#ALSO white calling billy the dreamer when HE'S the one who pushes so hard for things

[grinchwrapsupreme]

being super normal about White calling Billy "a dreamer"after the events of Maybe No Go

[sweetbillwriting]

This Is Bad, Billy

Part 2 - You're Special

Description: 1961. Joanie is a dreamer. She dreams of Hollywood, fashion and handsome men. Her favorite is the actor Billy Skarsgård. When she works as a volunteer at the hospital she meets him in an unexpected way and comes closer to him than she thought was possible.

Characters: AU Bill Skarsgård, here called Billy. He's inspired by real life Bill but also the character Clark Olofsson in the Netflix series Clark. The rest is my own characters.

Setting: This story is set in the 60s L.A and a smaller town close to L.A.

Warnings: 18+, historical preferences, mental health problems, mental illness, smut.

Even if it was late it was still quite bright out and it helped me see him in the distance. He was leaning against the hood of a car while he smoked. He made perfect rings of the smoke and I wondered if he did anything sloppy. He felt like the type that perfected every artwork he did. When I came closer he looked up at me and smirked with amusement. I knew why he looked like that and also why he bit his lip. I had been forced to wear my uniform so my parents would believe I was going to work so now I was walking towards him in my white nurse dress. I felt silly but knew other men had said I was cute in it. Maybe Billy would think the same?

"Oh, my own little nurse," he said when I came closer. He threw his cigarette on the ground and pushed his hands down the front pockets of his pants. They must have been his own pants but the sweater he wore seemed to be from the ward, I had seen other patients in similar ones. I blushed at his words but tried to look confident and grown up, like a femme fatale in a movie even if something told me I wasn’t doing it so very well.

"It's not my car but do you want to take a ride?"

I swallowed hard and fiddled with a button on my spring coat.

"Who's car is it?"

"Shawn's. He's a friend."

Billy opened the door for me and hypnotized by his smile I jumped into the passenger seat of the car. My mother had never even let me ride with the boys I went to school with, now I would ride in the evening with a young man. A famous, crazy actor. I giggled at the thought and it made Billy laugh softly when he jumped in next to me. He gave me a smile and licked his lips.

"I hope you're in for some trouble," he said and wiggled his brows before starting the car. I didn't know what he meant by trouble, only that I just wanted to find out. If it was real trouble then it would be that way. I just wanted the adventure.

I looked at Billy when he was driving with one hand. We sat silent in the Simca car. It wasn't anything special and I wondered what kind of car Billy owned. Living in L.A he must have a car, or maybe he had several? Was he rich? I didn't have a clue how much he earned and I realized didn't know anything about him.

"How old are you?" I asked and looked at his hands. My mom had said hands were a good clue to how old a person was. His hands were big but elegant, slender with smooth pale skin, like he hadn't done any practical work in his life.

"26, how old are you?" He asked and looked at me up and down. "18 or something?"

"Nineteen. I don't go to high school or anything like that. I work and…" I didn't have anything more to say to prove I was an adult but Billy didn't seem to react to it.

"You're from Sweden?" I said and looked out over the city. I didn't have a clue where he was driving and it had started to get dark.

"Mm," he just said and continued to look at the road.

"When did you move here?"

"I was your age."

I nodded a little when I understood he didn't want to talk about it. Even if he was standoffish I felt surprisingly calm. It was quick for me to calm down in his company even if I couldn't stop admiring his special beauty.

We rode through the countryside, by the ocean. It was quiet in the car but I didn't feel uncomfortable at all. I just looked at the beautiful surroundings and listened to the sounds of the car. I could smell faintly of an aftershave, but not the heavy sort my dad used.

Billy cleared his voice and I woke up from my trance-like state.

"You're different… I thought the first thing you would ask was why I am in the loony bin."

I looked at Billy who continued to look at the road but his expression had changed. He didn't look as tough any more.

"Of course I thought about it… But I don't get the feeling that you're one of them? Or… Are you?" I looked at him examining even if I felt quite indifferent to the answer.

Billy laughed uncomfortably and drove out on the highroad.

"I don't know. I guess in their eyes I am…"

I swallowed hard and looked down at my hands. I didn't know what that meant but I became worried for a few seconds then I looked at Billy's face again. He looked down at his lap and looked so fragile. Maybe he just was depressed? That was something I could handle and he hadn't shown signs for something else.

"You know, doctor's pretend to know so much. Pretend to have answers and evidence for everything. They say they know who I am, that I have these kinds of problems but they don't have an answer for anything. They just make it up. Typical doctors."

He ranted and sounded upset. I didn't say anything. Not because I was the doctor's daughter but because I actually didn't know if he was right. I wanted to believe my father wasn't like that but while listening to other doctor's I had wondered how much was a guess of what they said.

"I'm sorry," he said and looked at me with worried eyes. "I shouldn't talk so much."

I nodded a little but gave him a small smile.

