Joe Rogan Experience #1511 - Oliver Stone

1. 0:03 – 1:36

   Vietnam cover photo: last missions, leeches, and choosing extra combat time

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      All right, here we go. Thank you very much for being here. I'm a really big fan, so this is a-

   2. OSOliver Stone0:07

      Thank you.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:07

      ... an honor for me. I'm real, real excited. I'm really excited about your book, I'm really excited about, uh, just your films, The Unto- Untold History in the United States, which I think is fantastic. I mean, that is, that's one of my favorite things that you've ever done, and, and, and so thorough and so interesting. But, um, the book, uh, first of all, look how good you look in there, on the cover there. You young-

   4. OSOliver Stone0:27

      Well, it's an old shot. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:28

      ... young handsome bastard. Look at ya.

   6. OSOliver Stone0:29

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:29

      Looking good there.

   8. OSOliver Stone0:31

      Actually, it was-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:31

      What, what year is that from?

   10. OSOliver Stone0:32

       ... it was 1968, November.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       Wow.

   12. OSOliver Stone0:34

       I'd just come off the last mission in Vietnam.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:36

       Wow.

   14. OSOliver Stone0:37

       It was on a hilltop. We got stuck, uh, in the rain, in the A Shau Valley. It was First Cavalry, and, uh, we really, the helicopters couldn't get in for 11 days. It was awful.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       Wow.

   16. OSOliver Stone0:48

       We had leeches everywhere, and we ... and the enemy, we didn't know where they were, but we felt that they were gonna close in. It was ... but it was too wet ultimately for them to close in, but they knew we were there. So we were praying. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       (laughs)

   18. OSOliver Stone1:01

       So the whole time was kind of nerve-wracking, 'cause it was my last few days, you understand. I was supposed to get out of there, uh, DROs, leave the country. I was due out. Uh, I had volun- I had volunteered for an extra three months in order to get out of the Army three months sooner.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:16

       Wow.

   20. OSOliver Stone1:16

       In other words, they had, there, normally you had to serve, uh, if a two-year deal, you had to serve six, uh, six months stateside on the backside of it. So, uh, I didn't wanna do that 'cause I was going nuts with the rules and the regulations, and I'd gotten into some trouble with that. So I extended in combat for another three months, and that ended up in this mission.

2. 1:36 – 5:26

   Why most war movies feel wrong: distance, firepower, and the myth of constant heroics

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:36

      (laughs) How much did your time serving impact your, your directing? And you, like y- you've had these life experiences as someone who's just a filmmaker, th- they really can't draw upon. Like, you, you've had actual combat experience, and when you're making movies about combat, I mean, that has to be a, a, a gigantic advantage. Or at least it l- it adds layers to it that are almost impossible to cre- to recreate for someone who's just trying to imagine what it's like.

   2. OSOliver Stone2:05

      Yeah, and that was very important when we did Platoon. Uh, I wa- I was trying to get the exact distances and what ... and the amount of firepower is not as us- it's not as intense, generally speaking, as the movies make it.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:20

      Yeah.

   4. OSOliver Stone2:20

      And that's the problem, because the movies have so much to pl- you know, so much to show, they bring the enemy much closer, they, they condense things, and they, they amplify as much as possible. Now, I did that too here and there, so I'm, I'm guilty too. But I think overall, it's way overdone, and, uh, the newer stuff that's come out since 2001, you know, with the patriotic stuff and the heavily, heavily militaristic stuff is way off. Way off. And, uh, people don't die that way, like, you know, in the, uh, type of films like Mark Wahlberg made or, you know, those kind of films. They're just way, way overdone. Anyway.

   5. JRJoe Rogan3:00

      In w- in what way? Like ...

   6. OSOliver Stone3:02

      Well, uh, what was the name of the film? Lone Survivor?

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:04

      Yeah.

   8. OSOliver Stone3:05

      Was that the name of it?

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:05

      Yeah.

   10. OSOliver Stone3:06

       Yeah, they get dropped off, whatever, 10 guys, and they manage to kill how many Taliban for each guy, you know?

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:13

       How much of that was based on ... I mean, it's all about Marcus Luttrell's life.

   12. OSOliver Stone3:16

       Yeah, exactly.

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:16

       I haven't had a chance to talk to Marcus, although I'm friends with him, but I, I don't know how much of it ... they, they monkey with everything. Whenever they make a movie-

   14. OSOliver Stone3:24

       It was way overdone. It was way overdone. They ... and what I heard and what's, uh, been reported is that they, you know, they got trapped right away, it was pretty quick, and the ambush went on, and they, and they got, they got the shit kicked out of them, so ... And, uh, you know, I can't, I can't be ... I don't remember exactly the details, but he did get away, and-

   15. JRJoe Rogan3:43

       Yeah.

   16. OSOliver Stone3:43

       ... some people did scam, sc- but it doesn't look like it does in the movie where everyone's a hero.

   17. JRJoe Rogan3:48

       Mm-hmm. Right. That is a problem, and that's one of the things that I really loved about Platoon. Everyone wasn't a hero.

   18. OSOliver Stone3:54

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:54

       I mean, the, the Tom Berenger character.

   20. OSOliver Stone3:58

       Yeah, he existed. It's in the book.

   21. JRJoe Rogan3:59

       Yeah.

   22. OSOliver Stone4:00

       It's based on a guy called Sergeant ... Well, I called him Sergeant Barnes, but he had a ... I wouldn't use his real name. Real guy, got shot in the face, and was, uh, scarred, distorted. Kind of handsome like that. But he was a serious guy, and he knew what he was doing. He was the leader of the platoon. See, I, I made clear that the, the leaders of the platoon were not really the lieutenants, they were the, the platoon sergeant and this ... and the, uh, squad sergeants. And, uh, they were very important in our lives. So I rarely saw officers. I was dealing ... in the jungle, you deal with what's right in front of you, so the sergeant was crucial. Barnes is a crucial character. So is the other character, Sergeant Elias, played by Willem Dafoe, was the ... in another unit that (clears throat) I had combined four different units. I was in three combat units. I combined them into one, one unit, one platoon for this movie purposes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan4:53

       So the Willem Dafoe character was also based on a real person.

