Oliver's New Project.

November 11, 2005 11:42 PM

Oliver Stone has begun shooting a movie about the September 11 attacks. Despite promising to tread carefully on what is surely sensitive ground, one cannot be worried about Stone's possible interpretation of the events of that day. Furthermore, is it too soon, or does this movie come at just the right time? And finally, will it be more, or less, historically 'accurate' as his last film, Alexander?
posted by Effigy2000 (61 comments total)

Charles Wolf, who lost his wife on Sept. 11, has met with producers and asked to see a copy of Andrea Berloff's script. He said he appreciated the outreach and sensitivity of the filmmakers, but wanted to make sure that the day's events, including details as precise as the officers' view of the elevator from the rubble, are represented accurately.

What's the point of such accuracy? Who wants to see a dramatization of 9/11? It'd be a glorified America's Most Wanted. The only reason to make this film is to present some sort controversial, yet plausible, view on the events. The actual attack and rescue work are so well documented that a more graphic re-enactment would just be pornographic.
posted by mullacc at 11:54 PM on November 11, 2005

It will never be the right time for Oliver Stone to make a movie about September 11th. I wouldn't care if he made the piece of shit or not, but I know I'm gonna have to hear about the god damn thing, and that really burns me up.
posted by Edible Energy at 11:59 PM on November 11, 2005

Would like to see how this one would be any better than The Hamburg Cell.
posted by zarex at 12:16 AM on November 12, 2005

One would hope less. Usually, the more faithful an adaptation, the less entertaining. Something to do with storytelling.

September 11th has become something of a talisman. It is taboo to mention September the 11th without making reference to the tragedy. You should not go fishing on the open sea on September the 11th. If you spill salt in September, you should sprinkle 11 grains over your right shoulder. Failure to do so makes you as bad as the terrorists.

Everyone who worships at the cult of September 11th or 9-11 or whatever the fuck you call it is a terrorist. You are perpetuating fear and governmental control. All the politicians have to do is mention that specific date and you bow down. Someone needs to rob these assholes of their power without undermining the lives lost that day, because every time a politician waves Sept. 11th in front of you for personal gain he is defecating on the memory of those people. I don't know that Oliver Stone is the man for the job, but at least he's giving it a fucking shot.
posted by Eideteker at 12:31 AM on November 12, 2005

I can only imagine such a film as a documentary or some kind of docu-drama, both of which would be fairly pointless this soon. At the very least, though, it's nice to see that America has become relaxed enough to entertain the idea. I've been getting tired of a lot of blowhards that don't want to talk about anything that might offend somebody anywhere.
posted by alonelymuffin at 12:39 AM on November 12, 2005

This is what Oliver Stone does. Surely we knew since around noon on Sept. 11 that he would make a movie about this. This is what he does.

I don't like most of Stone's movies, personally, but I'm glad he makes them. He never makes a movie to sell a starlet or cash in on a remake... he makes movies because he's pissed off. We need more movies from directors that are pissed off, and fewer from directors who are sucking the tit and selling us the starlet/video game/"lifestyle brand" du jour.
posted by BoringPostcards at 12:52 AM on November 12, 2005

Totally unnecessary.
posted by bwg at 2:54 AM on November 12, 2005

I can't resist. His 'factual' movies just get worse.

"The Doors" is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, Ray Manzarek hated it. "JFK" was gobbledygook. I didn't even bother with "Alexander," but I am waiting for someone good to try the subject.

You can just see how he's going to try to make this his "Titanic." Once the first murderous plane hits, all the characters will be brimming with on-the-fly depth and prescient attitude. Out of touch: I think Oliver Stone is a drug addict.
posted by toma at 2:54 AM on November 12, 2005

He's an Oliver Stone addict, which comes to the same thing.
posted by jfuller at 3:26 AM on November 12, 2005

It is taboo to mention September the 11th without making reference to the tragedy.

