Young Film Director Oliver Stone On Vietnam -- My Complete Interview

or to the 50s where time in America when we think there was a lot of repression you know kids were trying to break out there was rock and roll etc etc but as a kid growing up do you remember what the American Dream was you remember what your parents told you the American Dream was how did that square with what you my dad told me uh I would be I should be very happy to be earning $100 a week $125 a week and I have a house one day in Long Island and maybe a job at the bank he was half kidding but he was also serious that he was concerned about security by security I used to say nobody gets out of here alive which was later paraphrased by Jim Morrison he said to say life is no bowl of cherries when he got out of college in 1931 his most vivid and dramatic memory was with a Yale education was turning out as a floorwalker begging for a job as a floorwalker to the department store so he took him a long while to get his feet after college and I think that profoundly affected him and he used to tell me that America did not come out of that depression until the Second World War and that he being a Roosevelt hater used to say there Roosevelt got all the credit for getting America out of the depression when in fact the war did so I grew up in a environment of strict conformity where I used to wear a tie and ass and a shirt and a jacket every day I lived in New York City I did not go out on the street with without a tie on you felt naked on the street without a time in the neighborhoods where I was on the other hand life had a very defined stability to it everything was done in a certain hour my father would sit in the bathtub at a certain hour and I could always go and see him at that hour and talk to him that that was repressive it was claustrophobic there was an essence to being normal that was driving kids crazy driving you crazy I did not realize that I I realized that in hindsight when people tell me about it because the beatnik movement was he stressed that in Kerouac and people like that were breaking out but as a kid at that point in time no I had no sense of where that there was a problem with the environment I felt something was wrong in the 1960s in the early 60s but in the 1950s it was fear and conformity in getting good grades in school and trying to grow up without getting into too much trouble you know I think smoking cigarettes and maybe getting being a JD and juvenile delinquent was about the the level of nonconformity then you could go to he'd always be terrified of the kids that got kicked out of school you know cuz there always be those kids two or three your friends ago and God what's gonna happen to him you know wasn't what's what's gonna happen to his life now that he's gone you know when do you think the the 1960s kicked in for you is this this time that does not necessarily bind itself by 1960 to 1970 but Wow something was certainly well from my my life paralleled the ear is in a certain way cuz I was born in 1946 at the dawn of the cold era Cold War era it's ironic because I grew up during all that you know being scared of the Russians my father really scared me a lot about they're gonna take over the world because we're letting them and we are there's this conspiracy abroad from the Russian the Communist conspiracy theory and I thought it's pretty frightening to a 9 to 8 9 year old you know and I believed it through the 50s and then and I suppose when Kennedy came along Kennedy if you remember did sell the Cold War idea at the beginning of his he changed I think later in his Ken a presidency but it all started to come apart about that for me and for the United States too my parents got a divorce ironically and 62 63 which was a major shock to me I was 14 years old and I was about to target Kennedy was killed and then when Kennedy was killed mr. Johnson committed us to Vietnam and I think you saw this whole sort of questioning going on in America and subconsciously was happening to me after a divorce situation it was a bit like Catcher in the Rye don't you know the book but Holden Caulfield was my it was a bit my love my antihero at the time I ran away from school I did a number of things that were similar and I went to college at Yale University and I really literally had a nervous breakdown without having than any of the physical symptoms of one and that it was suddenly stopped nothing was working for me I couldn't get good grades anymore I couldn't work I couldn't study I couldn't concentrate I knew something was wrong with my system mentally that it was not getting enough out of America not getting enough out of myself unhappy Wow and I said well I'm gonna take myself out to the Far East because I've got I've got to find another way I've got to find another way of living I remember being particularly influenced by Joseph Conrad's book at that point a lord Jim and about sailing the Southeast Asia Seas and having that sense of freedom in another life a second life so to speak that's what happened to me I went out there as a Second Life in 1965 to teach school and to Chinese students high school students in in Saigon and Charlotte Vietnam at those times in the early 60s for you as a word with somebody in the baby boomer generation that America wasn't providing what