Filming Rage: Oliver Stone on Talk Radio
Oliver Stone’s excellent TALK RADIO (1988), based on Eric Bogosian’s acclaimed off-Broadway play about a fearless, self-destructive radio shock jock, is arguably the filmmaker’s most underrated movie. Made between WALL STREET and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, it somehow slipped through the cracks — and yet it features on many cinephiles’ lists as their favourite Stone film, or is singled out as the exception by people who generally do not care for Stone. Bogosian, who also stars in the film, based his bravura performance on Alan Berg, a real-life Denver radio talk show host who was fatally shot by members of a white nationalist group. In this half-hour documentary, Stone remembers the making of TALK RADIO: How do you capture on film the wrath, the rage, the mind and the thoughts of a man behind his microphone? Stone freely admits that, without the genius of co-writer and main actor Eric Bogosian, the fluid camera and brilliant lighting of d.p. Robert Richardson and further input from all departments, he would never have succeeded in pulling it off. So much so that Stone can watch the film today and actually like what he sees…
PUBLISHED ON THE FOLLOWING DVDS:
Talk Radio (F)Talk Radio (US: Blu-ray)