[Nixon] reduced the meaning of his life to nothing but power. In the film, we gave this sad figure consciousness of what he was. We weren’t right to do that – I don’t think he did have that consciousness. But we did it for movie reasons – to create empathy.
You can never judge how the film will be taken; you can only make your best effort, and put out what you feel. How it’s read, you never can tell. Or remembered for that matter.
I’ve met people who will go to a movie that I can’t stand and they say that they saw that movie ten times. There’s something they like and identified in that movie, and I don’t see it.
Anybody who’s been through a divorce will tell you that at one point. they’ve thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn’t that major.
Many films are forgotten and deserve to be, but others glom onto the DNA and they keep a share of the collective consciousness. It’s a profound question: What are we here for? What is the purpose, the sum effect of our work?
When I’m working with another writer, I tend to make a lot of effort. When I collaborate with a writer, I’m not interested in credit, but I’m feeding him stuff all the time that I feel is important to shaping the script.
A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she’ll appear in film and it won’t work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don’t know.
![Oliver Stone Quote - [Nixon] reduced the meaning of his life to nothing but power. In the film, we gave this sad figure consciousness of what he was. We weren’t right to do that – I don’t think he did have that consciousness. But we did it for movie reasons – to create empathy.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/nixon-reduced-the-meaning-of-his-life-to-nothing-b-683x1024.jpg)
