Los Angeles —The memoir \u201cChasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game\u201d of 73-year-old award-winning director-writer-producer Oliver Stone talks a lot about his experiences in the Philippines while filming both \u201cPlatoon\u201d (1986) and \u201cBorn on the Fourth of July\u201d (1989).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019d found a new home out here after my first family came to an end, and although I had no claim, I felt welcomed back,\u201d he told us in an interview. \u201cPeople smiled with genuine happiness; there was such a thing in life as joy, and it could be had — here and now, it need not be delayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI plunged into rainforests outside Manila with a small Filipino crew under the local producer, Jun Juban. We knew with our budget we\u2019d have to be a guerrilla version of \u2018Apocalypse Now,\u2019 which had experienced well-documented problems in the Philippines, among them trying to shoot in the typhoon season. But the jungle itself was pure, and I could imagine cutting trails deep into it, leading actors down into the riverbeds and up into the valleys. I fell in love with the landscape and the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told us, \u201cThe Philippines gave birth to my new life in a way. It was my beginning as a director. Right from \u2018Salvador\u2019 in Mexico to the Philippines was exciting beyond belief. I had been to the Philippines the first time in 1983 with Dino De Laurentiis so Alex Ho and I planned out the whole thing. I went to many places, beautiful people, and beautiful reception, not much of a film industry. They made a lot of films but it wasn\u2019t like very expensive films. But they were wonderfully cooperative<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\u201cJun Juban was the head of a production company and gave us the crew and enormous amount of support. I love those crew members. They were so loyal and so tough, to go through that jungle experience, the heat and the everyday problems that we had were enormous. We always were short on the rainwater, the fire trucks, and all the problems of the munitions. We had the cooperation of the Philippine army.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oliver returned to the Philippines for \u201cBorn on the Fourth of July.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was another amazing experience. There we went up north to Ilocos Norte. We shot in a town. It was where Marcos had built a huge hotel. The Marcos people had built a huge hotel and I think we stayed in that hotel. But we shot all along that area, which was another amazing experience with Tom Cruise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oliver pointed out that the memoir is about \u201cthe first 40 years of my life and the coming of age and realizing a dream that was in my heart that I wanted to be a filmmaker and make films from the age of 23 on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What did he learn in the first 40 years of his life that he was able to apply to the rest of his life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll the conclusions are important,\u201d he replied. \u201cThat is what writing a book like this makes you think about all these things. There is the theme of love, what is love? I talked about it briefly and it\u2019s important and I say, I was talking about Elia Kazan\u2019s life and my feeling of that was remarkably like my own, where I say, we don\u2019t sometimes know what love is, but we learn what love is through the essence of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s an important concept and I think I learned that, maybe not by 40, but certainly I learned it later in my life. But that relationship, why is a man and a woman together? Mom and Dad, me and Najwa (Sarkis, his wife from 1971-1977), me and Elizabeth (Burkit Cox, his wife from 1981-1993, with whom he had sons Sean and Michael Jack), these are crucial questions. That is the heart of the memoir, it\u2019s a very important question. (He is presently married to South Korean Sun-jung Sung since 1996. They have a daughter, Tara.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s also the issue of risk,\u201d he added. \u201cI didn\u2019t know who I was, I didn\u2019t realize how torn up I was. I didn\u2019t realize that I was my mom and my dad but they are different people. I didn\u2019t fully realize it. I was French and American, I understood that, but then I really didn\u2019t understand the fundamental difference that I was a child of divorce. These are key questions. And also the taking of risk is a big theme, risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHere I go off at 19 for the first time to a country I don\u2019t know, in Asia, which opens my eyes to the world, a completely different world. And then I return at 21 as a soldier, take a risk that most people would not take, a risk. I didn\u2019t care, my life was on the line. From that risk, you see me drift back into a marriage that\u2019s comfortable and I talk about the comfort of Najwa and my life. And I talk about taking the risk and I knew I was dying inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy dream was dying, I talk about that, at the divorce at the time I was about 28 years old. And then at the age of 30 I realized with my grandmother\u2019s death that this is not. I am not living the life I was supposed to live. This is an important revelation. And then at 39 years old, after much up and down with success and failure, huge failures too, and tumultuous, I felt like a roller coaster. At 39, with nothing going, my career is dead in Hollywood, what do I do? I go off to Salvador with a crazy journalist. I invest my own money. I make a movie that is insane, about civil war, two different countries, two different languages, 93 speaking parts, battles, helicopters, planes, bombs, civil riots, Jesus Christ. And very little money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Article: Los Angeles —The memoir \u201cChasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game\u201d of 73-year-old award-winning director-writer-producer Oliver Stone talks a lot about his experiences in the Philippines while filming both \u201cPlatoon\u201d (1986) and \u201cBorn on the Fourth of July\u201d (1989). \u201cI\u2019d found a new home out here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1980,"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions\/1980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippinefilms.com\/pfsi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/a>https:\/\/mb.com.ph\/2020\/08\/14\/oliver-stone-recalls-filming-in-ph-in-new-memoir\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"