Analysis film .

We put this film out m t994 as R-rated You're seeing it now - 15

years later - xn Its orxglnal and purest form, the way It was intended

More than 150 cuts were imposed on the film by the Motion Picture

Assoclatxon of America at the time These cuts were made ostensibly

for purposes of vtolence, but m the process of negotxatmg back and

forth with the Board, It was never clear to us what precisely was

bothenng them At one point the Board msxsted that we go back for

one more pass I remember one of the Board members saying

something to the effect of, "We can't tell you specifically anymore

what to cut, but what bothers us is this general atmosphere of chaos?'

In a sense that was great praise because it was exactly the mood we

were after, but at the same tlme it was extremely frustrating

The movie, I beheve, was never really understood at the time to be

what ÿt was But ÿn the interim, ÿt seems most values m our soGety,

especially on our televlslons and its news, have been increasingly

commerclahzed to the point of superficiality The profits have grown

bigger, the sensatlonahsm even more ridiculous and crueler At the

time itwas released, I said NaturalBorn Kzflerswas a satire, and also

a strange love story about two young people who are desperately

damaged by dysfunctional famlhes, but flnd each other, hlt'the road,

and enact their destinies as killers on a wild spree I think what

angered many people was that they got away with tt They were not

punished at the end of the movie To the contrary, they escaped

underground and vanished I pointed out that the true wllams m

the story were not Mickey and Mallory but the Institutions and

the system that bred them, which included the prison system

"Having written 9carface and Year of the Dragon, I wanted to direct in the

gangster genre and do a story about American criminality," Oliver Stone

said in 1994 of his dec]sEon to make Natural Born Killers It's a humble

statement, one that would perhaps mean less coming from most other

filmmakers, but when Stone sets out to do a genre, the genre is forever

changed Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors and JFK are a

testament to such, and Natural Born Killers is no different -- no "gangster"

film, or road film, or prison film, or shoot-'em-up, or American crime saga

has ever been quite hke it

I 7

On a budget of approximately 36 milhon dollars, from a story by

future legend Quentin Tarantino and starring Woody Harrelson

(until that tlme primarily known as kindly bartender Woody Boyd

in Cheers) and Juhette Lewis (whose biggest role to date

was the httle-seen Kahfornla), Stone and many of his regular

collaborators (cinematographer Robert Richardson, production

designer Victor Kempster and producer Clayton Townsend] set

out to make what some would call "the most expensive student

film ever made," and others would simply call a "masterplece"

Initially earning an NC-17, the film underwent several cuts to receive

its hard R for "extreme violence and graphic carnage, for shocking

images, and for strong language and sexuahLÿy" It was shot on 35mm,

16mm, 8mm and video, in black and white and color, live action and

animation, and it featured about 3,000 edits, thousands more than

most films It challenged traditional, tired notions of mowe

"good guys" and "bad guys," for in Natural Born Klflers, neither

exists in simple cookie-cutter terms It's a film populated wfth flawed

people, good and bad, and no one, not even the theatre audience

watching, was exempt from its scrutiny and satire It shocked, it

outraged, it disturbed and it provoked It moved people in a way that

few movies can

lO

Wlth worldwlde box office that exceeded $70 mllhon,

Natural Born Killers was a commerctal success Its reputation

grew steadily, resulting tn well over $20 million In rentals

Stone recewed a Golden Globe nomination for hts above-the-

call-of-duty directing, and the film won the Special Jury Prize

at the Venice Film Festival, as did Lewis for her performance

Critically, though still dwlswe, tt has gaEned traction over the

years, winning over early naysayers wlth its staying power

and Intense cult following Like the best Stone films,

Natural Born Klflers is an expertence one can walk away from -

and be sure never to forget

with

\

\

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were perhaps America's first superstar

lawbreakmg twosome their penchant for robbing banks and killing

police officers catapulted them to pubhc infamy - and adoration There

was an undeniable romantic connotation to two lovebirds bucking the

system and staying one step ahead of the law Their explozts were later

tapped for inspiration by Hollywood luminaries in films hke You Only bve

Once (Fritz Lang, 1937], Gun Crazy (Joseph H Lewis, 1949] and the

seminal New Hollywood picture Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967], m