it said it was gonna provide it it wasn't being the country that it professed itself to be not yet no I think I don't know what I was rebelling against all I knew was what something was wrong and I had to go find another system find another see what the rest of the world was like I was too young to make value judgments I was just but I was old enough to know that something was wrong and that I had to look I just had to keep my eyes open and to go out to the Far East and to talk to meet new people and see new things seemed to be the solution the disillusionment possibly starts with with the sense of could you know I was one of the first kids to leave college that didn't start till 68 but I think it starts with that sense of the lonely crowd David Reisman book a sense of conformity am I going to Yale University in order to to turn into another tire in a suit on Wall Street to be a banker to be another member of skull and bones or the CIA you know I mean am I gonna be part of that assembly line of American leaders and lawyers and white-collar people and I looked at them I saw the result through my father I used to go to Washington and New York and see those the results of the system and I think I was questioning it I wasn't sure what I could replace it with but there was certainly a questioning going on I think you could sort of sum it up with what George Bush is today in 1990 I mean there were types like George Bush guys who never read a book who never see a movie there's a bone home bonhomie you know there's a good friendship sort of macho friendship quality and you slap on the back everything is alright the world is in is B you know there's a nice sense of order there - there's no question that gives you a sort of a sort of a sense of law and order which are mr. Bush's he emanates those feelings can you talk about it in terms of when you went what you believed you were doing oh boy this next ten years are like you know he's talking about a rollercoaster ride through adolescent hell I think that you see a lot of those feelings reflected in born on the fourth of July and in platoon if you look closely and in fact you I think if you look at him my movie Wall Street you'll see a kid that if I had ever stayed at college and gone to Wall Street I might have you know had some of those problems that Charlie did Sheen I think you know I went to Nam as a soldier eventually in sixty seven eight and I saw things that just shocked me open my eyes I never be the same again I I combat is a Syrian experience and devastating to what your sense of life is worth your sense of self you have no illusions about yourself or what life comes down to it comes to a very basic thing survival late and you see a lot of ugliness in your fellow man and young people I mean it's a very genetic kind of thing it's just as breeded it's it's an inbred thing I try to deal with that in platoon at the lowest level you see a certain type of man it's gonna go a certain kind of way in a pressure situation and other types of men are gonna do better things I think morally better so yeah I got a hand and I follow that about 19 and 20 I came back and I guess I was like the Tom Cruise character and born and that I was not ready to condemn the war effort but I certainly things were not working in sync my head in my heart were Tommy two different things my head was saying yes support the government support the troops be paid you know support your flag and my heart my body language is Tommy something was wrong over there I don't believe what I saw I don't think we were doing the right thing I think we were hurting people and I think that we were hurting ourselves a lot and uh so I came back to a very conflicted interstate and I went through years of questioning and alienation and doubts and personal problems I went to jail at one point in America ten days after I got back from the Vietnam War for marijuana which was another eye-opener because here in the jail's I saw another underclass of kids that I just left in Vietnam they were in jail without any really hopes of freedom I was lucky enough to end well and got the GI Bill to and made short film dance took some of the pressure off of me they you know yet non-veterans have been screwed up as you know you know they say I don't know the numbers but you know maybe more than 60,000 all right since the war in addition to the 60 thousand dead over there and we're talking about sides we're talking about alcohol-related car accidents and truck accidents we're talking about despair since symptoms of syndromes in our effort to make sense of the 60 series titled could you make sense of what you came back to I mean what to you at that point you said you came back he still wanted to believe in these things yeah she couldn't I mean where were you then where were you in terms what's going on in the streets of America well I think the America I came back to in a sense had changed enormously I think that Johnson split the country in half it by sending only the poor I the the draft was not just if you could get a college deferment you got one so that means the why did the war if you could go so if you had the money to pay a psychiatrist you could get a a truck discharge I mean anybody could get out if they really wanted to you cannot fight a war that way cuz it splits