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Chasing The Light: How I Fought My Way into Hollywood - THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Kindle Edition
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Oliver Stone
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Oliver Stone
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Length: 373 pages | Word Wise: Enabled | Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled |
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Product description
Review
Chasing the Light shows a man who still runs towards the gunfire.This is, you will gather, a tremendous book - readable, funny and harrowing. It's also full of movie-making gossip, scandal and fun. If you want to know what working with a truly difficult actor is like, read his account of handling James Woods on the set of Salvador. Nevertheless, Stone sticks with Woods because "he is a genius". Also if you want to know what it's like to be so intoxicated at a Golden Globes ceremony that your speech is so bad and almost denies you an Oscar, then you need this book... The book is phenomenally well detailed. ― The Sunday Times
Raw, savagely honest, as dramatic as any of his movies, Oliver Stone's memoir defies all the Hollywood clichés. ― Mail on Sunday
Oliver Stone is a giant provocateur in the Hollywood movie system. His autobiography is a fascinating exposure of Stone's inner life and his powerful, all devouring energy and genius that drove him to become one of the world's greatest filmmakers. Stone rattles cages. He pricks the bubbles of the namby-pambies. 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
Oliver Stone's narrative, his life story about the heartbreaks, the near misses, and finally the triumphs is a Hollywood movie in itself. I thank Oliver for writing Chasing the Light, especially for my NYU grad film students-or anybody else with artistic dreams of working in this thing called the movie business. Oliver, in honest and sometimes brutal fashion, lays it out-what it took for him to get to where he hoped to be-a successful writer/director working in Hollywood; the road it took is hard AF. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. ― Spike Lee
Oliver Stone's story is the story of my generation writ large. ― Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver
The cover of Chasing the Light is a picture of Stone as a young man, looking at the camera with that strange, haunted expression you find in the faces of shell-shocked US soldiers in Don McCullin's photographs from Vietnam. It tells us he is authentic. His is a soldier's story, not a showbiz autobiography. He has seen the darkness. He has actually been on the front line, with first-hand experience of the nightmarish experiences he later set out to show on screen. This is unlike other contemporary directors who have made war movies over the last 40 years such as Stanley Kubrick, Francis For Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, and Kathryn Bigelow. ― The Independent
Oliver Stone can write a helluva memoir, which isn't surprising when you consider he cut his teeth penning screenplays [...] It's a remarkable read; someone should make a movie about it. ― EMPIRE magazine
Oliver Stone's early years brim with drama...Stone grabs your attention fast... He writes brilliantly on being young, lost and reckless, and with punchy immediacy on the sensory assault of war. ...desperate and dangerous...giddily exhilarating. ... Sequel, please? ― Total Film
Chasing the Light is a deep book, illuminated and relentless, prose at its best...What Oliver Stone has written will last, because I have never seen anything like his insights into the way the film industry works... ― Werner Herzog
I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a rip-roaring read. It left me breathless. ― Chris Evans, Virgin Radio Breakfast Show --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Raw, savagely honest, as dramatic as any of his movies, Oliver Stone's memoir defies all the Hollywood clichés. ― Mail on Sunday
Oliver Stone is a giant provocateur in the Hollywood movie system. His autobiography is a fascinating exposure of Stone's inner life and his powerful, all devouring energy and genius that drove him to become one of the world's greatest filmmakers. Stone rattles cages. He pricks the bubbles of the namby-pambies. 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
Oliver Stone's narrative, his life story about the heartbreaks, the near misses, and finally the triumphs is a Hollywood movie in itself. I thank Oliver for writing Chasing the Light, especially for my NYU grad film students-or anybody else with artistic dreams of working in this thing called the movie business. Oliver, in honest and sometimes brutal fashion, lays it out-what it took for him to get to where he hoped to be-a successful writer/director working in Hollywood; the road it took is hard AF. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. ― Spike Lee
Oliver Stone's story is the story of my generation writ large. ― Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi Driver
The cover of Chasing the Light is a picture of Stone as a young man, looking at the camera with that strange, haunted expression you find in the faces of shell-shocked US soldiers in Don McCullin's photographs from Vietnam. It tells us he is authentic. His is a soldier's story, not a showbiz autobiography. He has seen the darkness. He has actually been on the front line, with first-hand experience of the nightmarish experiences he later set out to show on screen. This is unlike other contemporary directors who have made war movies over the last 40 years such as Stanley Kubrick, Francis For Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, and Kathryn Bigelow. ― The Independent
Oliver Stone can write a helluva memoir, which isn't surprising when you consider he cut his teeth penning screenplays [...] It's a remarkable read; someone should make a movie about it. ― EMPIRE magazine
Oliver Stone's early years brim with drama...Stone grabs your attention fast... He writes brilliantly on being young, lost and reckless, and with punchy immediacy on the sensory assault of war. ...desperate and dangerous...giddily exhilarating. ... Sequel, please? ― Total Film
Chasing the Light is a deep book, illuminated and relentless, prose at its best...What Oliver Stone has written will last, because I have never seen anything like his insights into the way the film industry works... ― Werner Herzog
I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a rip-roaring read. It left me breathless. ― Chris Evans, Virgin Radio Breakfast Show --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
From the Publisher
Oliver Stone is an Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter and producer. He has written and directed some of the most iconic Hollywood films of all time, from Midnight Express and Platoon to Scarface and Natural Born Killers. Stone is also the co-author of The Untold History of the United States.
