In the space of three years, Oliver Stone made three films in Dallas, an unusual number for any director but especially one not from Texas. “I know, I’m from New York!” Stone said with a laugh, when I connected with him over Zoom.
The films are quite different, but each captures a facet of the city. The late-night claustrophobia of Talk Radio (1988) is a maze of reflective glass with the neon skyline in the window. Born on the Fourth of July (1989) uses the sun-dappled streets of Oak Cliff to tell a very American story of idealism curdling to betrayal. And of course there is JFK (1991), Stone’s feverish spin on that fateful day in 1963 and New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison’s doomed crusade to make sense of it.
Stone is coming to Texas Theatre to screen and discuss those movies — in addition to his warped serial-killers-in-love classic, Natural Born Killers, celebrating its 30th anniversary — for a mini-festival called “4 Days in Dallas With Oliver Stone” running Oct. 3-6. He’ll be talking with Dallas-based journalist Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture critic and one of the preeminent Stone experts, having written a collection of conversations and essays about the director called The Oliver Stone Experience.
It’s hard to imagine better movie programming than watching JFK with Oliver Stone in the theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was caught. I spoke with the director about filming in Dallas, the lone-gunman theory and what Jerry Jones gave him.
Let’s start with your first Dallas film, Talk Radio. How did it wind up being shot here?
We were trying to make Born on the Fourth of July, but it was a big cookie to bite. It was too expensive, it was about a paraplegic and the studios considered it a downer. Tom Cruise and I came together to make that happen, but Tom was doing Rain Man, and we had to wait. [Producer] Ed Pressman saw this play in New York with Eric Bogosian called Talk Radio. The play was powerful. I said, maybe we should take a couple of months, and I’ll shoot it while we’re waiting for Tom.
It essentially gave you a chance to get to know Dallas.
That’s right. Because we had a limited amount of money for Born on the Fourth of July, which was a very big production, and Texas was very attractive. It’s a right-to-work state, and the Texas Film Commission came after us aggressively. Come to Dallas, see our beautiful new studio out in Las Colinas. And Dallas had so many talented extras.
So why had you wanted to film Born on the Fourth of July in Dallas in the first place?
[Real-life Vietnam vet and film protagonist] Ron Kovic grew up in Massapequa, Long Island, but Long Island was being developed, so it didn’t have the kind of emptiness, the open-space skies I found in Dallas. There was a neighborhood that really turned out well, [the Elmwood section of] Oak Cliff. They gave us a whole street.
Texas was good to us. I hated the hospital we shot in, though. We moved into an abandoned hospital, and that was probably the hardest two weeks I’ve ever shot. Those scenes based on the Veterans Hospital in the Bronx are very depressing, but it was necessary, because that’s the truth, of course.
You were reading Jim Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins while you were shooting Born on the Fourth of July. So was it filming in Dallas that sparked the fascination that led to JFK?
I never really made that connection, but I’m sure someone took me to see Dealey Plaza for the first time. When you see it, you realize what a jewel box it is. How small. You don’t realize that from pictures. It’s a perfect ambush site.
Dallas spent decades in denial about the Kennedy assassination. The Sixth Floor Museum didn’t open until 1989, shortly before you shot the film. And the movie JFK blows the doors off history, creating that feeling that something just isn’t right. How hard was it to get permission to shoot in Dealey Plaza?
There was a big fight. A lot of politicking behind the scenes. And Dealey Plaza was our first day of shooting. Can you imagine? With all those cars and the bang-bang echoing through the city. They closed off Stemmons Freeway and gave us the whole square. It turned into quite a circus.
That movie was a nightmare in terms of work. I had to be totally focused and ignore distractions. The Washington Post ripped off a first draft of the script, and we were already on the [sixth] draft, and they came out with a Sunday piece months before the movie opened, ripping us to shreds. I didn’t realize the opposition to the film until I got into it, which is somewhat like what happened to [New Orleans DA and the film’s protagonist Jim] Garrison.
I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole on JFK’s assassination, but friends who have will tell me: The conspiracies are fun, but at the end of the day, it’s just a lone gunman. They often cite Vincent Bugliosi’s book. What are your thoughts on Reclaiming History?
It’s ridiculous. It’s like citing Gerald Posner’s book [Case Closed]. The best refutation is from Jim DiEugenio, who went into Bugliosi’s book detail by detail [Reclaiming Parkland]. It’s sad that people don’t bother to read the rebuttals.
I went back to all this material in 2021 with the documentary JFK Revisited. It’s very clear that Oswald was known to the CIA. I don’t want to get into all the arguments here, but that documentary is worth seeing.
For a non-Dallas filmmaker, you’ve tackled some very essential Dallas stories. You came back to make the football film Any Given Sunday.
We were having a huge fight with the NFL. We couldn’t get stadiums, and we couldn’t get the jerseys or uniforms. We had to create our own parallel world. Thank God, Jerry Jones was a real gentleman, and he said, you’re welcome to use my stadium. Or maybe he said the Dallas Cowboys stadium.
No, it’s his. [Laughter.] So when you come to town, will you go to Dealey Plaza?
Oh, well, sure.
Details
Oct. 3-6 at Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd., Dallas. $17 each, $75 weekend pass. thetexastheatre.com.
