Chasing the Light

How I Fought My Way into Hollywood

By: Oliver Stone

Narrated by: Oliver Stone

Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

In this powerful and evocative memoir, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter, Oliver Stone, takes us right to the heart of what it's like to make movies on the edge.

In Chasing the Light he writes about his rarefied New York childhood, volunteering for combat and his struggles and triumphs making such films as Platoon, Midnight Express and Scarface.

Before the international success of Platoon in 1986, Oliver Stone had been wounded as an infantryman in Vietnam and spent years writing unproduced scripts while taking miscellaneous jobs and driving taxis in New York, finally venturing westward to Los Angeles and a new life.

Stone, now 73, recounts those formative years with vivid details of the high and low moments: we sit at the table in meetings with Al Pacino over Stone's scripts for Scarface, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July; relive the harrowing demon of cocaine addiction following the failure of his first feature, The Hand (starring Michael Caine); experience his risky on-the-ground research of Miami drug cartels for Scarface; and see his stormy relationship with The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino. We also learn of the breathless hustles to finance the acclaimed and divisive Salvador; and witness tensions behind the scenes of his first Academy Award-winning film, Midnight Express.

The culmination of the book is the extraordinarily vivid recreation of filming Platoon in the depths of the Philippine jungle with Kevin Dillon, Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp et al, pushing himself, the crew and the young cast almost beyond breaking point.

Written fearlessly, with intense detail and colour, Chasing the Light is a true insider's story of Hollywood's years of upheaval in the 1970s and '80s, and Stone brings this period alive as only someone at the centre of the action truly can.

©2020 Oliver Stone (P)2020 Octopus Publishing Group

Critic reviews

"Oliver Stone's narrative, his life story about the heartbreaks, the near misses, and finally the triumphs is a Hollywood movie in itself." (Spike Lee)

"He provokes outrage. He stirs up controversy. He has no respect for safe places. Oliver Stone is larger than life. Chasing the Light says it all." (Sir Anthony Hopkins)

"Riveting." - (The New York Times)

A brutally honest recollection

really enjoyed this book. Oliver Stone is brutally honest in recalling his past and the book is more than just a must read for film lovers.

Excellent

They say, you shouldn't meet your heroes. Well, listening to this memoir is a meeting of sorts and it has been a very happy one.

Thank you Oliver, yet again...

Interpreter of American Nightmares

Almost without exception, Oliver Stones' films depict American blunders; wars, assasinations, political deceit. Most of which follows is true, could have been a sub title for this book, but it is a brutally honest account of the director's cut, with many intriguing encounters, with Hollywood stardom - James Woods, Al Pacino, a conversation with Marlon Brando. Stones' low key, somnambulant voice is a little off putting, but the story remains intriguing and a must read for any cinephile worth his salt