ABSTRACT
Oliver Stone is one of the most successful directors currently working in Hollywood. Able to balance political critique with character-centered dramas, he has found a way to sustain both a popular and controversial vision of America. The story of Stone's films, however, is also the story of his developing protagonists, archetypal heroes who act as philosophical test pilots for an entire generation as they try out the next phase of teleological development. Stone's films, can be viewed as an anomaly in that they offer a unified mythic vision of humanity's perennial journey toward the self in the midst of postmodern fragmentation. Regardless of how early versions of the screenplay were released, they managed to stir up some of the same controversies Stone faced with John F. Kennedy. According to a March 14, 1995, report in Daily Variety, one of Oliver Stone's enemies may have actively dispersed multiple copies of the script in order to kill the film with bad publicity.
