Stone: The Controversies, Excesses, and Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker

Despite a nominally independent stance, Riordan (Break On Through), who consulted on Oliver Stone's 1991 rock fantasia, The Doors, has hardly a discouraging word to say about Stone's increasingly controversial films and notorious cage-rattling behavior in this admiring portrait of the Hollywood director. As what seems like a cast of thousands--friends, actors, Hollywood insiders--steps up to the mike to pay tribute to Stone's artistic greatness and personal goodness, Riordan chimes in with surprisingly few of his own ideas, beyond the oft-repeated mantra that Stone is a Method director who uses film to ``exorcise his madness.'' After chapters on Stone's chaotic childhood and harrowing Vietnam experiences, Riordan deals only glancingly with Stone's personal life, most notably the womanizing that led to the breakup of his marriage in 1994. But the often facile psychologizing aside, fans will appreciate the detailed, behind-the-scenes accounts of Stone's films. (Dec.)