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Oliver Stone After Midnight
February 8, 2008
It was nice to see Oliver Stone make an appearance in the new making-of featurettes found on Sony’s Midnight Express: 30th Anniversary Edition, which hit the street last week. He won a Best Screenplay
Oscar for his work on the 1978 film, which also happened to be his first-ever Hollywood screenplay, an adaptation of Billy Hayes’ 1977 book of the same name.
Then again, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Stone would appear on a supplemental piece for one of his most respected early projects, albeit one where he was solely the screenwriter: In the early days of the DVD revolution, he was one of the first major filmmakers to return to his body of work and outfit his films with supplements, including director’s commentaries on virtually every title.
His remarks on Midnight Express are quite lucid and enthusiastic, particularly this passage where he sums up his feelings about the film:
“I love this movie! I love its energy and I love its vitality,” Stone exalts. “And its madness, its very zeal. And its sense of excess—there’s nothing wrong with that.”
How about that? Oliver Stone, the screenwriter of Scarface and the director Natural Born Killers and JFK, insisting there’s nothing wrong with a sense of excess. Stick that one in the “Who Woulda Thunk It?” file. We love you Ollie!
Posted by Laurence Lerman on February 8, 2008 | Comments (0)