the generation you're sending half the kids after continuing on into a commercial life here back to a situation where my generation I know were all prospering because Johnson you know a period the inflation took oh it took this country like a steamroller and just the value of the dollar I mean when a dollar could buy in 65 and what could it was tremendously different and inflation was rate making money my friends were doing well I came back to a situation where I encountering hostility to my involvement over there I was encountering a complete indifference it was like oh you were over there you dropped out for a year to go over there I'm it's too bad welcome back let's get on with your life but just come back and get back into that beat you know you're off a beat when you come back from war you're off of beat and you you just don't look at people the same way you don't relate to them the same way you don't have friends have friends and you don't and you don't trust your family because your family doesn't my dad didn't ever got with Vietnam he thought it was a police action I remember me I've been wounded twice and he said well that's not really a war like where I was in he said that it was a police action which hurt me you don't trust anybody and then eventually you get to the point where you don't permit anymore the Pentagon Papers came out wonder what it was just seeing what was in those papers the whole Johnson fabricated the whole Vietnam war with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution they stampeded this house and took it into a war that was never declared he sends half the fight it he lets the rich go it's a completely insane way it's it you're dividing the country you're putting civil war in the other country it's but Lincoln did 100 years ago for but he did it for the wrong reasons Johnson made a civil war in this country given all that it took me I'm amazed it took me so long to realize what what the hell was going up I guess I'm stupid or slower or layer later developer arrests but I guess it took me to about 1971 to kind of say hey something is very wrong the government is telling them the government is a lie never trust your government again Blount 71 72 and then of course Watergate happened and Nixon ends up to be another con man and a liar I mean so many times Nixon lied it's you but I still think Johnson outdoes Nixon in terms of line this years or longer were you in this is a question yes first when you live a little more thank you right oh I see it Thorne 68 as a soldier fighting and you looked Chicago conventions Martin Luther King gets shot rock god America seems to be coming apart how does that occurred the soldier over there in Vietnam are you even conscious of what's happening in the conscious of the protesters what do you think of that what are they doing okay to the soldier fighting in Vietnam I remember think two demarcation point in 1968 when we were the 1st Cavalry Division up north in Camp Evans the the day that Lyndon Johnson declared a run for president you knew all the infantry long knew there was cuz you couldn't con them that we weren't go out and win this war that we were gonna be fighting a retreating act this infantry from that point on and from that point on for a man to risk life in a retreating action it becomes highly he will risk his life whereas before march of 6 there was still this sort of blind or naive belief that you know we were at least gonna try and take some territory and sort of close it in but after March or 68 there was no definition it was you have to fly in would be you'd lose meant you'd secure it you'd leave it again back to the same piece of land a few days later and then you'd lose more men the morale just went out I noticed the drug went up in 68 it was considerably grass heroin a real major point and then of course I think was April the King was shot in April you sensed an immediately on the black troops there was a lot of hostility and a and again that added to the demoralization where Kennedy was shot that was like the final straw that broke the back of this thing there was no hope after that of winning get out count your days and get out if you can don't risk your life don't take any of the foolish read and the officers of course could not rally think beyond the minimum yes when I first went up but that well you first go over and you're doing it you're serving and you're you're putting on and these are the kids that are not that yep deferments there's a natural resentment you know who are they let them if they're gonna protest let them do it at an na they let them join the army and be conscientious objectors inside let them take a stand or let them go to Canada at least let them stand for something but there was something hypocritical about you know be happy being able to avoid I mean the system and going to college at the same time to avoid all of the choices that that your decision brought about so I would seem like an easy out that's why I suppose at that time 67 at 68 I had contempt for them it that changed if I probably would have done the same thing I probably went into college because I wouldn't I knew what war is like I don't know what and I would probably protest because that's the best thing I could do and say something without you know that's the best I