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1. He wrote his first novel when he was 19

Oliver Stone is primarily thought of as a film director, but he tells Louis that writing was his first passion. “I wrote a novel (A Child’s Dream) when I was 19 years old, which was finally published in 1997.” He says the love of writing came from his father, who “paid me to write little themes when I was six or seven years old, which was a good thing because I wanted the money. I didn’t care about the writing, but it was a habit that stuck with me… Writing has always been intertwined with my life”

2. Serving in Vietnam changed his entire life

Fighting in the Vietnam War changed the course of Oliver’s life. It inspired two of his greatest films, Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, but it also shaped how he views power. “The American government [was] telling us that we’re winning the war… inflating body counts. Telling lies. Huge amounts of lies. These are gigantic lies. I didn’t realise this as much at the time. I just became more and more wise to the situation.” Unlike many of his generation, he chose to enlist, partly because he was so unhappy after his parents’ divorce. “I went over there with a throw of the dice. I was a fatalist. I said, ‘If I come back, it’s meant to be. Let God decide.’”

3. He had PTSD after the war

The effects of fighting in the war were significant for Oliver. He says he had post-traumatic stress disorder when he returned. “You come back numb; you’re alienated,” he says. “I’d be in the street and I’d hear the backfire of a car and I’d be on the sidewalk. That kind of nervousness.” He says PTSD wasn’t a term back then, but, “definitely I was disturbed in some way. I was very violent and angry at first, and also unstable in my emotional relations with people.” He says this difficulty fitting in eventually led him to film school.

Oliver Stone's teacher: Martin Scorsese

4. He was taught by Martin Scorsese

Oliver says he was “an outsider” at New York University, where he studied film. One of his teachers was another outsider, Martin Scorsese, who was yet to become one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation. “He was a very good teacher, very energetic and inspiring,” says Oliver. “He loved movies. It was, to him, a religion. That made a difference, because I loved writing, but I was learning movie [directing].” Oliver made a short film, Last Year in Vietnam, about a veteran returning to normal life, which Scorsese praised. “He confirmed to me that I had the ability to be a filmmaker. And that was important. It was like a diploma.”

5. He couldn’t get Platoon or Born on the Fourth of July made

Oliver won the Best Director Oscar for both Platoon, released in 1986, and Born on the Fourth of July, released in 1989. He struggled for over a decade to get either film made. He wrote both in the 1970s, but even as he gained respect as a screenwriter, with films like Midnight Express and Scarface, he couldn’t get anybody interested in financing his war movies. “No matter what success I had, nobody would touch Fourth of July or Platoon,” he says. “You can understand my frustration when Sylvester Stallone was making these ridiculous Vietnam movies (First Blood, aka Rambo, released in 1982). The American cinema did not want to deal with reality.” It took meeting British film producer John Daly for Platoon to finally get made. “He read both scripts and said to me, ‘Oliver, great, which one do you want to make first?’” Platoon made $138 million on a budget of $6 million.

6. Born on the Fourth of July was going to star Al Pacino

While Born on the Fourth of July didn’t get made until the 80s, there was a point in the 70s where it came close to going into production, before losing financing. That version would have starred Al Pacino. “It was two or three weeks from being shot,” says Oliver. “I learned a tremendous amount about screenwriting in those rehearsals. Pacino would have been great in the movie. He was too old for the part (he was 38), but he was great in the rehearsal I saw.”

7. He dabbled in Scientology

The eventual star of Born on the Fourth of July was Tom Cruise. Cruise is, of course, one of the most famous members of The Church of Scientology, which Louis has covered in his documentaries. Louis asks Oliver if he ever discussed Scientology with Cruise. “No, he never brought it up,” he says. He says Cruise was very intense, “sometimes too intense for his own good. As a human being, you wonder if he needs something like Scientology as a framework. His character as a person, I can’t understand, but I did appreciate him as an actor in this role.” Oliver says that while he and Cruise never discussed Scientology, Oliver was briefly involved with the church many years before. “When I came back from Vietnam, I was frankly numb and alienated.” A woman he was dating was a Scientologist, so he went along to find out more. “She was far along in her training and I joined for a month or two, I think. I think the cost was pretty high. I didn’t stay with it.”

8. He beat his addiction to cocaine while writing Scarface

Oliver has never made any secret of his drug use – he tells Louis he used LSD a few weeks ago – and says he had a serious problem with cocaine many years ago. “A new generation was rocking with cocaine in the 70s and into the 80s,” he says. “I started taking it recreationally and I didn’t see any harm in it, but it became addictive. More and more I was under its control. I didn’t feel like myself. My writing degenerated.” He was living in LA at the time, but says he moved to Miami when doing his research for Scarface, the 1983 movie starring Al Pacino as a drug lord. Being away from LA helped him kick the addiction. “You have to get away from people who are taking it around you.” He moved to Paris after writing the movie and weaned himself off the drug, though he says he has taken it since. “I could do it socially after that, but I was never addicted again.”

9. He thinks George W. Bush was the worst president in American history

Early in the interview, Oliver reveals that he was at Yale with future US president George W. Bush. Later on, he calls Bush, “to my mind, the worst president the United States has ever had. The damage he did was far worse, so far, from what Trump has done. Far worse. Bush put this country on a new direction. He’s the one who started the major mass surveillance and the wars, of course.” He made a film about Bush, 2008’s W., which took the Bush story up to the war in Iraq. Louis asks if a similar film could be made about Donald Trump. “Of course you can… But I would wait until the narrative is over.”