Stone blames 'fundamentalism' in US for 'Alexander' flop

[tuvor]

LONDON (AFP) - Oscar-winning writer-director Oliver Stone blamed "raging fundamentalism in morality" for the frosty reception that his new film "Alexander" is getting in his native United States.

In London for its British premiere, Stone, 58, said that after a career full of cage-rattling work, he thought a biopic of Alexander the Great, the 4th century Macedonian-born conquerer, would be "a safe subject".

But he said he was "quite taken aback by the controversy and fierceness of the reviews" which greeted its US release, including outrage at the film's suggestion that Alexander was bisexual.


"Sexuality is a large issue in America right now, but it isn't so much in other countries," he said. "There's a raging fundamentalism in morality in the United States. From day one audiences didn't show up. They didn't even read the reviews in the south because the media was using the words: 'Alex is Gay'."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1541&e=1&u=/afp/afplifestylebritain

Great, just what the freepers need--more ammo. Couldn't be that the movie sucked, now, could it, Ollie?

[eleonora]

1. I didn't go because I read that the movie sucked and I believed it

seeing that Collin Ferrel starred in it and the previews just looked stupid with him as the lead.

[Mr_Spock]

40. LOL - I think you summarized my view of this as well

Sour grapes will get Oliver nowhere - oh well.

[autorank]

2. Give me a break

I love Greco-Roman history. I went to the film ready to see it twice in a row. It was just pitiful (although that mountain woman he married was stunning). How much better an action story can you get than Alexander's conquests? If Stone puts some guy next to his main character who looks like a drag queen, that's his problem. It's not why the film bombed. It was just weak.

[UndergroundLight4]

3. Fundamentally speaking, the movie sucked.

The acting was laughable. The direction pompous. The sex scenes were silly and drawn out. Silly fake accents. I think they spoke Italian or French back then anyway, so the English sounds dumb. They should have had them speaking Hebrew mixed with Latin like they did in the Passion. It would have at least been fun to try to figure out some of the words in the other languages.

[jdj]

14. why did his mom have a germanic accent?

that one I didn't get.

[okasha]

39. It was Albanian

Olympias was from Epiros, now in Albania.

Okasha

[jdj]

41. well, she sure as heck didn't speak English

with an Albanian accent.

[Liberal In Texas]

4. You really can't blame them for everything.

Making them a scapegoat for a bad film is pushing it.

[MADem]

5. When a bunch of screamingly liberal, sexually ambiguous,

...artsy-fartsy reviewers all go to see the film, and all of them, separately and individually, exit the theatres holding their noses and retching, that tells me that the film was a D-O-G (my apologies to the many lovely dogs in the world).

Ollie needs to get over himself. Sometimes a shitty movie is just a shitty movie.

Hell, if it had Edward G. Robinson playing a Roman in it, I might go for the laugh, but alas, EGR is no longer with us....

[Ian David]

6. Oliver Stone has made some great movies, but he sucks lately

Maybe he'll make a movie debunking the single-critic theory of his movie's assassination.

[jdj]

15. a serious project for him would be the whole catholic church

molestation scandal. How the whole system protected these pedophiles for 30 years that they knew the abuse was going on. I want to see a major filmaker take this on.

[saltpoint]

7. Stone has a good point.

While his film of Alexander was flawed, two things did conspire against it: the idea that an American film should not celebrate two things just right now: homosexuality and a western crusade into Asian lands.

These were undercurrents, in places fairly strong ones, and did work against the success of the box office.

David Edelstein's praise of a failed effort this time by Stone is a good benchmark.

[okasha]

11. A flawed film but not a failure

The film was too short. Compressing all of Alexander's story succesfully into 3 hours would have required a raving genius of a writer and an audience willing and able to meet the narration halfway. That cuts out at least 95% of any American moviegoers and an equal number of critics. The other possibility would have been to make a pair of films or a trilogy. As it was, the storytelling was terribly compressed and the jump-cuts back and forth must have confused a lot of people who didn't already know something about the story.

The film was also very, very Greek, and not just in Alex's sexual preference. A good bit of the dialogue echoed the phraseology and cadences of the Iliad, and the mythological references such as the eagle probably went over a lot of heads. Just as well, in some cases; had the fundies realized that not only was Alexander in love all his life with another man but that he firmly believed himself to be the son of Zeus, the outcry would have been even worse.

Otherwise, the film subverts the American ideal of the macho "hero" who cuts a wide swathe through the bad guys while either (a)humping any female thing that moves or (b)remaining loyally in love with the local schoolmarm. Alexander does (a) all right, but not only goes to Hephaistion for comfort but weeps bitterly when all he can do for one of his wounded soldiers is help him die.

