Oscar winning writer/director Oliver Stone made his first HMS appearance with the World Theatrical Premiere of the Director’s Cut of his historical epic “Alexander.” Warner Bros. actually struck a 35mm film print specifically for our presentation, which was very cool! Oliver is often a controversial director and media personality for reasons I won’t get into here and refused to get into when he was our guest as the focus was on this movie and why he felt the need to re-cut it into what would turn out to be the second of three versions.
Oliver first came to fame as an A-List screenwriter adapting Billy Hayes’ non-fiction book “Midnight Express,” about his nightmare experiences in a Turkish prison for attempting to smuggle drugs out of the country. Though criticized for taking a few too many literary licenses with the facts, Stone won his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Following the release of the Director’s Cut of “Alexander,” Oliver revisited his historical epic to more times with a “Final Cut” in 2007 and an “Ultimate Cut” in 2013, each time dramatically changing the running time, sometimes trimming footage, as he did with the version we premiered, and in subsequent versions, adding previously unseen footage.
