of the ratings chart and perhaps interpreted 0 as a zero, on a 0-10 scale.) On 27 September, Fred wrote to me: “Please


send me a list of questions you’d like to ask Stone about the film. It will be helpful for whoever does the interview. I don’t know what form this feature will take; I’ll have to see how interesting Stone is and what he has to say.” There is a gap in the paper trail at this point, and


Oliver Stone circa 1976. It was my first-ever piece of fan mail. Isn’t life


strange? Our newfound contact with Oliver Stone was


enough to encourage Fred to consider devoting a forthcoming issue to “The Making of SEIZURE.” He wrote to Oliver, verified that he was willing to cooperate, and then wrote back again (on 26 September 1975) to offer the interviewing services of his New York correspondents Dan Scapperotti and David Bartholomew, both of whom had rated SEIZURE “O” [which meant “average” on CFQ’s Ratings Chart]. As an alternative, Fred said that two California correspondents might handle the as­ signment: Jeffrey Frentzen, who rated the film “+ ” [one notch above average], or Steve Rubin, who hadn’t seen the film at all. “Alternately,” Fred said in closing, “we could conduct an interview with you via tape.” In a return letter dated 12 September 1975,


Oliver responded to Fred in clipped telegraphese: “I appreciate your interest in film, and if you would like to do an interview, would be pleased to help you in any way I can. I am probably more prone to discuss the ineptitudes of the distributor more than the film itself because of my anger, so I don’t know if it would be your type of interview except as a scathing indictment of distribution methods—and my case maybe unique (vide EXORCIST, BEYOND DOOR successes); and I hate to sound like an angry loser, if you know what I mean. The film itself was made under torturous conditions in Canada in 5 hectic weeks where everything went wrong, and it was a miracle we even finished film; the rest of the history was like additional mud on the cake. I guess as a tragicomedy of errors it might make painless and entertaining reading. At your disposal, but hopefully with a sympathetic writer who has seen film and liked it—not one of your ‘O’ men.” (It seems that Stone was unfamiliar with the structure


I don’t remember precisely how I came to propose interviewing Stone myself. It’s probable that I reminded Fred by phone that Oliver had liked my review, that we had been in touch, and since Fred wanted me to supply questions to the interviewer anyway, why not send them directly to Oliver and cut out the glory-hogging middleman? Regardless of how it came about, that’s the way it finally happened. The paper trail resumes with a letter from


Stone, sent from his (then) East 55th Street ad­ dress in Hew York City, dated 23 June 1976: “Anxious to get your questions etc. and will return to you inside 10 days but sooner the better insofar as think will be pretty busy later in summer.” He enclosed a cover sheet illustration for his work-in- progress, THE RASCALS (in which he hoped to work again with SEIZURE co-star Hervé Villechaize), which has yet to be produced. Also in the envelope was the full answer to Fred


Clarke’s resonant question, “Who is Oliver Stone?”—a current resumé, which I had requested to help me prepare my questions. It said that Stone was bom in 1946 in Hew York City, that he had graduated cum laude from The Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in 1964 but had resigned from Yale University one year later “for personal reasons.” He had taught in South Vietnam, been a


journalist in Southeast Asia, and had served in Vietnam in the U.S. Army, Infantry division, from 1967-68, for which he had received the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. There was also men­ tion of an unpublished novel,CHILD’S NIGHT DREAM (1966), whose title evoked the darkly Sendakian atmosphere of SEIZURE. Between 1969 and 1971, Stone had attended


Hew York University Film School, where his profes­ sor had been Martin Scorsese. During this period, he wrote, edited and directed three short films: LAST YEAR IN VIETNAM (10m), MADMAN OF MARTINIQUE (20m) and MICHAEL AND MARIE (30m), which played theatrically in HYC. In 1972, he worked as an Associate Producer on Ted Gershuny’s SUGAR COOKIES, an erotic horror film starring, of course, Mary Woronov. Prior to SEIZURE, Stone’s only other acknowledged film


29

Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84