is the man he was, and it would be politically wrong of me to change what he felt for reasons of fashion or political correctness because Iraq is such an obvious disaster. He didn't know that then; as far as he's concerned, Iraq was involved in al Q'aeda, it doesn't matter, it's the truth to him, and it's also the truth, like it or not, that many Americans voted for Bush and they thought Iraq and al Q'aeda were linked. So, Karnes clearly represents, in one way, the American public. As do the paramedic, Sereika and the rescuer, Scott Strauss, who each express other concerns-- three different concerns that come up in the montage of the aftermath of men working at Ground Zero on the dawn of the 12 September. I don't know if this audience has seen the movie so I don't want to go into too much detail. But it's not political, it's emotional that day, it became politics later.

MK:     There's also a very striking image during the movie in which one of the characters, who was trapped under the rubble, has a vision and the vision is of Jesus coming towards him with a bottle of water. This being because he is completely parched, he's been under the rubble for 10 hours, it's something that could easily descend in kitsch, and yet it seemed that image was completely sincere and was designed to be exactly what that character had seen, and to completely accept the possibility that that was a genuine vision.


OS:       It was a genuine vision and it played a large role in Will's survival because he various reasons. Will said the vision brought him back to life and gave him a second chance: he was very serious about it and it was very important for us to show that. What's kitschy? That's more of a judgment than a fact. lf we think of Bunuel films, which I admire you see, he was quite flat and literal when he showed Jesus figures, which he did in several films. It’s only because we live in a hyper-political age right now, where we're so sensitive about the Christian right, that that vision upsets some people and can be interpreted as propaganda.  Such a shame.
MK:     But you don't seem to have any difficulty mixing, on the one hand politics, and on the other spirituality. Would you see those things are part and parcel...

OS:      It's only because of the politicization of the time. But that's a fashion. If you see the movie in 20/30 years, you may think of it as an archive, as a real document of the time, and I think you would simply see it as a man's faith being illustrated.

MK:     I have to say I admire that moment. I thought that what you were doing was demonstrating it in exactly the way it should have been, that you weren't in any way mocking it.

OS:       I think Bunuel would do it this way --- and remember he was an atheist.

MK:     One last thing before we throw this over to the audience, I'm sure they have many questions. When you're working on World Trade Center, we talked a little about this thing healing, what would be the best response for an audience coming out of this film.
Because obviously it's a subject that for many people is almost too difficult to approach, it's been5 years and there was much discussion in the media about when would be an appropriate time to approach this subject. What do you hope it would bring to an audience?

OS:       Some light in the darkness. There is no right time; it should have been done when it could be done. It took John and Will two years to heal, recover from their injuries. It took another year to work with Michael Shamberg and Andrea Berloff and Stacey Sher and Debra Hill to get this story out. It took probably another year during which the script lay dormant, nobody wanted to make it. I became involved in the 4th year and now it's the 5 1 year. Much drama is based on recent contemporary event, and it should be, but it does take time to go deeper, we’re not journalists, we’re dramatists so 5 years is fast. 'JFK' took 30 years, 'Platoon' - I was lucky to get done after 18 years, 'Nixon'- about 25 years. It does take time. In this case I think we're very fortunate to have a miraculous story which is also real, and these men are alive and they're not going to be around forever, and they were willing to share that story with us. So all those people who were there, I think we should grab the moment when you can and tell it quickly and come what may; it is for me a very solid piece of work, it's authentic, and it will last because it's the truth.

MK:     I think this is an excellent moment to throw over to the audience to ask questions:

A:          I want to ask how you feel about Hollywood today and the studio system and their willingness to embrace political stories, and much along the lines of what you've made in the past do you feel Hollywood are prepared to continue to make very daring films? Or do you think that as you were alluding to with the media generally there's a pullback from doing brave or difficult stories?

MK:     [paraphrase] He asked whether you felt there was a pulling back, at the moment, from stories that are edgy, confrontational which are dealing with difficult subject matter, those sorts of issues. Because you had sort of said in your lecture that you felt the media itself could be very duplicitous in it's reaction to such movies. So the question was do you find there's much openness to dealing with that type of confrontational material or do you find it more difficult than in the past?