"I don't think you are one of them… I think you're just… Special," I said with glowing cheeks and looked down at my lap. Billy made a sound, a happy sound and laid his hand on my thigh. I had never had a boy's hand on my thigh before and I looked at it a while before I laid my own hand on top of it. The back of his hand was warm and smooth and I dragged my fingers over it just to feel the smoothness of his skin.

"So… How well do you know who I am?" He asked with a teasing smile and I felt my face get beet red at once. I didn't know what to say. I thought about every picture of him I've cut out from magazines and every movie he was in that I had seen so many times.

"Ehh… Quite well I guess? You're quite famous," I said and looked out from the window of the car. He drove up a slope where there wasn't any lighting or other cars.

Billy just nodded at my words and licked his lips.

"But there’s not much about you," I said and hoped he would tell me more.

"Like what, you mean?" He said and parked by a viewpoint so we could look out over the city under the Hollywood sign. It was beautiful and it took a while for me to answer as I was admiring the view.

"Like age… If you're married…" I looked down at my hands embarrassed. I looked up at him and he succeeded in quickly catching my gaze. I drowned in his big green eyes while he smiled kindly towards me.

"I'm not married…" I couldn't stop myself from smiling a blushy smile but got nervous again when I remembered what I've actually read about him.

"They call you a bad boy…"

Billy threw his head back and laughed.

"Do they?"

I nodded and watched him closely when he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. I saw that he was trying to come up with an answer to that. He rubbed his stubbly jaw while I looked down at my little pearl ring I had inherited from my grandmother.

"I guess I like parties… And girls…"

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled towards me softly. I just looked down at my nurse dress and thought about what that meant. Did he kiss a lot of girls? Or did he just have many female friends?

"Oh… What are you doing with the girls?"

He laughed embarrassed but then licked his lips and looked at me up and down.

"I can show you?"

I didn't know how I knew but something about his energy told me he wanted my flower. My virginity.

"No… No…" I giggled bashfully and continued to look at my ring. "I'm a good girl."

Billy smiled at me and laid his hand on my thigh again.

"You can be a good girl anyway."

I shook my head but smiled. It was a compliment knowing he wanted to get so close to me but I knew a good girl waited for marriage. If you weren't a cheap girl or one of all those stupid girls who moved to L.A. to work as secretaries.

"Okay, I won’t force you or anything. Such things are beneath my dignity. I am a gentleman. Most often." He smirked as he put a cigarette between his lips.

"What do you want to do in the future? Do you want to be a nurse?"

I shook my head fast and watched him light his cigarette and took a deep drag.

"No. I want to do something more special."

"You should be a model," he said like it was obvious and looked me up and down. I laughed and shook my head. I was far from a model.

"I'm way too ugly for that. And tall. And skinny."

He nodded as if he thought the same but then smiled.

"That trend will be huge soon. You can see it in England. Skinny girls in the shortest skirts. They think I'm really handsome there. Here in the US I look too weird to be the handsome actor."

I looked at him with skepticism but I also a bit hurt.

"You think I'm ugly?"

"What?" He gave me a confused look. "No, no. God no. But you're more like Audrey Hepburn than Marilyn Monroe. You're more original." He took my hand in his and hugged it then he lifted it to his plump lips and kissed the back of it. My heart started to beat so hard it felt like I would have a heart attack. Maybe he could have my flower after all?

We sat by the viewpoint and talked about ordinary things but Billy also shared fantastic stories from his Hollywood life. It was obvious he first was uncomfortable doing so but did it because I loved it so much. I turned so I could sit with my back against the door and took off my flats. Billy tried to make himself comfortable too but his long legs made it hard for him to change his position.

"There is a blanket in the trunk. Maybe we can sit outside a bit? You can borrow my jacket."

Even if I was really comfortable with Billy now I blushed at the thought of borrowing his jacket. It was such a thing boyfriends and girlfriends did but I longed to have the smooth looking leather jacket over my shoulders. I saw it laying in the backseat and I imagined it smelling of his aftershave and cigarettes.

"Okay…" I said and turned so I could jump out from the car. I still had my light blue spring coat over the nurse dress but it was thin and didn't give me any warmth, not like how a leather jacket would.

Billy spread out a green plaid blanket in front of the car then he looked at me with a smile.

"Is it cold? Do you want my jacket?"

I blushed again but really I wanted to tread the waters more so I walked up closer to him. He really was tall. He had always looked tall on screen but I had thought it was some kind of camera trick.

"Yes please," I said even if it wasn't that cold. But of course I wanted his jacket.

He laid the heavy leather jacket over my shoulders and wrapped me in it from behind. He dragged his hands over my arms and looked down at me over my shoulder. Some of his hair hung down in his eyes which made him look handsome and really dangerous. I just wanted him to kiss me the way he did with the girls in the movies.

