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back-and-totheleft · 4 months

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Oliver's Twist

DECEMBER SUNLIGHT GLINTS OFF the bald, bronze head of a statue of the ever-serene Buddha, sitting in the lush backyard of a Mediterranean villa in Santa Monica. A few paces away, in a living room filled with Asian antiques, two more personages—also plump and sparsely haired—radiate inner peace. One is Tara Stone, 5 weeks old and deep in slumber. The other is her father—upon whose chest Tara sleeps as he lounges on an overstuffed sofa.

While Tara's mother, Chong Son Chong, 36, a Korean émigré and former actress and model, putters elsewhere in the house, the father smiles with deep satisfaction, dipping a finger into one of Tara's white booties to touch her baby skin. "She can feel my heart," says director Oliver Stone. "She's made me a happy man." He speaks again, examining the word like a flower: "Happiness."

Wait, wait—who is this zen, beatific puppy? The Oliver Stone we know is an angry, self-described provocateur. The familiar Stone is the one who, a couple of years ago, dismissed those who doubted the baroque conspiracy theories behind his film JFK as "chick s-t." He is a director so notorious for on-set tirades that Anthony Hopkins, who plays the title role in Stone's latest dive into history, Nixon, has said he expected "a kind of caveman." But while Stone doesn't deny there are brutish aspects to his character, he insists they are mere brush strokes—not the whole portrait. "There's no appreciation," he says, "that there's another side of me."

Stone now wants the world to see that other side. Chastened by the acrimonious end in 1993 of his 12-year marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth, 46—who lives with the couple's two sons, Sean, 11, and Michael, 4—the director insists he has embarked on a fresh, clear path in life. He has a new child, and a new relationship, with Chong. In their generally positive reviews of Nixon, critics, while not defending him against persuasive claims that he has taken his customary liberties with historical fact, have praised Stone's newfound "restraint." A Buddhist since he embraced the religion while making his 1993 saga of the Vietnamese experience of the war, Heaven & Earth, Stone says he has also found a degree of spiritual tranquility. In short, Oliver Stone wants us to know that at age 49 he believes he is growing up.

There are some signs it may be true—one being his decidedly un-Stone-like response to criticism of Nixon. Before it opened—to very disappointing box office business—the late President's normally private daughters, Tricia Nixon Cox, 49, and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, 47, read a script and issued a statement through the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., decrying the movie as "character assassination." Since then, seemingly every Nixon Administration official, and a number of historians and neutral observers, have weighed in in a similar vein. "It is a despicable fairy tale," says former Treasury Secretary William Simon. "This is a vicious attack on a man," says onetime White House Chief-of-Staff Gen. Alexander Haig. Though Stone hasn't shrunk from defending his work, his responses have been far more measured than in the past. He wrote this month to John Taylor, head of Nixon Library, to suggest he convene a symposium on the late President's image, adding, "I understand the feelings you have about [the film]." In his turn, Taylor—who calls the movie sadistic—says he will invite Stone to a planned conference on movies about recent U.S. history.

Ironically, there are numerous parallels between Stone's life and Nixon's. Nixon, no matter how successful, never found personal peace; Stone has seemed equally driven. Growing up in New York City as the only child of Louis Stone (a stockbroker who died in 1985) and his wife, Jacqueline, Stone, like Nixon, rarely received much affection from his father. "Louis would never kiss Oliver," says Jacqueline. "He would shake his hand." Stone says his mother was loving but caught up in New York's arty social whirl. "When she was [home], she was perfect," he says. "But it was continual abandonment."

Compelled, perhaps, by a child's sense of powerlessness, Stone sought control. "He was not like other children—he was conscientious, tidy," says his mother. At age 6 on family visits to France, she says, he called upon his cousins to perform in sketches he wrote—and charged adults two francs to attend the show. "Oliver was the leader, and his cousins did the work. Oliver likes to have it his own way."

Behind it all, Stone says, "I was very insecure." The feeling intensified in 1960 when Stone was sent off to the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., where he never felt he fit in. "I was nobody special," he says. "I felt invisible." Then, in his sophomore year, his parents divorced amid accusations of mutual infidelities, and Stone learned his father was deeply in debt. Stone's biographer, James Riordan, sees this as a formative moment. "After that, the whole world is like his parents," says Riordan, whose authorized bio, Stone, appeared last month. "There's always something deeper than the surface truth."

