Mickey Kaus is riding the story of Paramount tapping Oliver Stone to direct the first 9/11 movie. He has the goods, including Stone referring to the terrorist attacks as a "revolt."
Anyone want to set the over-under for when Paramount dumps Stone, appoints a bland director like Chris Columbus, and then quietly disappears the project into turnaround?
I'll start the bidding at 4 weeks.
2 hours ago
3 comments:
Are you kidding? This movie is going to be a blockbuster. Paramount couldn't buy the kind of press that you are giving it. And they haven't even started production!
The last Stone movie I saw, "Natural Born Killers," was on a date, and afterwards we stopped and sat outside at an all-night ice cream place in Foggy Bottom. Sometime well after midnight, we heard and then saw a small plane pass nearby and noted the oddity of an aircraft over DC at night. Not long later, while walking back to my dorm room on Virginia Ave., a phalanx of firetrucks passed with their sirens on, another unusual event in that part of DC at night. Next morning, I learned that the plane had been flown (almost) into the White House.
So Stone and terrorism are linked, at least for me.
Stone was a competent director once, and it seems at least plausible to me that he might want to make a reputation-restoring film here. I know it's a fashion on the right to condemn movies one hasn't seen, but condemning one that doesn't even exist yet seems to be pushing the point a bit far.
Though, to be honest, I'd rather see something like Stone's idea of a Battle of Algiers than the kind of Nick Cage action rescue flick it seems he's planning. A movie that portrays, without directoral condemnation, the characters and actions of al Qaeda terrorists would be a real contribution. None of the many reports and non-fiction books I've read have really given me any understanding of how and why a person would engage in this kind of barbarity; good art (like Andre Brink's An Act of Terror) can often provide the personal, human insight cold facts do not give us. Stone would not be the right director for such a project, so it's good he's planning to make a banal rescue movie instead, but I'd rather see something along the lines of what Kaus quotes him fantasizing about than the film he actually plans to make.
Leaving out the bit, of course, where our counterterrorism agents are drunken WWII vets who spend their days nursing grudges against Bobby Kennedy and refighting the Vietnam War.
I still havent forgiven Ollie for how he hosed up Any Given Sunday. that couldve been great if he did it in his prime.
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