10 Things We Learned From Oliver Stone On Joe Rogan Experience
6. Why He's Attracted To The Subjects He Is?
Oliver Stone's career as a writer/director has been defined by projects which don't seem attractive on the surface, but that's exactly why he chooses to take on the challenge.
Stone revealed that the more he gets into these seemingly undesirable stories the more they become exciting for him. The director then went on to describe himself as a 'dramatist at heart', declaring that he thinks he excels at dramatising a situation and bringing difficult subjects to life on screen.
He then referenced the John F. Kennedy murder as one such situation which was 'extremely challenging' to adapt into a movie, but he knew it could work and it became a surprise hit.
The same thing went down with Platoon as the director confessed that war can be seen as boring due to the amount of details and events which tend to happen over a long period of time, not in the short spell it tends to in a movie. Yet, he still managed to produce a film which was captivating as it was realistic.
In an example of him dramatising a situation to make it more compelling, Stone took two different sergeants from two of the different units he was part of (he was in four altogether during his time in Vietnam) and imagined what they would have been like if they were in the same unit. This clash would then lead to more on-screen drama and it would also represent the differences that were present throughout different platoons as people from all walks of life came together and sometimes didn't see eye to eye on certain things.