Keen to see more of Stone's films after reading.

Enjoyable listening about Oliver's life & experience as an outsider breaking into the Hollywood industry without straying from the stories he wanted to tell on screen.
His experience as a soldier in Nam and the tough going creating films like Sarajevo & the Oscar winning Platoon, deffinately read if looking to make it into the industry or just get a little behind the scenes info on Stone's works.

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A fascinating life-story

I came to this autobiography via an interview with Oliver Stone on Philip Adams excellent Late Night Live ABC Radio show one evening. I’d seen many of Stone’s movies over the decades, Wall Street, JFK, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Any Given Sunday and had liked some a great deal, while finding others a bit so-so. However, this interview focusing on Stone’s autobiography really sparked my interest as he related some fascinating insights about movie-making, politics and America.

As I’ve been getting into long walks and podcasts, I decided to buy this as an Audible audiobook and was so glad I did as Stone himself reads the book and this gives it so much more meaning. His characteristic deep, American accent gives the book a real authenticity and you can hear his emphasis on specific passages and words that clearly he sees as important. There is also a wry humour in many of the experiences and conversations that Stone relates that had me chuckling under my breath on my long lockdown afternoon walks.

The book is organized in a chronological fashion. There is a short prelude of his later film-making career in a fascinating opening relating the final shooting of a mass cavalry charge on the Mexican set of the film Salvador, with the director anxiously trying to catch the last light (the book gets its title from the film-maker’s quest to catch that last light of the day and metaphorically the deeper meaning that he is striving for). The book then charts his parents’ backgrounds, meeting and marriage at the end of the Second World War, his early year’s growing up and at school, his frustration at university, leaving Yale and then a restless time as a teacher in Asia and the merchant marine. In the late 1960s, he volunteers for the US army as a private and ends up serving in combat in the Vietnam War which provides the inspiration for his later film Platoon. The subsequent chapters chart the many, many frustrations on his return to the US as a war veteran, attending film school in New York, moving from early success as a screenwriter (he won an Academy Award for best screenplay in 1978 for Midnight Express), but then suffering many career setbacks and frustrations. The book concludes with his sudden mid-career successes in 1986/7 with the films Salvador and Platoon, two low-budget movies, made under extraordinarily trying circumstances, but which became surprise hits and cemented Stone as one of Hollywood’s great directors.

While the early years of his childhood are engaging, the book really comes to life from his time in the Vietnam war forward, his post-war experience at film school and then working as a screenwriter and later director. The book is full of detailed reminiscences of conversations and interactions with Hollywood names, directors, actors, producers, money-men, rogues and saints. It is a great story, and Stone must have kept some fascinating dairies of his life as the book is rich in detail and frank recollections of his own failings and mistakes. It’s a brutally honest take on a life lived large. It’s also a book that all aspiring movie-makers should read or listen to. Stone’s asides about the creative process of script writing, direction, lighting, sound and dealing with producers, studios and film finance are rich in experience and wisdom. I found resonances in his description of script writing with my own writing frustrations. I could certainly relate to his depiction of the tough daily grind of just sitting down each day and punching out the words, revising, editing and gradually crafting something worthwhile.

I greatly enjoyed my afternoon walks listening to Oliver Stone relating his hey-days in Hollywood and out on the sets of his movies during the 1970s and 1980s. I can still remember the impact films like Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador and Platoon made on me in the early-mid 1980s as an impressionable twenty-something. Having been immersed in Stone’s engaging recollections of a movie world that has now passed and the stories behind how his early films were made, I’m going to make a point of re-watching those early films. I’m also looking forward to Part Two of this fascinating life story, which I’m hoping Oliver Stone is writing right now!

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fabulous

absolutely loved it. Narration was on point, was fantastic and worth the listening. thanks Oliver

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Interesting and engaging

A wonderful book that gives an insight into the back room workings of Hollywood and is also a gripping personal journey. Being narrated by Stone himself adds more credibility and atmosphere to the story.

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Honest retrospective at its finest

I’m not even the biggest Oliver Stone fan, but this is one of the greatest biographies I’ve ever heard/read.
An astonishingly honest tale of a life. Whilst it’s based around movies and the movie industry, the stories and feelings are universal in theme and mood.
Just fantastic.

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Outstanding

Engaging and honest exposition of Stone’s early career and subsequent success as a director
Highly recommended

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Louey Hesterman

Thank you Oliver for a deeper understanding of your passion for depicting the realities of war. As a Vietnam Vet myself it helps me understand why I was there and why we should never let a similar intervention ever happen again. Best wishes.

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Excellent

Really nice hearing it read by the author, Oliver has a wonderful voice for narration

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Oliver the early days

Oliver Stone will take you back to his childhood, his tour of Vietnam, success with Midnight Express, his yearning loss of Conan the Barbarian, forever yearning for his past success. Never taking us deeper than his ongoing oedipus complex.

Oliver's memoir the abyss looking back at him. He spends most of the book missing the youthful exuberance of making his early films of The Hand, Salvador and Platoon.

Whilst it is well crafted, well spoken, the story goes nowhere very interesting. We learn little about his thoughts on life and growth, we have no better understanding of the man. I believe Oliver wrote this for himself, essential for "the good old days" as he harkens back to film making before he was a success, without giving much thought as to why and take us deeper.

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