One of the dangers of devoting your life to being cool and hip is that the rules of that game inevitably change and you ain’t so cool anymore. This is particularly true of my Boomer generation, which is headed, such is human life, for fuddy-duddy status come Hell or High Bananas. And despite our hipness, we are not aging gracefully. Staying cool-at-all-costs is not easy and the harder you try, the harder it gets.
There is no greater example of this Boomer desperation than Oliver Stone, recently caught DUI in his dotage. Now, on the eve of directing a major studio 9/11 film, he again reminds us… ad tedium, ad nauseum, as if we didn’t know already… that he opposed the War in Iraq:
“There was an over-reaction after 9/11. Bush was given enormous powers and misused them. He created a war in Iraq that has further helped bust the economy, and has led to civil war there.
“He was the wrong leader at the wrong time. I always felt that. I wish I was wrong.”
This is, of course, BS. Stone doesn’t wish he was (or were) wrong. He wishes he was right. He wants the country to have made the wrong step in his view so that he can remain what he thinks is cutting edge. Oliver Stone NOT in opposition to a president is not Oliver Stone. He is just some guy who recently made a bunch of movies that tanked – in other words, anonymous. Never mind all those millions of real live Iraqis waving their purple fingers in support of democracy. We won’t talk about them – and certainly Oliver won’t.
Yes, being cool is really hard to keep up. You just grow old and turn into a, well, fuddy-duddy. Of course there are those few exceptions that prove the rule. Like Dennis Hopper. But as is well known, Dennis voted for Bush.
The thing that concerns me is that Paramount is going to risk shareholder money so Oliver Stone can make this 9/11 movie. One would think that the shareholders in the parent company, Viacom, might say something. But the main shareholders of Viacom are the ultra Left duo of Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin, both of whom live to jam anything Left down our throats. In other words, the boss wants a movie about 9/11 that is slanted and the boss couldn’t have picked a better man for the job. And if Viacom doesn’t show a profit, he won’t care because it’s the “cause” that counts.
I must admit, I enjoy watching people our age as they try to remain “cutting edge”. The ONLY good thing about getting old is realizing that “being hip” sucks.
Oliver Stone isn’t worth commenting upon. Trying to spend a life (or any portion thereof) being “hip” or “cool” requires way too much effort and necessitates way too many bad compromises. Unfortunately a whole lot of people seem determined to try and blind to increasingly preposterous and compromised they become.
A subset of this group, OT as it is, are those who so desperately try to be “friends” with their children and their children’s buddies. Anyone who wants to be friends with their children needs to be a parent to their children and then patiently wait until the children are adults – then you’ll find you’ve achieved the goal of establishing friendship with them. (Don’t know why I bothered y’all with that, but I did.)
I’ve always thought that one of the advantages of being an adult is that you were no longer judged based on your coolth. There was a columnist a few years back who actually wrote a column about how, despite being 40 years old, he was still legitimately cool. After all, he had a Limp Bizkit CD in his car stereo. And no, he was not being ironic. One of the most unintentionally funny columns ever.
I was born in ’58 and have tryed to convince everyone that I am not a Boomer. You’re point on Boomers trying to continue to “be cool” is spot on. I find Boomers an embarrassment. I didn’t come of age in the sixties so all my life I have felt like I was trying to survive in the wake of the sixties kids, trying to paddle around the whirlpools they’ve left behind them. The Boomers have given us widespread drug abuse, ineffectual public schools, and they’ve decryed and mocked religion. Oliver Stone is the Poster Child of his Generation and history will not be kind.
I have no doubt that Oliver Stone’s chronicle of 9/11 will be every bit the accurate and disinterested portrayal of events in September 2001 and beyond, that “JFK” was in terms of the Kennedy assassination.
Being a member of the boomer generation (Born in the 1950′s) I will say it is very true that most boomers don’t age well, but I will add that some do, you named one… Dennis Hopper. In 1980 as I was stupidly voting for Jimmy Carter… for a second time! (What do they say about being fooled twice?)