   24. OSOliver Stone4:56

       Yes, he was. He was based on a guy I knew in the LRP's, Long-Range Recon Patrol, who was a great guy and he was an Apache, kind of an Apache, Mexican, uh, mix. Uh, uh, I'm not quite sure what he was 'cause I didn't get to know him that well, but I admired him because he had that life, grace of a guy who fought a lot and been around. He'd been on ... he'd been in before. He was on a second tour, and, uh, very much a love- a beloved figure. And he was killed after I left the, the unit.

3. 5:26 – 7:07

   Friendly fire and the realities the Pentagon won’t highlight

   1. OSOliver Stone5:26

      Uh, he was killed about a month later in a friendly fire accident. Now, friendly fire is m- we talk about it-

   2. JRJoe Rogan5:34

      Yeah.

   3. OSOliver Stone5:34

      ... in the book quite a bit, you know, because it's also underestimated. People never ... the Pentagon cuts it all out, especially in the movies that come from the Pentagon approval.

   4. JRJoe Rogan5:44

      Right.

   5. OSOliver Stone5:44

      They, they, they don't like to emphasize how difficult, how often ... I would say 15% to 20% of our casualties in that war were friendly fire.

   6. JRJoe Rogan5:54

      Wow.

   7. OSOliver Stone5:54

      Now, that's not just ground fire from ... when you get into a jungle situation, you're close to people, you don't really know where you're shooting sometimes. You don't know where the sh- where the incoming fire is, is coming from. So it's quite a mess. It's chaotic. The radio, people screaming, shouting, noise, confusion, and a lot of fear.

   8. JRJoe Rogan6:14

      Yeah, that was highlighted for us when the Pat Tillman, uh, incident happened.

   9. OSOliver Stone6:19

      Yeah, very important one. And-

   10. JRJoe Rogan6:20

       Pat Tillman, who is this, uh, spectacular athlete, decided to postpone his NFL career and, and go over and serve and was killed in friendly fire, and it wasn't really reported that way for a while.

   11. OSOliver Stone6:32

       That's absolutely correct, which is the point is that they don't-

   12. JRJoe Rogan6:35

       Yeah.

   13. OSOliver Stone6:35

       ... th- they really don't want the parents to know what's really going on. So if... Imagine if... Imagine 15, maybe 20% are dying from that friendly fire.

   14. JRJoe Rogan6:45

       (exhales)

   15. OSOliver Stone6:46

       Not... This is not just ground fire. This is, of course, bombing and certainly artillery fire, because that is often misplaced. It's not that easy to get the coordinates down in a tense situation where you, you can hit your... (laughs) Where artillery 20 miles away, 40 miles away has to hit, uh, has to hit the spot.

4. 7:07 – 12:55

   Platoon’s decade-long road to the screen: rejected for being too realistic

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:07

      When you're making a movie like Platoon, and this is, uh, in many, uh, mu- much of it is based on your actual real life experience, how much preparation is involved then? How much, how much is it different than when you're making another movie? 'Cause this is something that's intensely personal to you, obviously.

   2. OSOliver Stone7:23

      Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, how much preparation? Well, I got, I got, uh, a great m- combat advisor. He'd been there as a Marine, Dale Dye. Uh, he came in out of the blue and, uh, he, he was a real, uh, lifer type, so he remembered all the details in... Of uniforms and, uh, fire and the, and, uh, the firepower. I mean, it's, it took a lot of details to put this together. Uh, but the preparation was I'd been doing it for 10 years. I started the picture in 1976.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:56

      Oh, wow.

   4. OSOliver Stone7:57

      I wrote it, I wrote it. It wasn't made. It was rejected by the, uh, by the, uh, powers that be the first time and then it was, uh, it was considered great, great script, but too re- you know, too realistic a bummer, a downer. If you remember back in the '70s they had Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:16

      Yeah.

   6. OSOliver Stone8:16

      Those were big films and mythic, beautiful films, but they were not realistic. Then they had, uh, Sylvester Stallone do his, uh, Rambo series where he goes back and fights a war again.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:28

      Do those drive you crazy?

   8. OSOliver Stone8:29

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:29

      (laughs)

   10. OSOliver Stone8:30

       Although the first one was pretty good. Uh, but they're-

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:33

       The first one was different.

   12. OSOliver Stone8:34

       They're playing up the, you know-

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:35

       Yeah.

   14. OSOliver Stone8:35

       ... the, the whole sympathy card, the pity card. P- uh, I don't buy that, you know. That... There's a lot of that veteran feeling that, you know, it was... We were, we were, we were beaten. We had our hands tied behind our backs and we couldn't win and that kind of thing. Believe me, uh, it was a s- badly conceived war with a lot of misinformation. I go on in the book and talk about the lies that were spread by the military, the propaganda, that we're winning the whole time. The... They were using the body counts, heavy body counts and they'd say, "Well, if we're killing so much, so many of them, there are not gonna be that many left (laughs) ." And... But on the other hand, as the years went on, more and more of them kept appearing. So they, the Vietnamese were indestructible in a way. They were like ants. They were, they were fighting for their independence, uh, for their land, man. It was their country and, uh, they never gave up, ever. Uh, you could've nuked them and I... That's what Curtis LeMay at one point suggested. You could've dropped a nuclear bomb. It wouldn't have done... It wouldn't have made the difference. Thank God they didn't. But, uh, America went to extremes to win that war with poisoning, the, the bombing, uh, the bombing of, of not only Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It was intense. Intense. Bigger, bigger th- by far than World War II for this crazy war.

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:55

       Well, it also... It set a precedent for our lack of trust in the military, lack of trust in the government that guides the military, p- particularly in how they deal with the veterans that are dealing with things like Agent Orange or, you know, p- p- people that have, uh, come back that were, that were sick, where they're denied that this was part of the problem.

   16. OSOliver Stone10:14

       Sure. We didn't even have PTSD. We didn't-

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:17

       Yeah.

