“I’m old enough to have seen 70 years of mismanagement since WWII. I’ve seen the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies lie us into every war we’ve been in.”
Oliver Stone is an Academy Award-winning writer and director known for iconic films such as Scarface, Platoon and Wall Street. Stone recently released his memoir, Chasing the Light, detailing his life and career through the release of Platoon in 1987.
While attending Yale, Stone became disillusioned by the elitism on display from his classmates that included future President George W. Bush. That disillusionment and frustration permeated his understanding of the US government’s deceptive tendencies. Stone served a particularly violent and destructive deployment in Vietnam where he was confronted with the atrocities of war perpetuated by a dishonest US government. These experiences influenced the many iconic movies he’s made over his career. “Something was wrong with our system. I just didn’t know what it was; I didn’t know what to do; I just wanted to get out of it.”
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SPEAKER
Oliver Stone
Screenwriter
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks, my name is John Darsie, I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance, technology, and public policy and media, as well as entertainment. SALT Talks are a digital interview series that we started during this work from home period, with leading investors, creators, and thinkers. And what we're trying to do on these SALT Talks is replicate the experience that we provide at our global conferences, the SALT Conference, which is to provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts, as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future.
John Darsie: (00:47)
And we're very excited today to welcome Oliver Stone to SALT Talks, Academy Award winning Oliver Stone has written and directed over 20 full length feature films, among them some of the most influential and iconic films of the last several decades. Some have been at deep odds with conventional myth, films such as Platoon, the first of three Vietnam films, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon. Oliver Stone's films have reached far and wide, international audiences, and have had significant cultural impact. These include Salvador, a deeply critical view of the US government's involvement in Central America. Wall Street, an expose of America's new capitalism. World Trade Center, a story of two of only 20 9/11 survivors. The Doors, a poetic look at the 1960's and Jim Morrison's ecstatic music. And finally, Snowden, a story about the international acclaim of the recent American whistleblower who is now potentially going to get a pardon from President Trump in his remaining days in office.
John Darsie: (01:57)
Stone's other films include Any Given Sunday, an unconventional view of the world of American sports. An epic historical drama, Alexander, as well as Alexander: The Ultimate Cut. W, a satirical view of former US president George W. Bush. And finally, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, a realistic sequel about the 2008 financial crash and Gordon Gekko's fate after prison. And that movie actually features our cohost today on SALT Talks, Anthony Scaramucci.
John Darsie: (02:26)
Stone was born September 15th, 1946 in New York City. He served in the US Army infantry in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, and was decorated with the Bronze Star for valor. After returning from Vietnam, he completed his undergraduate studies at New York University's Film School in 1971. His path to success as a writer was not a direct path, as we talk about a lot here on SALT Talks. He worked as a taxi driver, a Merchant Marine, an advertising salesman, and a production assistant before becoming synonymous with everything we think about the movie game, as he calls it.
John Darsie: (03:04)
And hosting today's interview is Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm. Anthony is also the chairman of SALT, and as I mentioned, had his acting debut, I believe, in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. But with that I'll turn it over to Anthony for the interview.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:20)
So yeah, Darsie, you keep rubbing it in, okay? Because you needed Krazy Glue for your eyelid to see me in the movie. And of course, I obviously didn't do that well, because Oliver never invited me back for another rendition of one of his great movies. But-
Oliver Stone: (03:36)
Oh he wasn't... I'm sorry Anthony, you were terrific, and I had reluctantly to leave some of it on the editing room floor because the picture was long. I had to cut Donald Trump in order to save your spot.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:49)
Oh, well I appreciate you doing that. I remember Trump in the barber shop and you didn't like the thing, and you blue lit the movie.
Oliver Stone: (03:56)
I liked it. No, that's not true.
Anthony Scaramucci: (03:56)
Oh.
Oliver Stone: (03:58)
Don't start a myth here. I liked him in the picture, it worked, the scene worked, but it was not at the right time, I should've done it earlier in the film. In fact, I'd like to recut it and put him back in, I think he's good.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:11)
All right, well there you go. All right, so you wrote a great book, you know I'm not that self promotional Oliver, right? You know he wouldn't consider me self promotional, look at that. I'm holding up the book. Look how handsome you were back in the day. How old were you in this picture Oliver?
Oliver Stone: (04:28)
I was 21 going on... No, I was 22. I was on my last mission in Vietnam, it was right before I left in November of '68, it was about sometime in October. It was the very end. Came out of 11 days in the rain, we were stuck on a mountain, and it was pretty hairy for a while. And I was very relieved to get out of there. Very relieved.
Anthony Scaramucci: (04:51)
You wrote beautifully in this book, I'm recommending this book as a great holiday gift. My son, who's an aspiring director and a videographer in the music industry, I just wrapped this book for him and made it a Christmas present. But you start the book in such a beautiful way, you tell such a touching story about your parents. It's very, very real. It's typical of your movies, it's raw, it's emotional, and it's honest. And so bring our listeners and viewers into the early part of your life and describe your parents for us and a little bit about how you started your career arc.