One of my friends parents was about Roger’s age (60-ish), was from NYC and an artist with long gray hair, a very interesting guy and definately one of my favorite ‘geezers’. During the run-up to the election between Carter and Reagan, I had assumed him to be a Liberal and voting Democrat to which he said…
Oh for heavan’s sake I’ve grown up! If I were still voting the way I did back then it would mean I could’t admit ever being wrong and am incapable of change, it would also validate others notion’s of my inability to learn… I fooled all those sons of a bitch’s didn’t I!
I think if he were alive today he would simply commend me for learning at an earlier age. One thing I have learned since my world opened to include Republicans, is how utterly stupid the stereotypes of them are. I’m not saying it is a Party full of Dennis Hopper types, but there are a lot more of them the one would think, and I mean a hell of a lot more!
Yesterday I followed a link at lgf over to some pics of the ‘boobs not bombs’ march at Berkely and I thought if I ever do anything that disgusting I hope to God someone puts me away.
There they were a bunch of naked and semi naked boomers trapsing down the streets. [not a pretty sight.] One old hippie lady is still not shaving her armpits. I cringed.
I dunno, we started out fine but somewhere along the way we boomers just plain went nuts.
As for Oliver Stone’s picture, they are no doubt thinking it will play well to the anti American crowds aborad. After all I hear that Hizbellah liked Moore’s movie so maybe they can use Ollie’s conribution to help drum up new converts. On thing about being martyr, it is kind of a one shot deal. Always looking for a few good a**holes. Maybe Ollie can help inspire some more hatred.
Wow, do I get double plus cool points for never having been cool or hip? Anything extra for working on Bob Finch’s campaign in ’66 as a high school junior?
I knew sticking to principles would pay off.
Oh, man, I hate to ask this, but who is Dennis Hopper?
Interesting comment, particularly since the Commerce Department announced today that the U.S. economy grew at a 3.4% annual rate last quarter, which is the ninth straight month it’s exceeded 3%.
The last time the economy exceeded the 3% benchmark for so many quarters? From January 1983 through March 1986, when Reagan was in office. (Source: Bloomberg news)
Oliver Stone would really be better served if he just kept his yap shut, and kept making comedies like Alexander, which I understand generated the most laughs of any film in 2004.
Joe,
He’s the director/actor who helped Jack Nicholson to become famous.
Easy Rider – 1969
also see – Peter Fonda “Potential Negative Outcomes From the Use of Illicit Substances”
The problem with many of the self-important Boomers like Oliver Stone: They cannot seem to “surrender gracefully the things of youth.” Few things are more off-putting than a middle-aged hippy masquerading as a teenager. Being a teenager is not all it’s cracked up to be – lots of anxiety, lack of certainty about who you are, a desperate need to be part of the “in” crowd, over-dramatization of non-problems – but, of course, this is Oliver Stone!
Roger:
Stone and a large portion of the entertainment/media crowd are stuck in their 1973 world. Everything is seen in terms of vietnam and watergate. The fact that from the start of the Afghanistan conflict Vietnam has been a constant refrain is telling. Whether you are for the war or against it there is no way that these conflicts have anything to do with vietnam other then the fact that America is involved. Virtually every aspect of the two conflicts are different. The anti-war crowd use the very same rhetoric because they assume since it worked in the seventies they can stuff the Afghanistan/Iraq confict into the same rhetoric mold. They are trying to put the Rove affair into the watergate mold. Last night Obberman had John Dean on his show pointing out the similarities even though he constantly said he didn’t have enough facts to really know what was going on.
As far as the being hip too many middle aged people have confused hanging on to their youth is the same as hip. If you are 48 and you are trying to pass yourself off as 21 you are not hip you are desperate and in denial. True hipness is following your own tastes and fashions and ignoring what the current trend is. The “cadillac of Mini vans” bit in “Get Shorty” shows the herd mentality and shallowness of what passes for hip in America today.
Kevin Peters
The R
Sorry Rick, Uncool is the new cool.