   18. OSOliver Stone10:17

       ... know what that was, but it started to crop up when I got back and I talk about it here a bit about PTSD, which I'd never heard of, but I think we all had it.

   19. JRJoe Rogan10:26

       What did they call it back then? Shell shocked or-

   20. OSOliver Stone10:28

       Uh, I guess so, but that wasn't... It was not a diagnos- diagnosable... Uh, it was not an ailment that you could, uh, officially, uh, catalog, because if you did, the army would be admitting to a huge amount of insurance, uh, problems and all kinds of medical problems that would, they would have to cover. So it was... You know, it was something that... There was no word for it. But frankly, uh, to, to get back to the issue of... The original question was, uh, Platoon was rejected on... For these two... It almost came to be again in 1983, it fell apart again and it's a heartbreaking story. It's in the book. And, uh, uh, it's resurrected. Uh, I mean, I forget about it. I just put it in the closet. After those movies came out I said, "They, they don't wanna know about Vietnam in, in this country. They really... Forget it. It's not gonna happen." Fine. I, I live with it. I was moving on with my career. I had Midnight Express, I had Scarface. I, I was... Uh, I had other things in mind. I... But, uh, Michael Cimino, who had directed the, uh, Deer Hunter, uh, told me he wanted to produce it with me as a writer... As a director and that, uh, we would... He would... We would resurrect it, because he said, "Vietnam's coming back." I, I said, "That's nonsense. I don't think it's gonna come back." He said, "Look at Stanley Kubrick's pictures. He's gonna make a picture. It's called, uh, Full Metal Jacket." And, uh, it tu- it took three years or two years for him to make it. But the fact that he made it certainly gave us some impetus to make... We made it very low budget and, um... By the way, it was made by the same company as Made Salvador, my previous film. They made 'em... I made 'em back to back in Mexico and the Philippines, uh, back to back, financed very low budget by Hemdale, a British company led by a gentleman named John Daley, who I might...... who was my mentor. I much credit him in the book. So, uh, we were a nothing film, out of nowhere. I mean, we were at the bottom. I mean, we were in the Philippines and making a film that nobody really knew much about, and at the bo- you know, we were struggling to get it made, and there was, um, weather problems. There was all kinds of logistical problems, but we'd been through hell on Salvador, as I describe in the book, in Mexico, so we, we're a unit. By this time, we, we got used to the difficulties of making low-budget films.

5. 12:55 – 21:25

   Studio politics, Pentagon pushback, and the fragging/morale collapse of late Vietnam

   1. JRJoe Rogan12:55

      In between the time you wrote it and the time it actually got done, was there ever any effort by the studios to try to water it down or to try to doctor it up? And-

   2. OSOliver Stone13:04

      Yeah. Sure. No, that went on quite a bit. Uh, everyone read the script at one point or another, everyone who rejected it. So when it finally almost got made with Cimino in 1983, uh, we thought we were in. We thought we'd get it made. Now... But, uh, the, uh, the resistance to it at the very end with the MGM was supposed to be the distributor, and Henry Kissinger was on the board of directors along with, uh, Haig, Alexander Haig. You remember him?

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:33

      Mm-hmm.

   4. OSOliver Stone13:34

      Military guy, Secretary of State, very bad tempered. Though they were both on the board, and whether they went to that board, I don't know, but that's what the story... They cover their ass by telling me, "We can't make this movie. We can't distribute this movie because the board would be against it." Now, sometimes they say, they tell you that without checking, but in this case, I don't know.

   5. JRJoe Rogan13:52

      Hmm.

   6. OSOliver Stone13:53

      So as a result, the film fell apart again. This was a heartbreak.

   7. JRJoe Rogan13:56

      Did you ever think, like, "Maybe I can move it a little bit or change it a little bit?" Or would you-

   8. OSOliver Stone14:01

      No.

   9. JRJoe Rogan14:01

      ... just stick fast?

   10. OSOliver Stone14:01

       The Penta- the Pentagon said to me, "Forget it. We're not going to help you at all. This thing is completely distorted."

   11. JRJoe Rogan14:06

       Hmm.

   12. OSOliver Stone14:07

       They were upset as hell about the fragging. I mean, that's to say-

   13. JRJoe Rogan14:11

       Really?

   14. OSOliver Stone14:11

       You know what fragging is?

   15. JRJoe Rogan14:12

       Yeah.

   16. OSOliver Stone14:13

       Yeah. There was a lot of that towards the end. I mean, it started in '67, '68, but there was more and more discontent when Lyndon Johnson pulled out of the presidency in March of '68. Uh, that was a big moment. I think all the soldiers... Everyone kind of knew that this thing was not going to work out. And who wanted to be the last guy to get killed in Vietnam?

   17. JRJoe Rogan14:33

       Right.

   18. OSOliver Stone14:34

       And so I think '69, '70 were more and more fractions, more fracti- fractious, and there was more and more incidents. At one point, there was a Pentagon document that came out. I've seen it. It said, "This situation in the, in the army is getting so poor, so bad. The morale is so low that it's be- it resemble- it's beginning to resemble the French mutinies in 1917, in the World War I." That was, uh, a big concern of the Pentagon. They knew they w- the thing was not going to work. It was cracking from within. So we, we gave more and more, let's say, uh, more and more, uh, credit to the Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, and saying that they were going to take our place. We're going to put more money. We put a fortune into them, South Vietnamese army, like we're doing now with the Afghan army (laughs) .

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:22

       It's interesting when you look back. What year did Platoon come out? '80...

   20. OSOliver Stone15:26

       We finally made it out in '86.

   21. JRJoe Rogan15:28

       '86.

   22. OSOliver Stone15:28

       December.

   23. JRJoe Rogan15:29

       When, when you really think about it, you're only talk- you're not talking about that much distance, distance between that movie coming out and the Vietnam War ending. I mean, in terms of how we look at the world now.

   24. OSOliver Stone15:40

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan15:40

       I mean, if we look at, it's 2020. If we look at 2000, that doesn't seem like 2003. That doesn't seem that long ago.

   26. OSOliver Stone15:47

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan15:47

       But that's kind of the timeline you're looking at.

