Oliver Stone has been hailed (and reviled) as the "director of the Sixties" for his socially concerned and politically charged films on Vietnam, Latin America, Wall Street, pop music, the JFK assassination, and the intertwined nature of celebrity and violence in American culture. Giving particular attention to Stone's stormy relationship with the Establishment and his dazzling cinematic techniques, film scholar Norman Kagan examines all of the controversial director's work. The Cinema of Oliver Stone shows how the movies were inspired, how they were made, and what the critics' - and other filmmakers' - reactions have been. By including analyses of films Stone worked on as a writer but not as director (Midnight Express, Conan the Barbarian, Scarface, and others), we get a complete look at the man and his work.