OS:       Yes, no question, no question that it's a hot seat; it's a very hot seat. It was so certain critics who said we took the easy way out. It may seem so but it wasn't easy making it! I can guarantee you that the producers met with dozens of survivor groups, political groups, New York 9/11 groups, firemen, policemen, and Port Authority officials. It was an extremely complicated minefield because many people have recently died and the sensitivity has is very raw. But they were bold to go ahead; it could have blown up in our faces so many times. In the audience is Michael Shamberg, right here in the front row. Please stand up Michael; I'd like to introduce you. He was the first one in after Debra Hill with his partner Stacey Sher, and they went through all the meetings and he can tell you in boring detail how many man-hours were spent, it was extremely difficult. Also in the audience is Will Jimeno, who I would like to introduce, [to Will] Will, please stand up.

[Applause]

OS:       So as you can see he's a pretty tough-looking guy. So, I couldn't fuck with his story. But seriously, I think he's a sweet teddy bear, I never felt a sense of censorship. I was the 'final cut' director, once I came on board they accorded me respect, they understood my problem of dealing with 24 hours of time and trying to suck it down to 2 hours. They understood the problems of dramatizing family life in contrast to their positions in the hole -- leaving the hole, coming back to the hole. It was one of the most difficult movies I've worked on.

And because of it's simplicity and modesty I think that could be mistaken for a lack of ambition. It was a beginning, and there will be other movies on 9/11 and probably bolder in time because as "United 93" helped us to break the ice, I think we will help others to continue break the ice. So the media lock, the sense of 'you can't say that', that political correctness will diminish hopefully with time. We must wake up, we must demystify that event, as it has been made into a political myth.

MK:     Let's take another question.

A:        In the last 5 years there have been a number of pretty stunning documentaries about the World Trade Center. I wanted to know what you thought film could do, that documentary doesn't do about this subject and actually some of the other ones that you've mentioned too?

OS:       Well I think you're asking me the differences between drama and documentary. And I think you can answer that yourself if you come out of a documentary, sometimes you are very very emotional, and then you come out of a drama but with a different kind of emotion because you're watching actors in make-up, lit under certain conditions, with all the dramatic conventions. I like both kinds of filmmaking and I can watch documentaries, but I couldn't only watch, I'd miss the dramatic form. Inside that dramatic form are all the secrets of the genre.

A:        I apologize if I've got this wrong, but I looked you up on the internet today, and there's a reference to the Battle of Algiers which just happens to be one of my all time favorite films. I wondered if you could tell me with particular reference to JFK and Nixon, and indeed all your other films, what influence that film had on you? And, as a supplementary question, could I ask you why you chose the Jim Garrison route to JFK?

OS: As a film student I thought it was one of the most elaborately and successfully constructed quasi-documentaries, it was one of the first bridges I'd seen between the documentary and the feature.[Robert] Flaherty, earlier in the 20th century, had done similar kind of work with Nanook in the North, we saw these in film school, but for me, they didn't have the electricity of Pontecorvo's film, which put you in the heart of the casbah in Casablanca. The film was seminal and it influenced JFK very much so, in the sense that we used faux documentary styles to establish some of our realities.

You have to remember that Jim Garrison was the only public official in the United States who had the courage to do anything about the Kennedy assassination. The rest was talk, valuable talk, we benefited from 20 years of research done by independent civilians,
people who did so at their own expense, and accumulated a vast body of knowledge that questioned the 'Warren Commission'. We benefited from that research, but Jim was the only one who actually brought a case to trial and succeeded in at least getting a record made officially questioning the assassination. In the beginning, there was a moment he always knew that the case in New Orleans was only the beginning, it was had a shot. He always knew that the case in New Orleans was only the beginning, it was just a thread, but that if pushed could unravel and lead to far great information. He had enough evidence for sure, he had 6 or 7 major witnesses and they did call a Grand Jury, which is 22 jurors, who heard that testimony, in secret, in 'camera’ over 3 days. They came back -- and the Judge was very strongly for it – was an indictment on Clay Shaw . The trial was something else again; it took several years to get to trial, during which time many of these witnesses disappeared, or died strange deaths, Dave Ferrie among these. So, by the time Jim did get to trial, the media establishment had rendered it into a mockery. You have to read up on it, there's a new book by Joan Mellon, "A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and The Case That Should Have Changed History". It's big, about 600 pages on the whole story of Garrison, who she knew well; it's a fascinating read and rectifies some of the unbelievable accusations thrown at Jim Garrison.