   28. OSOliver Stone15:49

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       And so, in a lot of ways, it was probably very fresh in a lot of people's eyes, particularly people in the Pentagon.

   30. OSOliver Stone15:57

       It was quite something when it came out. It was a, you know, it was, it was like a bomb went off.
6. 21:25 – 24:48

   How Platoon was made: boot-camp training, casting youth, and shooting low-budget overseas

   1. JRJoe Rogan21:25

      Well, when it did come out, how much of a surprise was it when it was a giant hit?

   2. OSOliver Stone21:28

      Well, I knew that... The moment... Put it this way, the shooting was... You could tell from the young people, the actors and the, their enthusiasm for this, there, there was a hunger, uh, to make... They were so delight- delighted to become sol- soldiers for the purposes of the movie. We trained them on a 24-hour basis for two weeks and it was... it worked. I wanted them to get no sleep. And, and Dale Dye helped me with that. We, we put them in a bivouac training situation.

   3. JRJoe Rogan21:59

      Wow.

   4. OSOliver Stone21:59

      But a real one, I mean, where you don't sleep and you, you basically pulling sentry duty all night kind of. You have... you split your duty with Foxhall's three guys. And Dale would stage attacks and stuff in the middle of the night.

   5. JRJoe Rogan22:11

      Really?

   6. OSOliver Stone22:12

      So they were nervous and they were, they were tired beyond belief, which is good. That's where you want them.

   7. JRJoe Rogan22:17

      So how did, how did you plan this out? So when you were, when you were about to start filming, you had it in your head, we have to make this more realistic. What's the best way to do it? And then-

   8. OSOliver Stone22:27

      No, no from the beginning-

   9. JRJoe Rogan22:28

      From the beginning.

   10. OSOliver Stone22:28

       ... the way I cast it, I wanted, I wanted young people as much as possible in the, in the roles, people who were fresh, who didn't look like they'd done other movies-

   11. JRJoe Rogan22:37

       Right.

   12. OSOliver Stone22:38

       ... and types. They were based on everybody I knew in my platoons, people from the South, uh, a lot of people from the South, people from the Midwest, a lot of, uh, inner city people, uh, Chicago especially, uh, St. Louis, New Orleans. Um, and uh, you know, Californians. I tried to mix it all up, but the whole idea from the beginning was that we're going to make this with our little bit of money, we're going to make this as realistic as we could. So we planned it that way and we... the camp worked. We got the full cooperation of the Philippine Army and some shitty helicopters that they had, but very dangerous ones, but at least that was... it was a start.

   13. JRJoe Rogan23:20

       Had that ever been done before, the camp, the i- the idea of having them live like-

   14. OSOliver Stone23:24

       Never, I don't think so.

   15. JRJoe Rogan23:24

       ... soldiers?

   16. OSOliver Stone23:24

       I don't think so, because that had bothered me a lot in the fil- maybe in the old days, but I don't, I don't know of one, no.

   17. JRJoe Rogan23:30

       What made you fall on that? Like why was that?

   18. OSOliver Stone23:33

       Well, I'd lived it.

   19. JRJoe Rogan23:34

       Right.

   20. OSOliver Stone23:35

       I had lived it so I wanted them to... Above all, I wanted them to be tired, irritable. It gives you a sense of what it's like. You know, there's bugs, there's heat, it's, it's a jungle. And uh, it's uh...

   21. JRJoe Rogan23:49

       How did they respond to that?

   22. OSOliver Stone23:52

       At first there were a lot of bitching.

   23. JRJoe Rogan23:53

       (laughs)

   24. OSOliver Stone23:54

       There was a SAG, S-A-G, the SAG-

   25. JRJoe Rogan23:57

       Yeah.

   26. OSOliver Stone23:57

       ... SAG union said, "You have to have 12-hour turnaround." So a few of them quit.

   27. JRJoe Rogan24:01

       Really?

   28. OSOliver Stone24:02

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan24:03

       Wow, I bet they-

   30. OSOliver Stone24:04

       And we replaced them because I had a long list, waiting list of people that I'd seen over the years.
7. 24:48 – 27:52

   Platoon’s release shockwave: veterans’ reactions, worldwide impact, and cultural timing

   1. JRJoe Rogan24:48

      When the film was this gigantic success, did- did- did that... How did that feel to you? Did that validate-

   2. OSOliver Stone24:55

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan24:55

      ... this idea that you had in- in holding onto it for so long?

   4. OSOliver Stone24:57

      It shocked me. It shocked me. It shocked me. I mean, for years this had been rejected, 10 years, you know? I mean, I- I was sick of it. I was saying, "I'm not going to make this movie 'cause, uh, it's going to go wrong." You know, I didn't think it was possible. But because of, uh, this, you know, Kubrick picture and the support of The English Company, uh, John Daly, they, they wanted to make it. This is news for me 'cause all my life I'm fighting to make a movie-

   5. JRJoe Rogan25:21

      Hmm.

   6. OSOliver Stone25:21

      ... against somebody's wishes. All of a sudden, I got some people on my side. That's a big, that's a big difference. And the enthusiasm of the cast and Dale Dye and all these great people and my cameraman, everybody, they loved it. And, uh, we made it, and frankly, we finished it. We did it on budget in 50... It was 50 days. We went 54 days, but that was in... We had the money in the, uh, in the, in the, that 10% contingency. We finished it in 54 days, and it was tough. Uh, and we got out of there just in time because the monsoons came, and in the editing, right away, you could feel that people were reacting to it in a different way. We edited... There was no, uh... We, we, we edited a little bit, but, you know, we played with it, played with it, you massage it. But right away, I would say from the first screening on, you could tell people were responding saying, "This is real. This is... I've never seen this. This is real." So it, it took care of itself in a way. I mean, they didn't put much money in. The distributing company was Orion Pictures, existed at that... They, they put, uh, they said, "We'll give it a quality release, a few theaters at Christmas," in '86. And it opened huge first day in New York. Uh, there was a line of veterans, young le- young, uh, uh, veterans who looked young. I mean, not World War II veterans, young veterans. They were around the block at the Loews Astor. And, uh, (sighs) I wasn't there, but people told me that they were... They went in quietly. There was a mu- mute, and they sat through the film and very little talk, very little anything, not a lot of the gung-ho stuff you hear.