Hoping to find that something deeper, Stone says, "I took off into the world alone." He left Yale after his freshman year in 1965 to teach English in Vietnam. But he became bored and, craving to know "the bottom of life," enlisted in 1967 as an Army infantryman and was sent back to Vietnam. After a few weeks, he says, "I was becoming a jungle animal. I started out cerebral and civilized, and within two months I was operating on instinct."

Like many other soldiers, he was also operating on a range of drugs, from marijuana to LSD. After his discharge in 1968 he returned to the U.S. a heavy and indiscriminate user—a problem that plagued Stone, he says, until 1981, when he kicked a cocaine habit cold turkey.

Soon after he came home, drawing on a talent for writing stories and looking, he has said, for a way to "channel my rage" at the injustice he perceived in Vietnam, he enrolled in New York University's film program, graduating in 1971. After years of writing while getting by on odd jobs, he hit it big, winning the Best Screenplay Oscar in 1978 with Midnight Express.

The rage didn't disappear. James Woods, who starred in Stone's breakout film as a director, 1986's Salvador (and who plays White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in Nixon), recalls how he and Stone would pound one another's heads on the floor of their Mexican inn over artistic disagreements. "He bends you out of shape," says Woods. "He keeps you on edge—but he gets performances you didn't know you had to give."

Anger has made an imprint, in one way or another, on every Stone project, from Platoon, Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July to JFK, Natural Born Killers and, now, Nixon. Stone himself sees its source as fear. "It has taken many forms in my life," he says. "I can get a stab of fear anytime. Sometimes you can handle it, sometimes you can't. I can get moody and defensive." Or, friends say, turn it on others. When he filmed her autobiography in Heaven & Earth, says writer Le Ly Hayslip, Stone could be a bully. "His energy is too strong," she says. "He knows he can make people respect and fear him."

Which may be why he received such a comeuppance in his wrenching divorce from Elizabeth Cox, whom he met when she served as an assistant on his 1981 thriller, The Hand. (Stone's six-year first marriage to Najwa Sarkis, 56, an attaché at the Moroccan mission to the U.N., ended in 1977. They had no children.) During the last few years of their marriage, Stone had numerous affairs, and, in an act of colossal hubris—one Richard Nixon would sympathize with—Stone kept graphic accounts of his extramarital relations in his diaries. Elizabeth found them.

Today Stone's sense of chastisement is clear. "You lose your kids—it is so sad," he says. "I only get a little portion of them now." Then a bit of his old sense of grievance creeps in. "American divorce laws are very tough," he says. "For whatever reason, the system is geared to destroy people." Still, he hopes to rebuild some trust with his ex. "We're trying to work out a friendship," he says.

It is one project among many. He is busy revising an autobiographical novel he wrote at 19. There is Memphis, a film he is developing about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—lest we think the new Oliver Stone will be moving on to romantic comedy. And there is Tara, named for the Buddhist deity of compassion. As Stone plays with the child, his face splits in a gap-toothed grin. "I've got a bond with her," he says. "There's a special relationship between a daughter and her father."

Tara's mother, whom Stone met at a New York City nightclub in 1994, says little about herself, except that "the baby makes me happy." Their pairing is, for Stone, uniquely honest. According to Jacqueline, her son has been frank with Chong. "He's said he will not marry her." His need for love, she says, "has been filled by Tara."

Stone would agree. "Love kills the demons," he says, standing, as Chong enters the room and reaches to take the child. But Stone pauses, bends over and kisses their baby girl—once, twice, three times—on the forehead. "I love these moments," he says. "I just don't have enough of them."

-Gregory Cerio, "Oliver's Twist," People magazine, Jan 22 1996

#oliver stone #people magazine #nixon #chong stone #jacqueline stone #tara stone #fatherhood #divorce

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juliehowlin · 1 year

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10 May

In 1969, The Turtles gave a special performance at the White House as guests of Tricia Nixon. Stories circulate concerning members of the group allegedly snorted cocaine on Abraham Lincoln's desk, and that Mark Volman fell off the stage 5 times. Were these two incidents related, I wonder?

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 10 May:

#this day in history #On This Day #OnThisDate #on this date #10May #May10 #OTD #10th may #May 10th

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pretty-little-fools · 6 months

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#tricia nixon #jonathan frid #halloween #60's #vintage #late 60's #1969 #washington d.c.#the white house #dark shadows

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xtruss · 1 year

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Photos: From ‘Innocent Prince’ to ‘Adulterer & Killer King,’ The Filthy Life of Charles III

As King Charles settles into his new role, Al Jazeera takes a look at his life through photos.