Indeed. Why the fuck should Cambodians have to be subjected to something like The Killing Fields -- a much greater tragedy in terms of suffering inflicted and numbers dead, and a complete ethical disaster in terms of story telling, and yet people insist that nobody has the right to make a movie about nine eleven?

And as far as historical accuracy goes, why the fuck should someone making a movie about 9/11 be held to higher standards than someone making a movie about any of the other wars? Try taking a look at a US made WWII film sometime -- for example, Saving Private Ryan, or U-571, where acts of British military heroism are all of a sudden transformed into triumphs for the US military and you'd be left with the impression that the USA was the only country that fought in that war.

I always wondered why it was that the USA could never tell a story without making itself the hero of the piece. I tended to think it was some kind of obnoxious, bombastic national arrogance. The older I get though, the clearer it becomes that it's really about a national lack of security and sense of self. Burn the flag of a confident nation, and it's citizens will simply shrug it off -- big deal, who gives a shit? Burn a US flag, and Americans act like Muslims being subjected to the Satanic Verses, doing the American equivalent to bashing tin trays on their heads and calling for fatwa.

The saddest part of all this is that someone like Oliver Stone thinks he has to give script approval to any Tom, Dick or Charles Wolf who demands it, because he's terrified he won't be able to do this movie without being made into the next Salman Rushdie or Larry Flynt.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:52 AM on November 12, 2005

I think that, after *so* much deadening viewing of the footage of the towers and Pentagon and lists of names being read and people running and and and and and, there is a valid place in the film listings for a carefully-done, ruthlessly realistic piece concentrating on what happened inside the buildings, which focuses on the people. Just that. No more. No politics. Those dead people weren't thinking politics before they died.

I'd want such a film to portray them as real, boring, bored, just-waking-up-properly-in-the-morning people and not atavistic memories elevated to sainthood by tragedy. Also, I'd want the thing technically realistic if I was in charge. I'd be downright anal about it.

But is Stone the man for it? I have no idea. As far as I know, I haven't seen a thing he's done before.
posted by paperpete at 4:05 AM on November 12, 2005

Here's to hopping that he claims its a CIA plot!
posted by jeffburdges at 4:14 AM on November 12, 2005

Another September 11th thread? Oh, joy! It's like the gift that keeps on giving!

And by 'giving,' of course, I mean 'beating me over the head with a blunt two by four.'
posted by spiderwire at 4:20 AM on November 12, 2005

After reading the article, it could go either. The story is centered around two cops who survived the collapse, so that pins the story down without getting into politics.

But hearing Stone's quotes about the movie are just...creepy. It was like a flashback to an old college professor who's never done anything except teach and has no idea how the rest of the world works.

Ultimately, it may be TOO soon for this, to really do the film. The idea that politics should be left out if seems short-sighted, while the full range of ramifications are unknown (which would color our view of 9/11) while the leadup to why it happened doesn't seem widely accepted or understood.

For me, overrall, 9/11 is given way to much importance. The terrorists got really lucky, because America was really wasn't paying attention to them. To raise them and Osma to some grade level is more of success than the actual attack was.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:29 AM on November 12, 2005

I am afraid that PeterMcDermott is correct.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:11 AM on November 12, 2005

I'm hoping for a romantic comedy.
posted by Hildegarde at 5:18 AM on November 12, 2005

PeterMcDermott : "Why the fuck should Cambodians have to be subjected to something like The Killing Fields -- a much greater tragedy in terms of suffering inflicted and numbers dead, and a complete ethical disaster in terms of story telling, and yet people insist that nobody has the right to make a movie about nine eleven?"

I dunno about "should", but if you're asking "why was the Killing Fields made without much complaint, but this is garnering complaint", then one answer is that the Killing Fields was made (ie greenlighted, budgeted, edited, released) in a different country than the country which experienced the event. In the same way, here in Japan I've seen direct-to-video movies based on 9/11 at the video store as of at least two years ago, without muss or fuss.
posted by bugbread at 5:21 AM on November 12, 2005

Stone's flicks are always hit-or-miss for me. The thing about Oliver Stone is that he's always had what I consider a truly goofy lack of subtlety, or for that matter, just evenhanded delivery; that can be either oddly charming or just tedious, depending on the film.

