Chasing the Light : Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game

Oliver Stone; David Larabell
 9780358346234
0-358-34623-1

An intimate memoir by the controversial and outspoken, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter about his complicated New York childhood, volunteering for combat, and his struggles and triumphs making such.

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films as Platoon, Midnight Express, and Scarface. Before the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam, and spent years writing unproduced scripts whiledriving taxis in New York, finally venturing westward to Los Angeles and a new life. Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with in-the-moment details of the high and low moments: We see meetings with Al Pacino over Stones scripts for Scarface, Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July; the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction following the failure of his first feature, The Hand (starring Michael Caine); his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; his stormy relationship with The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino; the breathless hustles to finance the acclaimed and divisive Salvador;and tensions behind the scenes of his first Academy Awardwinning film, Midnight Express.Chasing the Light is a true insiders look at Hollywoods years of upheaval in the 1970s and 80s.