MK:     Just as a footnote to that, one of the things you were saying in your lecture is that a director has to understand what is capable of being changed by film, but also to know his limitations. Am I correct in thinking that actually, as a result of JFK, there was an opening up of certain restricted information, and in fact the Government did respond to it
and there is stuff now in the public domain that would not have been in the public domain had you not fought that battle?

OS:      That was a happy by-product. It was amazing that Congress was so upset by the film that in order to prove the film was fraudulent, they passed this act. It's a game of perception but I strongly doubt there is a clear smoking gun on paper, it's not going to be found there. But what does come out of these things is often other things around the case. One of them was a very interesting covert action called Operation Northwoords that James Bamford reported in his recent book; he's a specialist on the National Security Agency, and as a result of thisa ct, he found the Northwoods Report, which in 1962 was issued at the highest levels of the Pentagon. And guess what  -- it was a blueprint for terror in the United States, to create a pattern of terror, and blame it on the Castro regime and thus justify an invasion of Cuba, which was very much in the works in 1962.People forget that, people forget that that was very much a reason for the hostility between Kennedy and the Pentagon. Operation Northwoods is one of these benefits; some of the gravy had nothing to do with Jim Garrison but again it shows you the nature of the time. Here is the American military, making a secret plan to employ the dirtiest tricks possible, blowing up our own  airplanes, buildings, killing people, anything to create a climate of fear in order to justify the invasion of Cuba. It's all laid out very clearly; for all intents and purposes, it could've been a roadmap written by al Q'aeda years later.

Q:        Changing the subject slightly, one of my favorite is U-Turn. Could you talk about U-Tum a little bit?

OS:       Yeah, U-Turn is probably the most cynical film I've ever done. I like it because everyone's killed; it's a true film noir. Except for the Billy Bob Thornton and the Indian ghost played by John Voight, everyone dies. I like it because, as in 'life, most everyone is
self-deluded: totally. And they end up like scorpions in a bucket and kill each other. It was playing with the genre and we really had fun with it. We made it quickly in Arizona in something like 42 days. Very much enjoyed it and actually you're one of those people that I run into all the time, somewhere in the world, who, believe it or not, think it's their favorite film of mine.

MK:     Do you ever feel that the pressure or responsibility that every film you make must be a great statement. Because one of the joys for U-Turn is that it does feel like it was made fast, was made within the conventions of a genre, which you are both merging and taking apart at the same time, and  it is what it is.

OS:       I very much enjoyed making it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get away with it, I was nailed and the reviews were terrible.

MK:    Not in Britain, they weren't.

OS:      But in America they were terrible and box office was even worse. So you do get stung on these thing sand it is part of this march, you have to learn and you do get scars as you go and you can only take so much, as David Lean made very clear. Even saying of World Trade Center, 'this is not an Oliver Stone film' is part of that continuing misunderstanding. It is a very my film.

MK: You know you were there! Another question.

A:        One of the things I've noticed about World Trade Center is that you've kept it very simple in look. And I just wanted to go back to JFK, to when you were designing that film and editing that film, was it a conscious effort to change things around in that film, what was your approach to the original cinematography on JFK.

MK:     [paraphrasing] In the case of JFK, which is a number of different styles, very distinctive, what people often think of as the Oliver Stone style. In contrast to that World Trade Center has a visual simplicity, the question was how do you move from one to another, was there a particular theory for shooting World Trade Center in that way?

OS:      The way I would look at it is that each subject merits its own style. At the time as fractured  I was doing which was
  Natural Born Killers  and modernist, I was also making Heaven and Earth in the most classical style; I love that contrast. It's the story that matters to me and the style suits the story. In that regard I guess I am what the Hollywood craftsmen were in that day in that they were very much aware that they were telling a story first and not calling attention to themselves. The irony of course is that somehow I have managed to call quite a bit of attention to myself and sometimes to my detriment because my name unfortunately blocks some people from seeing the film. I really regret that. If I could change my name I would, but it's impossible to do that in a transparent film business. WTC is a modern and austere story, it goes to the edge of death, these two men came as close as any character in any one of my movies, (I did a scene with Nixon where he almost died). With Will and John I really had to stay on top of their facial and mental expressions, to participate with them. I felt like we were marching out there to the very edge, and I was fascinated by the concept of what keeps men alive under these circumstances; not only is it the physical, these men are both very strong and withstood much pain, but I think that there was a strong metaphysical aspect to their lives; although they did not know each other and were not at all similar personalities, they helped each other enormously in the hole. They also had strong marriages, both of them, one's a younger love story, the other an older love story, and I think they had wonderful wives and children, and that helped them get through this experience. At the same time I wanted to question the things we take for granted, such as a spouse: what is it in the life of the wives that would change that day? When is it they would realize that their husbands probably wouldn't come home because there were no survivors? That's a very tender moment, and a very sad one. In the hole there were moments where the men had to pray, they prayed in extremis, both of them were strong of faith. Will was raised Catholic, he was originally from Colombia; John told me he prayed along part of that night and he was in tremendous pain. This faith, hope, love pulled them through, as well of course as the timely arrival of the rescuers.

