Oliver Stone Looks Back at the Fall of Saigon 50 Years Later: 'We're Back to Learning Nothing' (Exclusive)

Yahoo

30-04-2025

April 30 marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the capture of the capital of South Vietnam by the Communist North Vietnamese army that marked the official end of the Vietnam War — a conflict that stretched two long decades and cost millions of lives. Approximately 60,000 of them were U.S. soldiers. Among the survivors was director Oliver Stone, whose combat injuries earned him multiple decorations, including a Bronze Star with 'V' Device for valor, Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster (to denote two wounds), an Air Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge. Stone — who through landmark films like 1986's Platoon and 1989's Born on the Fourth of July allowed the country to process the trauma of war — reflected on his time in Vietnam, his conversion to pacifism upon his return to the U.S. and his thoughts on similar endless and deadly conflicts currently plaguing the planet.
I went to Vietnam as a teacher first in 1965. I was 18, and I taught there after I had attended Yale. I went again three years later as a soldier. I was young, and I didn't have the conscience we all have now. It was just something that we all believed in at the time. Vietnam was all of a sudden the center of the world. It was like Ukraine is now, where people were going nuts and saying that we have to fight for Ukraine.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Agatha Christie Comes to Life in AI-Enhanced BBC Maestro Writing Course
Daniel Ings Joins Catherine Zeta-Jones in Prime Video Series Adapted From Nick Harkaway Novel
Cannes: 'March of the Penguins' Director to Judge Immersive Competition
That mentality of militarism was born in America. It was in our blood. I grew up relatively conservative. In 1965, Vietnam was an interesting place to be a teacher. It felt like a divine mission. But as I traveled around Asia, I saw Cambodia before the war — before Pol Pot — and I ended up in Laos. And the more I saw, the worse it looked. By the time I went back as a soldier, it was depressing. All barbed wire camps.
We put half a million men on the ground and as a soldier, I could see that it was a mess. It was just this poorly run war, and we were counting the bodies and pretending that we were winning. The whole thing was based on a lie. There was a lot of other lying going on. In my book, Chasing the Light, it tells my version of Vietnam. By the time I left in December '68, I had been wounded twice and seen quite a bit of action. I was shot in the neck and had shrapnel on my lower body. It was a miracle I survived the neck injury because that was close — about a quarter-inch from my carotid. But I went back into combat anyway.
I served most of my 15 months in the jungle, in the plains around the beaches. I was exposed to quite a bit and who knows, maybe I got Agent Orange poisoning. We used to walk through that stuff. You've seen the movies — Platoon, Born on the 4th of July — and then I told the Vietnamese side of it with my 1993 adaptation of the Le Ly Hayslip book, Heaven & Earth, which depicted a beautiful Vietnam before we got there.
When Richard Nixon came into the White House in January 1969, I had left already Vietnam a month earlier. For Americans, the war dragged on for another four years till 1973. And then Nixon made his deal to get the POWs out. Most of the American combat troops were out by '73. And the amount of casualties was amazing between '69 and '73. I think it was rather an even split between the two regimes, Lyndon B. Johnson and Nixon.
I came back to the U.S. in '68. In 1970, I went to NYU film school. That was a very revolutionary kind of place. The student body distrusted veterans and stuff, so I kept my mouth shut. In the early 1970s my feelings about the war changed, but by the mid-'70s, I would be on the other side of the fence completely. I was more aligned with Jane Fonda. I grew to admire her after the war. When it was going on, her opposition seemed strange.
We knew it was over when Johnson refused to run in March '68. So he wasn't backing his policy in Vietnam. And the army kept going. The American media had been so 'rah rah' on Vietnam. It's part of the problem that we have in our country — the media tells us what to think. The New York Times is awful. In every single war — Vietnam, Iraq, etc. — read their editorials. They were so jingoistic and pro-government. They always were the government. They were the government line, I guess you could say. At the end of the Vietnam, they changed, because they hated Nixon. Now they hate Trump. So they go after Trump all the time. But the truth is, they support the Ukraine war. So it's the same crap. And the Ukraine war is another one that's completely a lie. They keep lying to the American public and the public falls for it.
When Saigon fell — on April 30, 1975 — I was relieved. Everyone was. It was a wonderful moment in the sense that it was the end. There was a wave of movies that started with The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1978) and Jane [Fonda]'s movie Coming Home. All of these were noble, good movies. And then I got to make Platoon.
I made Born on the Fourth of July, a very strong, anti-military movie. It came out Dec. 20, 1989. The U.S. invaded Panama that day. It was the beginning of a change — a shift back to the use of our military and belief again in the system. It was George H. W. Bush. The next thing you know, we're in the Iraq war, which was all based on propaganda. According to the media, we were heroes. The military had done a great job. The next thing you know, we were back in Iraq for the second Iraq war. It hasn't stopped. As Bush 41 said, 'The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula.'
There was this fear that we were becoming too pacifist, too soft. So that was why they reclaimed that sense that we had to get tough again. And we did. We got very tough. And before you knew it, by the late '90s, we had this policy — it's written in ink and we've lived up to most of it — to take out the seven countries on the NeoCon list. We hit six of them so far. The seventh one, of course, is Iran. If we go after Iran, it's a huge mistake. We're going to bury Bush's bullshit in the sands of the ashes of history. But I think we'll go. Netanyahu, he's our leader. He's our foreign policy. Middle East policy goes through him. I think that guy is absolutely fanatical. I interviewed him years ago, and I thought he was mad then. He really hates the Arabs. He just can't get over it. So we're back to learning nothing.
This country really has a problem with history, I think.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025
Harvey Weinstein's "Jane Doe 1" Victim Reveals Identity: "I'm Tired of Hiding"
'Awards Chatter' Podcast: 'Sopranos' Creator David Chase Finally Reveals What Happened to Tony (Exclusive)