Oliver Stone: The director Sean Penn said was like “talking to a pig”
Not all Hollywood actors are so careful with maintaining their public image, with stars like Gary Oldman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean Penn caring very little about what the wider world thinks about them, for better or worse. Penn is the most notorious of the bunch, having fallen out with multiple filmmakers and co-stars thanks to his tempestuous personality and particular way of acting.
Rising to fame back in the 1980s, thanks to collaborations with such directors as Rick Rosenthal, John Schlesinger, Dennis Hopper, and Brian De Palma, Penn quickly became one of Hollywood’s greatest talents. Indeed, it wouldn’t take long for the star to earn his first Oscar nomination, receiving the nod for the 1996 crime flick Dead Man Walking, where he starred opposite Susan Sarandon.
Yet, it wouldn’t take long for Penn’s true colours to shine in the industry, and one year later, he found himself locking horns with none other than the great Oliver Stone during the making of U-Turn, undoubtedly one of the director’s most forgettable releases. With a mighty ensemble cast that included Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte, the thriller told the story of a man who gets mixed up in chaos whilst paying off his gambling debt.
Telling The New York Times that the movie depressed him, Penn added: ”You could have called U-Turn Dr. Dolittle, because being able to communicate with the director was like talking to a pig…And I think that was my greatest accomplishment on that movie. For seven whole hellacious weeks, I was able to communicate with a pig. I asked myself many times, What the hell am I doing out here in the desert with Oliver Stone?”.
Stone admitted that the film wasn’t as universally loved as the likes of Platoon or JFK, but did express on Twitter, “Certain people really liked U-Turn. More than you might think claimed it was the one they ‘most liked’ of my films. It’s certainly different, and its incest storyline was verboten to the average American viewer. Let’s just say, you need a sense of humor for this one”.
Elsewhere, Penn got annoyed with the creators of Team America: World Police, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, with the duo receiving a letter from the actor shortly after the release of the feature film. “The only way he could have been that pissed off is just cause he was in the movie and we made fun of him,” Parker said of the letter, adding, “What was so crazy was that in the movie the big thing we were making fun of him for was like ‘I’ve been to Iraq, you don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve been there’. And he writes in the letter ‘I’ve been to Iraq’”.
Take a look at Penn in the trailer for the Oliver Stone movie, U-Turn below.