   7. JRJoe Rogan26:58

      (laughs)

   8. OSOliver Stone26:58

      And, uh, at the end of it, they were quiet, and they... some of them wouldn't get up out of their seats. Quite a few of them were sitting there still in their seats, you know? Some were crying. It took off, uh, and then it took off like I can't... I've never... You know, it's a phenomenon you s- rarely see in the world. This is like the top third highest grossing film in America that year, and it was... It was a blockbuster because no children are allowed in, you know, and you don't have much of a f- a woman's audience at first, so you don't figure on these things, you know? Uh, it, it took off and kept going. And then the women started to come in the third week as, as it was getting more and more talked about. There was no stopping it. In the... Even when you went to places like Paris or London, you know, people cared. It was unbelievable.

   9. JRJoe Rogan27:45

      Well, it was a masterpiece. And is it... Is that your finest moment and your, your proudest moment you feel like as a filmmaker?

8. 27:52 – 36:15

   Memoir origins: family rupture, Yale discomfort, faith, and volunteering for Vietnam

   1. OSOliver Stone27:52

      Well, it's one of the highlights of my life, and- and it- it's the climax of this book. The, the ten chapters here lead up to that because my story starts in '76. Uh, I'm in New York, I'm broke, depressed, written 12 screenplays. Nothing's happened. I've come close a few times. Nothing's going on. And, uh, my marriage is ended, my first marriage, and looks... I haven't accom- accomplished in my life the things that mattered. So at the age of 30, you kind of wake up. You say, you know, "What can I do?" My grandmother dies. I talk to her. I go and talk to her on her deathbed. She's, she's dead, but in France they let them. My mother was French, she said. They, they lay, they lay them out, and, uh, I was talking to her and it just... I think it's a very moving scene where he communicates with her because she loves him, and his, his own family life was quite disturbing in many ways. It was for him a traumatic divorce between the mother, his mother and father, and he goes into, uh, he goes into this, what, what happened in... It's about a family too. It's about how a family life can break apart. You can become a child of divorce. So, uh, his life kind of falls apart, and he goes off, you know? Hence, he goes to Vietnam as a teacher, and then he goes joins a merchant marine. There's all kinds of things that happen. Comes back to school, goes back to Yale University, drops out again, writes a book, writes his first book about his experiences. I did this before (laughs) back in 1966.

   2. JRJoe Rogan29:25

      Hmm.

   3. OSOliver Stone29:25

      I was nine- 19 years old. Didn't work out. It was rejected. It was ultimately published about 1997. It's called A Child's Night Dream. So I was a writer from the beginning, I, I think, before I was a director, and, uh, when that was rejected, I just said, "Fuck it." You know? "I'm too, I'm too full of myself. I'm too much of a narcissist here. I can't write about myself." So I joined the army, uh, and volunteered for combat and for Vietnam. I didn't want to miss it. You know, I wanted to see it right away 'cause I-

   4. JRJoe Rogan29:56

      For the experience?

   5. OSOliver Stone29:57

      No, I wanted to get to the bottom of the barrel, uh (laughs) . I wanted to see what, what this country was about. I, you know, I was, I was inquisitive. I was... I wanted to know what life was about. I mean, I'd grown up rel- relatively sheltered, you know?

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:11

      Yeah.

   7. OSOliver Stone30:11

      I went to, uh... My father, uh, made a living on Wall Street. He was a Republican, Eisenhower supporter. He was a lieutenant colonel in World War II when he met my mother. So, I mean, he was a, a, a s- strong Republican, and all his life, uh, I grew up in that ethic. Uh, and it really... It's something that when I went to Vietnam, he had never been in combat, but when I saw what I saw over there, coming from a sheltered existence relatively, it was shattered. The look in the... The glass was shattered. It was just... I wasn't like... I couldn't take my father's word for it anymore on anything, so I had to learn for myself. That's why.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:53

      What was different from your father's perceptions of what, what it was like for-

   9. OSOliver Stone30:56

      Well, he supported the war, like many, many people did, uh, for several years, until he got older, and then he came around one day, and he said, "You know, I think it's a... And I think you're right. I think it was a s- it's a futile thing." Because, uh, the, the whole idea of the Cold War, he wa- he, he began to question it at the age of, uh, 70 about, 65. He said, "You know, what, what, what difference does it make, uh, this domino bullshit?" He said, uh, "You know, the Russians have a sub off Long Island. You know, they can bl- they can nuke us from anywhere. You know, it does- it doesn't make sense to play this, uh, uh, zero-sum game of fighting for land, fighting for one country or another, intervening in other countries." He began to question everything. So, uh, and I was too. So it... I didn't change, uh ... I know you're gonna go to later in my life, but basically, I didn't change until I gone, went to this trip into Honduras, which I just told you about, with my friend, Richard Boyle, for Salvador. In 1985, I went down there, and what I saw in Central America confirmed that we were doing it again. We were going into these countries. We didn't know what the fuck they were about. We didn't... And we were fighting these, in most cases, the interests of most of the people, the majority of the people. They'd had a revolution in, in Nicaragua 'cause it was so corrupt, major revolution in 1979, and, uh, the, the, uh... We've been opposed to that new regime ever since.

   10. JRJoe Rogan32:27

       So when you first... When you entered into the army, when you signed up, did you, did you have clarity about this? Did you... Would you just have this idea in your head-

   11. OSOliver Stone32:36

       No.

   12. JRJoe Rogan32:36

       ... that you needed to find out-

   13. OSOliver Stone32:37

       No, no.

   14. JRJoe Rogan32:38

       ... what it was like?

   15. OSOliver Stone32:39

       No. No, I had no clarity. I was... I wanted to get out of New York. I wanted to get away from my, the whole w- my parents were divorced. My father, I wanted to get away from my father. I wanted to get away from everything I knew. I didn't, I didn't like Yale University. I was in the class with George Bush (laughs) .

