Oliver Stone: Cutting-edge filmmaker or political provocateur?

Oliver Stone discusses his upcoming memoir, Chasing the Light, in which all his questionable bravado and self-admitted insecurity are on full display

Oliver Stone is as known for his political views as for his acclaimed films. Picture: Thomas Niedermueller/Getty Images for ZFF

Beginning in 1986 with the release of his films Salvador and Platoon, Oliver Stone kicked off a decade of remarkable success.

His controversial and stylistically brash films of this era were box-office hits and established Stone, who twice won the Academy Award for best director, as a bold generational voice. While Wall Street and Natural Born Killers didn’t have particularly nuanced takes on the rotten amorality at the core of US society, and the treatment of the country’s self-deceptions in Born on the Fourth of July and JFK wasn’t especially subtle, Stone’s work spoke to the US’s dreams and nightmares.