I nominate Oliver Stone - for so many reasons – but this one takes the cake. Click this video. This is why Hollywood seems so out of touch with mainstream America. They are artists. We are cretins.
Talk about a guy who “doesn’t get it” and who longs for the good old days.
Geesh.
Oliver Stone IS a moron but not for those comments.
I don’t think he was really attacking the “average Joe”- what he was attacking is the idea that anyone can be a filmmaker. The Internet has democratized media and has generated both good and bad content. Anyone can upload a video to YouTube, but that doesn’t mean that it will be entertaining, that the person uploading the video is a filmmaker or that the video is a film. I think he is attacking the idea of calling a user that uploaded a 5 minute video about their dog a filmmaker more than he is attacking the Internet or users.
Ok, wait a minute. At last night’s game you sat smiling broadly during a standing ovation for YOU in celebration of your Emmy (TV Arts & Sciences) Award for YOUR FILM “Nanking”… (I know, I was one of the ones standing mere rows in front of you – congratulations, again.) But now are you saying all “movies” are created equal? That a film of people “jerking off in front of the camera” (quoting Stone in the link you provided) is every bit the cinematic contribution as “Nanking”? That wanting films on large screens, longing for stories with content (which is what Stone pines for in the linked clip) is “out of touch with mainstream America” and moronic?
I’m not sure he’s a moron anymore than you’re being a hypocrite here… If the internet is “it” Ted, why release “Nanking” in theaters? Why put it on TV, then celebrate awards for TV programming? Why not just throw it up here so we can see it in herky-jerky little windows (just like the Chris Cooley-interviews-the-Caps video herked and jerked away)?!
He actually makes a lot of sense to me; I think I get what he is saying. Oliver Stone’s chosen medium is film; the actual 24 frames, still images, running over the light source being projected onto the screen. He talks of the “grain of it.” He loves it and I think he is just bemoaning the seeming death of an art form and medium he is deeply in love with. (We are also losing reading and writing. We’re losing those.)
When shooting film; “Rolling,” “Action,” and “Cut,” are very important words. (for the benefit of all readers; I don’t need to tell you that.) The shot that is being recorded on those still frames has been painstakingly considered and readied.
The precious, very expensive seconds the entire crew and cast has to capture those images on that film are fundamental. The student-directors I have worked with shooting on mini DV (which they later digitize) don’t use those words.
Very few film-schools actually have their students shoot on film; Columbia College Chicago I know still has students shoot everything on 16 mm. That’s rare.
I think what Mr. Stone is honing in on here is the loss of that fundamental care, craftsmanship, and artistry which he has seen as people all over the world now have High-Def cameras storing directly to large capacity internal hard drives. It changes the medium.
I have most definitely used these new technology to my advantage; just setting the camera and letting it go sometimes; it runs out of battery before storage. And I get the best of both worlds because my work in film has given me a filmic oriented work-flow on the set even with the 1080i AVCHD 60 gig HD.
I think what Mr. Stone is getting at when he says, “Certainly at the beginning of this thing, the internet was an enemy. It was just a disaster for people like me who are classically trained in film school,” is that it is a disaster; for him. He’s unemployed. He can’t work anymore. He’s done; a dinosaur; how he feels probably.
Here he is aimlessly wandering some palatial estate somewhere when most wants to be on-set in the jungles of Thailand and Viet Nam directing a feature film about the Mia Lai Massacre for about 16 hours every day months on end. Can you imagine?
You may notice at the very top of Levity one I chose to include my “Action,” and, “Cut” cues. Didn’t really have a reason for that, but now I think it was to start the entire thing with that fundamental filmic consideration; and because I like it; the work-flow of a film set :-j It’s my home.
Rather than a stilted LA industry type himself; I think Oliver is talking to that very phenomenon he witnesses with the guys shooting backyard pool scenes and calling it a film he mentions. To me; he has a fairly genuine; positive outlook on the way things will work together in the future.
Remember; his film is not getting made, “Pinkville.” You probably remeber that one We wrote about a couple years ago; about the Mia Lia massacre. I continue to pull for him and that film getting made. Seems to me to be a seamless double-bottom-line model; film makes a profit and brings to the forefront of the public consciousness what happens when humans slaughter humans like animals.
Oliver is not industry anymore. He’s on the outside; watching from the side lines. Now one is willing to fund him. “Sorority Row,” gets a brilliant green light; blazing producion and post (that machine that is the West Coast industry in full effect) and the film is released worldwide on September 11th. … “My One and Only,” sat on the shelf for months and had a very difficult time finding even limited release distribution. … Upcoming theatrical release “The Stepfather,” breaks my heart. I bet it will make hundreds of millions. Breaks my heart. This is what America brings to the world?
In a screenwriting workshop taught by McLean native Marc Lapadula, he tells us that it is widely accepted the five top film directors of all-time; Hitchcock, Bergman, Kubrick, Kurosawa, and Fellini. This led me to begin exploring the work of these directors and have found that all seem to very carefully craft small, minute details in every shot which often go unperceived to the viewer.
For example; the way Marc describes Hitchcock’s, “Psycho,” made the hair on the back of my neck stand up; and I never have even liked that film. i.e.; the creepy old house is an exact replica built from an Edward Hopper painting. In the scene when Anthony Perkins gives Janet Leigh a pb&J sandwich in the sitting room of the motel, they make small talk, Over Anthony’s right shoulder, on the wall, the Hopper painting. I think this is also the painting he removes to reveal the hole in the wall through which he; and we, the audience, peer into the bathroom of Janet Leigh next door.
One thing about Hitchcock I found; I LOVE his leading ladies. Where are the women like that in today’s America. I don’t see ‘em. I don’t think they live in my neighborhood. Maybe they do; who knows? We shall see.
Much love to you and yours and CAPS.
Have a great day, Jeff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
First he says “I’m not an elitist.” Then he compares his work to “fine art.”
This is, of course, coming from the guy who had Colin Farrell play Alexander the Great.
Ted,
I’m not a big Oliver Stone fan, but you can understand his point of view. He’s unhappy that people are conflating the art form of full-length movies, seen on a big-screen, with some of the junkier short-length video produced for the Internet. He’s also concerned that people watch snippets of movies in formats in which they weren’t met to be watched instead of full-length on bigger screens.
I don’t think he meant in any way to lump in serious short-form filmmakers like you in his criticism, and I would guess that he would concede, if directly engaged on the point, that there are serious filmmakers who produce good material specifically for and appropriate to that medium. He would also concede that there has also been plenty of full-length, big-screen trash produced.
He didn’t help his case with the remark about “the average voter,” but unfortunately there’s some truth even to that.
Bob
Bob