could have done without screwing up my life the next thing we're talking about is what is it mmm and you have any identification with what we the counterculture with the long hair see them were you a part of that movement was it just a political cultural movement or was it a big party or didn't have any meaning it had nothing no meaning to me until I heard the some of the music in Vietnam I heard brothers and I heard the doors I heard well I grew up as I told you earlier in a more conformist Society in the 50s in the sixties when you wore a tie and a shirt to suddenly see girls and boys completely naked taking their clothes off wearing these outrageous clothes was quite a shock to me I said how did that you know I never have the courage to do that I look that I would never look to try to stand out you know with long hair my father had always sort of taught me you know a woman it should stand out should look good but a man stand out you know he should be anonymous just part of the reason you go to the army to sort of be anonymous to sort of not have an identity to to to be part of a social fabric that gives it there's a strange strength in that you know that to be one of collective which I suppose is true about some of the hippie movement to own way they were joining a collective and being Anonymous in their own way but it struck me as very at that time it struck me as a mistake and I said I could I never understood the motivation of the girls of rape and you know the old thing about at that point in time some of the girls were saying that we would never have sex with soldiers because you know they're the war machine and they were going to sex a military and that was an interesting I thought concept of birth Sarada you know then and in fact they were right I mean if all the mothers in America had worked had declared war on the Pentagon then they could have prevented it if all the mothers had spoken out as mothers to protect our sons it would not weigh it dead the hippies were to me in you know I came to understand after the or what the music that got me first the music was black music because what worked because I'd it was a lot of black ya know I'm so they were playing temptations and key Robinson and stuff you saw in platoon you know I'm like that gets to your unconscious very quickly it's interesting that me and Vietnam between the guys who listen to country music of which there are many they've had a very strong I would say a more a hawkish point of view whereas those boys who listen more to the soul music had a different point of view and there was more like I'm gonna take the Cassius Clay attitude the Muhammad Ali attitude I got no beef with the Vietcong I just gotta get a I'm gonna get out of here they were more cooler and we went to such as I found that those type of people were would treat the villagers a little better and some of the people who listen to some of the country music who'd kick some ass III think the music got to me first in the spirit of intoxication when I came back States I started to do more and more grass so of course but you know the grass mellows you out and you start to be less rigid and you're thinking less judgmental you don't see categories the same way I became much more tolerant and I think what you know nice about the hippie movement to me in those years was this there was no fear they really didn't operate out of fear like I did in Vietnam I mean I had to lose that fear there was no sense of danger to life there was no dealing with death it was it was everything was was there to be had it was abundant the world was an abundance the world was to be the concept of love is a public phenomenon love in a public way BIA outside of the church this is the first I heard of it you know love peace man the love and peace that was the refrain the concept was that life was there to be exfoli to experience everything have no fear make no plans make no career plans test and enjoy the limits of life it's for vietnam veteran to come back to that situation because you've you're you're you're wracked with fear your paranoia with death on your mind for me to make that transition to seen hair the musical orgy superstar and trying to relate to those narration my generation was very difficult very difficult and I never felt like I was with them I could never be a hippie just so there was a gulf but that doesn't to say that I didn't smoke as much dope as I ever did or take as many acid trips because I did and I had my own series of experiences but I never I never considered myself in the mainstream of the hippie movement um well you talk about the music you talk about the doors I'm just making the assumption that Jim Morrison was a cure a correct assumption could you tell me that and could you tell me why I think Morrison is an interesting case it's he goes against the grain it's you could not say that Jim Morrison or the door is in fact where I hit the type band like the Grateful Dead were or you know any plane or even Jimi Hendrix I suppose or Janis Joplin there was something about Jim he was addressing issues of sex and death heavily I mean straight on with words which were cluck-cluck clear a lot of the lyrics from those songs were unclear so he was very upfront and straightforward and ascribed to sort of an ancient mythology of his