It's not an action film at all; it's a psychological novel. More, it's one that deals with male homoeroticism, which is still very much a taboo subject. Consider: it's become almost fashionable for a politician to have a lesbian daughter. But where are the gay sons?

Okasha

[saltpoint]

12. Concur on all points.

Have you read Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault?

That would have been a more manageable film project, and Stone could have done a great job with it.

Maybe taken Alexander's life in three films instead of trying to jam it into one.

[jdj]

17. that Alexander weren't no murikan

and folks says he were a quar, too.

This isn't a great time for high art in America, in case anyone hasn't noticed.

The fine arts are really hurting in this country, and well, it's no surprise that history doesn't rate with a country that doesn't even know it wasn't Iraq that attacked the U.S. on 9/11/01. If you can't keep a thought in your head from 9/01 to 3/02, then you won't be able to appreciate ANCIENT history.

[saltpoint]

22. Loved the humor in your post -- thank you.

And agree totally with the rest of it. We're in a dark age of sorts.

[okasha]

20. Yes, I've Read Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy

and made half-a-dozen good-faith efforts to read Funeral Games. I never quite made it into the book, though. Every character I found to like was shortly murdered by one of the far more numerous dislikeable crew.

I agree that Fire From Heaven would have made a more manageable and more widely intelligible project. A second film might have covered the conquests up to Babylon, with the third dealing with the Indian campaign and the return. That would have given a lot more room for background and exposition. While I don't want to fault Stone for not making the film I'd have made--which is what a lot of the critics are doing--I do wish we'd seen more of the basis of Alexander's and Hephaistion's relationship. Stone relies very heavily here on the parallel to the Iliad: where Patroklos was Achilles' conscience and reality check, Hephaistion was Alexander's. I'd have liked to see Sisygambis included, too. She'd have made a marvelous character!

That said, Stone's debt to Renault is a very heavy one as the film stands. There's the characterization of Olympias and the whipsawing of the young Alexander between parents who badly need a divorce and can't get one for political reasons. There are also, I think, some echoes of her other books, specifically The Bull from the Sea.

So: not by any means a perfect film. Not a bad one, either, unless a viewer is willing to fault it for not being the story the viewer wanted instead of the story Stone wanted to tell.

Okasha

[saltpoint]

23. Yes.

If you make it back into Funeral Games, the narrative becomes more convincing as Bagoas shadows the author's story-telling. It really is a great tale, altough I imagine the fundies would hate it.

Sisygambis WOULD have been a great character for Stone to emphacize more.

[okasha]

21. Oops.

Double post.

Okasha

[Merlin]

33. Thank you for that sober, realistic assessment.

I will now see the film. It is beyond belief to me--having once spent time with Stone, being a devout JFK conspiracy advocate, and, after 2 years in Vietnam combat, still finding "Platoon" the finest, most accurate deptiction of that conflict--that he would be capable of producing an abjectly horrific flick.

[KSAtheist]

30. I think it failed...

Because it sucked. I love Stone, but this was maybe his worst movie. Worse than Any Given Sunday.

Also, Colin Farrell is box-office poison. The man can't carry a movie. Daredevil, Hart's War, Phone Booth...

[DRoseDARs]

8. Didn't c, bt wasn't the whole thing that Alex looked @ a guy "that way"...

...and that's it? Nothing further?

[Renew Deal]

9. I don't think he considered the fact that the movie might have sucked.

The History Channel special was very good. Watch that.

[TheFarseer]

10. I saw it and

I had completely forgotten about the man on man kissing. I just remembered that it totally sucked and it took 3 or so hours to suck.

[Bono71]

38. I have never walked out of a movie, but I came close on this one n/t

[TheFarseer]

42. I went to the 10:55 showing

and it was like 2 before we got out. One of my friends fell asleep and I might have lobbied to leave except I didn't want to wake him and besides, I've never walked out of a movie either. That part when the movie is over except for Anthony Hopkins talking is just brutal. I was about ready to yell, "STFU so I can leave!"

[Fed Up]

13. You can watch the same stuff on the Hitler Channel.

Last month they had a big show about Alexander.


this movie had HBO and DVD written all over it before it hit the theatres, IMO.

I did go to see his movies about the Doors and JFK.

[Zynx]

16. Actually, the movie was a technical disaster

Just bad on just about every level. I could care less about the bisexuality.

[kodi]

18. our ever attentive American movie goer was "Greeked out" from "Troy"

one Greek epic a decade is enough to whet the appetite of the typical dull eyed, empty-headed American.

