Book Review: Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game by Oliver Stone
With its subtitle in place, this book has a long, long title. I’ve found that most nonfiction books have subtitles; publishers probably figure that buyers browsing in bookstores won’t pick up a book unless a bombastic title spells out the details for them. Personally, I would have preferred something simple like Chasing the Light: A Memoir; I would have assumed, of course, that everyone would already know who Oliver Stone is and be familiar with at least some of his work. Then again, maybe not – who knows?
For those unfamiliar with his work, Oliver Stone has been writing, directing, and/or producing movies since the 1970s. Besides those the subtitle mentions, they include such iconic works as JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street, The Doors, and many, many more. This memoir begins in his childhood and takes us up to the evening when he wins the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Platoon. His reminiscences of his early years are not extraneous, though; the background is crucial in understanding his intensity and what motivated him to focus on the subject matter that he did. His dad was an American GI who was stationed in France at the end of World War II, and his mother was a young French woman. When Stone was away at a boarding school during his high school years, they got divorced, and the trauma and confusion following their neglect of him during this time caused Stone to volunteer for the army and get promptly sent off to Vietnam. More severe trauma followed, of course, and this became inspiration for the screenplay of Platoon.
Stone is an excellent writer, although sometimes given to hyperbole. At the heart of the book are the accounts of how he managed to create Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, Platoon, and other works, usually when faced with great opposition. He tells of his struggles with drugs, obstinate actors and film crews, foreign locations, producers, and financers. This is all fascinating, of course, but even more important to me are his insights into the creative experience. For instance, one of his teachers at NYU film school, a young Martin Scorsese, praised one of Stone’s early short efforts by exclaiming: “This is a filmmaker. Why? Because it’s personal. You feel like the person who’s making it is living it.” Whether Stone, in his creative efforts, flew or fell flat on his face, he always remained emotionally intense and personal. He also persevered against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Of the arduous filming of Platoon in the Philippines despite multitudes of difficulties, he writes: “I had to keep going now… Self-pity is not possible. You must be stronger than your captors – or your critics.” In referring to captors, he meant the POWs and their efforts to stay sane when they had to endure horrific confinement during the Vietnam War; he mentioned critics because at the same time he was off in the jungle filming Platoon on an excruciatingly tight schedule and budget, the film he had just completed, Salvador, was premiering in the States to mixed reviews.
The answer, according to Stone, is to persist in spite of everything. His early career was like a roller coaster: extreme highs followed by extreme lows. One moment he’d be winning an Oscar for the screenplay of Midnight Express, and soon afterwards he would be involved in several flops in a row. As Stone makes clear, the point is to remain resolute, or in the words of Kipling in the immortal poem “If”: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same…”
As I mentioned, the book ends on a high note, with the triumph of Platoon at the Oscars in 1987. For Oliver Stone, there would be many more triumphs and disasters yet to come. This book is so absorbing and well-written that I hope he carries on the story in another volume.