own he talks about concepts like snake that are familiar to the Egyptians to ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks it would talk about Greek theater and my thoughts so as a veteran of Vietnam veterans certainly the types of sex and death were very close to me and I could relate to him but I saw Jim oh is this sort of a countercultural more closer to probably Marlon Brando or James Dean then the people from hair or John Lennon fellow John Lennon would be the the obverse of Jim what was about that was very particular song that they did something I might be able to use bring specific memories or images that well I think what was good about - Jim and the door so I'm gonna try to bring out in the movie I'm making is that they were so damn good they they had a high density of hill of good songs because not only were they good musicians ray and Robbie and John but Jim was a church it was a tremendous poet of his time I mean he's gonna stand up there with a Rambo and Baudelaire and TS Eliot as far as I'm concerned he said it he said a lot of good things so it runs through from you know break on through their flagship first thumb to light my fire - the end is certainly the first sort of a classic opera kind of teeth a journey through a subterranean consciousness and then you you know in this album was just as strong as the first and it went all the way through the seven albums down to La woman where Jim I think got much mellower later on I mean I think he lost some of his that harder-edged and he became Oliver blues type singer they always loved the blues and he was laying back and I think you've had seven albums and maybe 40 songs and maybe 20 25 songs are terrific songs when if you just chronologically go from 1960 to 1970 weird because I'm the end of the decade if you will and 70s is not necessarily cutoff point but really good beginning of the 60s and where had you come by the end of this are you talking about adolescence I think nothing everything happens that's exciting in our lives when the age of probably fourteen to twenty four you know that's that's the playground of where so much has decided I came from being a Republican young Republican type conformist not really knowing what I was thinking or why I was thinking it but parody in a sort of a party line to being a anarchic creatively anarchic independent free think doubting everything by the end of the 60s doubting the systems that I had learned about in the 50s but not yet knowing how to live my life quite and then wrestling with many doubts and much internal warfare when did the sixties end for you that that period that we call the sixties when did it come to a close was there anything symbolic about anything any symbolic moment or event personal or see I don't ascribe to the media aspect of the sixties been this defined era it was you know it's about our generation in the sense that we were born in the 40s and it's a process that's been ongoing so 60s just melted in the 70s or 70s in the 80s and now into the 90s but we're accumulating we're absorbing all that information still and we're we're reflecting back now some of our 60s values they they didn't disappear there was no dramatic bombing of an airport that ended the sixties you know I don't ascribe to Altamont be in the end of the 60s because there was some fighting and ugliness and people were taking too many drugs and there's no question that you know abuse and it self-indulgence did set in but that didn't make drugs bad drugs were I you know will forget in this simplistic times that drugs were there to expand our minds and we took him to expand our minds and in many cases it worked our minds did get a little better we started something we questioned things and we must never say that it was a loss or a failure or that it stopped I see it as an ongoing phenomena I would not be the person I am a fan man for the 60s and I'm still using that information in the 90s and I hope among other things not only to celebrate the 60s with this means but to pass on like DNA some of that information to the kids that are growing up in the 90s they should have it it was a good time it was a time when we were not scared it was a time when we believed in the possibility of all things we believed in love as a concept we believed in experiencing all of life that innocence is wonderful and should be always be there it should not just disappear with age and we mustn't become world weary we become tired as we get older we become more jaded yes that's a part of life - but thread it in there it should be that innocence some of those values that we talked about in the 60s or we've identify or assigned to the 60s got lost by a generation of generation of yuppies yes well the characters in Wall Street Charlie Sheen character is obviously was not born in the 60s he was born and I did notice among people that were came of came of age in the 70s and 80s and I that there was too much accent on material things and I tried to point that up in Wall Street Gordon Gekko was a character probably was grew up in the 60s but I see him as a character I've been out of born the 4th of July the guy who runs the fast-food hamburger joint in Massapequa I mean he probably went right through the National Guard or guy or went to business school never had to go to Vietnam and