Oliver Stone: (05:30)
Well my parents were crucial to my life, like everybody's parents are, but they were not destined, really, to be a couple. My father was just a military man, a lieutenant colonel in Paris, and in Berlin after the liberation of Paris. And he was on Eisenhower's financial staff. And a Wall Street man all his life. My mother was a French... Her parents were hotel people in Paris, but she came from Savoie, and she was a very healthy, French, vigorous, young 19 year old girl. And she fell for this man... She had a fiancee, but she fell for this man with his uniform and his medals, and all that, and the Americans were pretty powerful then, and had a lot of money. France was broke and in trouble.
Oliver Stone: (06:24)
She broke off her engagement with a Frenchman, and she married him very, kind of abruptly. And I was... She was made pregnant in France and she came back to America on a GI ship, I don't know how much detail you want, but there was 20,000 GI guys on the boat, she was the only female on the boat, and it was a rough voyage. I was there too, and I remember being rocked incessantly by the North Atlantic in that January winter, it was terrible. And I was born in New York City in September of '46, right after the war had ended and the whole Frenchman was picking up again, and it was quite an interesting time. I lived through a lot of that in the '50s, '60s, and they finally broke apart in the '60s, and it was rather climactic, and I describe it in detail in the book, because I was away in boarding school, but I was the only child. And of course, it impacted me greatly because I didn't know it was coming.
Oliver Stone: (07:23)
And they didn't tell me anything. There was no forewarning, you see. And that's what makes it, I think, very dramatic. To find out all these things about your parents afterward, in hindsight, and it's quite shocking, some of the details.
Anthony Scaramucci: (07:35)
Well, it's very tender. And you also write about the fact that other divorced children go through similar things. It's a breakup, and a destruction of the family, and you describe the three of you as becoming three separate entities as opposed to a glued together family, which has its own level of trauma. But you speak very lovingly about both of your parents, and you've got accepted to your dad's alma mater, Yale. But you have other things in mind, and you're thinking about going to war. And tell us the thought process back there, to the young Oliver Stone making those decisions.
Oliver Stone: (08:15)
Well, I grew up, like most American children in the '50s, with a healthy dose of violence on television and in movies, especially movies. I loved them, I watched TV shows, cowboys, westerns, detective shows, all kinds of violence were evident. And in a way it was sort of a healthy violence. It was sold to us as a redemptive violence that everybody had the right to get back at their enemy. And I grew up with that idea, that we had the, almost a Christian right to violence. Which is a strange idea when you think about it, but that was the American way.
Oliver Stone: (08:55)
So when I grew up and as I was coming of age, the Vietnam war was beginning to happen. And the concept of going to war was romantic to me, I have to say. So school was not working out, I was deeply troubled by the divorce, many things were troubling me, and I guess in present day terms, you'd say I had some form of... I should've seen a psychiatrist, but that was not very popular back then in the '60s, early '60s. I ended up dropping out of Yale and teaching in Vietnam for two semesters. I ended up in Saigon alone, and it was quite an experience. And then I ended up going to the Merchant Marine, I joined the Merchant Marine as a wiper, and sailed around Asia, and I also came back to the United States on a ship. Quite a story.
Oliver Stone: (09:50)
But I didn't go into it here. The point was that when I got home I went back to the school, Yale, couldn't make it, I couldn't... See, it was a different... I think you know something about this Anthony, you went to Tufts. No that's... Well, Tufts is a good school. But I'm saying there was a sort of an elitism at Yale that I just could not stand. There was a certain class of people. George Bush was in my class, just to give you an example. That was a C student, a C student and proud of it, and generally ignorant, and fraternity bound. He ended up, as you know, avoiding Vietnam with his father's influence he got appointed to the National Guard, and I think it was in Alabama, and whatever the story is. It's a pretty dirty one, he never really served, and he didn't care about it. He did a lousy job at avoiding the draft.
Oliver Stone: (10:46)
And it came out in the press, and a lot of people got into trouble, [Dan Radley 00:10:49] got fired. But that's another story. But that's the kind of people that I did not like to be around, and they were running the country. They became the ruling class of this country, whether it's Bill Clinton or Obama. They all went to Ivy League colleges. Something was wrong with our system, I just didn't know what it was, I didn't know what to do, I just wanted to get out of it. I wrote a book too, but the book was turned down. The book became... later was published as A Child's Night Dream in 1997 by St. Martin's, and it's quite a sensitive book. Written by a 19 year old boy.
