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Stone to speak tonight

Oliver Stone, director of highly acclaimed and controversial movies including "Nixon" and "Natural Born Killers," will appear tonight at Hill Auditorium.

"He's considered to be Hollywood's pointman, the one who does not back away from controversial ideas," said Frank Beaver, a professor in the film and video studies department. "Oliver Stone is out there by himself doing things other filmmakers wouldn't have done."

In 1994, Beaver published a book on Stone's work titled, "Oliver Stone: Wake Up Sentiment." Beaver said Stone "just didn't arrive all of a sudden."

"He wrote a lot of things for other directors he wasn't happy with," Beaver said.

LSA senior Dan Rabinow, chair of Hill Street Forum, said he wanted Stone to speak to students about using film as a provocative medium.

"He is one of the only directors around today who really tries to make people think when they go to the movies," Rabinow said.

English lecturer and freelance film writer Raymond McDaniel said Stone's flexible interpretations of historic events should not be condemned.

"History isn't science," McDaniel said. "It's continuously rewritten and redetermined."

McDaniel said Stone's work is unique in the way it has made moviegoers question the nature of power in America.

"He interferes in the process of authority by turning power over to the average moviegoer and saying, `You judge for yourself.'"

Beaver described Stone as a "very, very dynamic" speaker.

"He likes a certain amount of controversy," Beaver said. "He's making films that are not mainstream, feel-good, sentimental films."

Shani Lasin, programs director at Hillel, which is sponsoring the speech, said she is "hoping several thousand" people attend the lecture.