Oliver Stone names the worst period of his directorial career: “It just did not take”
Like any other walk of life, a filmmaking career has its fair share of ups and downs, especially when it spans decades. Oliver Stone enjoyed one of the greatest runs in modern cinema history, but there was no chance he could keep it up in perpetuity.
When it comes to naming the greatest period of his professional life, it isn’t up for debate. Between 1978 and 1989, Stone was on fire, turning his hand to a myriad of different projects as a writer, director, and producer, with the end result almost guaranteed to be critical or commercial gold, and in many cases both.
Those boom years kicked off when he won an Academy Award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ after penning Midnight Express, and the hits just kept coming. Over the course of the next decade, Stone would win another two Oscars from six nominations, establishing him as one of Hollywood’s marquee auteurs.
That era gave rise to not only Midnight Express but John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian and Brian De Palma’s Scarface, in addition to Stone’s own Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, and Born on the Fourth of July. The muted response to Talk Radio showed that he was far from bulletproof, but that doesn’t take the shine away from what was otherwise a remarkable hot streak.
There were intermittent wins in the following years, most notably JFK, The Doors, and Natural Born Killers, but Stone gradually began an inevitable decline. Common sense would dictate that 2004’s notorious flop Alexander would be the nadir, but the filmmaker disagreed. Instead, he pointed to a trio of consecutive disappointments between 1993 and 1997 as his lowest ebb.
“Nixon was a setback for me financially, far worse than Alexander,” he told Jeremy Smith. “Alexander did well abroad and will make money for its participants. Warner Bros is doing well with it on DVD. But Nixon was the biggest setback; we spent $42 million, I think, and we grossed $13m. I love that movie; it’s one of the most ambitious I’ve made on the political scene. But it just did not take.”
Describing it as “the worst setback” he’d ever faced at the time despite four Oscar nominations, Stone then pointed to a largely forgotten war drama that also tanked thunderously and a noir thriller that didn’t even recoup a third of its budget as continuing to add insult to injury.
“People who write about the setback of Alexander are wrong,” he maintained. “My worst period was Nixon, Heaven and Earth and U-Turn. Those were the three least performing pictures I directed.” If anything, it’s typical of Stone to try and defend the folly of Alexander at all costs, but it’s also hard to argue that three duds in quick succession will be a miserable time for any director, especially one who’d grown so accustomed to triumph.