was making bucks in the 60s and working his way up as a businessman you know I don't think that at Gordon Gekko or Michael Douglas character ever in any way shared the values of most of the kids in the 60s so I think both of those characters missed the 60s and in no way stand for it ask you this we're in our show six right now it's the last episode it's the legacies if you will um and there's two different legacies of Vietnam I want to examine and I don't know if you can separate them or not I don't know if they're separable but the attitude the legacy of Vietnam for the nation versus the legacy of Vietnam for this generation your generation not the generation of people who are 25 years old more than our parents generation but is there a difference that the nation does a nation have a legacy of Vietnam as a nation and does your generation rephrase that I'm sorry and then legacy of my general for this generation your generation that's what I'm I see what you're saying it's new the ice I say well I mean I think the legacy of Vietnam is very intertwined between my generation and the countries because my generation is in the early 40s you're gonna start to see though that political leadership come to the forefront in our country I I'm hopeful at people like Bob Kerry for example a governor of Nebraska you know would be a presidential candidate he's about 42 he lost a leg in Vietnam a very bright man compassionate he's been there I think make a fine president against him would be a guy like Dan Quayle who was also about the same age early 40s a heartbeat away from the presidency a man who has never really suffered pain a man who went to the National Guard to avoid Vietnam and yet is one who always calls for military intervention in South Central America with other people's bodies you have that hypocrisy at work so you see I think you you she heard the real split right there between a guy like Bob Kerrey from Nebraska and Dan Quayle from Indiana wherever you see that split in the country and that's the love that Nam legacy in my generation the Ollie North's on one side the Oliver Stone's on the other I mean there are some in my opinion there are boneheads who never learned anything about faith in Vietnam they were willing to go back in we mustn't kid ourselves they were ready to invade Nicaragua in 1986 already they were ready to go I was in Honduras I was in Guatemala I was in Salvador I saw that whole machine building up again and they knew they could win you know and they were willing to fight it I think the only thing that side rail that was the iran-contra investigation and it was in the when that got in the wind and picture like platoon came out I think that people sorry they sense the politicians sense that no the people would not support and in a war another war in Central America so it's it's we're right on the borderline and now you know there's just no excuse with Gorbachev decoupling the the Cold War for this mentality to go on I'm very divided I mean we are politically we must get smart we must him evolve towards a planetary consciousness with the environment etc on the other hand I have this perennial fear of the old Jane Goodall theory about the Apes you know that the old alpha ape is up there in a somewhere in our brain this dinosaur brain keeps emerging and we need enemies we need enemies and if we don't have one we invent one certainly the Oliver North's of this world do that and so do many of the people in politics people who have the power and that's a war that's going on gonna go on for into the turn of the new century my kid's gonna face that war is America gonna become a third world policeman we're gonna be intervening in numerous border wars trying to protect our ideology from perceived threats or are we going to become more like Japan Switzerland or Sweden or European country that through its past experiences of suffering and pain and wisdom will well accept other ideologies accept other ways of life and go on about its business which I've always think America it has a good business its business we're good at it we're not great warriors we're good businessmen so I think America should do that and maybe the defense people the defense industry will our expenditures there will will drop two minutes two minutes one more table it was interesting night once again we're in the 90s looking back for this episode what are some things that that people from the from the 60s people who grew up through the 60s people like yourself are the things that they just won't let go up or the there's certain ideas certain values that you feel that they just won't let go up yeah I think the important thing of the 60s values that we learned was to experience was a power of experience and we took acid we took mushrooms peyote we tried everything to expand our minds and I think that that hunger is still there I hope it is we knew that if we narrowed our minds like our parents we were doing the wrong thing and those people who have held onto that legacy and the 90s are people that have always kept an open mind and are pushing those barriers they know that the mind has got no limits great finally audiences will see your movies today do you get a sense of who's watching these movies are you are they appropriate a 60s crowd that watches these movies what are you