For instance, I enjoyed the Ruthless take on Any Given Sunday as being thought of not so much as a film but "...much better thought of as a two and a half hour long line of cocaine. Frenzied, harried, over-rendered and just a tad fucking nuts, this, uh, "film" really is the cinematic equivalent of getting cornered at a party by some dude who has been doing rails for most of the evening and now wants to talk your ear off--loudly--about a subject he is only marginally familiar with."

It's a tone that could fit a film on 9-11 fairly well--not in a historical or "sensitive" way, but in capturing the general fucking-nuts air of the country in general at the time.
posted by Drastic at 5:48 AM on November 12, 2005

- Oliver Stone
- starring Nicolas Cage as one of two policemen who survived the towers' collapse
- "It's an exploration of heroism in our country — but it's international at the same time in its humanity"

Those three things already sent my cringe-o-meter into overdrive...
posted by funambulist at 5:56 AM on November 12, 2005

I'm probably in the minority, but I don't think enough has been shown of the specifics of 9/11. Oh sure, we saw a photo of people in the windows, maybe downloaded an illicit video of the jumpers, were a little tittilated when we read the New York Times piece on the last phone calls of the victims.

But people still have this disconnection. I want Stone to show what it was really like for those people in the towers: choking smoke, intense heat, burning jet fuel everywhere, perching themselves at the edge of a window for a brief second to contemplate their fate, then four seconds of free fall. I want Stone to follow some office worker through their personal hell so everyone can see just how bad it was.

Basically, I'd like to see the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan, 9/11-style.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:09 AM on November 12, 2005

And what in the hell is this "survived the towers' collapse" shit?

When a billion pounds of concrete comes crashing down, you don't have survivors. You barely have bodies, for chrissake. Maybe, just maybe, if you were already on the ground, a few hundred feet away from the collapsing structure, and you got buried in some rubble... maybe you could spin a "survivor" tale out of that. But the thought of some action hero thinking up some clever way to save himself and his leading lady through the entire collapse ("I know! We'll jump in the specially-reinforced elevator shaft and put some blankets around ourselves!") makes me very, very angry.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:13 AM on November 12, 2005

I understand the folks discussing whether or not Stone will do the film well. And I understand the folks who are discussing what they want the movie to be. What I don't get are these comments:

Effigy2000 : "Furthermore, is it too soon, or does this movie come at just the right time?"

mullacc : "The actual attack and rescue work are so well documented that a more graphic re-enactment would just be pornographic."

alonelymuffin : "I can only imagine such a film as a documentary or some kind of docu-drama, both of which would be fairly pointless this soon."

PeterMcDermott : "people insist that nobody has the right to make a movie about nine eleven"

Brandon Blatcher : "Ultimately, it may be TOO soon for this, to really do the film."

You folks do realize that this isn't the first non-documentary film about 9/11, right? There have been fictionalized TV movies, fictionalized straight-to-video movies, and at least one fictionalized silver screen movie already.
posted by bugbread at 6:25 AM on November 12, 2005

Er, unless the issue is a major Hollywood studio releasing a movie to theatres about it. That would be a first. I guess I'm not just clear if folks are talking about that, or are just unaware that this isn't the first non-documentary movie about 9/11.
posted by bugbread at 6:34 AM on November 12, 2005

Richard Jobson
Spike - this was an adaptation of a book which was changed quite dramatically from the original text. You introduced many new elements including the events of 9/11. Why was that?

Spike Lee
Well I think we were very faithful to the book. It was only the 9/11 stuff that was new.

RJ
Why was it necessary to bring in 9/11?