"Better?" He said softly and continued to drag his hands up and down my arms. I wrapped the jacket around myself tighter and nodded. We stood like that for a while, Billy behind me, holding me close and I listened to my heart in my ears. I had never been so close to a boy and Billy was a man. Twenty six years old and seemed to have been with several women before me. That thought didn't scare me, instead I wanted him even more. A man with experience.

We sat close together on the blanket and while talking about awful movies we had seen and getting some insider gossip from Billy. He laid his arms around my shoulders and dragged me closer to him. The position wasn't really that comfortable because his arm laid heavy around me and to be able to rest my head against his shoulder I was forced to sit in a weird way. I really tried to say to myself it was nice but it really wasn't. My back hurt and I couldn't sit still.

"Are you uncomfortable?" He asked as he looked down at me while I tried to find a more comfortable position. I looked at his kind eyes and smiled a little.

"Ehh… A little?"

Billy smirked and laid down on his back on the blanket.

"Come here instead," he said, patting his chest. The knitted sweater had moved to the side and I could see his naked collarbone. I giggled a little and laid down half on top of him. It was nicer and I could listen to his even heartbeat at the same time. It was so dark now we could see constellations and to my surprise could Billy name quite many of them. I shifted between looking at his profile and the starlit sky even if I knew what star I wanted to watch. He shone brighter than all of them.

He must have felt how I watched him because while I stared he looked down at me and hugged my waist with a big strong hand. He moved so we laid nose against nose on the blanket, then he pressed his soft lips against mine. It was heavenly so when he continued I tried my best to follow his movement even if I didn't have any kissing experiences. He made a sound of amusement and took a break to look at me.

"Emm… Can you, like, let my tongue in?" He said and dragged me closer with a teasing smile on his lips.

"Oh… Yeah," I blushed hard and lowered my gaze.

"Just follow me okay? It's not that difficult," he said and pushed my hips against his. I could feel that he was different from me between his legs and thought back on the image of him naked in the bed. Maybe it was the fantasy about his sex that made me follow his movement better because after just a few seconds of tongue kissing I could follow Billy in his heated kisses and I moaned when our tongues danced with each other. He groaned and dragged me up so I laid on top of him and the movement made the three top buttons of my dress open up so he could see the white lace of my slip. Billy took a break and looked at my face in his hands, then down at my slip and my hardened nipples through the thin fabric.

"You're so sexy…" he whispered and bit his lip. He looked evil watching me with a hooded gaze but I wasn’t scared. This was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me and I knew I would give my flower to him. I wanted him so badly and would do anything in my power to lose my virginity to him instead of someone like Jacob. Billy was sexy, manly and strong. Famous and mysterious. Sexy. I giggled and was just happy he wanted to be close to me so when he pushed down the sleeves of my nurse dress and then the thin straps of the slip I just let him. He looked at my chest in the moonlight and I felt beautiful and strong by seeing his big eyes on my breasts. My mom would have killed me if she saw how easily I let a boy close but this was Billy. Billy Skarsgård.

"Can I touch them?" He said softly and pushed down the dresses so much my arms were free. I thought about covering myself with my hands but I liked how big and round Billy's eyes became from seeing my naked upper half.

"Okay…" I giggled again and played with my fingers. I didn't know where to put my hands and when Bill's long fingers started to play with my nipples I didn't know what to do at all. The sensation made a hot stream flow down between my legs and when he continued to massage my breasts it felt like I peed myself. My panties were so wet by seeing big, beautiful Billy playing with my breasts and he did it so softly and did teasing circles on my areolas.

"Is that nice?" He whispered when he realized I squirmed in his hands.

"Yes…" I said and pressed my legs together. Billy moved me so that I laid on my back on the blanket and looked at me from top to toe.

"Do you want me to play with your pussy?"

The word made me open my eyes in horror. I had never heard anyone say it that way, just some stupid boys in school, but not like it was a sexy word. But it was. Everything that came out from Billy's lips was sexy but it wasn't time for it. I pressed my legs together harder, not by arousement this time but because of panic. If he got my panties off he would probably be able to stick his… Thing in me.

I sat up and covered my chest with my hands.

"Ehh… Maybe next time?" I said and tried to say it sexily. Billy moved away from me and laughed warmly.

"So there will be a next time?" He said and laid my hair over my shoulder. I nodded quickly.

"Yes. Yes. And I think I’ll work on the ward too so…"

Billy smiled a little uncomfortable and looked out over the view.

"Hopefully you won’t see anything scary. It's not a place for a young, fine woman like you."

I smiled a little and shrugged my shoulders. I let go of my breasts to be able to take his hand in mine and Billy was quick at looking at my chest again. How I loved having his attention on me.

Even if Billy had many hours left in freedom he drove me home by midnight. I wondered why when I knew he didn't need to be back at the ward until 5 AM, when they woke the patients up. Maybe he wanted to be the gentleman he had said he was because it didn't feel like he had lost interest in me. I actually felt the opposite because the whole way back to my little town he held my hand in his big warm palm. It felt like I was in love and I probably was. He was the first boy I had been with all alone and now also been so close to. I looked at him bashfully and wondered if he was my boyfriend now but I didn't dare to ask. If he had been with other women he maybe didn't feel that intense feeling of love as I did.

