“Heaven and Earth,” which presented the war through the eyes of a Vietnamese woman, Le Ly Hayslip (from whose autobiographical writings the film was adapted).
Stone's next directorial effort, “Natural Born Killers” (1994) was attacked for its glorification of violence. A story of serial killers, played by
Woody Harrelson and
Juliette Lewis, the film was named the eighth most controversial movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly in 2006.
The following year, Stone co-wrote and directed “Nixon,” an epic take on the title character's presidency that earned four Oscar nominations. In 1997, Stone directed
U-Turn, starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez.
Stone also produced such films as “Reversal of Fortune” (1990), “The Joy Luck Club” (1993), “The People vs Larry Flynt” (1996),
Savior (1998), “Freeway” (1996), “South Central” (1992), and “Wild Palms” (1993) for television. In 1999 he again took a seat in the director's chair with “Any Given Sunday,” a football movie starring Al Pacino, Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx, and repeated collaborator James Woods.
Stone went to Cuba for his first documentary -- on Fidel Castro -- entitled “Comandante” in 2003. After covering the current state of the Palestinian conflict in the same year's “Persona Non Grata,” Stone traveled back in time to study yet another great conflict with war drama “Alexander” in 2004 (a revised “Alexander Revisited” was released in 2007). Stone's follow-up in 2006 was “World Trade Center,” a true story about two New York Port Authority policemen, who were on duty and trapped in the rubble on September 11, 2001. Stone directed in 2008, “W.”, a chronicle of the life and presidency of George W. Bush, while Bush was still in office.
His documentary work includes two follow-up films on Fidel Castro -- “Looking for Fidel” (2004) and the upcoming “Castro in Winter” (2012) -- as well “South of the Border” (2010), a roadtrip across Latin America meeting seven of its progressive leaders.