SL
As New Yorkers we felt that we had to reflect the change in the world and New York City. After the events of that day we thought we cant stick our heads in the sand and act like everything was hunky dory. We shot this 6 months after 9/11 and it’s still different today. We wanted to make our comment on it.

posted by matteo at 6:39 AM on November 12, 2005

People seem to have forgotten that Oliver Stone is probably the most talented political director of his generation. Platoon? Born on the Fourth of July? I prone to believe that the people that are afraid of Stone mucking with things are the people on the right that don't want him to tread on what they think is their holiday.
posted by my sock puppet account at 6:39 AM on November 12, 2005

Civil Disobedient: Miracles emerge from debris
posted by cillit bang at 6:41 AM on November 12, 2005

my sock puppet account : "I prone to believe that the people that are afraid of Stone mucking with things are the people on the right that don't want him to tread on what they think is their holiday."

Perhaps the people afraid of him mucking with things are those people, but there are certainly other, non-rightie folks who are prone to be annoyed at his mucking with things thanks to his results in JFK, The Doors, and Alexander. He's produced some good stuff, and some bad stuff, and the bad stuff is more recent, so I doubt that all misgivings about the film are due to political affiliation, and suspect that quite a few are due to his recent track record.
posted by bugbread at 6:59 AM on November 12, 2005

That's legitimate, bugbread. I was going to make an addendum to my post, but you did it for me.
posted by my sock puppet account at 7:03 AM on November 12, 2005

Is this why we've been getting so many 9/11 conspiracy posts recently? Viral Marketing?
posted by Mcable at 7:18 AM on November 12, 2005

Never forget! to cash in.
posted by furtive at 7:19 AM on November 12, 2005

Come on, it'll be awesome actually to see a fully accurate depiction of what happened in the building when the planes hit. A quiet, clean office, seconds later... wall to wall organs and viscera, a nightmare of twisted metal and a gaping void. Like Titanic, the fascination is not being squeamish about getting into the gritty details of what exactly happened. Fuck reverence for 9-11, it's not like the holocaust or something.
posted by snoktruix at 7:20 AM on November 12, 2005

Wait. This is the guy that did Natural Born Killers, right?

Thanks, but no thanks.
posted by kryptondog at 7:38 AM on November 12, 2005

I like Stone's ability to stir shit up. Regardless of how the final print turns out, I think the Bill O'Reilly and other Fox and Friends talking head's outrage about the film --- without seeing it of course -- will be more entertaining.

It isn't too early and 9/11 is not so sacred that films shouldn't be made about it. It may be the first big studio theatrical release of the story, but certainly not the last.
posted by birdherder at 7:53 AM on November 12, 2005

What birdherder said. As I write this, JFK is on, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing what kind of trouble Stone can stir up over 9/11.
posted by alumshubby at 8:18 AM on November 12, 2005

When a billion pounds of concrete comes crashing down, you don't have survivors. You barely have bodies, for chrissake. Maybe, just maybe, if you were already on the ground, a few hundred feet away from the collapsing structure, and you got buried in some rubble... maybe you could spin a "survivor" tale out of that.-Civil_Disobedient

Actually, twelve people survived. Cage plays one of the last two to be pulled. A slate article talks about the man who helped find them:

Two Port Authority police officers, Will Jimeno and Sgt. John McLoughlin, were buried in the center of the World Trade Center ruins, 20 feet below the surface.
posted by Atreides at 8:37 AM on November 12, 2005

You know, if this wasn't true, someone would have to make it up.
posted by afroblanca at 8:44 AM on November 12, 2005

Anyone who makes films like Salvador is going to divide people. He's just too in-yer-face for some. I thought Natural Born Killers was a gutsy satire of the American obsession with ersatz violence, but it comes close to being a gratuitous piece of cinematic ultra-violence itself (and you can watch and understand it on that level if you can't look beneath the surface of a movie).
posted by snoktruix at 9:05 AM on November 12, 2005

Stanley Kubrick once said that Schindler's List wasn't really about the holocaust but was really a movie about 2000 people that didn't die. It seems that this is the same thing. Not to compare this to Schindler's List.
posted by my sock puppet account at 9:18 AM on November 12, 2005

I can't wait for the scene where the government guys press the button that creates the big 747 hologram heading into the building while the demolition people set off the charges inside, with the scene cutting back and forth to the people in the actual planes being led to a hangar to meet their demise at the hands of "Matrix" looking agents with sunglasses and silencers, all set to ominous ambient music of some sort.

