The Cinema of Oliver Stone

This book analyses the work of Oliver Stone - arguably one of the foremost political filmmakers in Hollywood during the last thirty years. From early productions like Platoon (1986) and Wall Street (1987) to contemporary dramas and documentaries such as World Trade Center (2006), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) and The Untold History of the United States (2012), Stone re-defined political filmmaking in an era when Hollywood and the United States was experiencing rapid and radical change. Drawing on previously unseen production files as well as hours of interviews with the director and his associates within the industry, this book is a thematic exploration of Stone's life and work seen through the critical lens of war, politics, money, love and corporations. The structure allows the authors to synthesise earlier and later film work, and locate that work within Stone's own developing critique of government and history. Exploring developmental and aesthetic changes in Stone's filmmaking, the book locates these changes within ongoing academic debates about the relationship between cinema and history, as well as wider critiques about Hollywood and the film industry. All of this is contextualised within a detailed examination of the films themselves and related to Stone's wider concerns about American exceptionalism, global empire, government surveillance and corporate accountability. The book has been written with both an academic and general readership in mind and will be of interest to anyone concerned with US cinema and history, and Oliver Stone's place in that history.