Oliver Stone: (11:25)
Anyway, I ended up in Vietnam, and I thought it was the best thing for me because I just wanted to get away from any kind of privilege, any kind of elitism. And I wanted to go at the bottom level, and I started out as a private, and I went to... I asked for infantry and I got it. I asked for Vietnam, I didn't want to be sent to Korea or Germany. And I ended up in the field after six months of training in September of '67. I was 21 years old, my birthday, when I flew over on an airplane, on the 21st birthday. As you know, the international time zone, you drop a day. And that was my 21st birthday, that day. I was shot twice, I was wounded twice. Shrapnel and shot. And both times... That was early in my tour, the first three, four months. And I got better as a soldier, but it was a very rough beginning, and they put me out on point right away.
Oliver Stone: (12:25)
A lot of that is in Platoon, I hope you get to see it again, it's a powerful vision of what it was like to be in Vietnam. I think it's the most realistic ground version of that war. [crosstalk 00:12:39].
Anthony Scaramucci: (12:38)
Yeah, no listen, I've seen the movie three or four times, I love the movie. I actually also watched the movie a few years ago with your over the top narration of the movie, which I found very compelling, that was part of the bonus features of a CD back in the day.
Oliver Stone: (12:53)
Oh the... Yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci: (12:55)
And-
Oliver Stone: (12:55)
With the commentary you do it, yeah. I don't remember that.
Anthony Scaramucci: (12:58)
Yeah, you were on a microphone explaining the different scenes and shots that you took. There's one scene in that movie I was always dying to ask you about, I'm going to ask you now. There's a scene with Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen, and he's a fresh guy, he's a newbie in the Platoon, and he grabs them, and he takes his backpack, and he starts taking out of his backpack things that he thinks are irrelevant to him. And it's this sort of veteran trying to help out the younger guy. And I've always wanted to ask this, was that true to your life? Did someone do that for you with your backpack when you got to Vietnam?
Oliver Stone: (13:30)
Oh, very much so, yeah. I was over packed. Although we were trained, and we went over there, when you get actually get there in the jungle, you still have a lot to learn. A lot. And I was obviously over packed, and it's so hard, when you're cutting point for eight, nine hours a day, or six hours a day with a machete, you can't carry that kind of weight.
Anthony Scaramucci: (13:57)
What would you say, now, reflecting, what impact did the experience of the Vietnam have on your world view?
Oliver Stone: (14:06)
Aw, gee, you're talking about a huge impact. I would say Vietnam was... I didn't realize it then Anthony. I went to a... I was trying to survive and trying to integrate and be a good soldier, which I did become. And I eventually, as you know, I got a Bronze Star because I was able to take care of myself and take care of other people too. I was about 13 months, I was most in the field for about 11 of those months. The three things I wrote about... I didn't realize it until later, this is... I'm writing it from the hindsight of an older man now, looking back. There are three big lies about Vietnam that bothered me. Big lies.
Oliver Stone: (14:46)
One was the amount of people killed by friendly fire. That's always glossed over and unreported by the Pentagon. It's not something they're... it's attractive idea because the Pentagon doesn't want parents to believe their child was killed by friendly fire. But that happens a lot, especially in a jungle, asymmetrical war situation where you don't see the enemy easily, and you don't see your own men, because you're firing across lines, you're firing over your own men sometimes, throwing grenades. And then there's artillery coming in, sometimes misdirected. Airplanes dropping bombs, sometimes misdirected. Napalm too. I estimate, and I honestly did, in the book, I say 20% of the people killed and wounded there were friendly fire. That's a pretty big number when you add it up. A lot of people would be really upset. That has never come out. Never come out.
Oliver Stone: (15:45)
Then I talk about the lie of killing civilians, villagers. A lot of our operations were crossing into villages. Sometimes we were in a jungle, sometimes we were on the coast. And this was when I was in the first calvary division up north. We went into a lot of villages, trashed them looking for supplies, looking for weapons. And sometimes we'd find them, sometimes not. But it was just chaos, and there was a lot of abuse that went on. I'm not saying it was consistent, I'm not saying it was a Mỹ Lai situation, but it was bordering on it. There was a lot of antagonism against the Vietnamese. It was a lot of racism in a lot of the troops. Not all. A lot of the... And I dealt with that in the scenes in platoon where you see some of the people very racist. And of course, you see a lot of people who are not.
Oliver Stone: (16:40)
But there was a distrust of the Vietnamese skin, the race, as well as... See, we never knew who the enemy were, we were not sure. Sometimes they wouldn't show up for a while, they'd just be booby traps, ambushes, people would get hurt. And frustration, and you take it out on the villagers whom sometimes acted dumb, sometimes looked like collaborators. Mỹ Lai was very much that situation. They had not seen a lot of the enemy for months, and a lot of them had been hurt, and when they got there that day they really took a vengeance on them, they killed 500 people. And you know what, I mean, I almost made a movie on it, it was almost happened, but it was canceled at the last second. It was more than 500 civilians killed in that particular village. More in the other villages.
