Stone first gained acclaim as a writer, winning an Oscar®, a Writers Guild Award and a Golden Globe for his screenplay for MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (1978). Prior to that, at age 25, he wrote, directed and edited SEIZURE (1974), a stylish, low budget ($150,000) Canadian horror film starring Jonathan "Dark Shadows" Frid. An intriguing cast failed to compensate for the incoherence of the screenplay about a novelist, his family and friends, who are bedeviled by what may be his nightmares come to life; the film has nonetheless acquired a small cult following. Stone returned to horror for his next directing assignment -- THE HAND (1981), a retread of THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946), starring Michael Caine as a cartoonist who loses his hand in an accident. His life becomes further complicated when his missing member goes on a murder spree.
Stone's screenwriting jobs were somewhat more respectable genre films, including CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982), co-written with director John Milius; Brian De Palma's SCARFACE (1983); and YEAR OF THE DRAGON (1985), co-written with director Michael Cimino. While these films have their admirers, each to varying degrees reflects criticisms that would plague much of Stone's work as a director, namely charges of racism (particularly towards Asians), excessive violence, and the marginalization of female characters.
With the release of SALVADOR (1986), Stone was off and running to achieve his current status as one of Hollywood's most forceful directors, tackling social and political themes with evident skill and commitment, as well as generous doses of bombast. His films were often heavy-handed, a bit simplistic, and masculinist, but they moved people with their big emotions and powerhouse imagery. Stone received a second Oscar and a Directors Guild Award for PLATOON (1986), one of the starkest treatments of the Vietnam war to reach American screens, and brought a similarly uncompromising gaze to bear on the world of high finance in WALL STREET (1987), the street where his own father plied his trade as a stockbroker. BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (1989), based on the true story of Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic and featuring Tom Cruise in his first heavyweight dramatic role, earned Stone a second DGA Award. The film depicted Kovic's evolution from nave, gung-ho kid to frightened soldier to embittered paraplegic to committed anti-war activist.
One of Stone's most ambitious and controversial works to date is JFK (1991), a dramatization of the attempts by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) to uncover a conspiracy behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A substantial artistic achievement that weaves volumes of theories and hypotheses into a narrative peppered with colorful cameo performances, the film led to Congress' opening of the classified files on the assassination as well as providing armies of conspiracy theorists with ammunition for their views. Stone reached a new level of notoriety with the release of JFK; no longer just a filmmaker, he was a political figure. As such, he was both attacked and applauded by politicians, editorial writers and newspaper columnists across the country.
Stone returned to Vietnam for HEAVEN & EARTH (1993), but this story was from an Asian female perspective. Based on two autobiographical books by Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace, this was the continent-spanning story of how the war impacted upon the life of one young woman in Vietnam and back in the States with her American husband. Some saw the film as an atonement for the narrow American male point of view expressed in the first two installments of Stone's unplanned Vietnam trilogy. In any event, the film was greeted by mixed reviews and lukewarm box-office.
Stone actively courted controversy again with NATURAL BORN KILLERS (1994), a project that harkened back to his early pulp fictions. The original story by hotshot writer-director Quentin Tarantino was overwhelmed by Stone's hallucinogenic vision of two lovers (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) who become media darlings due to a spectacular murder spree. Taking inspiration from music videos, commercials, and other media, NATURAL BORN KILLERS launched a sensory assault with an ultra-cool soundtrack assembled by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, rapid-fire montages, various film stocks, animated sequences, and sharply observed TV parodies. Audiences and reviewers alike were sharply divided over the film's merits but it opened to brisk box office.
Recent credits include: (as producer) REVERSAL OF FORTUNE (1990), SOUTH CENTRAL (1992), THE JOY LUCK CLUB (1993, exec. producer), THE NEW AGE (1994), FREEWAY and KILLER: A JOURNAL OF MURDER (both 1996, both exec. producer), THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT (1996), SAVIOR (1998), THE CORRUPTOR (1999, exec. producer), ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (1999, exec. producer, writer & director), COMANDANTE (2003, also writer & director), ALEXANDER (2004, also writer & director), PINKVILLE (scheduled for 2008, also director), and ESCOBAR (scheduled for 2009); (as writer) 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE (1986), TALK RADIO (1988, also director), THE DOORS (1991, also director), EVITA (1996), and COMANDANTE (2003, also director); (as director) MAD MAN OF MARTINIQUE (1979), U TURN (1997) and WORLD TRADE CENTER (2006).
Writing (Best Screenplay based on material from another medium) 1978: MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
Directing 1986: PLATOON
Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay written directly for the screen) 1986: PLATOON
Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay written directly for the screen) 1986: SALVADOR (w. Richard Boyle)
Nominated for Best Picture of the Year 1989: BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY - Producer at Ho & Ixtlan (w. A. Kitman Ho)
Best Achievement in Directing 1989: BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY
Nominated for Best Screenplay Based on Material From Another Medium 1989: BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (w. Ron Kovic)
Nominated for Best Picture of the Year 1991: JFK - Producer at Camelot (w. A. Kitman Ho)
Nominated for Achievement in Directing 1991: JFK
Nominated for Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published 1991: JFK (w. Zachary Sklar)
Nominated for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen 1995: NIXON (w. Stephen J. Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson)
11 nominations, 3 Awards