which their romantic attributes were stressed and their level of tragedy

heightened. Badlands'(Terrence Mahck, 1973) took a similar formula but

instead drew its respiration from another sensattonahstlc real-hfe murder

spree, that of Charles Starkweather and Card Ann Fugate The result was

a different type of film altogether, in which the antiheroes were regarded

not as misunderstood ideahsts, but rather as dispirited, perhaps even

soulless youths, aimlessly meandering across the countryside as if

waiting to be apprehended

27

Natural Born K3Hÿrs [Ollver Stone, 199/-+) paradoxically manages to

echo the narratives of each of the above true-crime counterparts,

while also displaying opposite points of view in one hypervÿolent but

hyperrelevant cinematic collage Not only are Mickey and Mallory Knox

the romantic and self-rlghteous heirs to the throne of Bonnie and

Clyde, but they are also the unquestionably amoral and cold-blooded

counterparts of Starkweather and Fugate, bound by blood and aloof in

their spiritual search for an eluswe purpose Furthermore, the focus of

Stone's film broadens from the narrow confines of the criminals and

their would-be captors (as has been the case tn virtually every other

film of this sort) to an ambitious scope encompassing the media and

the country at large, on whose hunger the media feeds If lovers on

the lam like Bonnie and Clyde and Starkweather and Fugate so

enraptured Americans that Hollywood could make a stnng of hits and

cult classics based on their mayhem, then shouldn't a film indlctlng the

phenomenon of cnmlnaI celebrity follow)

t

I

J

Natural Born Killers attacks with the ferocity of a rabid dog, recalhng a

barrage of imagery from the annals of American cnme, from the sniper

shootings of Charles Whitman (as referenced by Tom Sizemore's

Jack Scagnettÿ when describing his mother's death]], to the

Charles Manson-hke death row television interview (between

Woody Harrelson's MIckey Knox and Robert Downey Jr's Wayne Gale),

to the Richard Speck-hke group slaughter of young women (a deleted

subplot featuring Ashley Judd as the sole survivor), to the actual

newsreel images of 0 J Simpson, Tonya Harding and the Menendez

brothers We may be in a cinematic landscape of rear-screen

projections, animated sequences and grainy 8mm film, but we are also

in the psyche of a nation caught in the grip of fear and enthralled by the

entertainment of it all at the same time We watch Mickey and Mallory

with the same detached fascination as we do the freak shows on the

evening news, condemning them for their malevolence but showering

them with our undivided attention, possibly even our secret admiration

Says one product of the MTV Generation, "Mass murder is wrong But

if I were a mass murderer, I'd be Mickey and Mallory"

4 . o Aÿ ÿ

31

Over the closing credits, Leonard Cohen sings "The Future," in which

he warns, "Get ready for the future It Is murder" In the years since the

opening of Natural Born Killers, America has seen a glut of media-hyped

murderers paraded across TV screens (from Andrea Yates to

Scott Peterson) and indulged in tabloid journahsm that would be the

perfect prlmetlme lead-in for Gale's American Mamacs (clips of

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris firing their shotguns on an endless

loop and day-ln, day-out coverage of Robert Blake and Phll Spector)

Movies "inspired by" true events or "torn from the headlines" will

continue to be produced, as wdI movies alternately romanbclzlng and

deconstructing infamous American icons

But perhaps none will ever again come as close to the truth that

Natural Born Kfffers so boldiy e{ucldates that the natural-born klrier Is

inside all of us Perhaps It doesn't manifest in a literal sense, as It does

with the "civilized" characters in the film (Tommy Lee Jones's warden,

Tom Sizemore's cop and Robert Downey Jr:s reporter), all of whom do

succumb to the murderous ÿmpulse, but it does in a flguratwe sense

each time we enable wo]ence by treating ÿts purveyors as celebrities In

the end, if we do so, it is because it has become a tlme-honored

American tradition

33

When we set out to make Natural Born Killers in late 1992, it was

surreal By the time it was finished in 1994, it had become real In that

warped season, we saw Bobbltt, Menendez, Harding, King,

Buttafuoco and several other pseudo-celebrities grasp our national

attention span with stories of violence, revenge and self-obsession

Each week America was deluged by the media with a new soap opera,

ensuring ratings, money and above all, continuity of the hysteria

Tomorrow - tonight - Mickey and Mallory Knox can happen, without doubt

And they too would have their hour in the sun - and, by the next two issues

of TV Guide, would give way to the next predator in the ratings war, which

like the polls that monitor the Premdent's daily popularity or whether or not

we should send troops to Runtama tbs month, become sort of equivalent

of the "popularity contests" we all had to suffer through as kids The

desserts, as I remember, never went to the deserving but to the gossiped-

about, which is more important to the American psyche than to be

percewed as an A student The scientist, as we learn in our culture, is

unknown, Bdly the Kid is not Only the Greeks created great victims [n their

dramaturgy - Elektra, Medea, Antigone and Oedipus we are not But we are

a race whch inflicts, we are people who do unto others - Vietnam, sports,

lawsuits come imme&ately to mind

34

When Tonya Harding finally made the front page of The New York

Times some five or six times, we must've all subconsciously sensed

that the Age of Absurdity would close out the American Century "The

ancients had visions," Octavlo Paz recently wrote, "we have television

But the owhzatlon of spectacle is cruel The spectators have no

memory, because of that they also lack remorse and true consoence

they quickly forget and scarcely blink at the sense of death and

destruction of the Persian Gulf War or at the curves of Madonna and

Michael Jackson They awmt the Great Yawn, anonymous and

umversal, which is the Apocalypse and Final Judgment of the society

of spectacle We are condemned to this new vision of hell, those who

appear on the screen and those of us who watch Is there an escapeÿ

I don't know One must seek it"