Those of us born in the 1940s know what cool is.
Cool is someone who can still Rock and Roll but doesn’t.
Joe S.,
Dennis Hopper is a veteran actor who has played many a movie villain. You can see his filmography on imdb.com. My favorite role was as the mad bomber in “Speed”; I love it when he growls to Keanu Reeves, “Jack, do not try to grow a brain!”
As for Stone, I thought “Platoon” was crap – the wicked sergeant with the scar down his cheek and the egregious overuse of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” – and I’ve seen nothing since to change my opinion of his work.
But what amazes me is that the studios will hand this hack tens of millions of dollars knowing that, sure as fate, they will lose most of it. There are so many powerful stories associated with 9/11 and Iraq – stories that, if told well, would pull millions into the theaters – and yet we see none of them. I know that Hollywood has been shallow and fashionably leftist; but since when did Hollywood become allergic to making money?
I’ve hated Oliver Stone for about 40 years. I don’t know if that’s cool or not. I don’t care.
I hate to stick up for Oliver Stone but he may surprise us.
“Nixon” was a surprisingly even-handed and sympathetic portrayal of Tricky Dick. I will go so far as to say that few directors would have been so objective and fair.
“Any Given Sunday” was fantastic as well. And Stone didn’t fall for a lot of the left-wing themes. There was this one scene when Jamie Foxx was doing an interview on this sports talk show. He had just been named starting QB and the success was really going to his head. In the middle of the interview he starts spouting off with all of this black nationalist stuff, comparing the NFL to the plantation system, etc. A lesser movie would have turned that dialogue into a serious and thought-provoking interlude in an otherwise escapist action flick. But instead, the movie took great pains to make Jamie Foxx’s character look like an idiot. I remember being pleasantly surprised to see such sacred leftist cows get lampooned.
Stone can be objective when he wants to be. He is also a heck of a good director. Well, I never understood what all the fuss was about re: “Natural Born Killer” — I didn’t see any deep symbolish, it all seemed very crude and childish to me — but some of his stuff is outstanding. You never know.
Dennis Hopper voted for Bush and Jack Nicholson, long considered the coolest guy in the room, is an ardent pro-lifer. Go figure.
You other boomers will have to speak for yourselves of course, but, although I’m too far removed from contemporary culture to be hip, I am in fact still way cool.
I was never cool.
I was not-cool before not-being-cool was cool.
Still less was I ever hip.
I’m one of those Sixties’ flower children who remembers every last detail of the Sixties.
Therefore, I was not there.
Jamie Irons
Jamie:
When I remember the 60′s I am amazed I am still alive.
I loved Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers.
BTW if you want to know what the country looks like where I live, watch Hoosiers. best sports movie ever made. Except maybe for Rudy.
I’ve no clue what Dennis Hopper is like today, he could be a puddy cat, but if you want to read about what he was like in the 60s/70s, check out Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. I’m not sure I ever want to encounter Dennis Hopper in a dark alley or, at least, Dennis Hopper off prescription anti-depressants. I have looked at books of his art though which I thought was really wonderful. It’s interesting to think about what he could have done if he hadn’t been so screwed up or had grown up in a different time.
Jamie,
But did you work on Bob Finch’s campaign? I mean, really, some proof must be provided regarding non-coolness.
If you weren’t in California in ’66, working for Finch (and Reagan), did you at least think that it was a shame about Goldwater?
I’ve never considered myself hip.
These days I’m grateful I still have hips.
Oliver Stone always sees a VRWC just around the corner.
When I think of Stone I imagine him to be kind of man who has wall-to-wall shag carpeting, mirrors on all the walls including the ceiling and lying naked on his round bed believing his sagging self is ‘it’.
That’s the vibe I get from Stone.
Oliver’s “…helped bust the economy” take is hillarious. Perhaps he’s practicing excuses for why Hollywood is having a bad summer. Bush lied and Hollywood died…
“Oliver Stone always sees a VRWC just around the corner.”