"Is it something?" He asked when he noticed I just sat and watched him. I shook my head with a smile even if my head was full of questions.

"Do you want to meet me again tomorrow night?" He asked and smirked a bit cockily. He probably already knew the answer to that question.

"Yes." I just said with a blushing smile.

“How do you live? Like, do you have your bedroom next to your parents?"

He parked the car at the beginning of my street so my parents wouldn't see his car if they were awake.

"No, we have our bedrooms on the second floor but they have theirs at the end of the hallway to the right while I have mine to the left. Why?"

Bill smirked a little and licked his lips.

"Tomorrow, can I visit? In your bedroom?"

I felt my ears heat and my heart rythm go up. I don't even know how he would be able to come into my bedroom at night without using the entrance door.

"Can… Does that work?" I asked and looked at Bill's handsome face. He smiled reassuringly and nodded.

"I will find a way. Believe me."

I nodded nervously and looked discreetly down between his legs. Did he want my body then?

"We can just hang out. Maybe just cuddle a little?" He said like he had seen my doubt. He smiled sweetly and played with my hand in his and dragged his thumb over the pearl ring. I giggled and nodded. I believed him when he said he would find a way. He was probably creative.

"Can I kiss you goodbye?" He said softly and leaned closer to me. His eyes shifted between looking at my eyes and my lips. I just nodded and soon felt his soft lips against mine. He kissed more determinedly now and I felt more sure about how to do it. It was really nice and it felt like he thought so too because he groaned and pulled me closer by the waist. I wished we didn't have the gear shift between us. I giggled against his lips when I realized again who I was kissing. Billy Skarsgård! I was kissing Billy Skarsgård!

×××

It didn't seem like my mother had noticed that I disappeared in my daydreams more than I otherwise did. She probably was too uninterested in my extravagant dreams to actually care. She forced me to help her make a cake for my father instead. It was his 53rd birthday and when he came home we would celebrate him. And when my parents were asleep Billy would jump in through my window. Like in a movie.

"So what did you think about Jacob?" My mom asked while the cake was in the oven.

Who? Jacob?

"Ehh…" I said to win time.

"Wasn't he sweet? Did you hear that he has taken a course on how to be a good husband? Few men do such things. Care so much."

Oh. Right. Jacob with a green bowtie. The pattern was similar to the blanket I had made out with Billy on. I blushed with a small smile.

"Aw! You like him!" Said my mother teasingly and excitedly happy. If she just knew what I was really thinking about. I tried to come up with something to say but maybe it was better if my parents believed I liked Jacob, then they wouldn't try to matchmake me with someone else.

"He was nice," I said with a shoulder shrug but pretended to be embarrassed. My mom laughed and gave me a hug, like it was something to celebrate.

"Maybe we can invite him this weekend?" She said and gave me an expecting smile and I smiled back but really I wondered if I would be with Billy then too.

"Sure… But I work on Friday."

It wasn't a lie, I was but I didn't know if I would continue in the psychiatric ward. Maybe it wasn't a place for me, just like Billy had said but I just wanted to see him as much as I could.

When my father got home we celebrated him with the double frosted chocolate cake he loved. As usual he let me blow out the candles even if I was now an adult woman. He seemed to have some problems understanding that I had become older and wanted me to still be his little girl. It was just a year ago he had tried to get me to sit in his lap but then my mother actually said no. It wouldn't look good, especially not if a young man would see us. No boy wants to marry a daddy's girl. But I wasn't really a daddy's girl and the whole family knew that. My father had worked most of my childhood and I couldn't say I knew him or that he knew me. My father just believed he knew me and saw me as one of his perfect daughters even if I wasn't. Far from it. I was close to not getting a grade in neither math or science because I couldn't focus and some teachers had even called me stupid. It wasn't that kind of daughter a doctor should have but my dad probably didn't even know that. My mother never told him about the bad things and let him believe I was just as perfect as my sister. Or maybe even a future doctor.

All of us went to bed at 9 PM but most often my mother let me stay up to read. She thought I read Jane Austen but I usually just stayed up to do different hairstyles and practice painting the perfect winged eyeliner. I think I had learned to master that by now so that night I made an elegant updo on myself and painted eyeliner and my lips. I thought about what to wear but some sort of confidence took over so I wore just my thin slip. I looked like some actress in a french movie and the only thing that was missing was a cigarette in a holster.

I laid down in bed and tried to lay sensually but it was hard and especially when I realized I would need to wait for Billy a long time. I didn't know when he would come and even he didn't know when he could come. For a second I wondered if he maybe would give up but that didn't feel like Billy. I already had a feeling he was the sort that stuck to his plans.