— In Pictures | Gallery | 01 May, 2023 | Al-Jazeera

Back when he was still Prince of Wales, Charles opened parliament for the first time on May 10, 2022, and reads the Queen's Speech on behalf of his ailing mother. File: Alastair Grant/WPA pool/Getty Images

Britain’s 74-year-old King Charles III, who will be crowned on Saturday, was the oldest sovereign to take the throne in a lineage that dates back 1,000 years when he succeeded his popular mother, Queen Elizabeth II, after her death in September. She had reigned for 70 years.

Charles does not enjoy the same support as his widely admired mother, but his public approval ratings are generally positive. An opinion poll last week showed many more people hold favourable views of him than negative although there is also a wide segment expressing indifference.

Republican sentiment – which was almost entirely absent publicly during Elizabeth’s reign – has become visible with eggs thrown at the king and his wife, Camilla, on one trip and small groups of protesters voicing opposition at others.

Buckingham Palace has supported research into the monarchy’s links to slavery as calls grow for apologies and reparations, not least from some of the 14 Commonwealth realms, where Charles is also king.

The Guardian newspaper has run a series of articles raising questions about the opaque nature of the wealth and finances of the institution and the royal family, an issue that resonates at a time when Britons are facing a cost of living crisis.

Left: Then-Princess Elizabeth is pictured with her first son, Prince Charles, at Buckingham Palace after his christening in London on December 15, 1948. File: AP Right: In this July 27, 1958, photo, Prince Charles wears his school uniform. He became the first heir apparent to the British throne to attend school rather than have a private tutor. File: AP

Top: A 7-year-old Charles sits with his mother and younger sister, Princess Anne, as they watch the final match of the Smith's lawn polo cup in Windsor, England, on June 23, 1956. File: AP Bottom: Prince Charles arrives at London Airport from Glasgow on April 2, 1964, at a time when he was a student at Gordonstoun School in northeast Scotland, which his father, Prince Philip, also attended. File: AP

Top: An 18-year-old Prince Charles leaves Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth in a state coach on October 31, 1967, for the opening of parliament. It was the first time the prince took part in the ceremony. File: AP Bottom: Prince Charles and Tricia Nixon, daughter of US President Richard Nixon, discuss baseball at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC, on July 18, 1970, during a trip the prince made to the US capital with his sister, Princess Anne, after they had visited Canada with their parents. File: AP

Top: Prince Charles walks with Imelda Marcos, first lady of the Philippines, in Katmandu on February 24, 1975, at the coronation ceremony for Nepal’s King Birendra. File: AP Bottom: Prince Charles drinks from a freshly cut green coconut at Haripur village, which he visited during a one-day trip to Bhubaneswar, India, on December 4, 1980. The prince is wearing a marigold garland, which was given to him by villagers. File: Santosh Basak/AP

Top: Queen Elizabeth II crowns her son the Prince of Wales during his investiture ceremony on July 1, 1969, at Caernarfon Castle in Wales. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is seated at the right, and British Home Secretary James Callaghan stands next to the prince. File: AP Bottom: Prince Charles wed Diana, Princess of Wales, on July 29, 1981. The couple appeared with his parents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London after their marriage at St Paul's Cathedral. File: AP

Top: Charles and Diana take home their firstborn son, Prince William, from St Mary's Hospital in London on June 22, 1982, the day after his birth. File: John Redman/AP Bottom: Charles and Diana made their second trip to Australia together in 1985 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the state of Victoria, named after Charles's great-great-great-grandmother. File: AP

Top: Charles greets models wearing clothing from a local designer during a tour of Soweto, South Africa, on November 3, 2011. File: Kim Lubbrook/pool/AP Bottom: Charles speaks after a performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra at St James Palace in central London on December 12, 2011. File: Lefteris Pitarakis/pool/AP

After preparing for the crown his entire life, Charles was king on April 28, 2023, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police presented him with a horse named Noble as he accepted the role of commissioner-in-chief of the police force at Windsor Castle. At the age of 73, he had become the oldest person to ever assume the British throne when Queen Elizabeth died on September 8, 2022. File: Andrew Matthews/pool/AP

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bonnieb23-blog · 1 year

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From Catastrophe to Success!