It would be fun to hire someone to do nothing but follow Oliver Stone around all day just to see how freaked out and paranoid he would get. Perhaps he could wear a t-shirt that says “VRWC” or just dress normally … hmmm….
Rick
But did you work on Bob Finch’s campaign?
When I said I was just not-cool, I didn’t mean to imply I was not-not-not-cool. (not^3-cool)
No, in that year I was in Connecticut. I didn’t get to California till 1969, more’s the pity!
Jamie Irons
What happened in the sixties?
Kyda:
You other boomers will have to speak for yourselves of course, but, although I’m too far removed from contemporary culture to be hip, I am in fact still way cool.
Born in 1958, technically I’m bringing up the tail end of the baby boom. Having read your coments here for a while, Kyda, you definitely are cool.
I’m not, though. I used to try to be, but eventually gave it up. That was kind of liberating, in a way.
_________
Unrelated: I watched Easy Rider on TV a few months ago and was struck by how aggressive, belligerent and confrontational Dennis Hopper’s character was. Not a flower child at all. (So maybe he wasn’t even a lib back then, either.)
coments = comments
Lately I seem to be losing the ability to type.
another boomer born in ’58 here. by the time we came around, long hair was no longer a statement, but a fashion. the war was over when we finished high school in ’76, so there was no worries there. my older brothers were the cool ones and our age was the me too group. brian
I get it. If you vote for Bush, Roger thinks you’re cool and with it. And if you didn’t, Roger thinks your out of touch, old, and trying to look cool.
He’s the director/actor who helped Jack Nicholson to become famous.
Easy Rider – 1969
also see – Peter Fonda “Potential Negative Outcomes From the Use of Illicit Substances”.
Now, be nice. Since he got sober he’s done some killer work … and become a Republican.
Something worth thinking about there.
Dennis Hopper was born in the same year as my mother. Other things they have in common are that they parented baby boom children and that they voted for the President. My mother is the cooler of the two.
Hey, man, you don’t talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll, uh, well, you’ll say hello to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you, and he won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say do you know that if is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you – I mean I’m no, I can’t – I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s, he’s a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…
It was a triumphant return that led to Blue Velvet, Hoosiers and River’s Edge in his year (1986) and the classic When I was a boy, I dreamed of playing football… a decade later.
Born in ’67, I guess that makes me a Gen X’er. No one asked me, but I would offer one bit of advice to the Boomer crowd:
“Remember, we will write your epitaph, not the other way around. And we’re not impressed.”
BTW if you want to know what the country looks like where I live, watch Hoosiers. Best sports movie ever made. Except maybe for Rudy.—-Terrye
Please say it ain’t so. You didn’t just say that Rudy was a better movie on any level than Hoosiers, did you ? Hoosiers is my all-time favourite sports flic, and an all-round enjoyment on virtually any level. Rudy — bleeah.
Thought Dennis was great in that one, but I still remember him from Blue Velvet. With Dennis sometimes he blurs the line between real and imagined so successfully that it is hard to remember that he is just ‘playing’.
A little nitrous anyone ?
Blue Velvet was one of my favorite movies; I really never enjoyed anything else by Lynch quite as much. Hopper said that Frank Booth was the character he played that he could identify with the most.
Moses:
I don’t think it was who Stone voted for that bothers Roger. It is Stone trotting out the same old stale cliches of the 60′s and 70′s and pretending that they are cutting edge thinking. Stone has the same schtick for 20 years and forces every current topic through the same cookie cutter mold. read Stone’s words on Castro. They have not changed and they ignore the historical facts of the last 30 years.Theymay have been hip in the seventies but everyone knows that castro is not a dashing revolutionary but simply an old tired despot hanging on to power.
Kevin Peters
Screw cool. I am trying to be a perfect lady.
(Need to watch that goddamn language)
One of the great joys in life is becoming old enough that you no longer have to try to be cool. I have noted before that coolness is the glue that keeps liberals together – they are too afraid of looking uncool to ever stop being liberal. Growing up seems to be a big reason many drop liberalism and all of its silly inconsistencies and foolishnesses.
