Oliver Stone - nicolas genin from Paris, France photo

Heaven & Earth - Warner Bros poster

Video Beat Part 1 - OLIVER STONE'S FAVORITE FILM OF HIS WORK

James Loving - National Radio Text Service

With all of Oliver Stone's success his favorite film of his work was not a box office hit that being Heaven & Earth - Recommended TV Listings

Thursday November 4, 2010

HEAVEN & EARTH IS ON!!!

Filmmaker Oliver Stone is recognized as having made numerous hit films. With all of his success his favorite film of his work was not a box office hit that being Heaven & Earth. The film's budget was $33 million but grossed only $5,864,949. It is the third film in Stone's Vietnam War trilogy, which also included Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). The film aired on the Hollywood channel this past week in East Asia.

The picture released in 1993 was based on the books, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace, which Le Ly Hayslip wrote about her experiences during and after the Vietnam War. Stone wrote the screen play, produced and directed the movie that stars Tommy Lee Jones, Joan Chen (The Last Emperor) and Haing S. Ngor (Killing Fields).

American helicopters landed in Hayslip's village when she was 12 years old. At the age of 14, she endured torture in a South Vietnamese government prison for "revolutionary sympathies". After being released, she had fallen under suspicion of being a government spy, and was sentenced to death by the Viet Cong. However, instead of killing her, her executioners raped her.

She fled to Saigon, where she and her mother worked as housekeepers for a wealthy Vietnamese family, but this position ended after Hayslip's affair with her employer and subsequent pregnancy. Hayslip and her mother fled to Da Nang, and by the age of 16, Hayslip was supporting both her mother and an infant son, Hung (whom she would later rename Jimmy), while unmarried and working in the black market and as an occasional drug courier, and once even as a prostitute. She eventually met and married an American soldier moved to America and lived with her husband's family.

A poignant scene took place at the diner table the family in their way of thinking they were being nice inadvertently talked down to her about appreciating what she gained by being in the USA. Her husband lost the plot and exploded in anger that she was fully aware of what she had. He noted that she came from a place where children were without limbs because of what the US soldiers had done but still waived to the soldiers when they came through. "Why," he exclaimed, "Because they were glad to be alive."

In this film through Hayslips' story Stone showed how the Vietnamese people suffered from the invasion of the US military to their country. Stone knows what he's talking about when his films depict the horrific brutalization of the Vietnamese people by the US forces as he served in the US army in Vietnam for two years. This is a must see and worthy of being included in one's video library. On a scale of 10 this is a BOLD 10.

Part 2 - Oliver Stone Witnessed the Subject Matter of His Vietnam War Films

OLIVER STONE FILMS

Seizure (1974) o The Hand (1981) o Salvador (1986) o Platoon (1986) o Wall Street (1987) o Talk Radio (1988) o Born on the Fourth of July (1989) o The Doors (1991) o JFK (1991) o Heaven & Earth (1993) o Natural Born Killers (1994) o Nixon (1995) o U Turn (1997) o Any Given Sunday (1999) o Alexander (2004) o World Trade Center (2006) o W. (2008) o Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

National Radio text is published in five languages, English, Thai, French, Russian and Khmer (Cambodian language). Any of our foreign language material and our Roman Wanderaugh columns is legally available ONLY on our National Radio site. Our sports, entertainment and feature programming has been broadcast on over 1000 radio stations.

TV SCHEDULE

Note: The shows listed are for the Cambodia/Thailand time zone. Check our chart or your local listings for time in your area.

NOTE TIMES OF THE SAME TELECAST IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES

10:00 PM - LOCKED UP ABROAD - National Geographic

1:00 AM - AMERICAN GREED - CNBC

© Copyright: National Radio. Any use of these materials, whole or in part, is prohibited unless authorized in writing by National Radio. Contact: nationalradio@yahoo.com All rights reserved.