One Of Those Things

So okay. Oliver Stone. "Alexander" was one of those you-can-tell-he's-a-genius-by-how-bad-this-was things. It was straight out of Baudelaire that way. ("The successes of geniuses are greater than the successes of other men, and his failures are worse than the failures of other men.") This was a total disaster which, at the same time, had tremendous visual richness. It came from an artist. So, I thought, let's brush up on Oliver Stone. I went to the salon.com archives and found some article from several years ago.

The author of the article accused Stone of fatuous self-flattery because Stone's website at the time described him as "Writer, Director, Thinker." Um...but Oliver Stone *is* a writer, director, and thinker. If Paris *Hilton* had a website that said "Writer, Director, Thinker," we'd have a problem. Not here.

It's interesting the opprobrium that Stone gets. I wonder what it is that ticks people off so much. They accuse him of being unsubtle. What, exactly, about American culture *is* subtle? Did I miss something? Is this or is this not the nation that produced Metallica, the Dallas Cowboys and Adam Sandler?