Posted on 02/21/2006 9:29:31 AM PST by Bubba_Leroy
Director Oliver Stone says he doesn't know if America is ready for his upcoming film about the September 11 terror attacks, but stresses the movie is a human rather than political account of the tragedy.
The often controversial three-times Oscar-winner said "World Trade Center", to be released this year around the fifth anniversary of the attacks, documented a day in the life of two men trapped at the scene, their rescuers and families.
Speaking to an audience during a question and answer session late Monday at the Bangkok International Film Festival, Stone was asked if Americans were ready for the first major Hollywood film on the subject.
"Is America ready for 9/11? Is America ready for gay sex? I don't know," Stone told the audience, referring to Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated cowboy film "Brokeback Mountain" which has been a surprise hit in US cinemas.
"It's about a rescue and families involved in the rescue. It's really a technical attempt to be realistic about what happened in that building," he said.
Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage plays the film's lead role, New York Port Authority policeman Sergeant John McLoughlin, who was trapped along with a fellow officer in the mangled wreckage of one of the twin towers that crumbled after being hit by hijacked passenger jets.
Besides the sensitivity of the subject matter to the American public, industry media have reported that some people linked to the Paramount Pictures project were concerned that Stone may introduce his own politics into the movie.
Stone has been publicly critical of US President George W. Bush's handling of the attacks and their aftermath and in Bangkok told the audience that "the present administration has been a nightmare".
But Stone, whose film "JFK" was condemned in some quarters for pushing the argument that the 1963 assassination of president John F. Kennedy was part of a plot, said there were no conspiracy theories in "World Trade Center".
"No, there's no mention of that because it's truly a 24-hour document of these men's lives," he said.
"They were right at the heart of the destruction ... right in the middle by an elevator shaft. They survived. It's about their rescue and their children at home," Stone added.
Stone said filming had finished two weeks ago, with the last four weeks proving difficult to work in as the set was filled with smoke.
But Stone, who won best director Academy Awards for his war epics "Born On the Fourth Of July" (1989) and "Platoon" (1986) as well as best screenplay for prison drama "Midnight Express" (1978), said making the film had humbled him.
"It was a wonderful experience to go back to working class people and their ordinary lives, the cops and firemen in New York. It was a very humbling experience," he said.
Stone, whose films have aroused controversy ever since "JFK", said the political landscape had changed "radically" under the Bush administration.
"If we get to make films and plays about it, it will be an interesting era to write about," he said.
The September 11 attacks that left a total of around 3,000 people dead in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
The Bangkok film festival, which features 160 movies from some 50 countries, runs until February 27.
And water's not wet, up is down and Howard Dean is really not a shreiking loon.
Rita Cosby claims to have adopted the Cabbage Soup Diet.
< Oliver Stone says September 11 movie not political >
(I'm cleaning my monitor now)
Of course if you try to make an "apolitical" movie about the WTC attacks, you end up treating them as some sort of horrible natural disaster like the tsunami.
Which of course constitutes a political statement.
I need to do that one, but I hate Banana Day.
The only "nightmare" I have these days is one of Al Gore or John Kerry being POTUS for even 1 second.
Or of Hillary Clinton winning in 2008.
I sleep better knowing W is at the helm, and if anti-Bush whiners were honest, they'd admit that too.
Liberals like Stone are like heroin addicts... they can't help themselves. The are COMPELLED to make all things political.
" . . . Brokeback Mountain, a surprise hit in US cinemas."
That's as far as I got.
Just a little minor fixing there.
The simple fact of the matter is that Stone, like most liberals, thinks that his views are apolitical and/or mainstream. He doesn't recognize his own biases and, as such, he probably genuniely believes he is being apolitical.
I Still hate him for what he did to Alexander.
Absolutely correct. 9/11 becomes nothing more than a "Poseidon Adventure" in the stairwell of a building,
Nazis attacking the Warsaw Ghetto is only an earthquake in a city with lotsa casualities. 9/11 is another movie I'll pass. I did, however, see and love "Wallace and Gromit".
Uh-huh. Guess he'll have to cut the scene where Chimpy Bushitler and Darth Rove parachute to the streets after setting the airliners on a collision course with the WTC. Alec Baldwin and George Clooney are gonna be upset that their scenes were cut.
as the MSM media proves: it's as much about what you don't talk about as it is about how you talk about what you print as "news".
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