Oliver Stone: (17:30)
But, not one bullet, not one enemy bullet was fired at the US. That was established by the Army itself in a commission that they investigated the massacre. Not one enemy ability. Okay, that's my second lie. The third lie is the biggest lie of all, that we're winning this war. This was a lie that was there from the beginning, this was the origins of the war. They lied about that in Washington. Pentagon Papers prove that. Consistently lied about the enemy, the number of enemy dead, how well we were doing, that we were winning the war. This constant refrain in the newspapers, in the military, in the brass, in the Pentagon. Went around and around for years until one day it just was clear after the Tet Offensive, after three years of war, January '68, that it wasn't true. That there was more North Vietnamese than we ever dreamed, and that they were succeeding. And they continued to succeed despite taking a heavy casualty count, because they were fighting for their independence of their land. That means all of Vietnam, not North, South Vietnam, Vietnam.
Oliver Stone: (18:39)
And they were a formidable enemy, they were very smart, very smart. Used very little... They took everything they could get from us that they stole or they had various networks through our... We sold a lot of weapons to them by accident too. We gave weapons to the South Vietnamese and a lot of times the South Vietnamese soldiers would give weapons to the North Vietnamese. It was a mess. But that lie was that we're winning, that was never true. And it backfired. And we retreated, as you know, we pulled out. Peace with honor. Nixon sold us the peace with honor. This was a new president, came in after four more years of conflict, and more people dying.
Oliver Stone: (19:24)
Several... We don't know... Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, estimated up to three to four million Vietnamese were killed in that war. And that means mostly civilians.
Anthony Scaramucci: (19:36)
Well, and it also created an arc of further catastrophe in the American government, the onslaught of Watergate. The precursor to that war, however, was the... Not the precursor, because we were already active in Vietnam, but perhaps an accelerant to that war was the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November on 1963. One night at dinner, you and I had dinner together, you told me that you felt that JFK, the movie, was your opus. I don't know if you still feel that way, or if you do, why do you feel that way? Why was that your opus? And tell us a little bit about your experience making that movie.
Oliver Stone: (20:18)
These are tough stuff you're asking me. JFK was my most ambitious movie ever, I knew it when I was making it, I knew that I was going into a new arena. And I pissed off a lot of people. A lot. I, in some ways you could say my career was never the same afterward. The film was well done, I thought. It was impactful, it was taking a three and a half hour movie and making it exciting. I mean, it was about tension. It was a murder story, a thriller, who did it? And there's no clear answer, but it's pretty clear to me that it was significant people who had power behind the scenes, power to make things happen in Dealey Plaza that day.
Oliver Stone: (21:00)
And we went into a lot of the reasons for it, Kennedy was changing things, this is a historical point of importance. Kennedy was a big change from Eisenhower and Truman, a new policy for the United States. He understood the third world. Kennedy was against the Algerian War, he was in Indochina in the '50s. He really... His speeches, everything indicates a strong anticolonial mentality, because he was Irish, he understood what the English had done to Ireland. So there was a lot of rebellion in Kennedy. But he was a smart man, and young man, and he was going up against an older, at the time, the '60s, the older people controlled everything. They were the establishment.
Oliver Stone: (21:46)
And you had to be pretty smart to change things, as you know from government, it's very hard to get anything done. And he was biding his time. He said, "Look, they want to go into Vietnam, but I am not going to send combat troops." And he never did. He never broke that. His desire was clearly stated before he died, right up to the last year of his life. We are pulling out of Vietnam, we are not going to go on with this, we're going to maybe give them money, but we're not going to fight their war for them, this is not for us.
Oliver Stone: (22:16)
That directive, the beginning of that was the withdrawal of the first advisors, 1,000 advisors were coming out. And then he knew he couldn't sell it then, but if he got reelected in '64, which he most assuredly would have, because he was very popular, if he had been reelected that's when he would've made the big move and the bigger changes would've come. And believe me, his enemies knew that. They knew what he was up to in Cuba, they knew what he was up to in Africa, what he was up to in Indonesia and Vietnam. And they would never allow him to do that because not only was he a danger to their whole system of doing things since WWII, his brother, Robert, attorney general, was a powerful young man. He was a likely successor in '68 to Kennedy. And of course, there was the younger brother Teddy Kennedy.
Oliver Stone: (23:06)
But what they feared was this change in the world. America would become a more cooperative member of the world, would not seek to impose a colonial policy that was inherited from France and from England. And that's, I believe, those are the reasons he was killed in November of '63.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:31)
Listen, I've also seen that movie several times, and of course we have a lot of Wall Streeters that watch the SALT Talks, you've been to the SALT Conference a few years back and-
Oliver Stone: (23:42)
Oh, yeah, right.
Anthony Scaramucci: (23:43)
... you came to the SALT Conference. Tell us about your two Wall Street movies. My first question is, will there be a third? Will there be a trilogy of Wall Street movies? And tell us about the two that you did, and tell us about the impact that they've had on your life. And how do you think that they reflect what goes on in financial services?