I hadn't even noticed that I had fallen asleep when I woke up to a light knocking on my window. I didn't remember why I was lying in my slip with my hair up until it knocked again.

Billy. He had come!

I looked at myself fast in the mirror and fixed myself. I didn't look as good as I had done before I fell asleep but still looked good. A Brigitte Bardot I would never become.

Billy sat outside off the window on the little roof over the windows on the first floor. It was really thin so I couldn't understand how he was able to come up there. When I moved the yellow curtain away I met his mischievous eyes. Oh Lord, wasn't he the cutest?

It was a task to open the window without Billy falling down the roof but I noticed he was much more lethal than I thought. He was tall, broad shouldered but he seemed to have an easy time moving around, sometimes even like a dancer. He jumped into my room and landed smoothly on my rug. I couldn't stop myself from giggling and that made him smile big and drag me close to his body.

"Hey…" he said softly and kissed my cheek. I giggled again and hugged him around his neck.

"Missed me?" He said and hugged me back around my waist so my dress moved with his hands. He patted it down again but dragged his fingertips over the silky fabric.

"I've missed you," I just said and gave him a warm smile. I wondered again if he was my boyfriend. It felt like it. It felt like it even more when he kissed me deeply and pushed my body even closer to his.

×

[back-and-totheleft]

A Journey Against a Raging Historical Backdrop

If there is anything the year 2020 has shaken into the very fabric of our imperial society, it’s that nothing ever goes according to plan, rarely is anything absolutely assured. While a biological threat has upended not only our nationalist pride as a world hegemony, it no doubt has uprooted many personal obsessions with career paths and lifestyle. That most provocative of American film directors, Oliver Stone, has now released a passionate and absorbing memoir, Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador and the Movie Game, which in its own way, is fully apt for our time. More than any other work of autobiography to be released this summer, Stone’s account of going against the grain and demanding to be allowed to live off his vocation reads like a tonic.

For consumers of cinema, Stone remains a filmmaker eternally divisive. Whether it be his style, and above all, his politics, he inspires admiration and derision. He probably remains best known for his work from the ‘90s, especially the technical masterpiece JFK, which somehow collages every conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and Natural Born Killers, a visually anarchic satire crystalizing our American obsession with violence and celebrity. Agree with their theses or not, the fact that both films remain instant pop cultural reference points is a testament to their lasting value as art. I dare argue Stone’s 1995 opus Nixon, is a grossly underrated and vital drama unmatched by anything released since when it comes to cinematic political biography. This article could continue on and discuss Stone’s hallucinatory Jim Morrison biopic The Doors or his 1999 football epic Any Given Sunday, written and shot with the spirit of a Roman gladiator.

But Chasing the Light is powerful reading precisely because it is about those years before Stone reached Hollywood prominence. It is a book full of memories, self-doubt, stirring experiences and that ever so hard, grinding need to push oneself towards a stubborn goal. It helps that Stone is a natural born writer, chronicling his early years with a crisp, eloquent prose. But pulsing in nearly every space of subtext is a spirit of surviving by going against the grain. Stone even brushes aside the stale sugarcoating of other Hollywood biographies. He is blunt about sex, the personalities of others, and of course, his political opinions.

As evident in his work, Stone is obsessed with history and its lessons, the way it casts a shadow over our daily lives, whether we notice it or not. His book opens in 1976, as the U.S. celebrates it bicentennial and Stone stares out New York Harbor. Chapter one opens with a line recognizable to any dreamer without immediate resources, “I was coming up on thirty, and I was broke, but I didn’t want to think about that anymore.” The Statue of Liberty, the pomp of American Independence Day, even as the country was reeling from Vietnam, only adds to Stone’s sense of personal limbo. The narrative then shifts to a reverie going back to 1946, when Stone was born to Lou Stone and Jacqueline Goddet. Stone was himself a direct product of history. Lou was in General Eisenhower’s staff as a military man stationed in post-World War II France. Jacqueline was a French upper class girl who fell for the American G.I. fantasy. But like all dreams, the shores of reality provide a hard crash. Stone would be born into privilege, with Lou described as one of the last breed of Wall Street brokers still imbued with a slight sense of morality. He had lost it all before in the crash of 1929, but would lose more again. Sent off to boarding school, it was there that a young Stone would receive a blunt phone call informing him his parents were getting a divorce. In a swerve away from the typical image of 1950s America, Lou and Jacqueline were pretty blunt with young Oliver about their extramarital activities. On top of that, Lou was wallowing in debt.

It is this shattering of the ideal atomic family, white, affluent, basking in the delights of American capitalism, that seems to be the first real catalyst in the formation of Oliver Stone. In 1967, at the eve of turning 21, Stone is on his way to Vietnam after having enlisted. Here the rebel emerges, running from the plasticity and lies of the American privileged class, deciding on his own he wants to taste the real world. Raised in a conservative environment, Stone has little to say about the early cultural shocks of Elvis or the Beats, it simply wasn’t much a part of his world. What he does carry in him to war is a love for Homer, Greek mythology and its potent lessons. A Homeric view of combat, its bloody terror mixed with boredom, the cast of warriors in his platoon, would stay with Stone forever. This literary view sustains him as he returns to a country embroiled in radical cultural change.