here about and what are you here for back for these people what is it they tell you about these films reviews or or personal letters well the film market is generally it's over the years it's been skewed to under 25 so my movies the ones I mean most of them play to the other markets what's been interesting has been platoon and born on the fourth of July and Salvador have played towards older people who were there yet so for them it's not it's not a first-time lesson or illustration it's really a history and I mean I can only answer yes to the letters I've received they've been extremely encouraging that somebody filmmaker is trying to deal with the with their history their that they know and I it's surprising to me that's how few films have been realistic about the daddy era that we lived through maybe now it's gonna change but the kids are the most interesting because they don't know I mean that's where is it it really gets you the kids that come up to you and say that that really happened the Vietnam was like that I can't believe that we you went back and stayed in hospitals like that or you know some kids told Tom Cruise in his high school he told me that they thought we won Vietnam War that they didn't know the history of the war and for them there was an eye-opener to see something like born in the 4th of July so that's pretty surprising you know that news in that new generation it's a blank slate you know maybe maybe they've seen it maybe they haven't uh I never sent a question well any particular scenes from any of the movies that people say that scene really it said it to me it said what the experience of the 60s was or Vietnam was I'm just wonder if there's anything in particular oh oh yeah every movie has he set scenes like I guess Midnight Express people were talking about the scene where he he bites out the fellows and I remember in Scarface ago I got a lot of flack for this scene where Pacino's hung up on a hook in the bathroom and they cut off they caught up his friend and they used a chainsaw on him and in Salvador I think the ending got a lot of people when he loses his girl at the border and platoon it's when I guess - Willem Dafoe is killed in the jungle you know and born the 4th of July a lot of people have been talking about the hospital that seems to but a lot of people are talking about him and Dafoe find it out in the desert you know you know it's a movies like an elephant with a blind man that they all sent but he sees something that I want to say it's such a no I really can't answer that question for you you've chosen film is the medium which is expressing yourself what is it you walked into the tank out of it is it your anger is it your expression is it your joy what is it you're looking for him to take out of the theatre when they leave it no I'm just running a relay race in the sense of passing on and my impressions of a time as I lived through it but I obviously I mean I depended on raw material from other sources this is Ron Kovic story specifically in born the 4th of July and I'm passing on that information to other people I don't want to impose my viewpoint on them I'd like to be considered a social realist of the time one of one of them like Zola was or Balzac was in another century in France or Dickens who's by one of my heroes from England I think that movies cannot all be you know back to the future - in Harlem Nights I don't condemn those films but if we just make that type of movie we're gonna have morons for kids and they're going to then I kind of get this nothing they're beyond an entertainment of two hours you know you a movie house I think to have in addition to being entertaining and enjoyable as an experienced aesthetic experience has to have an underlying texture and underlying thing to to make you more conscious or at least to open your mind to an alternative way or to change and those are the kind of movies I think they're really matter they mattered to me when I was a kid and I believe in my heart that they will matter the kids always it's America a better place because of course it is of course it is 60s were good for America not off some of the pressure cooker that existed that conformity was dangerous that Cold War conformity the 60s really started to question these things brought it out into the open and raised the possibility that hope and change and youth taking over the country and changing the mores and the standards of the country you know it was very good time and as I said it's it's it's hardly over it's still in US and it's it's coursing through our veins right now psychically well as our generation is coming to power now when the sixties generation is coming to power and the good people have not forgotten what the sixties promised and Jung you

Channel: David Hoffman

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Rating: 4.9025035 out of 5

Keywords: Oliver Stone, David Hoffman filmmaker, 1960s, growing up in the 60s, 1950s, growing up in the 50s, Vietnam era, Vietnam veteran, Vietnam War, Vietnam, middle-class life, suburban memories, Oliver Stone film maker, filmmaker, film producer, Hollywood filmmaker, feature film director, maga, trump, 2020, republicans, democrats, veteran

Id: dQTrTtqW-uk

Length: 46min 2sec (2762 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 12 2020