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Q&A with Director Oliver Stone Page 8

It did very well overseas. It did, yeah - 70 [million] here and 90 [million] abroad. That's serious good drama money. And Alexander did great abroad - $130 million. So there is an international thing that's going on - which is very interesting because certain American subjects don't interest them abroad. When people write about movies, they never mention what the foreign grosses are, but sometimes there's a whole other truth there.

Have you always done well overseas? I have. I've been international that way. I've sometimes done better overseas.

Even with something like JFK? Yes. The best things I've done have always done well in both places. The only one that didn't do well overseas was Any Given Sunday. But frankly, we knew that going in because the football connection wasn't necessarily going to click overseas. Nixon was a hard sell, but I still think it's one of my better films.

Do you get to see all the movies you want to? No, not at all. There are too many being made now. I go to the theater as much as possible, but I only want to go see certain types of films. A lot of these movies they're making now have good acting and all this interior stuff and blah-blah-blah, but I don't want to see something unless there's a hook. I'm not going to mention names, but I just don't want to see most of the Oscar things. They're really the last things I want to see. I like movies that are international, that resound - you know, have a big noise to them. That goes back to my earlier theme, about why I went to movies - to escape, to dream, which I hope kids still get to do, because sometimes you wonder if they still dream. When I see kids in a gang, where they're all talking and conspiring together, I wonder, do they ever have a chance to be alone, to dream? I don't think so. I think their poverty and despair breed conditions where they're stuck together and they form a bond, become a group, and they all inherit the bond - the philosophy of the bond as opposed to the individual. So they lose something.

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