This time Oliver Stone wanted to keep it simple. There’s nothing political in his new film, “U-Turn.” It will ignite no debates about historical accuracy or redeeming social value, or lack thereof. It’s just a nice, nasty, twisty little Western noir starring Sean Penn as a gambler whose car breaks down in a desert pit stop where bad things happen. Stone calls it his scorpions-in-a-bucket film. The suspense stems from guessing which of its venomous characters, if any, will walk out alive.
Stone shot “U-Turn” in 42 days for $20 million, about half the usual Hollywood film budget. “It freed me,” he says. “It was, like, make a picture for fun. Just do it and enjoy yourself. The amount of money spent on films today, and their incredibly long schedules, there’s just no reason for it.”
After making 10 pressure-cooker films in 10 years, he wanted to shoot one that would be judged on its merits as a film, he adds, as he relaxes in a rented house in this old mining town turned chic resort. His high-energy filming and virtuosic editing technique have helped reshape the language of film, yet discussion of his films has largely focused on political contexts (“Salvador,” “JFK,” “Nixon”) and social ones (“The Doors,” “Natural Born Killers”).
“It was an easier film to craft,” Stone says of “U-Turn.” “It didn’t take a lot of time. It was relatively simple. A town. A few sets. A couple of canyons. We found it (Superior, Ariz., 60 miles north of Phoenix) pretty quickly. It was raincoats and dark alleys but in the desert.
“Deserts work for me. I used them in `Born on the Fourth of July,’ `The Doors’ and `Natural Born Killers.’ There’s something about the desert that just brings out a freedom that I like. I love `Duel in the Sun.’ I love `One-Eyed Jacks.’ I love those desert movies. The irony, of course, is that what started, and ended, as a modestly budgeted film took the same amount of energy and stress as any larger film. We shot in December and January, which meant we only got five hours of sun each day. We rehearsed on Sundays. We really were working the whole time. I was always doing touchups. Sundays writing, that’s hard. I don’t like working on Sundays. Then the editing was a (expletive), getting the tonality right. This little B film turned into a major effort.”
Certainly none of the stars, several of whom accompanied Stone here, would call the experience lighthearted. Penn wouldn’t. A schedule conflict caused him to pass on the film. But when Bill Paxton, Stone’s next choice, bowed out on the eve of shooting, Penn drove all night from California, arrived at 7 a.m., ready to go into the demanding role — in which he’s beaten up six times and has a finger chopped off, among other indignities. “Oliver and (director of photography) Bob Richardson are very pick-up-and-go filmmakers,” Penn says. “If they see something they want, they start shooting it. And their speed is by design. It’s organic to what they were trying to do. Oliver is really wide open in terms of attacking the movie.”
In fact, no clearer picture of Stone’s high-energy shooting process has ever emerged. “On set, you don’t even know when they’re rolling,” adds Nick Nolte, who plays the richest, meanest man in town. “The work is done with a great tempo, fast and furious, way out on the limits.”
Jennifer Lopez, who plays Nolte’s vengeful wife, says: “The project definitely grew and changed on the set. Oliver and Bob steal shots in between, when you might do something a little quirkier or crazier than you would when actual filmmaking was going on.”
From Powers Boothe, who plays the sheriff, comes this piece of the mosaic: “I learned my lesson from having played Alexander Haig in `Nixon’ for Oliver. There’s no such thing as off-camera.”
Jon Voight, who plays a blind old-timer, summarizes: “He breaks things open.”
“Yes, I prepare,” Stone says. “I have a shot list every day. But I will go into a scene that day and decide — based on rehearsal or my instinct, or perhaps the location or sunlight — to change my plan. The hell with it — you know? Let’s cut out in a new direction. And that gets pretty spooky sometimes.”
So spooky, in fact, that it prompted Billy Bob Thornton, cast by Stone as the town’s only auto mechanic after he saw a video of “Sling Blade,” to say: “I grew up in the South, where small towns have their own thing. Little desert towns have their own thing too. Little desert towns scare me more than any place on Earth. I can’t imagine human beings wanting to live there.”
For the citizens of Superior (pop. 3,485), the filming provided the first good news since its silver and copper mines closed years ago. The town — with only four businesses remaining open on the mostly boarded-up street — was spruced up for the film. The mayor, recalling the only other time Superior was used for a movie (“How the West Was Won” in 1962), asked that the town be called by its real name, not Sierra, as in Stone’s script. In fact, there has been such an absence of the angst that has surrounded most of Stone’s other films, that it has made Stone a little nervous. Even the MPAA ratings board — whose demand for 150 cuts in “Natural Born Killers” for an R rating still rankles him — passed the far from placid “U-Turn” with an absence of contentiousness and an R rating.
Today, at 51, Stone seems to exist on two levels in the film world. Even those who dislike his films admit they’re made by a gifted filmmaker. From some actors, he has drawn their best work: James Woods in “Salvador,” Charlie Sheen in “Platoon,” Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July.” Actors admire him, want to work with him. Stone’s blast-furnace work ethic coexists with a meticulous detail-oriented sense of craftsmanship and a stomach-churning inability not to care about what people think and say about him.
His next project, he mentions casually, might be a “Mission Impossible” sequel if he can get final cut. But actors do not sit on the boards of corporations, including the ones that own studios. Stone had a difficult time financing “U-Turn,” he recalls, even at its relatively low cost. “Warner Brothers turned me down. Propaganda turned me down. Perhaps because `Nixon’ was financially unprofitable and perceived as a miss, the perception of me changed. Even in the media.
“When that happened, I was a little depressed. Then I gave it to Mike Medavoy, who had just set up Phoenix Pictures. He read it and said, `Do it.’ “
In the year between “Nixon” and “U-Turn,” Stone says he didn’t do much. Not doing much in this case means producing Milos Forman’s “The People vs. Larry Flynt”; launching a film, “Gravesend,” by an unknown phenom from Brooklyn, Salvatore Stabile; and belatedly bringing forth “A Child’s Night Dream,” an angst-ridden autobiographical novel. He wrote it in a hotel room in Guadalajara at age 19.
Much of Stone’s book, published on Sept. 15, grapples with recollections of his mother. While both parents led sexually active lives, his mother’s freer style contributed to the young Oliver’s sexual confusion. It’s a courageous book, made more so by Stone’s willingness to reveal himself, unretouched, in the purity of a raw, youthful vulnerability.