If there is a romantic, almost Hemingway tone to the early sections of Chasing the Light, relatable to anyone who has ever felt like running away, even if it means to seek something greater in a tumultuous world, the second half of the book becomes one of the great recent testimonials of the struggling artist. What Stone knows from the beginning is that he is a writer. Words are his vocation. But after penning a failed, hallucinatory novel (later published in 1997 as A Child’s Night Dream), Stone realizes screenwriting is the new literary form of the age, because it is also an age of cinema. Books may never entirely go out of fashion, but the masses consume images, coupled with sound and music. This seemed to Stone, who confesses his mother would play hookie with him to see movies, like a better pathway to express the ideas and memories swirling in his intense psyche.

NYU would be where Stone would attend film school with Martin Scorsese as an instructor described as wonderfully manic and passionate. In the ‘70s a B.A. in had even less job market value than today, and Stone is soon driving cabs to survive, admitting that he wanted to avoid practical jobs as much as possible. Stone’s life reads like those classic, romantic authors of decades past, who would defy the norm, live in poverty and peck at their manuscripts. Stone eventually marries Najwa Sarkis, a Lebanese UN worker serving the Kingdom of Morocco. She provides Stone with a comfortable home as he writes scripts and treatments, and directs his first, low-budget feature, a horror film named Seizure. It fails, playing in a small grindhouse spot as a double bill in New York City. This is when Stone makes that difficult decision of again casting aside comfort, ending the marriage so he can move to Los Angeles with a script in hand based on his Vietnam experiences, Platoon. As Stone boards the plane for L.A., history both political and cultural blaze in the background. Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter are some of first cinematic attempts to grapple with Vietnam. Stone admires their scope, but they are obviously grandiose films made by directors who never fought in the war.

When Stone lands in the city of angels with its Hollywood promises, it is Platoon that gets him work. Through talent and stubbornness, Stone comes across as rather the lucky writer. His first major studio assignment, Midnight Express, based on a book by Billy Hayes, who was arrested and imprisoned in Turkey for smuggling hash, is for then emerging British director Alan Parker and becomes a smash hit, winning Stone his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The passages describing the cocaine-fueled ambiance of the Golden Globes before they were a live broadcast show are hilariously decadent, as well as the party atmosphere of late ‘70s Hollywood. Stone vaguely recalls writer Gore Vidal attempting to seduce Mick Jagger at one gathering.

Some of the warmer passages in the book involve Stone meeting his second wife, Elizabeth Cox, a blonde Texan who Stone describes as everything he would have ever wanted in a partner at the time. One gets the feeling of Stone constantly battling between the search for domesticity and his own impulses to go further, experiment and search as a young writer. He wants to be both loved and a libertine. He’s also a collaborative type of partner, giving Elizabeth a speaking role in his second feature, the box office bomb The Hand, which like Seizure, has not aged terribly and retains an eerie psychological force. When acting is not Elizabeth’s calling, Stone hires her as his typist.

Yet even as Stone basks in both the bacchanalia of the times and a loving relationship, developing a dangerous coke habit along the way, he writes every single day and manages to put his stamp on projects that would later be remolded by other filmmakers. Stone includes pages from his early drafts of Conan the Barbarian, which read like a Wagnerian fever dream. There’s still a sting of regret in the way he describes macho director John Milius taking the script and cutting it down to more of a B-movie romp to show off Arnold Schwarzenegger. The colder, by Stone’s observation slower, Brian De Palma would provide a better learning experience however, when Stone is hired to write the enduring cult classic Scarface. The infamously violent update of the 1932 Howard Hawks classic, starring Al Pacino as a Cuban refugee rising in the cartel world of 1980s Miami, would bring Stone into contact with underworld elements. There’s a darkly fun moment where he recounts meeting with Colombian gangsters and then unwisely dropping the name of a certain lawyer.

Through Scarface and other projects, Stone vividly remembers all the characters, some endearing and others downright venal, one encounters along the way of attempting success in this field where creativity and greed are nearly Siamese twins. What is eternally admirable about Stone is that he refuses to sell out. Even when slammed as overly violent or on the nose, preachy and despairing in his work, Stone’s voice is his own. He reserves low-grade acid in his prose for New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, who would write with a condescending, almost pathologically obsessive hatred for Stone’s scripts. And history is always in the background. The loose ‘70s would give way to the ultra-capitalist, hyper nationalist Reagan ‘80s. At one point Stone was even offered the chance to write Top Gun, still seen as a defining example of the post-Vietnam, macho American military movie meant to stir hearts to Uncle Sam’s marching call.