Oliver Stone: (24:03)
No, the Wall Street movies, I think this is it, because in 1987 my father had just died, and I wanted, because of the success of Platoon and Salvador, I wanted to do a movie honoring what he said about business to me, which was something like what you said in your book. He said, "Look, people always make business movies, they make fun of businessmen, they're not positive figures. But actually, Wall Street is the engine," he said, "the engine of the American economy." At that point in time, in the '50s, '30s, '40s, Wall Street was very much the leader in the sense of a source for funding for these companies to do research and development and capitalize for bigger and bigger jobs, whether it be GE type electronics or...
Oliver Stone: (24:54)
Father was a big believer in American business, and he said, "The only way to defeat despair is through work and prosperity." And it was a good message, and I believe in that message. He was totally against, obviously, Roosevelt. He made a... Boy, boy, did he take off on Roosevelt. But that came with the time, and I understand why he did that. But I since them have come more to the Roosevelt point of view. Gordon Gekko was the type of Wall Street operator that my father would've hated. He was slick, younger, financial, looking for money, looking for the financial side of things but not caring about what the company really did and how productive it could be.
Oliver Stone: (25:41)
When he takes over the airline in Wall Street, because of Charlie Sheen's inside knowledge, Charlie is the son of the union head of the airlines company employees, Martin Sheen plays his father. When the son takes that information, betrays his father, gives the information to Douglas, it sets up a clever chain of events where Douglas, among other many deeds buys the company, buys more and more stock in the company until he has a controlling position, at which point he cannibalizes the company. You know more about that, but he breaks off the assets, he sells the divisions, and [crosstalk 00:26:20]-
Anthony Scaramucci: (26:20)
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Very '80s thing to do. Yep.
Oliver Stone: (26:21)
It's very what?
Anthony Scaramucci: (26:22)
It was a very '80s thing to do, actually. And so you captured it beautifully.
Oliver Stone: (26:26)
And it was done by [Cravis 00:26:28] and these people in the '80s. It was quite a bunch of them that came by. And their argument was, "We're good. We're good for business because business has to evolve. These companies are archaic, they're old fashioned, they have boards of directors that do nothing, and here we can do... we have to make them modern." Well, that's true, but you have to run the company first, and you have to administer it, which is what Gekko didn't do, he was more interested in if he could make a quick buck by selling assets of the company, which has been done 100 times now.
Oliver Stone: (27:00)
The economy of the United States has changed so... And the result of that has been, in 2008, I think, the crash. What they call the Big Bang, I don't know what you call it these days. What I saw in 2008, this is... I thought when I did Wall Street, which was very successful against all the odds, nobody expected that to be successful, it was one of the first business movies that really did well and got an Academy Award for Michael Douglas. I thought the Wall Street phenomenon would flatten out, that it was over. But I didn't count on all the young people like you coming into the business who admired Gordon Gekko. They [crosstalk 00:27:40]-
Anthony Scaramucci: (27:40)
Oh my, be fair to me. I wrote a book that said Goodbye Gordon Gekko. You read the book.
Oliver Stone: (27:45)
Yeah, oh you got it, I think you understood it. I'm saying a lot of young people told me that that was their movie they saw when they were 17 or 18 and it really made their day, and they wanted to go to Wall Street. They changed their majors from engineering or from science and they said, "Well, I'm going to go into Wall Street."
Anthony Scaramucci: (28:05)
Okay, so I have one last question for you-
Oliver Stone: (28:08)
Oh, wait, that doesn't get me to the end of what I'm going to say.
Anthony Scaramucci: (28:10)
No, no, go ahead. Please, go ahead. No, I want you to finish, yeah.
Oliver Stone: (28:12)
Briefly, the reason I went back, I had been offered sequels to do Wall Street through the '90s and the 2000s. I turned them all down. But in 2008, 2010, I'm sorry, I made the sequel with Michael Douglas because Fox owned the property and they wanted to make the movie. They wanted Douglas, they didn't care about me. Douglas insisted that I direct it, which I think was a good idea. I saw it as a chance to address the 2008 burn down. Was it 2008, right?
Anthony Scaramucci: (28:44)
Yes, 2008 crisis, yes.
Oliver Stone: (28:46)
Yeah, because that crisis was completely different. No one saw that coming except those on the inside. It was about Wall Street being a new kind of instrument for banks to operate. The banks in the second Wall Street or the owners of the economy. That was not true in 1987. The banks, because of Glass–Steagall repeal, of that law in 1999 by Clinton and that group, that horrible... You know who he is, I forgot his name, the biggest... the guy from Citibank, ring a bell?
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:22)
Well, yeah, yeah. You're thinking of-
Oliver Stone: (29:24)
Rubin.