The argument about “boomers” is really an argument about the ’60s, right? Hey, the sixties were FORTY years ago! Not just the last century, but the last millenium – they are SO over! I’ve been fed up for years with both aging ponytailed hippies and conservative culture warriors, neither of whom can let the sixties go. Let’s just forget the sixties and move on, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Gary:
“The argument about “boomers” is really an argument about the ’60s, right?”
Nope. It’s about people who refuse to re-think.
And so far almost this entire century is about the necessity to re-think.
In the end I don’t think it matters much which prior decade was the defining one to any individual, the current necessity still stands.
It’s just that the ’60′s decade was rather noisy and sharply changed the compass heading our entire society and the following decades moved toward. And many of the movers and shakers back then are loudly fighting the current compass correction.
They won’t let go. I’m tired of them too (and I are one), but not tired of the conversation nor am I tired of the need to point out the necessity of re-think.
Syl:
When my brother and his wife came to visit I told my sister in law that if she did not want to hear my brother and me argue she needed to impress upon him that it was not 1969 anymore.
And for all the Mo’s out there that do not know why it is that some of us are sick unto death of guys like Oliver Stone I think a good explanation can be found in Bernard Golber’g book…100 People who are screwing up America. He is not as good a writer as our host, but he does make some interesting observations.
Stone is #65. Goldberg says: “The problem with Oliver Stone is not really that he’s a leftist with paranoid fantasies about sinister forces running America. People have a right to their delusions. Besides, in Hollywood having fashionably leftist delusions is always an excellent career move.
The problem isn’t even that Stone lies about history and unloads his fantasies on the rest of us in his movies. It’s his right as an “artist”–the word they like to use in the “creative community” to describe themselves–to put whatever he wants on film, as long as he can get someone to pay for it.
No, the problem is that, even as he plays fast and loose with facts, distorting things in the most unscrupulous ahd heavy-handed way, Oliver Stone cavalierly goes out of his way to present his warped take on events….as real, authentic history.”
end quote.
Now that is the problem. The attack on 9/11 killed a lot of people and I for one am disgusted that this fraud and charlatan is going to get his grubby paws on it.
Hoosiers is one of my all-time favorite sports movies, too–how can you not love a story like that and it boasts, besides Dennis Hopper, the incomparable Gene Hackman (Rudy is the Sound of Music of sports movies–well done, but “same old treacle”). Another favorite is the more recent Miracle with a stand-out performance by Kurt Russell, an under appreciated actor is ever there was one.
PSGInfinity, how can you not be impressed with us boomers? (When I refer to “boomers”, BTW, I’m talking about those of us who came of age in the 60′s and early 70′s–you other boomers are a whole ‘nother breed of cat and I don’t blame you for not wanting to be associated with us.) We’ve had things screwed up for decades, it will take decades more to un-screw everything and when we retire, we’re going to break the bank. What’s not to be impressed?
(Rick1–you’re a Dylan fan, you recognize cool when you see it–that’s cool)
Terrye
Hey, be happy. At least you get visits from your family. Mine and me barely speak.
Well, maybe, I’m the lucky one. No, I don’t really mean that. But when a conversation has only two choices of subject: Bush or one’s latest aches and pains, I have no real enthusiasm to engage.
I think the most disheartening is that the stereotype I had of Republicans has been shattered, but my family still maintains it.
Forget discussing all this war business. We just can’t go there.
When I’m asked about the “cool” sixties by young people (I graduated from high school in ’65), I remind them of JFK: murdered; RFK: murdered; Martin Luther King: murdered; Medgar Evers: murdered; riots in the streets; 58,000 dead in Viet Nam.
When I see people my age trying to identify with twentysomethimgs, I feel an urge to chop off their ponytails and rip out their earrings.
I first saw Dennis Hopper in the movie “Giant” where he played a good, but nerdy son opposite the man who defined “cool” for the generation that came of age in the fifties–James Dean.
