Words matter. These are the best Oliver Stone Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When I was a child, I’d see a movie, I took it for what it was, I enjoyed it. And if I believed it I would tend to be more interested in knowing more about it.
I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations.
You’re not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.
There’s an electrical thing about movies.
If anything, if you can get somebody interested in something and get them excited, that’s great. You should be praised for having opened the debate and having asked the right questions.
I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed.
I’d love to do historical pictures more, but I don’t know if I can.
I will come out with my interpretation. If I’m wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take.
Well first of all you have to make the character strong so that people can follow that. And then hopefully that character can integrate with the background of the social situation that people can recognize.
Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.
I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.
But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.
I study history in order to give an interpretation.
It’s interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that’s when many people embraced liberalism.
One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia.
I would vote for the man who’s lived life, who’s done different occupations, who’s been out in the real world and struggled to make a living, struggled to raise a family, struggled with life as it exists. So I’d vote for experience, honest experience.
But in answer to your question about the conspiracy angle, I think that any historian worth his salt, and this is where I fault Stephen Ambrose and a lot of these guys who attack me – not all of life is a result of conspiracy by any means! Accident occurs alongside conspiracy.
In any film there’s always a historical implication.
Lunch is for wimps.
Fear may very well be a caveman fear of the predator, of the giant lizard chasing them – maybe that’s what Steven Spielberg connects with so well in Lost World.
I’d like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you’d sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling.
I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It’s my responsibility to find the research. It’s my responsibility to digest it and do the best that I can with it. But at a certain point that responsibility will become an interpretation.
