How Oliver Stone Went from the Battlefields of Vietnam to a Prison Cell

We're asking me about, we're back, yeah. You're asking me about, you know, why, why I get attracted to these kinds of subjects. And they don't seem attractive on the surface, but the more you get into them, the more they can be exciting. So I am a dramatist at heart. I'm really, that is my, what I do best, which is to dramatize situations, take something and bring it to life. So take it, take it, I can't even murder. It was extremely challenging and I knew it could work. I felt like it could work. And it was a surprise hit like Platoon. I mean, basically, how can you take this? War is boring. There's a lot of details. I was in four different units, you know, time, not much happens and then suddenly things happen. It's not that easy to make it happen in a movie time, movie space. So I took two different sergeants from two different units. And I imagine what would they be like if they were in the same unit? They would clash. One would be the law and order guy. That was a guy who believed in what he was doing and fought it viciously. And the other guy is the guy who was an anti, who was a rebel, who was like, a bit like my own character. My father was much of a law and order guy. My mother was very much a rebel. And I kind of put that into this conflict because I saw it in every Platoon. There was people who were like doing marijuana, people who were doing alcohol, you know, there was that split kind of. And a lot of the black guys I hung out with were doing marijuana and they were doing music. The music was unbelievable. But they had a different kind of music than the Oki music. So it was all the split in these Platoons. I saw it constantly. Black, white and country, city, sensibilities. Also a very important point is that I found over time that the law and order guys often were the most racist in terms of coming down on the Vietnamese civilians. Because we did jungle duty, but we also did a lot of civilian villages. Searching, whatever, search them. We find stores, weapons, this, that. Not necessarily they were cooperating, but sometimes they were forced to. But a lot of guys screwed with them, you know. Didn't like the Vietnamese at all. Which was not the black problem. That was more of a, it was a white problem. So I felt there was a lot of that going on. I couldn't, that was not my thing. And I just really didn't like what I saw. There's a lot of cowardice too. I can only imagine. And that's a shock, education. I mean, you talk about like a no escape. Just thrust into this completely volatile, chaotic world. And then introduced to a bunch of different people that you weren't around. Yeah, and then when I got out, I got thrown into jail. It's in the book too, you know. What for? For a federal smuggling marijuana. Coming back from Mexico. How much did you have on you? Just an ounce or two. Really, that's it? Federal smuggling for an ounce or two? I'd taken some Vietnamese grass home. But I never went home, I just went right to Mexico. So it was a few days later I was in the jail. Wow. Called my father and said, hey dad, you know I'm in trouble. He said, why haven't you called me? Where have you been for the... We knew you got out two weeks ago at Fort Lewis. I said, well, I said, dad, you want to hear where I'm at? You know, blah, blah, blah. And he got me out. He got me out with some money. Without it, I would have been sunk into that prison. It was awful. Prison was filled with blacks and Latinos. I mean, there were 5,000 people in there for 2,000 beds. That was the beginning of the drug war. Nixon had been elected, but had not yet declared it war on drugs, but it was filled. Most of them were non-violent crimes, you see. And I saw that side of America coming out. So we have a lot of law and order types here. Yes, well that law and order stuff was instituted when they passed that sweeping Psychedelics Acts of 1970. Oh, God. Yeah, what they were trying to do is they were trying to squash the civil rights movement. That's a big part of what they were trying to do. They were trying to make everything incredibly illegal, schedule one, so that they could have a reason to infiltrate these groups and start arresting people and break the groups up. That's absolutely correct. Yeah. And J. Edgar Hoover was still around, unfortunately. He was a lot of influence on this. Marijuana had been the devil drug. What a fascinating character he was. Yeah. Just... Yeah, they never got him yet on movies. No, no, God. Almost impossible to really get... I really wish there was more, I mean, real personal footage of all the crazy shit that he was actually into. We can get an understanding of how nuts it was that this guy was in charge of spying on people. And Lyndon Johnson, you have to ask, did Lyndon Johnson really believe the bullshit he was talking about, that the black civil rights movement had a communist basis, that the communism was supporting it? I mean, that was very much Hoover's thesis. Yeah, well, that was a great way to get people motivated to see your side of things back then. During the whole Cold War scare and the Red Scare, it's like communism being a motivating factor for any group. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.