On the night of my debutante ball, Richard Nixon, who was Vice President, and his wife, Pat, came over early with their two adolescent daughters, Julie and Tricia. They wanted to see the tent and the decorations before the extraordinary debutante party my parents gave for me at Underoak, our beautiful estate. Walter Sharon, the florist, was there, too, working on the flowers. Ridgewells Caterers…

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#debutante #Debutante ball #Fontana #Limbo #Myer Davis #Pedrito Altieri #Vice President Richard Nixon

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dreamofstarlight · 11 months

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the thing about tricia nixon's wedding is that it was overshadowed by the release of the Pentagon Papers that revealed her dad and wedding guests were lying about the Vietnam War. like can you imagine lol

Luci Johnson had protestors outside of the WH during her wedding due to the Vietnam war

#anon #ask #answered #tricia nixon #luci baines johnson #luci johnson nugent

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 1 year

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Moon at the 1974 National Prayer Breakfast

From WIOTM

In 1974, in the midst of Moon’s “Forgive, Love, Unite” campaign and rallies in support of Nixon, Rev. Moon was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast organized by the secretive political and religious organization, the Fellowship. The C-SPAN aired “National Prayer Breakfast” is an annual event held in Washington DC that brings together government officials, religious leaders, and other prominent figures to pray and discuss issues of national and international significance.

This Fellowship is known for influencing Washington’s leaders and for support and participating in covert operations all over the world to influence high-profile figures and, through such figures, the masses. According to a complaint filed by 13 pastors in the early 2000s, “A secretive religious group that operates a congressional boardinghouse near the US Capitol might have used money from a terrorist organization to fund overseas trips for certain members of Congress.”

As reported in UC publications, a “post-breakfast rally at Lafayette Park brought out Edward and Tricia Nixon Cox, the son-in-law and daughter of 37th U.S. President Richard Nixon, who greeted well-wishers who rallied to ‘Forgive, Love and Unite’ as an answer to the Watergate Crisis.” This was around the time Moon was able to meet with Nixon, reportedly telling him, “Don’t knuckle under to pressure. Stand up for your convictions.”

When Moon spoke to the National Prayer Breakfast, his address was not his usual rambling about God’s providence of restoration or “convex and concave” but rather a message of gratitude for the event. That being said, it was not without controversy for a messiah claimant to be speaking to the USA’s foremost Christian leaders.

The Unification Church’s involvement with the National Prayer Breakfast was widely criticized by religious and political figures who felt that the event was opportunistically being used by Moon and his organization. Some argued that Moon’s theological teachings, which included a belief in his own divine nature, were incompatible with traditional Christian beliefs and therefore did not belong at a prayer breakfast that was supposed to be ecumenical in nature. Vocal opponents included Billy Graham, who openly questioned the theological teachings of its founder, Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

One of the most prominent critics of the Unification Church’s involvement with the National Prayer Breakfast was the late Rev. James Robinson, an evangelical leader who was a strong opponent of Moon and his theology. Like others, Robinson accused Moon of using the event to promote his own agenda and to gain political influence in the U.S. He also criticized the close relationship between Moon and members of the Reagan administration, who were often in attendance at the National Prayer Breakfast and were reportedly paid to give speeches in support of Moon and his organizations. Many members of the Reagan administration, including Attorney General Edwin Meese and White House Chief of Staff James Baker, were reportedly close to Rev. Moon and his followers, were often seen at the National Prayer Breakfast. In the 1980s-2000s, to look around the National Prayer Breakfast was to witness a room full of the USA’s top leaders who had at one point been paid by Moon.

The Moon organization (a phrase to describe this multi-tentacled network of organizations) continued to participate in the National Prayer Breakfast into the early 2000s, and to some degree have a presence through their Washington Times’ reps, though their involvement gradually declined over the years. In 2001, the Unification Church’s organizations launched the Inaugural Prayer Luncheon for Unity and Renewal, which featured respected Evangelical figures, such as the Southern Baptist Convention’s President James Merritt and Ed Young of Second Baptist Church. Rev. Moon also had a chance to speak. There was even a tribute to Billy Graham.

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Sun Myung Moon’s plan to influence US President Richard Nixon during his impeachment Unification Church Project Watergate 1973

Sun Myung Moon placed ads in newspapers all across the US. The above is from The New York Times. Statement on the Watergate crisis

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Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe, transcript and links 1. “Rev Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe” documentary . A BBC / A&E Network co-production, 2000 2. World Domination – Sun Myung Moon died before he could take over a single country.

The Moons’ God is not the God of Judeo-Christianity

How “God’s Day” was established by Sun Myung Moon in 1968

The Moon church is unequivocally not Christian

#Sun Myung Moon #Unification Church #Rev. James Robinson #Richard Nixon #National Prayer Breakfast #“Forgive Love Unite”#Project Watergate

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