Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game
Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game
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Houghton Mifflin
Annotation: An intimate memoir by the controversial, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter about his privileged New York upbringing, volunteering for combat, and his struggles and triumphs making such landmark films as Platoon , Midnight Express , and Scarface
 
Reviews: 1
Catalog Number: #6681939
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Copyright Date: 2020
Edition Date: 2020 Release Date: 05/04/21
ISBN: 0-358-52250-1
ISBN 13: 978-0-358-52250-8
Dewey: 921
Language: English
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (Wed Jul 06 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

The celebrated and controversial filmmaker chronicles his journey "from the bottom back to the top of the Hollywood mountain."Stone knows how to grab a viewing audience-and readers. He begins by describing a complex, dangerous scene he was filming in Mexico for his "epic-scale" Salvador (1986). "It's everything that made the movies so exciting to me as a child-battles, passionate actions, momentous outcomes," he writes. This book covers Stone's first 40 years. Those who read the author's novel A Child's Night Dream (1997) will be familiar with his early years: French mother and soldier father who divorced when he was at boarding school; teaching in Saigon; time in the Merchant Marine. After Yale didn't work out, he enlisted in the Army and went to Vietnam. Stone engagingly describes his harrowing experiences, which included being bombed by friendly fire. At NYU, he learned his first basic lesson in film: "chasing the light." Teacher Martin Scorsese critiqued Stone's short about Vietnam: "Well-this is a filmmaker." After splitting with his wife, Stone worked on a number of screenplays, including one about his fellow soldiers and the "lies and war crimes" he observed: "I had to find meaning in that shitty little war." His screenplay for Platoon was "good, solid work-maybe some of the best stuff I'd done yet." Al Pacino was interested, but the time wasn't right. Stone's screenplay for Midnight Express won him a Golden Globe and an Oscar, which made him "a commodity in demand." However, he made errors in judgment with Seizure and The Hand, and he also had a "devil in my closet," cocaine, which he later kicked. His screenplay for Brian de Palma's Scarface opened doors and led to his writing and directing Salvador and Platoon. Stone recounts his life of ups and downs well; besides being an accomplished screenwriter, he's also a fine prose writer. To be continued?In the often tacky world of movie memoirs, Stone's will stand out for its hard-earned insights, integrity, and grace.

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Kirkus Reviews (Wed Jul 06 00:00:00 CDT 2022)
Reading Level: 6.0
Interest Level: 9+

An intimate memoir by the controversial, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Oliver Stone

Before moving to Los Angeles and the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts while working odd jobs in Manhattan. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the highs and lows: meetings with Al Pacino over Stone’s early scripts; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction; the failure of his first feature; his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; and much more. Chasing the Light is a true insider’s guide to Hollywood’s razor-edged years of upheaval in the 1970s and ’80s with untold stories of decade-defining films from the man behind the camera.


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