Response essay #10 of "Memo to John Grisham: What's Next-'A Movie Made Me Do It'?"

Popular filmmaker Oliver Stone wrote “Memo to John Grisham” as a response to his article “Unnatural Killers” which was published in the Oxford American. Mr. Stone addressed the criticism laid about his movie Natural Born Killers. He gave his interpretation of Ben and Sarah (the convicted murders from Grisham’s essay) actions without giving the entire story. The entire article is Mr. Stone’s come back, yet he leaves the last half to enumerate different reason why John Grisham was wrong in his attack on Hollywood.

The purpose for Mr. Stone’s writing is not as clear to me as it may seem to others. The most obvious reason seems to be that he got a little teed off and wanted to rant publicly. His writing is filled with fallacies and contradictions. My attention was drawn more to his obvious dislike for Mr. Grisham. Mr. Stone was right to point out a few things though. He comments on how his film is no different from Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny cartoons, I agree. He makes the point that if you’re going to pick on one “harmful” industry you have to do the same to others, I agree to a certain degree. He was right to mention the protection given under the First Amendment. I must point out that he shot himself in the foot with the statistics of children and their TV watching. In his explanation he admits that the violence from television shows could contribute to violent acts. That doesn’t help his case much. His last paragraph is what makes his purpose so unclear for me. He writes “Strangle art in its infancy, he suggests, and society will be a better place. One might more persuasively argue that cold-blooded murderers should be strangled in their infancy. Yet as with human infants, can never know the outcome of nascent are, and so both must be protected and nurtured, precisely for society’s sake.” Does he dare compare his murder-film with a child? Is he trying to convince me that no matter how heinous a “human work” is, that it should be nurtured and protected just as a human child? If so, he just may be just a crazy and masochistic as Hitler.