Anthony Scaramucci: (29:24)
... Sandy Weill and Bob Rubin.
Oliver Stone: (29:27)
Bob Rubin, yeah. Those guys pushed... And also Sandy Weill, Sandy Weill was my father's last employer. Now, how'd that happen? Because he took over the firm that my father worked for. Among other firms. He combined travel companies, insurance companies, Wall Street companies, it was a new business. Everything got bigger, far bigger than I ever dreamed. Money started to inflate. Young people on the street in 1987 who are making 20 million dollars a year was stunning to me, I couldn't believe it. I was knowing kids from school, "Hey I made 20 million, I'll make 30 million next year." Blah, blah, blah. I was shocked. It was a lot of money.
Oliver Stone: (30:07)
But in 2008 people were making billions, and the banks had gotten into this game in a big way. And they were, obviously with collateralized debt, whatever they called them, they made up all these new financial instruments and were making a fortune, a real fortune. And it was kind of disgusting because it really had gotten to... You know more about it. But it was crazy, it was too crazy. The whole thing was going to blow up, I thought. And they did. They got bailed out, they got bailed out big time, the banks, all the banks. They were all guilty. All of them. They got bailed out big time by Obama.
Anthony Scaramucci: (30:50)
Yeah. Well it was actually, Bush started the bailout, Obama finished it off. But-
Oliver Stone: (30:54)
Is that true?
Anthony Scaramucci: (30:54)
Yeah, yeah. Bush basically put the TAR program together with [Hank Carlson 00:30:58]. But listen, I mean, we could debate it, but it was... if they didn't get bailed out it was probably going to be even a further catastrophe. I've got one last question, and then John has a few questions. We have to get our millennial in here so we get good ratings Oliver. He's like... Look at how bright and young he looks. But my last question is that, you're a phenomenal reader, you're an even better writer, for that matter. I mean, the book, Chasing the Light, incredibly well written, and people should run out and buy the book. And I look at all the books behind you. What books do you recommend to people that have been influential on you intellectually and that's helped to shape your worldview?
Oliver Stone: (31:41)
Oh gosh, no Anthony, that's not fair. You should've asked me that in advance, I would've prepared a list. I read everything, I read from everywhere. It's just a [crosstalk 00:31:51]-
Anthony Scaramucci: (31:51)
Well how about just a few. How about just a few that come to mind. You don't have to be that well prepared. One that you [crosstalk 00:31:57]-
Oliver Stone: (31:58)
Well I just want to say, with Peter Kuznick, I wrote and directed a documentary called Untold History of the United States, which came out in 2014.
Anthony Scaramucci: (32:08)
Showtime did the series, right?
Oliver Stone: (32:10)
Yeah. And it's played all around the world practically, and it continues to do well. It was on Netflix and all that, now it's on streamer services. And I'm very proud of it. It was a lot of work, it took five years. But I went back to school in a sense with... Peter's a professor of history at American University, a liberal, American history. I don't always agree with him on everything, but he really put me through a school in the sense of understanding a lot of the things that I had not understood.
Oliver Stone: (32:40)
The history goes from 1898, the beginning of the Philippine War, and our involvement in Cuba and the Philippines, and carries through to Obama and his whistleblower program between 2014. It's before Trump. But it's a powerful series. And I read so much about history in conjunction with that. But I still... And I enjoy... And I shifted my thinking about everything, about WWII, about what the reasons of it were, what the consequences of it were, how America changed in that war. We became from being an isolationist kind of country where we became a heavily involved imperial colonial power acting as if we were the continuation of Britain's empire and French empire.
Oliver Stone: (33:34)
And this was a huge mistake. Huge mistake. And it became the basis of our involvement overseas. We have so many military, 800 plus military bases overseas, ringing the world. We are seeking to control everything in the world and it's just not going to be possible and sets up a whole bunch of major problems. And we are not going to emerge from this until we look back to 70 years ago when this WWII ended and see what we did. We committed to a program which I think we're going to regret. Basically world hegemony, world domination.
Oliver Stone: (34:14)
Books, books. God, I've read thousands of books. I don't know what to say first. I think Untold History is a powerful book.
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:24)
All right, well we'll go with that. Well I'll post that up on our website. I thought your book was very powerful, it was poetic. It was heartwarming, it was honest, it was authentic, it had every element of your personality was imbued in this book.
Oliver Stone: (34:43)
Yeah. Just wanted to show you in case.
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:52)
There you go.
Oliver Stone: (34:53)
Can you see it?
Anthony Scaramucci: (34:54)
Yep, yeah, it's very prominently displayed. And we'll make sure that we get those out there. And I will tell you, I watched every segment on Showtime when it came out. And I [crosstalk 00:35:04]-
Oliver Stone: (35:04)
[crosstalk 00:35:04].
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:04)
I learned a lot.
Oliver Stone: (35:07)
And aside from JFK, that is my opus.