It would be history that would come and save Stone as well. Disappointed in the way the system seems to use writers as nothing more than hired hands, yearning to direct but having burned bridges in his wilder days, Stone puts it all on the line to make an independent war movie about the then raging civil war in El Salvador. Based on the experiences of  wild man journalist Richard Boyle (who provides page after page of colorful anecdotes in the book’s latter half), Stone’s movie stars James Woods as Boyle and Elpidia Carrillo as the young Salvadoran peasant he loves. Outrageous, bloody, with a Hunter S. Thompson tone, Salvador has a making of story as intriguing as the movie. Nothing can stop the hungry director whose time has come. Stone tries to shoot in El Salvador itself amid the war, meeting with fascist military figures with Boyle. When that falls apart the production moves to Mexico as producers sweat over depleting funds. Yet Salvador opens the door for Stone to make his beloved Platoon, casting an unknown Charlie Sheen in the role based on himself. It’s quite the shift from capturing war in Central America to then reliving his memories from Vietnam, in a powerful opus featuring Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger as well, both embodying figures Stone remembers from his days in combat.

Both Salvador and Platoon not only close the book victoriously, as one becomes a sleeper hit and the other a box office sensation that would win Best Picture and Director Oscars for Stone, they also crystalize the historical obsession that defines his journey. Like few, if any, movies made about Latin America since, Salvador is about a war in which the United States intervened to prevent revolutionary forces from overcoming a local regime and aristocracy firmly beholden to U.S. interests, and Platoon is about Stone having been a young man holding the rifle used by American power to impose its order on the world. He has been an agent of history, which is why it haunts his mind even now with his recent documentaries, the most controversial being a sit-down with Vladimir Putin.

Chasing the Light is like a tonic in these times when the world becomes increasingly unsettled, as if hurtling towards major conflagrations but our movies are now devoid of radical politics or even political passion, with a few exceptions. Great directors who begin with promise then get lured by the bigger system, and they end up contributing to the “Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Agree with him or not, Stone at least celebrates two things in this book we can all agree on: The hard work wanting to write demands, both in commitment and honing of the craft, and the need to engage with the wider world. Film obsessives and Stone’s fans will no doubt eagerly await the next volume, I know I will, when he will surely explore his defining political films. For now, Chasing the Light is a volume to give comfort to wandering talent out there, writing deep into the night, wondering if anyone will ever read it or care.

-Alci Rengifo, “Oliver Stone’s Chasing the Light Chronicles the Great Director’s Journey Against a Raging Historical Backdrop,” Riot Material, Sept 3 2020 [x]

[worldinferno]

Pages from the Life of a Criminal Cat

Among the various effects and detritus, I am first most interested in Cat’s own words, or those written to him directly by intimates, inasmuch as I would like to believe his take to be somewhat more unfiltered and, even when it appears to be non sequitur, valuable to untangling this affair. The journal entries are for the most part apparently complete, albeit it with lengthy gaps, and neither weighted nor organized according to any notable events, so far as I can see. His writing is startlingly lucid, despite certain flights of description which make it appear he is in fact narrating for an audience, though an audience of what ilk is manifestly unclear. There is a telling, relatively early (at least as far as the dates can be trusted) entry which sheds some light on his style throughout the pages available here. Before I reproduce any entries, though, I am compelled to mention if only so I do not forget, that these journals are distinct from another, cloth-bound volume labeled “Tails,” which I’ll need to address at greater length later. The last oddity, which I doubt very much I’d be likely to resolve even if I wanted to, is that the journals have a smattering of words redacted or emended in what certainly appears to be a distinct hand, as if they were edited somewhere along the way. It is difficult to say how much this practice alters the voice or style of the entries, but as it seems not to have any fundamental effect on the actual content, I’ll leave them intact. Discerning the finer points and justifications for these changes is a rhetorical project best left to someone else.

First entry:

“I have destroyed many pages of these, and I wonder if that was the right thing to do. I did it because I read some of them and every page I turned to was deeply sad. I could look at this a few different ways. I might have been writing the sadness out of myself, although I still felt it when I looked back. I remembered exactly the type of bad feelings arising within me. So if I didn’t get them out, maybe I wanted to remind myself of them. But that’s not very kind or useful either. If it is for other people to discover my sadness, then my ego is larger than even I thought! I think of these notebooks as a friend that I only want to talk to when I am feeling low. That is not good for me, and it is certainly not good for the friend. Perhaps there could be some joy in my sadness, somewhere. I think until I have a place I can rest my head for a week without readying myself to be stolen away, it will be hard to feel much else. But a record is still important, it might not be so sad later. It might be much later, but at some point in time.”

Second entry:

“I find myself sitting inside of someone else’s home, even though no one lives here all the time. There are people around, but no one is in front of me. They’re talking, trying to decide on the best way to proceed, knowing it has all been decided. There are bad feelings, and I’m not used to that. I do not sense that we will pull through this easily, and something might have changed. I can see the insulation on the ceiling, which is not necessary when it is warm, and the ceiling fan spins above me. It interrupts the light. I wonder why it moves so slowly, too slowly to do anything but push the warm air around. There is lots of air being pushed around here.