If you care about being cool, you ain’t.
I was born in ’48 so I was right in the heart of the 60′s gen. The last Democrat I voted for was Carter in ’76 and I’ve regreted that vote for many years.
Dennis Hopper is an actor I always enjoy. For a movie of his that fits right in with this thread try “Flashback” with Kiefer Sutherland from 1989. My take on Boomers from the 60′s is that two different types were there. The “Sex, Drugs and Rockin’Roll” Hippies who were just doing your average teenage “Let’ Party” years and the “Serious Political Activist” types who were more puritanical than the Puritans. The “S,D and R&R people generally grew up and are adults now. The “Activists” managed to get ahold of the reins of power in the media, unions and the Democratic Party and so never had to grow up as they could demand that everyone listen to and obey them. Now that their power is slipping they are having a tantrum like kids always do when they can’t get their own way. Heaven help us if they ever get it.
I agree, geoff, it’s basically a case of arrested development. (hey, they were a cool band, weren’t they?) As painful as this process is–and we all have family and friends who think we are nuts, or worse–maybe a new sort of cool is developing. Irony and self-loathing pale in comparison to the heroic and idealistic zeitgeist emerging the world over, and Bush, like it or not, started the ball rolling.
(I think Stone has lost way too many brain cells to his assorted intoxicants. It catches up to you.)
It is to be hoped that eventually the character who calls himself “Moses Wine” will figure out that — whatever his politics — sophomoric oversimplifications simply don’t cut it on this blog, even when dressed up as half-assed attempts at wit. (Old joke: “He thinks he’s a wit. He’s half right.”) I am amazed at the patience with which some commenters go out of their way to explain that, no, Moses, it isn’t quite as simple as that.
As a boomer myself (born in 1950), my most indelible memory of the soi-disant “non-conformists” of the sixties is the way they rabidly conformed to one another. “Hip” and “cool” haven’t changed much in that respect in the last 50 years — those most anxious to appear “cool” are the most lemming-like in their quest for approval from those they deem their peers.
there was also two 1960′s. there was the “can do” 60′s of kennedy promising to put a man on the moon, the beach boys, muscle cars. of course, there was the anti-war, civil rights, altamont, charles manson 1960′s. the boomers forget the can do 60′s.
Born in 49 and have been disgusted with most of my generation since college when so many of my peers paid attention to third-rate entertainers posing as savants like Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden and God knows who else (whether it’s from age or otherwise, I’m very grateful that I can’t remember any of the others). The last straw was when so many people in my midst were shocked that McGovern got rolled so bad; I knew that there were a lot of people that would have increasing problems with reality.
geoffb: (re: SD&RR vs. Activists)
You absolutely nailed it. I have nothing to add to your analysis.
I also voted for Carter in ’76. But I was 18 then, so that’s my excuse. Unfortunately, it took a while for me to learn from my mistakes. I went on to vote for Clinton in “92 (but NOT in ’96). Today the Carter vote is still the one I regret the most, no question about it.
brian:
Since I was 11 in 1969, it was the “can do” 60′s that I remember personally. The hippie/radical stuff simply wasn’t on my radar screen at the time (but it came later).
My parents and teachers had a tacit understanding that I would be “out sick” on launch days. I think my teachers were generally OK with it, since they realized it was history in the making and they were probably glad I took an interest in it.
One of my very favorite writings of Ayn Rand is her nonfiction essay “Apollo and Dionysus”, written in 1969. She basically compares and contrasts Apollo 11 and Woodstock. You young’uns might not realize those events occurred only about three weeks apart.
If she had waited another couple of weeks before writing it, she could have included the Manson murders.
Kyda Sylvester,
I admire your spirited ‘defense’ of your fellow travelers.
I actually enjoy watching train wrecks, for they are cool. I just feel sorry for the poor suffering bastard up front with the really big headache, and the hapless train guys who get the joyous task of “Ctrl-Z”-ing the resulting mess.