That'll be the best part, cinema-wise. Then there's two fairly tedious hours of mumbly voiceover stuff from Cage in which he unsuccessfully tries to convince everyone else of the TRVTH.
posted by First Post at 9:19 AM on November 12, 2005

Pointless to make a movie about 9/11 if all it's going to be is a literal recounting of what happened to two cops. Obviously going to be much more than that. What are the major themes available? I'd want to see emphasis on the international diversity and in-common humanity of the murdered for example. Anyhow, Mr Stone would seem to have an opportunity on this one to do something either really amazing or amazingly awful. Could be the defining work of his career, one way or the other.
posted by scheptech at 9:37 AM on November 12, 2005

Then there's two fairly tedious hours of mumbly voiceover stuff from Cage

No, Cage is such a fine actor he won't need to speak much in the film, his face conveys so many emotions already. In the subtlest ways. I can already picture his stunning performance.

This is Nicholas Cage looking terrified before the planes hit:


This is Nicholas Cage realising he's still alive:


This is Nicholas Cage shaking off the shock and getting into action to rescue people stuck in the towers:


This is Nicholas Cage as he savours the bittersweet taste of satisfaction after heroically saving 300 people:


Nicholas Cage, the face of America's worst tragedy.
posted by funambulist at 9:51 AM on November 12, 2005

Funny story about Oliver Stone.
A friend of mine was involved with the group at UT-Austin that organized all their major guest speakers. Politicians, academics, etc. etc.
Often he would go and pick up people from the airport, drive them around, basically be their liason with the school to make sure they had everything they needed.
So, Oliver Stone comes to speak, and Mike goes to pick him up. This was around the time of Natural Born Killers, and Quentin Tarantino had been to campus some time recently as well. Oliver had found out about it, and he kept asking things like, "What did he say about me? Did he say anything bad? How many people came to see him? Will I have more people? Did people like him? Was he popular? More popular than me?"
posted by papakwanz at 9:59 AM on November 12, 2005

There's a relatively short list of things that are worse than the 9-11 disaster. Making a movie about it is one thing that might be on that list.
posted by Jon-o at 10:15 AM on November 12, 2005

How else will we Nevar Forget? The War on Terror/Iraq, magnetic bumper ribons, and gleaming tower shining through an American Flag Sunrise desktop pictures won't cut it.
Neither will Calvin-pissing-on-OBL stickers.
There will be books and movies about that day for decades.
The terrorists have reaped much more than they could have ever possibly dreamed.
posted by Balisong at 10:38 AM on November 12, 2005

Try taking a look at a US made WWII film sometime -- for example, Saving Private Ryan, or U-571, where acts of British military heroism are all of a sudden transformed into triumphs for the US military and you'd be left with the impression that the USA was the only country that fought in that war.

OK, I'll grant you U-571, but how does "Saving Private Ryan" transform acts of British heroism into American ones?
posted by Cyrano at 10:39 AM on November 12, 2005

the producers of Enigma once mentioned how they pitched the project to Hollywood producers and the Americans really liked the script a lot but then asked, why do the characters have to be Brits?
posted by matteo at 11:05 AM on November 12, 2005

well it doesn't so much transform them as simply omit them. I don't recall any Brits in the movie but I believe some may have fought in World War II.
posted by snoktruix at 11:06 AM on November 12, 2005

As Zarex mentions upthread The Hamburg Cell.is excellent and would be hard to beat. Have any Americans actually seen it?
posted by Artw at 11:11 AM on November 12, 2005

As Zarex mentions upthread The Hamburg Cell.is excellent and would be hard to beat. Have any Americans actually seen it?