Anthony Scaramucci: (35:09)
Yeah. I learned a lot about Henry Wallace in that book. And I learned about the decision... I mean, and not the book, but the series, where he was taken off of the ballot for some of his views and replaced by Harry Truman, which probably also impacted the way the war ended with the atomic bombs that were unleashed in Japan. So it is certainly a serious documentary worth watching and worth reading the book. We got a couple more questions for you Oliver, we're going to invite my millennial cohost in, John Darsie. Fire away John. What did I leave out, okay? For the professor here to talk about.
John Darsie: (35:48)
Well Oliver, it's a pleasure to have you on. One thing we like to talk about on this show is, we try to break down the myth that success or self actualization is a straight line for people who have achieved the type of success that you have in your given industry. And as I mentioned in the open, you went from basically a 30 year old cab driver big breaks, and breaking into the movie game as you like to call it. What was sort of the ingredients to your rise from being somebody who was struggling to making it in the industry, to somebody who now is one of the most famous filmmakers of all time?
Oliver Stone: (36:25)
Well it's a struggle, and I outline it in the book, Chasing the Light. All those years of shaping my writing skills. I mean, I never gave up writing. I wrote the book at 19 when I went to film school, finally, after Vietnam. It took me about six months, almost a year, to get my life together. But when I went to film school I kept writing screenplays, although they were not popular back then because the nouvelle vague was in power and screenwriting was not considered important.
Oliver Stone: (36:59)
But I'd always kept at it. And I used to write about two scripts a year, or at least one treatment and one script, and kept submitting them and getting rejections. And they're very important to learn, for me, to learn the art of writing screenplays. And a lot of directors don't have to. I mean, a lot of young people can become commercial directors, or they find other ways, documentary, to work their way into directing and producing. But for me it was always through writing. So that slows you down a bit, because it takes longer to write. And it took me a while to break through.
Oliver Stone: (37:32)
Robert Bolt was significant. He wrote... Was one of the great screenwriters of his time. He became a mentor at one point. But I talk about the break I finally had with a man that... I wrote Platoon in '76, 1976, it did not get produced until '86. That's a big... It was rejected numerous times as being negative and all the reasons why it was real. It was about what I saw and it was important, but it was not Rambo, and it was not a Chuck Norris film. For that matter, it was not Apocalypse Now, which is mythic, a beautiful movie, but not realistic to me as a soldier on the ground, nor was Deer Hunter. But they were both powerful... those two movies were very powerful.
Oliver Stone: (38:18)
But that kicked off a kind of Vietnam wave, but they wouldn't make Platoon. For seven more years I had to... I was very frustrated. And finally I got a break with Midnight Express, which was a low budget film at Columbia in '78, '77, eight, and it did very well, and made big money. And it was made for very little money but it was tremendous. He went around the world. And I talk about that and my rise in the system, but then I talk about my fall, and I talk about all those things that can get in the way. Happen to success, and how success can be very elusive and it can be disfiguring.
Oliver Stone: (39:02)
I came back with Salvador and Platoon, and I talk about that in depth. The Salvador movie is a... How do you make a movie with no money? How do you go down to a foreign country and try to stage a revolution? Try to stage a helicopter war? It was really quite a significant undertaking, and I'm amazed we survived and succeeded. After Salvador I made Platoon. All this with British money, not with American money. It was financed out of an independent British producer.
John Darsie: (39:33)
How important was your relationship with Martin Scorsese, sort of as a mentor early in your break into the movie game?
Oliver Stone: (39:43)
Marty was a teacher at NYU, he was young, very vibrant. Were many good teachers at NYU. He was one of them, and I think he inspired many of us. He loved movies, you can see that. And he treated it like a theological seminar. To him it was crucial, movies were the essence of life, they were... it was like finding God. And I talk about the development. And how he encouraged, at least with me, he very much liked one of the films I did, short films. And he told the class one time that, "Here is a filmmaker." Which was sort of for me like a diploma.
Oliver Stone: (40:20)
You have to understand that that's very important in a young man's life, a young filmmaker's life. Afterward he became, as you know, a big success in Hollywood. But I really didn't intersect with him much. That was my major intersection with him.
John Darsie: (40:37)
So you produced a fascinating movie about Edward Snowden. It's called Snowden. Obviously it was met with some level of controversy. He is vilified by US intelligence agencies and much of the Western world for blowing the whistle on government secrets, corporate secrets, but there's also a large contingent of people that think that he opened the light on some very serious malpractice, or issues related to government actions. So, in your opinion, and I think I know the answer to this question, but do you think Edward Snowden, as well as Julian Assange should be pardoned? If yes, why?
Oliver Stone: (41:17)
Yes. I think you know my position on that. Posted it on my Facebook page. I think that it would be shocking if Trump, who is not known for his sense of mercy, were to grant mercy to both Assange and Snowden. It would be quite surprising. And it would look good in history for him. It would alert some of the, perhaps, mistaken perception of him as a ruthless self promoter and egoist.