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Review
Chasing the Light shows a man who still runs towards the gunfire [...] This is, you will gather, a tremendous book - readable, funny and harrowing. It's also full of movie-making gossip, scandal and fun. If you want to know what working with a truly difficult actor is like, read his account of handling James Woods on the set of Salvador. Nevertheless, Stone sticks with Woods because "he is a genius". Also if you want to know what it's like to be so intoxicated at a Golden Globes ceremony that your speech is so bad and almost denies you an Oscar, then you need this book. [...] The book is phenomenally well detailed. [...] A brilliant memoir. - The Sunday TimesRaw, savagely honest, as dramatic as any of his movies, Oliver Stone's memoir defies all the Hollywood cliches. - Mail on SundayOliver Stone is a giant provocateur in the Hollywood movie system. His autobiography is a fascinating exposure of Stone's inner life and his powerful, all devouring energy and genius that drove him to become one of the world's greatest filmmakers. Stone rattles cages. He pricks the bubbles of the namby-pambies. 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 HopkinsOliver Stone's narrative, his life story about the heartbreaks, the near misses, and finally the triumphs is a Hollywood movie in itself. I thank Oliver for writing Chasing the Light, especially for my NYU grad film students-or anybody else with artistic dreams of working in this thing called the movie business. Oliver, in honest and sometimes brutal fashion, lays it out-what it took for him to get to where he hoped to be-a successful writer/director working in Hollywood; the road it took is hard AF. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo. - Spike LeeOliver Stone's story is the story of my generation writ large. - Paul Schrader, screenwriter of Taxi DriverOliver Stone has channelled his early years into a brilliant memoir. - The Sunday TimesThe cover of Chasing the Light is a picture of Stone as a young man, looking at the camera with that strange, haunted expression you find in the faces of shell-shocked US soldiers in Don McCullin's photographs from Vietnam. It tells us he is authentic. His is a soldier's story, not a showbiz autobiography. He has seen the darkness. He has actually been on the front line, with first-hand experience of the nightmarish experiences he later set out to show on screen. This is unlike other contemporary directors who have made war movies over the last 40 years such as Stanley Kubrick, Francis For Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, and Kathryn Bigelow. - The Independent
--This text refers to the hardcover edition.
About the Author
Oliver Stone is the multiple Oscar-winning writer and director of Platoon, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killer, Midnight Express and many other films.
Product details
- ASIN : B07Z4KVWZN
- Publisher : Monoray (21 July 2020)
- Language: : English
- File size : 11612 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 373 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 9,853 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
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Reviewed in Australia on 9 August 2020
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This is a remarkable book. You are submerged into a world of Hollywood sex drugs screen plays hustlers and artists with Adrenalin and BS not to be missed.
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Reviewed in Australia on 23 October 2020
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Whether it’s about the highs or the lows he pumps it at you with unfettered raw and truly inspiring honesty.
Reviewed in Australia on 19 September 2020
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opens your eye re Hollywood.
Top reviews from other countries

Robert Appleton
5.0 out of 5 stars
A frank, riveting autobiography
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 July 2020Verified Purchase
I’ll have to admit, I was slightly disappointed when I learned that Oliver Stone’s autobiographical ‘Chasing the Light’ only covered his life up to his breakthrough success with Platoon. He made several great films after that, including some of the most fascinating and controversial of that generation: Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, and Natural Born Killers. What he’s given us here, though, feels neither truncated nor incomplete. Stone is interested in the forces that shaped him as a person and an artist, as well as the seeds of his mad ambition, which partly manifested themselves in his tempestuous filmmaking experiences. It’s a self-portrait: raw, emotional, brutally honest. Here we have the antithesis of the cliched shallow, ego-stroking Hollywood autobiography, as the writer-director lays bare his flaws and failures alongside his hard-fought victories.