/

Note, of course, Robin Anderson's (of Fordham Unlversrty's Communlcatzons

Department) observations that whde TV's "reality" cops enjoy a success rate of

62 percent, FBI statlstlcs indicate only 18 percent of crimes are actually

resolved The plots, which most often feature the restoration of justice through

force, send a clear message aggressive behavior by cops toward suspects is

necessary to protect law-abÿdÿng cÿtÿzens from dangerous minorities, we are

empowered by it When the pohce force the,r way Into a house, throwing the

occupants down on the floor and tackling "suspects" we feel a surge of

excitement at the moment of confrontation We are on the side of state-

sanctioned "power"

But we did not set out to do this In Natural Born Killers - to depict the violence

naturahstlcally I have done that in Platoon, Born on the Fourth of Julyand JFK

And I have seen the crime formula expertly drawn in films like In Cold Blood,

Henry A Portrait of a Serzal K#ler, Reservoir Dogs and many others I accept

the overwhelming evidence of the reahty of crime around us (though statistics

show that violent crime has actually remained flat, Bureau of Justice statistics,

which I beheve more accurate tnan FBI figures, reveal violent crimes per 1000

people at 3;= 6 percent [n 1973 and 32 1 percent in 199/4) 39

But Jn accepting the post-A Clockwork Orange/Sam Pecklnpah zeitgeist of

dramatic crime around us, what I set out to do was satirize the painful laea

that crime has gotten so crazy, so far out of hand, so numbfng and so

desensitlzlng that in this movie's Beavls-and-Butt-head 1990s American

cnmescape, the subject approaches the comedlc, as does the media which so

avanclously covers It

t

Our society Is bloated not just with crime but with the medÿa coverage of it

But bloated also with the madness of selhng more and more armaments to

the world, the madness of massrve buildup of prisons to house the "crlmJnal

subclass," an antl-cnme fervor that creates unusual sentencing such as "three

strikes and you're out," drug laws that are particularly hypocritical and

dÿosyncratlc state to state

Cops, wardens, pr,sons, repoÿers - they all most sense they have become

part of a vast and bÿzarre web of cruel, totahtanan pumshment In this

enwronment, ÿt Js Jnewtable that killers hke M1ckey and Mallory, antiheroes

to the core, will rise to the surface of a facelessly oppressive system and

capture the hearts and minds of Americans looking for a human face - be it

Bobbltt, Buttafuoco or Anita Hill complaimng about the injustice of modern

hfe Kafka was wrong the Indlvldual Is no longer crushed or faceless as long

as he can get on TV - game show or murder, what's the real differenceÿ

When you're in jail all your life, a moment in the sun is a moment in the sun

41

Mlckey and Mallory are, yes, irreverent and feel no guilt, drawn broadly in a

Swlftlan/Voltalrean caricature of our worst mghtmare But they do "come"

from violence Vlolence is depicted as generatlonally handed down from

father/mother to son/daughter and on and on, to the end of time There will

be no end to vzolence But something particularly vlclous about the 20th

century stands out in its faceless, genocidal quality In showing those

scenes of Hitler and Stalin and Vietnam and Armenia, etc, we have planted

the idea in the numerous rear~proJecting images of the film that we are all

swamped in this century, Iooklng, as Paz said earher, to "get out"

I did not seek to dwell tn or glorify their violence, although I wllI be accused

of such I beheve the cuts are fast, the film nervous as ÿt should be, nothing

is meant to upset the stomach as perhaps our Scarface chalnsaw scene or

Midnight Express tongue-bltlng scene did No, I think the shock is

ideological - the idea that a situation like this can exist repels certain

people, from either side of the pohtlcal spectrum But satire, if it's working,

should be about shock

Always an alternate or subverswe idea upsets the mind of the time Didn't

Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange offend the perceived borders of violence)

Did not, years before, Bufiuel and Dah, with an eyeball and a razor, shock and

offend) Elsensteln with a baby carnage and shattered eyeglassÿ It Is, I think,

a question of style The Greeks got there first with buckets of blood and

gouged-out eyeballs I don't think we should artÿstlcally dffferentJate

between subject matters Once we outlaw subJects on the basis of political

correctness we have begun the process of undermining our basic freedoms

43

I Iÿÿ' I,YI

,v