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Oliver Stone (2020) - War on Drugs and JFK Assassination · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Today, we're diving deep into a
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  really fascinating conversation. Yeah.
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  The one between Joe Rogan and filmmaker Oliver Stone.
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  Episode hashtag 1511. Right from the powerful JRE
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  channel and our mission basically is to pull out the key
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  stuff. Especially on his Vietnam
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  experiences right and making platoon.
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  Totally. And also his, you know, his
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  takes on American history, political stuff, it gets pretty
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  provocative. Definitely.
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  Our source material is basically excerpts from the transcript of
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  that JRE video. OK, so let's jump in.
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  Stone talks about Vietnam almost straight away.
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  That last mission, N68. Yeah, I show Valley First
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  Calvary. It sounds incredibly intense.
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  He volunteered for extra time too.
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  That's right, three extra months just to avoid stateside duty.
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  Which led him to this final mission. 11 days.
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  Helicopters couldn't get in constant rain.
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  Leeches everywhere, he said. And just feeling the enemy all
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  around them. Yeah, harrowing, nerve racking.
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  And you can immediately see how that experience just, well, it
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  bled into everything for him. Esecially filmmaking.
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  Exactly. Yeah, it fundamentally shaped
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  how we approached war films. He wanted authenticity, not
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  just, you know, simple heroics. So that direct experience
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  informed how he directed platoon, then getting the
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  details right. Totally like the distances in
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  combat, the intensity of firepower.
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  He felt movies often got that wrong.
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  How so? Well, he said, they often overdo
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  the intensity. Can the enemy way too close for
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  dramatic effect? His experience was different,
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  more confusing maybe. And he wasn't a fan of some
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  later war films post 2001 stuff. Right.
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  He was pretty critical, called them patriotic, heavily
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  militaristic, and kind of way off on how combat and death
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  really look and feel. Did he mention any specific?
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  Ones he brought up Lone Survivor, suggesting it
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  exaggerated the number of enemy killed quite a bit.
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  So his own benchmark for realism was just different because he'd
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  actually been there, done that. Precisely.
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  It's rooted in that messy, often unglamorous reality he saw,
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  which is why Platoon feels different.
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  Not everyone's a hero in that film.
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  And the characters were based on real people he knew.
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  Yeah, that's a key thing. Sergeant Barnes, Tom Barringer's
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  character based on a platoon leader with these really
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  distinct scars. And Willem Dafoe's character,
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  Sergeant Elias. Based on this beloved guy from a
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  LRRP unit. LRRP Long Range Reconnaissance
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  Patrol, right? Those guys went deep.
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  Exactly. And the real tragedy there, the
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  real guy Elias was based on, he was killed by friendly fire.
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  Wow, Stone early hammers that point home, doesn't he?
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  Friendly fire in Vietnam. He does, he estimates, and this
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  is staggering, maybe 15 to 20% of their own casualties came
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  from friendly fire. 15 to 20%, that's huge.
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  Yeah, including bombing runs, artillery, not just small
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  mistakes. He even draws a line to the Pat
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  Tillman incident. How the initial story kind of
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  obscured the friendly fire aspect.
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  Exactly, and he feels the Pentagon actively downplays this
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  stuff, especially in movies. They approve.
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  They don't want to admit how common it was.
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  So you can see this deep seated need to tell a different story
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  born from that raw experience. Which brings us to actually
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  making Platoon. That took a while, didn't it?
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  Oh yeah, he started the script back in 76.
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  Nearly 10 years before it came out.
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  Why so long? Well, it was a tough sell.
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  Studios rejected it. They thought it was like, too
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  real, too much of A downer. Compared to what?
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  Apocalypse Now? The Deer Hunter.
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  Yeah, those films had a more mythic quality, maybe, or even
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  the Rainbow movies, although he said the first Rambo wasn't bad.
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  So the resistance was to the realism, the lack of clear cut
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  heroes. Pretty much, it wasn't the
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  triumphant war story some people wanted.
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  It almost got made in 83 though. With Michael Simoneau producing
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  Oh Deer Hunter, director of Deer Hunter, right?
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  But that deal fell through. Stone kind of suspects powerful
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  figures might have blocked. It like.
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  Who he mentioned maybe Kissinger or Haig who were on MGM's board
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  then. But look, that's his suspicion
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  based on timing and stuff, not like a proven fact.
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  You should take his gospel. Gotcha.
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  And the Pentagon wasn't exactly rolling out the red carpet,
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  either. No way they refused cooperation.
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  They were particularly upset about the whole fragging
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  depiction. Soldiers killing their own
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  officers, Yeah, I can see why they wouldn't like that.
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  Definitely challenge the image of discipline.
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  So what broke the log jam? He mentioned Kubrick's Full
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  Metal Jacket might have helped pave the way a bit, right?
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  But the funding actually came from overseas.
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  A British company, Hemdale. And they made it on a tight
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  budget back-to-back with Salvador.
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  Yeah, filming in Mexico and the Philippines, which probably
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  explains some of his methods. Like that intense boot camp for
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  the actors. Oh yeah, sleep deprivation, mock
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  attacks, the whole 9 yards. He wanted them exhausted,
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  irritable. To feel like real soldiers in
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  the jungle. Exactly, he said.
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  Some actors actually quit, couldn't handle it.
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  Wow, and the casting was very specific too.
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  Yeah, young, fresh faces, people who look like the guys he
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  actually served with from all different backgrounds.
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  And he had Dale die on set. The combat advisor Vietnam vet
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  himself crucial for authenticity.
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  Absolutely getting those little details right.
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  So when it finally came out December 86, he said it felt
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  like a bomb went off. Yeah, the timing was potent.