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:56

       (laughs)

   17. OSOliver Stone32:56

       You know, I come from that generation of Donald Trump-

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:58

       Yeah.

   19. OSOliver Stone32:58

       ... George Bush, Bill Clinton.

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:00

       Yeah.

   21. OSOliver Stone33:00

       It's the same generation.

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:01

       Yeah.

   23. OSOliver Stone33:01

       But I don't identify with those people, uh, uh, because maybe they, they didn't have that sense of service at all. I did. I had a sense of patriotism. I thought, yeah, but I think, call it, I really think it was misplaced, but I felt that I owe my country something.

   24. JRJoe Rogan33:17

       Yeah.

   25. OSOliver Stone33:18

       I can't work just for myself.

   26. JRJoe Rogan33:19

       The reason why I keep going back to this, it's so significant that you had that moment in your life when you were involved in Vietnam and you were in combat duty, because all of your films, although they are these big commercial successes, they all have a message. I mean, uh, Midnight Express, even Scarface. There's a, there's a message in these films that's based on real live scenarios that took place that a lot of people are unaware of, you know. A lot of people got their education about, uh, Cuba releasing prisoners to America based on Scarface. I mean, that's how a lot of people found out about that.

   27. OSOliver Stone33:56

       That's too bad because it's... I wish we had more con- more study of what's going on in the world, more contemporary studies, but-

   28. JRJoe Rogan34:03

       Well, that's, again, what I really loved about The Untold History of the United States. It's a fantastic piece that you put together. Want another chair?

   29. OSOliver Stone34:10

       Okay.

   30. JRJoe Rogan34:10

       Get slacked on that chair right there.
9. 36:15 – 42:35

   Postwar America: protest myths, LSD for dad, and the militarized economy’s need for enemies

   1. JRJoe Rogan36:15

      How did you feel about the protests?

   2. OSOliver Stone36:16

      ... fighting with my father (laughs) .

   3. JRJoe Rogan36:17

      Oh, fighting with your father over it?

   4. OSOliver Stone36:18

      Sure, of course.

   5. JRJoe Rogan36:19

      Yeah.

   6. OSOliver Stone36:19

      I gave him LSD one time ever-

   7. JRJoe Rogan36:20

      Uh, did you on purpose?

   8. OSOliver Stone36:21

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan36:21

      Did he know?

   10. OSOliver Stone36:22

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan36:23

       Didn't he know you were giving it to him?

   12. OSOliver Stone36:23

       No, he didn't know I'd give it to him, but he knew-

   13. JRJoe Rogan36:25

       Oh.

   14. OSOliver Stone36:25

       ... that he was on something, yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan36:27

       (laughs)

   16. OSOliver Stone36:27

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan36:28

       (claps) How did you do that? Ah, just, were you slipping it in his coffee?

   18. OSOliver Stone36:32

       No, in his scotch (laughs) .

   19. JRJoe Rogan36:33

       Ah. Even better (laughs) . How much?

   20. OSOliver Stone36:37

       Uh, quite a bit (laughs) .

   21. JRJoe Rogan36:40

       (laughs) .

   22. OSOliver Stone36:40

       He was strong though, you know.

   23. JRJoe Rogan36:41

       He handled it?

   24. OSOliver Stone36:42

       He's drink- he drank, he drank whiskey every day of his life, so yeah, he was a tough guy.

   25. JRJoe Rogan36:46

       Hmm.

   26. OSOliver Stone36:47

       But he was great, and he was like swaying to the music and-

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:50

       Oh, wow.

   28. OSOliver Stone36:50

       ... having sex fantasies (laughs) .

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:52

       Wow.Did you tell him about it afterwards? Like, how-

   30. OSOliver Stone36:56

       No, actually we... But over the years we... He knew I kind of... After a while, he figured it out, I guess.
10. 42:35 – 1:06:45

    JFK obsession: magic bullet disputes, Stone’s documentary, and who he suspects

    1. JRJoe Rogan42:35

       That is a complex story. The, the story of JFK's assassination is very complex because I can learn a lot from a person and what their opinion is. Like, "What do you think happened?" "Oh, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone." You get these very specific character types where these people have these predetermined patterns that they plug into-

    2. OSOliver Stone42:56

       Sure, sure.

    3. JRJoe Rogan42:56

       ... and the Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone is one of the weirder ones.

