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In Salvador, Stone was learning to wind the cinematic mechanism until it coiled with productive tension, both on the screen and on the set. "Working with Stone was like being caught in a Cuisinart with a madman," James Woods opines. "And he felt the same about me. It was two Tasmanian devils wrestling under a blanket. But he's a sharp director. He starts with a great idea, delegates authority well, scraps like a street fighter, then takes the best of what comes out of the fracas." Says Dale Dye, the Marine captain who hazed Platoon's actors to firm them up for filming: "Oliver thrives on chaos, throwing together a crew of such diverse backgrounds and ideologies that there's constant friction. It's the kind of energy he thrives on." Platoon's star, Charlie Sheen, 21, found the director "brutally honest. Which is why we clicked. After a scene he'd say, 'You sucked' or 'You nailed it.' That's just my style."
Right now Stone is Hollywood's hot new guy. He is even entertaining the improbable idea of a Platoon TV series. But don't expect Stone to direct Indiana Jones III. Says Stanley Weiser: "Oliver's been around the block ten times and won't be seduced by money. He's not an easy lay." Stone and his second wife, Elizabeth, 37, look the family-album picture of swank domesticity in their Santa Monica home. They swore off drugs a few years ago, and now seem addicted only to each other and their little son Sean. "Success and Sean have made Oliver much mellower," Elizabeth notes. "But he's still a compulsive worker. Always reading or writing, he simply loves ideas. He's filled with them, and he's thrilled with them."
One suspects that the old troublemaker will find new trouble spots in the political landscape; the soapbox spieler will continue his spellbinding harangues. His mind and moral sense are too restless to relax in the glow of celebrity and the promise of statuettes. But for the moment, Oliver Stone has found for himself the one plot twist he would never have put in Platoon: a happy ending to his Viet Nam nightmare.