Oliver Stone: (41:48)
But we'll see what happens in the next few weeks. He's preoccupied with his own thought of his election and so forth. I'm old enough now, and I guess you're of a different age, but I'm old enough to have seen, as I said before, 70 years of mismanagement since WWII. 70 years. I've seen the intelligence agencies lie, and the Pentagon, lie us into every war we've been in. Whether it was Vietnam, whether it was Iran, Iraq rather, or Afghanistan, and so forth and so on. And not only the wars, but these missions in foreign countries, like in libya and in Syria, and all over the Middle East. None of which have worked, none of which have succeeded. They've only succeeded in killing more people and destroying more infrastructure.
Oliver Stone: (42:46)
It's a tremendous disservice to the world. So I'm not an admiring of intelligent... I don't think of the CIA and the FBI as all knowing, must less the NSA, which they're not supposed to be a... they're just supposed to be a gatherer, they gather information. But again, all these powers, all these agencies use their power to enhance their power. They grow in time like fungus. They get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and they can't check themselves. CIA was supposed to be an intelligence gathering organization in 1947. Truman intended it... Truman always said, at the end of his life, said that it was a huge mistake.
Oliver Stone: (43:28)
You gave these... These are supernational, these are outside the democratic process. These are agencies that have way too much power, and they've gotten us into a lot of hot water. So I would tell you as a young person, disbelieve everything they say, everything. You have to. You have to demand proof. You have to say, "Where's the evidence of this?" And don't buy their bullshit lying about, "Well, we can't tell you our source because it will compromise our source." Don't go with that. That's the problem. They've been... And I can't believe what happened with Trump on this whole thing. He's come into office and all of a sudden all the liberals in America, they love the FBI, and they love the CIA.
Oliver Stone: (44:09)
Many of us were disgusted by this, because we know the truth. We know that intelligence agencies promote themselves.
John Darsie: (44:17)
So, I want to ask you one more question before we let you go Oliver. Chasing the Light ends in 1987, after Platoon comes out and you're going through the awards ceremony for that. So you're always good for a great sequel. Are we going to see Chasing the Light 2? Or another iteration of the second half of your career? Or what should we expect going forward [crosstalk 00:44:40]?
Oliver Stone: (44:40)
I hope so. I do hope so. I hope I sell enough books to justify it and people are interested. But frankly, yes, I would love to. I think I have to do it anyway, just to set my own soul in order before the end. It's a great story, from 1986 on. The reason I ended it '86 was because it was big story already. I realized a huge dream, the writing and directing a movie. Not only writing and directing a movie, but the movie achieves an international success beyond any expectation I had. I can't tell you, Platoon went around the world, had huge impact, every country had made an impact, every country had made money.
Oliver Stone: (45:20)
It got, on top of that, reviews and it got Oscar nominations. And I had Elizabeth Taylor giving me an Oscar for best director and giving me a big kiss. What the hell? I mean, Elizabeth Taylor was the star of my youth. She was an attractive young actress of her time.
Anthony Scaramucci: (45:39)
Oliver, I'm going to hold up your book one more time here, Chasing the Light. A Merry Christmas to you and your family, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, whatever you're celebrating. But more importantly, this is great Christmas gift. And this is a gift that every young person should get actually, because it is a rite of passage story, it's raw, it's authentic, it's honest. And it's revelatory about the human condition in a way that moved me, Oliver. So thank you for writing it.
Oliver Stone: (46:07)
Oh, thank you Anthony, I'm glad you read it. And I hope we get together soon.
Anthony Scaramucci: (46:13)
All right, amen.
Oliver Stone: (46:13)
When this is over.
John Darsie: (46:15)
And thank you to everyone who tuned in to today's SALT Talk with Oliver Stone. Just a reminder, you can sign up for all of our future SALT Talks at salt.org/talks, and you can access our entire archive of SALT Talks at salt.org/talks/archive. Please follow us on social media. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you're on those channels, please follow us, and follow our pages, and interact with our content there. We post a lot of the content live and on demand on all of our social channels. So please follow us there.
John Darsie: (46:48)
Tell your friends about SALT Talks, if you come across an interesting interview, pass it along to your friends, your family. I know a lot of my family tunes into these talks and they still don't understand bitcoin, but it's a work in progress. But please, pass along the message. We love growing our community and growing the audience of people that we're able to educate on a variety of different topics.
John Darsie: (47:09)
And on behalf of the entire SALT team, this is John Darsie signing off for 2021 from SALT... or signing off for 2020 from SALT Talks rather. Good riddance to 2020, it's been a long year, but we've been fortunate to make the most of it here on SALT with these SALT Talks, despite our conferences being canceled. But I will see you back here in 2021, and thank you for being part of the SALT community.