Legendary director Oliver Stone is known just as well for his successful films (Wall Street, Platoon, Born on the 4th of July) as he is for his failures (W, Nixon, JFK), so it is with great trepidation that I bring news to you of his recently announced documentary series airing on Showtime sometime next year.
Reuters reports that Stone will be producing (and most likely directing) a 10 part documentary series about unknown but influential moments in U.S. history. According to Reuters, "topics for this new [series] will range from the reasons behind the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and changes in America's global role since the fall of Communism."
While this sounds like a potentially fascinating documentary series there are two red flags to be aware of: 1) Oliver Stone has on occasion 'filled in the blanks' of history to create a more interesting story; 2) Showtime, while certainly improving it's original programming, is not close to the level of HBO and I wonder how such a major project fell into their laps.
All that said, I'm still curious to see this series as I'm a firm believer that when Oliver Stone is on his game, he's one of the best directors of his time.