    4. GUGuest43:00

       Yeah, sure. That is one of the weirdest arguments, and when, when I talk to them about the magic bullet, you know, like, and they go, "Well, that's actually been proven that that can happen." Yeah. I mean, that drives me nuts- Yeah, sure. ... 'cause I'm a guy who shoots guns. Yeah. I'm a hunter- Yeah. ... and I know what happens when bullets hit bones. It doesn't ever come out like that, ever. And also you, I think you know it was a hell of a shot. (laughs) Well, a, a hell of a shot can happen. I don't think it's that bad of a shot. I don't think it's that big of a deal. I think that's overstated. There's many things that are overstated. One of the things that's overstated is the scope was off. You know, people always say, "Well, the scope was off." Well, fucking a- anything can knock a scope off. You can drop a gun in the evidence room and the scope's off. Yeah. That's, that's nonsense. That's people who don't understand guns. Yeah. But the bullet hitting those two people and finding its way onto Connally's gurney- Yeah. ... magically, with very little distortion in the bullet at all, is straight up horseshit. Yeah. And the fact that, that that still gets touted as being pu- well, this is actually how it could have happened, and weird things happen with bullets. Sure, weird things happen with bullets, but one weird thing that never happens with bullets is when they hit bone and shatter bone- Yeah. ... they always distort. Yeah. Always. Yeah, I'm, uh, making a, I made a documentary, it's almost finished, about, uh, we went back to the case again. Oh. Taking all the information from the, uh, Assassination Records Review Board that came out of the film. They were, they passed an act, the JFK Act, Congress did. It was amazing, and, uh, they allowed the board to exist for five years, and they went through a lot of detail. They weren't out to prove anything, but they were, they found a lot of little s- detail that we put into this documentary, which I think you'll love. I'm sure I'll love it. It goes into, uh, in, into CE 399, the bullet, but it also goes into so much else on the autopsy that's screwed up. Mm. The two autopsies- Yeah. ... the one at Bethesda and also the one in Dallas. Th- there was no one in Dallas, but- Well, they, they, m- they did- Yeah, they did a track down of it, yeah. ... some examinations, yeah, of what happened to him in- Yeah. ... in examinations in Dallas. But everybody saw a huge, r- gaping wound in the rear right of his, Mr. Kennedy's head. Yeah. And that was covered up. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there was, um, there was also the reason why they needed to make that magic bullet work. The guy who got hit under the underpass- Oh, yeah, yeah. ... which is a, uh, a- Well, I know you're, I can see your enthusiasm on this. No, it's deep. I ca- Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, uh, come on, I mean, you know, if you're an infantryman, you, it's a har- you can't fire three shots like that. Why aren't you not firing at him when he's coming towards you if you really- Mm-hmm. ... if you're serious? It's very unlikely, but possible. I mean, it can be done. The shot can be done, but that's one of the least ridiculous things about that story is whether or not one person could have pulled off those shots. I don't think it could be done. I don't think it could be done. I don't think the, I think the world's l- best, uh, marksmen couldn't do it. I remember reading something about that. Mm, I'm not sure about that. No, it's a hard shot. Three shots- It's a hard shot, but hard shots can be made. Hard shots can be made. Three shots in that time period? Depending upon how much he train- trained for it, depending on what ... I mean, I've, I've, know some people that are s- spectacular marksmen that can do some ridiculous shit, and do it so fast, like- But he wasn't. He wasn't. But he was also trained, and if he, d- depending upon how much training he did between his time in the service and his time actually getting ready to shoot Kennedy, you can get a lot better. I don't know how much training he did. I mean, you could take someone who's three years ago a terrible shot, and then he, they kill someone, you go, "Well he couldn't have done it, he's a terrible shot. Look, three years ago he was a terrible shot." Mm-hmm. Well, if that guy was training that entire time- With a, with that rifle? Well, see the, there, I don't think the rifle ... Look, it can be done, but again, whether it's likely or not, that could be debated. Anyway, yeah. But it's the least ridiculous thing about that story. Well, w- wait 'til you see the documentary- I can't wait. ... 'cause we, we, we go, we, I think we pretty much prove that there's no chain of evidence on the, on the rifle either. Hm, oh, no, I'm sure. I'm sure. Did you read Da- uh, David Lifton's book, Best Evidence? Years ago, yeah. Yeah, that's what got me into the Kennedy assassination. Oh. Somebody gave it to me, a friend of mine, a c- musician friend of mine when I was on the road, and, uh, I re- (laughs) I read it unfortunately all day right before my stand up comedy shows that night, and I was so depressed. Yeah. I didn't think anything was funny, and I went on stage, I had a terrible show. And then, uh, I had to shake myself out of it for the second show- Yeah. ... because I was bummed out. I was like, I had never considered it before. I'm like, "Jesus Christ, they killed the president and they covered it up." Yeah, and we're paying for it to this day, 'cause I think, uh, Mr. Kennedy was one of the, really on the road to being a great president, and I think he did a lot of great things that people don't even know, and we put that in the documentary. What he was actually doing in Africa- Mm-hmm. ... people don't know. What he was doing around the world in Asia, in Cuba, obviously, South America, what his plans were. People don't understand that there was a big divide between Ly- Lyndon Johnson, who he, he was about to get rid of him as vice president and for the next election. There was a big divide in thinking between Kennedy and Johnson. Kennedy was without doubt pulling out of the war. Y- there was a directive, we, we, we bring it up in the, from the, uh, a, a sec def conference in Hawaii from earlier that year. He was pulling out, he w- made that very clear. Well, there was also the Northwoods document, which was really crazy. Oh, that's shocking, yeah, that's crazy. Shocking when you- Sure. ... actually, because this is not speculation or, uh, any kind of conspiracy theory, this is all from the Freedom of Information Act signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff- (laughs) ... they were going to blow up a jet airliner and blame it on the Cubans. They were gonna arm Cuban friendlies and attack Guantanamo Bay. They were gonna do all this to get us to go to war with Cuba. Yeah. And it was, it's, it's stunning that this, this is an, this is an actual plan by the United States government, vetoed by Kennedy. Wasn't there a plan also to fly a plane into a building, as I remember? I don't know if there was. There was a plane, a plan to blow up a drone jetliner. They were gonna take a jetliner, fly it- Yeah. ... and blow it up in the sky, and, and, you know, attribute, uh, all these deaths to that. That came about actually, the Northwoods came about as a result of the movie, because that was what they, was found by the Assassination Records Review Board. Really? Yeah. Wow. So, it's one of many documents that have come out. That's why it's important from my, s- sp-

    5. OSOliver Stone49:00

       ... space- peace of mind to finish this thing. It's kinda like, "Okay, this is the end. I have to just-"

    6. JRJoe Rogan49:05

       Mm-hmm.

    7. OSOliver Stone49:06

       "... put down the evidence, because I couldn't do it in a film."

    8. JRJoe Rogan49:09

       Right. Yeah, that's what I was gonna get to. Like, what, what is it like when you have this passion for this story, and this is a, a critical story in the history of the United States.

    9. OSOliver Stone49:18

       Yeah.

    10. JRJoe Rogan49:19

        And a clear piece of... I mean, it's, it's a clear historical record of an assassination of a president, and most likely-

    11. OSOliver Stone49:26

        (laughs)

    12. JRJoe Rogan49:27

        ... whe- who... I mean, I don't know, who do you, who do you think was behind it?

    13. OSOliver Stone49:30

        I think, um, it... I'm not gonna, you know, get sued because they're all dead-

    14. JRJoe Rogan49:34

        Right.

    15. OSOliver Stone49:34

        ... but I think that Allen Dulles has to be looked at a lot closer, and I think hi- he was no longer in the CIA but he had a tremendous amount of influence, and I think he needed some organized, very organized top people to help him. So I think it could've been a group of people that were involved, and that may be involving certain people in the Pentagon too, because there was an awful lot of strange things that happened.