[lovuian]

19. It was the worst film in 5 years and I almost walked out

Stone took a Great Warrior and made a story about his sex live. There was much more to Alexander the Great than his sex life Sorry stone it was HORRIBLE and I'm a liberal!!!

[okasha]

24. Hmm.

Do you feel the same way about Braveheart? I didn't have a stopwatch, but I'd guess that minute for minute and line for line, Stone spent less time on Alex's sex life than Gibson did on Wallace's. And didn't bollix history up to do it, either.

There's a reason Stone didn't call the film Alexander the Great. It's not about the conqueror. It's about the person.

Okasha

[lovuian]

26. Well Gibson did it tastefully Stone had him slapping each other

Baaawaaahaaa it was so terrible it was pathetic. Even Colin farrell I thought he was going to crack up!!!

[KSAtheist]

31. Braveheart is a different kind of movie.

Braveheart may have screwed up the history something fierce, but it was about what William Wallace represented. That's why he could get away with the sex scenes. No one remembers the sex from Braveheart, they remember the ultraviolence and the corny speeches. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that all Alexander will be remembered for is the homoerotica and the greek lawsuit.

Another reason why Braveheart succeeded where Alexander failed is that Braveheart was a guy movie. Sure, half of it consisted of men running in kilts, but because of the gratuitous sex, your average Joe Sixpack could watch it while not having his masculinity threatened...and because of the romantic subplot and handsome male leads, it also appealed to women.

The gay sex aspect of Alexander kind of turned off both segments of the population that braveheart attracted.

[okasha]

35. Braveheart wasn't just a guy movie,

it was a movie aimed straight at the Christian, conservative American audience. Gibson's villain is named at the very beginning of the film as a "cruel pagan," when in fact King Edward was a devout Catholic. (It was Robert the Bruce who was eventually invested in a pre-Christian Celtic ceremony at Scone.) Gibson's Wallace, in contrast, is conspicuously pious. He's also presented as a humble farmer, very much in the American tradition of the underdog hero who triumphs in the face of overwhelming power and corruption.

Braveheart is also a thoroughly homophobic film. Prince Edward is characterized as an effete twit obsessed with his wardrobe and his equally effete boyfriend. We are not meant to be horrified when King Edward tosses "Philip"--presumably Gibson's stand-in for Piers Gaveston--out the window. The Prince's homosexuality is also, apparently, what makes it morally acceptable for Our Hero to commit adultery with the Prince's wife and for Isabella to vow to dethrone and murder her husband.

In short, Braveheart didn't challenge the Southern fundamentalist prejudices; it openly appealed to them. While it has at least as much emphasis on Wallace's sex life as Alexander has on Alex's, the difference is Braveheart's sex is all hetero.

(A side note: I thought that Robert Bruce was a far more interesting character than Gibson's two-dimensional Wallace, and that Angus MacFadyen was a far better actor than Gibson. I'd have liked to see a follow-up film that dealt with the years between Wallace's capture in 1395 and Bannockburn in 1314. But Gibson would never make such a movie, because that would bring us to the subject of Sir James Douglas, deemed the handsomest knight in Europe, who was so extraordinarily devoted to his friend Robert that he never married.)

Okasha

[Bono71]

37. Whoa...

I didn't like braveheart, but Alexander just plain sucked. The story was boring. The acting was terrible. The battle scenes were crap...forget the homosexual content...it was just plain BORING...

Agree...Braveheart was made for a god-fearing American public...

[sakabatou]

25. All my friends

said it was the bad acting... Yeesh.

[Yupster]

27. That was 4th century BC

just to be historiolistically accurate.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tabasco]

29. If Roger Ebert doesn't like it...

I won't go see it.

[ISUGRADIA]

32. Oh, yes, this movie...it sucked

Not up to Mr. Stone's earlier works. He forgets that many liberal minded critics thought the movies had problems. Easy out for his though.

[Merlin]

34. Haven't seen it but there's surely truth to this. Plus another factor...

Another factor being overlooked here is that the active JFK assassination coverup effort has worked hard to damn Stone in every nook and cranny of the media.

From even before the time JFK, the movie, was released, a barrage of criticism was heaped upon him for trivial imperfections in the film, while the indisputably factual main thrust of it was swept away in rebuke. The barrage has never let up.

Stone is a target of the latter-day Hoovers within the VRWC.

Today every Stone film is immediately greeted by anti-Stone fanaticism. It is the fate of truth tellers in every age.

As one who spent nearly 2 years in combat in Vietnam, Stone's "Platoon" absolutely nailed the experience. He is, imo, a genius.

[Bono71]

36. I'll admit...I went...and it sucked...really badly...the acting

was absolutely atrocious.

[YolandaMartinez]

43. I liked the film.

I thought it had nice action.