From a happy, sheltered upbringing in New York’s Upper East Side – his stoic Jewish father worked on Wall Street, his vivacious French mother courted the Bohemian society – to his parents’ crushing divorce, on to his nomadic wanderings around South-East Asia, which led to him volunteering to fight in Vietnam, Stone’s early journey is joyful, sad, and a whirlwind of broken dreams and stirring passions. The way he describes himself, his spiral into aimlessness, we can see the adversities accumulate, forces that could either break a young man or forge him into something vital. It took time, heartbreaks, perseverance, and help along the way for him to find his personal spark in the creative process and fan it into screenplays that would blaze with his particular vision.
Even after he’d gained his foothold in Hollywood, he had to fight an uphill, Sisyphean battle every time, often to no avail. And the successes along the way, like Midnight Express and Scarface, inflicted wounds, both professionally and personally, that he carried into future projects. Lessons learned the hard way. At times Stone was his own worst enemy, by his own admission. Hubris, cocaine, naivety, arrogance, bad choices: his honesty is welcome, his self-analysis illuminating. I knew, by reputation, that he could be abrasive, but I didn’t realise how fragile his confidence could be. He’s a complicated guy, no question, and to his credit he digs deep to try to grapple with those contradictory forces.
Greek mythology has clearly had a profound influence on him. The way he approaches this literary self-portrait reminds me of his treatment of Alexander the Great – firstly, identify the forces that shaped what he would become, and then weave them throughout his life story, sometimes in non-linear fashion, with flashbacks, asides, and stream-of-consciousness passages. He never loses sight of those formative influences – his parents, their divorce, mythology, movies, combat, politics, etc. – and it’s a pleasure to see him address them at the various stages of his arduous climb to the top. Salvador and Platoon were the double-whammy that thrust him to the front ranks of American filmmakers in the mid-eighties. What’s clear from his behind-the-scenes accounts of those productions (and indeed the crazy journeys of the projects to production) is that he earned every bit of his success.
Chasing the Light is a riveting read. There’s rarely a dull page in this frank, fiercely self-aware autobiography. I’ve been a fan of Oliver Stone’s work for years, both as a writer and director, and this book has only bolstered my appreciation. It’s a scintillating chronicle of an artist’s almost Homeric struggle to discover, and eventually to blaze onto the screen, his own maverick, personal vision.
Highly recommended.
From a happy, sheltered upbringing in New York’s Upper East Side – his stoic Jewish father worked on Wall Street, his vivacious French mother courted the Bohemian society – to his parents’ crushing divorce, on to his nomadic wanderings around South-East Asia, which led to him volunteering to fight in Vietnam, Stone’s early journey is joyful, sad, and a whirlwind of broken dreams and stirring passions. The way he describes himself, his spiral into aimlessness, we can see the adversities accumulate, forces that could either break a young man or forge him into something vital. It took time, heartbreaks, perseverance, and help along the way for him to find his personal spark in the creative process and fan it into screenplays that would blaze with his particular vision.
Even after he’d gained his foothold in Hollywood, he had to fight an uphill, Sisyphean battle every time, often to no avail. And the successes along the way, like Midnight Express and Scarface, inflicted wounds, both professionally and personally, that he carried into future projects. Lessons learned the hard way. At times Stone was his own worst enemy, by his own admission. Hubris, cocaine, naivety, arrogance, bad choices: his honesty is welcome, his self-analysis illuminating. I knew, by reputation, that he could be abrasive, but I didn’t realise how fragile his confidence could be. He’s a complicated guy, no question, and to his credit he digs deep to try to grapple with those contradictory forces.
Greek mythology has clearly had a profound influence on him. The way he approaches this literary self-portrait reminds me of his treatment of Alexander the Great – firstly, identify the forces that shaped what he would become, and then weave them throughout his life story, sometimes in non-linear fashion, with flashbacks, asides, and stream-of-consciousness passages. He never loses sight of those formative influences – his parents, their divorce, mythology, movies, combat, politics, etc. – and it’s a pleasure to see him address them at the various stages of his arduous climb to the top. Salvador and Platoon were the double-whammy that thrust him to the front ranks of American filmmakers in the mid-eighties. What’s clear from his behind-the-scenes accounts of those productions (and indeed the crazy journeys of the projects to production) is that he earned every bit of his success.
Chasing the Light is a riveting read. There’s rarely a dull page in this frank, fiercely self-aware autobiography. I’ve been a fan of Oliver Stone’s work for years, both as a writer and director, and this book has only bolstered my appreciation. It’s a scintillating chronicle of an artist’s almost Homeric struggle to discover, and eventually to blaze onto the screen, his own maverick, personal vision.