    16. JRJoe Rogan49:58

        Yeah, he certainly had some ideas that didn't jive well with the, the people that were in power.

    17. OSOliver Stone50:03

        Dulles was fired by Kennedy, let's call it-

    18. JRJoe Rogan50:05

        Yeah, that's true too.

    19. OSOliver Stone50:05

        ... call a spade a spade, which had never been done.

    20. JRJoe Rogan50:08

        Right.

    21. OSOliver Stone50:08

        This was a shock, uh, to the American way of government. I mean, we'd come from a pro-military system and here was Kennedy questioning it. And then, uh, w- you know, when after he was killed, I mean, it was insane for Lyndon Johnson to appoint him to the Warren Commission-

    22. JRJoe Rogan50:25

        Hmm.

    23. OSOliver Stone50:25

        ... where he managed to control pretty much the hearings and who, who was heard, who wasn't heard-

    24. JRJoe Rogan50:30

        Right.

    25. OSOliver Stone50:30

        ... and what the CIA was delivering to the... It was a joke, it was transparent a joke.

    26. JRJoe Rogan50:34

        There's a qu- a couple things that are a joke. Arlen Specter, being the guy who comes up with the magic bullet theory, is another joke.

    27. OSOliver Stone50:40

        Yeah.

    28. JRJoe Rogan50:41

        There's, there's a lot of that that's ve- just very disturbing. When... It's one of those things where you go over that subject and you just leave in this state of d- discomfort and unease, and, and it's very hard to relax afterwards.

    29. OSOliver Stone50:53

        (laughs) Well, you'll wait till you see our documentary.

    30. JRJoe Rogan50:55

        I can't wait. I love... Look, I lo- like I said, I love the untold history of the United States-
11. 1:06:45 – 1:18:19

    Scarface, researching criminals, and why the war on drugs mirrors war bureaucracy

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:06:45

       ... now when y- like, Scarface is another movie, like we were saying that, that, that is the introduction for a lot of people. Uh, they, a lot of people, especially outside of Miami, really just didn't understand how crazy things had gotten there. And, uh, I have a, a good friend of mine who's an ophthalmologist who did his residency in Miami, and he would tell me stories. Like, he, he was there in the '80s when all the crazy shit was happening and, uh, just, he was like, "It was a war zone." He go- You would just, everybody was, you just, everybody coming in was shot, people were all-

    2. OSOliver Stone1:07:17

       Oh.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:07:17

       ... coked up and all these overdoses and-

    4. OSOliver Stone1:07:20

       Well, that's, I think there's a lot of sensationalism in that. You know, America likes war, they like-

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:07:24

       Mm-hmm.

    6. OSOliver Stone1:07:24

       They like to play up the, uh, the machine guns and all that, and that was 1930 Chicago.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:07:30

       Mm-hmm.

    8. OSOliver Stone1:07:30

       Time Magazine went out of its way to sensationalize it and I, I was there, I saw, you know, it wasn't wild that way in the sense of shooting in the streets would happen rarely, but they happened. People would be gunned down. Families were killed. Drug dealers went after families of each other, so-

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:07:45

       Yeah.

    10. OSOliver Stone1:07:45

        There was a lot of that kind of internecine warfare.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:07:49

        Well, my friend saw it because he was in the ER, you know, so he was seeing-

    12. OSOliver Stone1:07:52

        Oh, I see, yeah, at the ER.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:07:53

        He's doing his residency there, so he was seeing it.

    14. OSOliver Stone1:07:55

        Well, I think in any American city there's a lot of shootings every week. (laughs)

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:07:58

        That's true.

    16. OSOliver Stone1:07:58

        You know, so I think it's-

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:07:59

        Especially right now, right?

    18. OSOliver Stone1:08:00

        But definitely there was a new element, it was, it was the Colombian element, and the Marielitos came in, some of them, uh, C- Cubans who were thr- uh, gangster element out of Cuba.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:08:11

        Yeah.

    20. OSOliver Stone1:08:12

        And it got bloody when the, the Colombians were not playing around, so there was a lot of cutthroats. They used to, they used to, chivatos, uh-

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:08:21

        Colombian necktie?

    22. OSOliver Stone1:08:22

        Yeah, that's right. That's right.

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:08:24

        Yeah.

    24. OSOliver Stone1:08:24

        And when I was there I heard about a couple of these guys, uh... It was interesting because I was working both sides of the case. I was trying to get to know the, the, the, uh, crime element as m- as more than... So I knew all the g- the lawyers and I went over to Bimini one day to, uh, to, to f- get some real information about them because they couldn't... In the US they were scared to talk. So I, I, I located through a defense lawyer, uh, a couple of, some guys in, uh, in Bimini. I went down there and I met with 'em and, uh, they were talking, and 'cause that was, Bimini was another kind of world. There was a, the government was on the take there, I think, and they had a lot of speedboats flying, going out of there every night at the hotel towards the, you know, Bimini's very close to Miami. And I, I was doing coke at that time and I got with my wife, I, she was my cover.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:09:15

        (laughs)

    26. OSOliver Stone1:09:15

        And I, you know, and I took, uh, "Hollywood screenwriter he wants to talk to you. He did Midnight Express." They like that, you know?

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:09:21

        Mm-hmm.

    28. OSOliver Stone1:09:21

        They wanna know about the business. But then in the middle of this, we were all coked up in the hotel and I, you know, the way conversation goes, and I drop a name, uh, just like that, you know, a guy I talked to. Well, he'd been a defense lawyer when I talked to him, but in the past he'd been a prosecutor.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:09:37

        Ooh.

    30. OSOliver Stone1:09:37

        Because that, prosecutors often flip to defense attorneys to make more money. So when I mentioned that name, the two of these three guys got really uptight and they walked, they s- they excused themselves, went into the bathroom when I s- I said I fucked up. I knew I'd fucked up and I didn't know what was gonna come out of that bathroom, you know? If, if they thought I was some kind of cop, some kind of underc-

Episode duration: 1:43:27