Probably very few, as it dares humanize the 9-11 highjackers, and we can't have that. Those guys were narcissistic, religion addled assholes to the 10th power, but it was an important story to tell, and it was well executed.

I'll agree with others posters on the main topicl, I'm no fan of Oliver Stone (his films are hamfisted tripe that insult the intelligence of the audience), but so much crap was covered up, glossed over and ignored about 911, why not stir shit up just for the hell of it? I'll get a kick out of it, just to know someone else shares my frustration and discontent with the way the whole thing was covered and spun by the media, the 911 commission and the administration.
posted by psmealey at 11:32 AM on November 12, 2005

IIRC The Hamburg Cell was broadcast on HBO last fall...

Just about – IMDb has a 'relaese date of January 10, 2005.

But there have been so many of these things lately - 'Dirty War', 'Strip Search', etc. it's hard to distinguish one from the other...
posted by vhsiv at 11:55 AM on November 12, 2005

well it doesn't so much transform them as simply omit them. I don't recall any Brits in the movie but I believe some may have fought in World War II.

And...they were busy fighting in their section of France. Erm. If a company of British soldiers had showed up on the beach with the Americans, I would have been concerned.
posted by Atreides at 12:02 PM on November 12, 2005

Miracles emerge from debris

Wow! (Though, no higher-floor survivors). So I guess my dialog's gonna be used, then.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:15 PM on November 12, 2005

Stone's flicks are always hit-or-miss for me.

I couldn't agree more, except for the hit part. I thought Platoon was a boring sermon. Wall Street was like a 13 year old leftist read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and then made a movie about how angry the book made him. Finally after a long catalogue of failures, we come to Alexander, a film that proves that Oliver Stone's only creative virtue: his fiery anger - has deserted him, leaving him nothing but a bitter, scolding harridan. I can't imagine an Oliver Stone film about 9/11 being anything but a mechanical exercise. As an artist, he's a dried out old husk.
posted by slatternus at 12:23 PM on November 12, 2005

Will I get to hear "My pet goat"?
posted by kaemaril at 12:35 PM on November 12, 2005

If a company of British soldiers had showed up on the beach with the Americans, I would have been concerned.

If we're talking about D-Day perhaps a map would help set the record straight. Note the 2 American flags at Utah and Omaha beaches, the 2 Brit flags at Gold and Sword, and the unrecognizable flag there between the 2 Brit flags? Canada.
posted by scheptech at 1:35 PM on November 12, 2005

the irish accents for all the macedonians in alexander made me laugh because i went to the kent institute of art and design where the mass of students is irish or greek. "Roide Macedonians, Roide!"
posted by paradise at 1:37 PM on November 12, 2005

Scheptech, yep, them be the Canadians. Glory for the Empire, or something.
posted by Atreides at 1:51 PM on November 12, 2005

People can write books, compose songs, write poems, etc., about Sept. 11 and that's just fine. Why can't this artist make his art?
posted by surferboy at 6:57 PM on November 12, 2005

I find it highly amusing that so many people here are willing to dismiss the film before so much as a frame has been released to the public.
posted by ed at 9:33 PM on November 12, 2005

Oliver Stone. The Oliver who is not me. Thank god.
posted by owillis at 2:41 PM on November 13, 2005

curiousity derail: is this a typo, or do people say this and mean the opposite in some parts of the world:

"Despite promising to tread carefully on what is surely sensitive ground, one cannot be worried about Stone's possible interpretation of the events of that day".

(The sentence says one isn't worried while the context suggests the opposite)

Normally I would assume typo, but a thread on ask Mefi established that in some areas, it's not considered an error to say "I could care less" when meaning the opposite, so I wondering if this is the same thing.

Err... if it's just a type, sorry to focus on it. Just curious :)
posted by -harlequin- at 1:59 AM on November 14, 2005