Around the corner, one of them smokes too quickly. She’s calm and nervous at the same time. She thinks always of the next move, which is smart, especially when you know the current move is going to be completed successfully. She has less and less time for what she calls “nonsense.” She says “no more nonsense.” I like how it sounds, but people get hurt. They need their nonsense, because it is not nonsense to them, not at the moment they say it. I can see the clouds of blue smoke through the open door. There are no windows to the outside here, they are all bricked over. But all the doors inside this place have glass in them, so they have to hang curtains when they want to be alone. So I can see the clouds but not the person. I can almost hear her drag on the cigarette, but there are other sounds.

Around the next corner, past the little smoking porch, is a discussion. It might be an argument, and it might be about the first person. It is beautiful out there, I know it because I was just out there to see the sunset over the fence. Beauty here is tricky, it can sneak up on you if you are not looking for it. I am always looking for it, which makes it hard to be taken by surprise. There is a feeling of mistrust and uncertainty in the air, it mixes with the humidity and hangs there. It is a feeling that is familiar to me, but not here. Here there are strong emotions, but they mostly concern the project, which is the project of getting me to a place where I can get on with some kind of life. That is what The Professor would say. Some kind of life. Let’s find you some kind of life.

This could get much worse. I can hear a voice crackle and another bubble in response. That usually is bad. It means someone is upset and someone else cannot bring themselves to take it seriously. So they console. This is the wrong kind of consolation. I am wearing my pointed burgundy shoes, red like wine, and the divan is a little sticky from the damp air. People in the crew know exactly what to expect when it comes time to work. Always. But tonight people do not know what to expect between now and the event, and that is scary. It may make for a bad job, or it might force us to concentrate even more. I trust them, that is important. But it is still a bit scary.

——————

The thing is done. I am spent out, there is nothing left of me. Enough maybe for a little pipe smoke and a few quiet words about it. The calm has been restored, but it is hollow. It is the calm of exhaustion alone. Still, people are lighter now. Aunt Sandy can celebrate, as she should. Precarious and she can embrace and we will think about the next one. We can ignore our errors and indignities to one another and concentrate on the next thing. It will take a few of these to get what we need. Caprese and Precarious are inspiring, in the way that two people in love should be. Sparkles and Reich and Moist disappeared, and that is right also. We are better off to have Billy One-Shoe hopping about somewhere. People should drink now, we can wonder about all the rest later. The fan is still spinning. It is not quite as beautiful outside as it was before. The couch is still a little sticky, and I should find my bed. Remember: do not take things so seriously. Or else take them much, much more seriously. It seems to be a waste of time to be somewhere in the middle.”

There are a variety of letters as well, few of them in envelopes, some of them folded up quite small. I include this one only because it was stuck to the back of the preceding journal page, which is about as good an ordering principle as any at this stage. It looks to be written in a different hand from the pieces above, although we already have the problem of two sets of handwriting interacting on those. As such, I present, again with minimal comment, a letter, most likely written to Cat In The Hat:

My Love,

Have I told you about that dream? It’s almost unreal, sometimes implausible at best, it’s the one that wonders about a better way, or what might have been, but it’s close enough that it still seems it might all come to pass? If I haven’t, now might be the time, because it’s nearly driven me mad how often it crowds my mind in the dark. In fact, that’s not even quite right: it’s true that I think about it, or it overwhelms me, when I’m laying in the dark, wishing it was darker, staring at the ceiling or the corners of the room. But then again, I’m not asleep now, I’m sitting in a sticky cotton shirt, scratching my head even though it doesn’t really itch, and staring at my own shadow projected from motion-activated lights behind me onto the white siding of my temporary home. It’s a dream whose focus sharpens when I talk about certain aspects of this life that make me uncomfortable, and reminds me that the fact that I’m even thinking about them signifies that it might be different, however unlikely that sounds as I say it. It tells me that even if fortune never smiles on us again, one day we might smile on each other in the knowledge that we everything we could think of to improve the parts of the world around us which needed improving. Sometimes the dream is warm and welcoming, other times it is cool and reminds me that it is a dream which will require effort to actualize. In all cases, we smile, and we kiss one another’s forehead. It is important to have an active imagination, you taught me that long ago. Those who toil against injustice and ugliness without being able to imagine another way are screaming into the wind. And those who create without purpose, and there are far, far too many of them, are dangerous in the worst ways. They are the sleepers, not the dreamers.

I know you’re with me, and if this finds you, then I am with you,

XxX

But what can it mean? Anything? Nothing? Just the remnants of a life lived? It is all collected, though, and that must be worth something. Someone thought enough of it for that. It is enough to make one wonder if their own corpus would be worthy of tabulation one day...what would that shoebox look like? What sort of picture would it paint?