MK:     Before we take one more from the audience, I was in America when WTC opened and I saw you interviewed on a news program, you said something I thought was very moving, you were addressing the issue that you've just addressed about people's preconceptions about you and what it means to be an Oliver Stone movie and what you said was, ‘If you like the director, great. If you don’t like the director, the film’s better than him.’ If was a very selfless way of presenting something that you’d just worked on to the world. It must have been a big step to say something like that?

OS:       It is...

MK:     It's the art of asking a question the answer of which is yes! [Audience laughs] We're running out of time so I will take, Sir, there.

A:        Do you find it easier it harder directing something you haven't written?

OS:      In both cases ["U-Turn" and "World Trade Center"]where I'm not credited I was very involved in the writing and during the shooting with the actors and also in the editing. Andrea Berloff wrote a wonderful first draft screenplay, which inspired me to do it, and she deserves the credit, but she would tell you 'that we collaborated intensely throughout several more drafts to make it better.

MK:     One more, Madam?

A:        Hello, you were talking about the collective consciousness of going into a dark cinema and watching a film together. I was reminded by that, not only in World Trade Center but also some of Bette Davis films at the NFT, which were packed. But now that people can download films on their computers and watch them at home on DVD's and people are not going to cinemas anymore because of the cost and the fact that the person next to you is, more often than not, talking on their mobile phone instead of watching the film. Spielberg said to us about 5 years ago that when he had to make films digitally, he'd stop making films, how is all this changing your film making, or, will it if you can't make films for audiences that will watch it collectively?

OS:       Such a shame, such a shame. A part of me says you're right and a part of me says you're wrong. I do think that theatres will still be there in some way. I think they may have to be bigger, with some new aspect to them, but there is something about going out, getting out of the house, and mixing in a public arena as the Greeks did in their 'agoras'. There is something to be said for that, people may not be so eager to give that up. Even the younger generation who seem so enamored of the Internet, remember we were young too once and we all had fads and a lot of those fads ended up in the closet. The young people may well rediscover the art of film - I'm hoping. It's a beautiful medium, there is nothing quite like film: the resolution itself, the quality of the grain, the colors. On the other hand the most irritating thing of all for a director to go from theatre to theatre and see a differently projected film each time. So, the irony is on digital you have consistency, on the other hand on film you have a singular beauty. Digital projection is fine but we need the collective experience. At home the DVD is always interrupted, it's a shame. I notice this constantly, that people are not getting the full effect of the film.

MK:     As a final footnote to this, you mentioned something Steven Spielberg had said which was that if he has to do it on digital, he'll stop making films. He spoke recently about being in an editing room with celluloid, its the smell of celluloid...he says that he will absolutely refuse to edit on digital because he wants the smell that David Lean and..[others] that they all worked with. He says if you go into a Avid edit it’s more like being in a Microsoft office. His key point is that there is something sacred about the simple thing of light passing through celluloid, and it seems to me that when you talk about the collective unconscious, when you talk about modern folk stories, people watching these together in the dark, there is an element of sacrament in the act of watching a film.       

OS:      I think we all feel it, that's why we like movies. Although we all watch films at home, it's not the same thing. I work on the Avid, personally, because its so fast, but we all handle film at one point or another, we go back to film. We try to look at it as much as possible when we're shooting, but sometimes it's very expensive and time-consuming. I handled a lot of film in film school, I know what he means by the smell and feel of it, but it was also a pure pain in the ass to physically cut and recut! By the time a workprint was finished, it could barely get through the projector.

MK:    I think that's a very good moment to end. I'd just like to thank BAFTA and thank you [the audience] for your very intelligent questions. And please join me in thanking Oliver Stone.

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