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  The war wasn't that far in the past and it's realism, the drug
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  use, the divisions between draftees and volunteers, the
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  racial stuff after MLK's death. Things that weren't usually
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  shown. Right.
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  It hit a nerve globally. Apparently he's stressed getting
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  the details right, like how bodies actually look after
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  death, the sheer confusion of battle.
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  Contrasting it with the Army's method of just like bombing
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  everything to minimize US casualties.
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  Yeah, but pointing out that led to civilian deaths and, well,
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  more friendly fire. And it became a huge hit,
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  despite being so dark. No obvious kid appeal not
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  initially aimed at women. Surprising, right?
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  But it clearly resonated. So Vietnam wasn't just a
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  setting, it was the heart of it. But his view goes beyond just
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  that war. Yeah, he talks about the lack of
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  trust that came out of Vietnam in the government, the military.
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  Especially how veterans were treated.
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  Agent Orange PTSD, which, you know, wasn't even really
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  recognized then. Right.
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  And he saw parallels later in Central America in the 80s while
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  making Salvador. Yeah, seeing young GIS deployed
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  again, maybe without fully grasping the situation, just
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  like in Nam, he felt he had to show that stuff.
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  In platoon in Salvador, that sense of obligation comes
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  through it. Really.
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  Does it drove him? I mean he even talked about
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  giving his own dad LSD. Wait, what?
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  His Republican Eisenhower supporting dad?
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  Yeah. Apparently, during arguments
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  about Vietnam, to try and shake up his dad's mindset, his dad
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  held the whole domino theory line.
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  That is unconventional. Did it work?
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  He says his dad did start questioning things later on, but
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  wow. And when Stone came back from
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  the war himself, the protests. He said in New York it was more
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  indifference he felt, not really open hostility.
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  Interesting, his whole approach seems to be tackling these
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  tough, thorny subjects as he calls them.
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  Yeah, but making them entertaining like Nixon or JFK
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  diving into really controversial.
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  Stuff JFK especially. He went deep on that, didn't he?
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  Influenced by Lifton's best evidence knew Jim Garrison.
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  Yeah, he's firm on Oswald not acting alone, the whole magic
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  bullet thing. What do you call it?
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  Straight up horseshit. Pretty blunt.
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  Can't miss that and he has a new documentary coming on it.
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  Apparently so, using info from the Assassination Records Review
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  Board looking at inconsistencies in the autopsy, the rifle
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  evidence. He also touches on Jack Ruby
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  right? The weirdness around him.
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  Potential drugging in prison. Mob links.
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  Yeah, suggesting Ruby was likely forced to kill Oswald, and he
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  mentions the Zapruder film, how it eventually got out.
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  It's a lot. Shifting gears, he briefly
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  mentioned Scarface too. Yeah, how?
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  It had a mixed reception at first, but became this huge
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  cultural icon. And his view of Tony Montana is
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  kind of interesting. Yeah, almost like an anti hero
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  because he saw through the quote bullshit of the drug war.
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  Stone really sees that whole war on drugs as a disaster.
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  A bureaucratic invention, he called it.
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  Pretty much. He finds hypocrisy there,
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  comparing the waste to stuff he saw in Vietnam like overbuilt
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  noncombat bases, and points to ongoing issues like protecting
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  poppy fields in Afghanistan. He seems really proud of his
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  documentary series The Untold History of the United States.
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  Oh, massively. Five years of work trying to
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  debunk myths in American history from 1898 up to around 2013.
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  When he talks about that powerful system hindering
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  change, you assume he means the military industrial complex.
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  That seems to be the implication, yeah.
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  That network of military contractors, politicians that
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  can kind of perpetuate itself. And his motivation seems quite
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  personal too, exploring his own flaws through his work.
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  Yeah, rediscovering himself, the contradictions.
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  He also talked about films he couldn't get made.
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  Like 1 about Malay. Yeah, thwarted by the 2008
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  crash, right? And an MLK story that was seen
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  as too sensitive. He also made Snowden, which he
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  clearly feels strongly about. Absolutely.
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  The importance of that story, the shock of the surveillance
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  state, he laments to the film, didn't get more support in the
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  US. He met Snowden in Moscow.
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  He did, and he also talked about interviewing Yasser Arafat, this
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  really tense moment in Ramallah right before in Israeli raid.
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  Wow, he acknowledges his outspokenness sometimes
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  overshadows the films. Maybe.
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  Yeah, but he feels he has to speak out, and his biggest
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  concern now seems to be World Peace, the new Cold War vibes,
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  nuclear weapons. Exactly.
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  He sees that as the absolute critical issue and he sounds
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  pretty disillusioned with politics since JFK mostly.
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  Maybe some initial hope for Obama or Clinton, but feels like
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  the system itself is just too entrenched.
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  So wrapping this up, what really stands out for you from this
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  whole conversation? Is it that visceral Vietnam
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  account? That's definitely powerful.
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  Or maybe the sheer struggle to get Platoon made against the
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  odds. It shows incredible persistence.
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  Or just his willingness to keep tackling these really difficult,
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  controversial parts of American history and politics, even when
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  it makes people uncomfortable. Yeah, His whole journey, you
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  know, from the jungle to Hollywood, dealing with power.
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  Yeah, it gives you a really unique way to look at things, a
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  unique lens. For sure, and like we said, this
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  deep dive really just gives you a taste.
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  There's so much more in the full episode.
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  Absolutely. We definitely encourage you.
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  If you're interested, go check out the original JRD episode
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  Hashtag 1511 with Oliver Stone. So thinking ahead, what other
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  big historical moments or political debates would you find
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  interesting for us to dive into like this?
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  Let us know.