If you’re anywhere near Brooklyn on Monday night, July 20th, there’s only one place you should be: Videology at 308 Bedford Ave. That’s where RogerEbert.com Editor-in-Chief Matt Zoller Seitz and filmmaker Ramin Bahrani will host a conversation about the films of Oliver Stone in advance of Seitz’s upcoming book “The Oliver Stone Experience,” and Bahrani’s upcoming film “99 Homes,” which will be released on September 25th and certainly falls into Stone’s approach of thrillers with a social conscience. The critic and the filmmaker will discuss Stone’s career and screen one of his most divisive films, “Natural Born Killers.” Get tickets while you still can.
Before you go, check out an interview that Bahrani and Seitz did with Zack Sharf this week to promote the event on Indiewire. As Seitz says, “Through it all, what really stood out to me was the way he showed and told. They always say, “Show, don’t tell,” which is bullshit. Some of the best movies tell, and some of the best movies show and tell. There are great movies that only show, but not too many that I can think of. Stone is in this great tradition of doing both. He’s aiming for the great American regular moviegoer, and in that way he’s kind of like the primeval Spielberg, you know? Spielberg makes a movie like “Munich,” “Saving Private Ryan” or “Amistad” and he pitches it so that he can hit the widest audience possible. They’re very complex films visually and narratively, but he pitches them at the widest audience possible — he makes sure everyone can understand a part of it so that every audience member can get something out of it. Oliver Stone does the same thing, just his movies are darker, rougher and, in terms of editing, much more sophisticated.“