Highly recommended.
26 people found this helpful
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AdrianT
5.0 out of 5 stars
Frank and riveting memoir
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 July 2020Verified Purchase
One thing is certain. I don’t think there is a single American filmmaker working today who could write a book half as good as this. Stone has an erudition, a cultural bandwidth and a self-awareness that comes across on every page. The son of a successful Jewish businessman and a French mother, he was brought up bilingual, bi-national and privileged. Not many directors could devote several pages to Homer these days or discuss a montage in Pierrot le Fou. Maybe only Paul Schrader could do that.
Chasing the Light (great title) covers his childhood, his parent’s divorce, his tours of duty in Vietnam, his alienation from almost everything, his anarchism, his drug addiction, his paranoia, his marriages, his failures and successes. After Vietnam, where he got wounded and saw the man he killed, he lived frugally and wrote feverishly like some beat poet, somehow ending up with Robert Bolt as his mentor. Bolt taught him the practicalities of screenwriting and he also got Stone a serious agent. Consequently, his script for Platoon made the rounds and while no one wanted to make it, everyone recognised Stone’s talent as a writer - his script for Midnight Express earned him his first Oscar. He was suddenly an A-lister. There were scripts for Milius's Conan the Barbarian, De Palma's Scarface and Cimino's Year of the Dragon.
Stone -who seemed to be stoned a lot of the time - covers all this with unflinching honesty. Until the raw and thrilling Salvador, the combative, opinionated and iconoclastic director was always just an inch away from rejection by the Hollywood establishment. But the book has an inevitable trajectory, running at a canter towards his Oscar-winning triumph with Platoon.
One hopes for a second volume.
Chasing the Light (great title) covers his childhood, his parent’s divorce, his tours of duty in Vietnam, his alienation from almost everything, his anarchism, his drug addiction, his paranoia, his marriages, his failures and successes. After Vietnam, where he got wounded and saw the man he killed, he lived frugally and wrote feverishly like some beat poet, somehow ending up with Robert Bolt as his mentor. Bolt taught him the practicalities of screenwriting and he also got Stone a serious agent. Consequently, his script for Platoon made the rounds and while no one wanted to make it, everyone recognised Stone’s talent as a writer - his script for Midnight Express earned him his first Oscar. He was suddenly an A-lister. There were scripts for Milius's Conan the Barbarian, De Palma's Scarface and Cimino's Year of the Dragon.
Stone -who seemed to be stoned a lot of the time - covers all this with unflinching honesty. Until the raw and thrilling Salvador, the combative, opinionated and iconoclastic director was always just an inch away from rejection by the Hollywood establishment. But the book has an inevitable trajectory, running at a canter towards his Oscar-winning triumph with Platoon.
One hopes for a second volume.
11 people found this helpful
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john taggart
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oliver Stone writes even better than he directs.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 September 2020Verified Purchase
Biographies that start at the beginning generally make me want to skip the first few chapters. Not here. He is perceptive about his childhood and the effect of being an only child who learns that his image of his parents and their marriage was built on lies. How he learns to forgive and to find himself is fascinating.
This is the story of a man coming to know himself better and to do so he has to follow his passion. He is neither humble nor arrogant, but ruthlessly honest. So revealing about himself and the crazy industry he finds himself in!
As Stone's background is in writing ( later writing screenplays ) this is in a different category from the usual film star or film director biography. He cleverly makes you want to read on, and to do so will mean buying the next volume.
This is the story of a man coming to know himself better and to do so he has to follow his passion. He is neither humble nor arrogant, but ruthlessly honest. So revealing about himself and the crazy industry he finds himself in!
As Stone's background is in writing ( later writing screenplays ) this is in a different category from the usual film star or film director biography. He cleverly makes you want to read on, and to do so will mean buying the next volume.
4 people found this helpful
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matthew p gardner
5.0 out of 5 stars
No surprises that Oliver Stone can write a decent yarn
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 August 2020Verified Purchase
This is a notch above the usual self agrandizing drivel most biographies fall into. Stone has a genuinely different take on the world - the early years before he made it are worth reading alone. It's a book that shows this big name director has a heart and is very self aware of his fallings which is very refreshing. Cracking read
6 people found this helpful
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NeilRocks!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stone can write!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 August 2020Verified Purchase
A fantastic read. Obviously Stone is a fantastic film director. But he can also write. This is no ghost written back patting exercise, but a well written, thoughtful book. Excellent.
4 people found this helpful
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