When your film makes back only a fifth of its budget, you have to acknowledge that you've screwed up. Oliver Stone seems to have accepted that there were big problems with "Alexander" and spoke frankly with Variety about what might've been.
"If I could go back, I'd have put events in linear order and limited the voiceovers. I'd have gotten the film to two hours and taken out the homosexuality for the U.S. market and for countries sensitive to such things, like Korea or Greece. Kids weren't comfortable with men who hugged, a king who cries and expresses tenderness," Stone says.
Meanwhile Intermedia chairman Mortiz Borman who helped fund the film says "If I had it to do again, I would have found the extra money and moved it to next year. That would have given Oliver more time to think about the things we're talking about now, and allowed us to open out of competition in the Cannes Film Festival. Maybe we should have started in Europe before coming here...I know there's a film in there that American audiences could have embraced."
Stone revealed that the cut could've been a lot longer giving him the chance to explain the complicated rivalry among Alexander's mother, wife Roxane and soulmate Hephaistion. The director also accepts fault for obscuring an array of symbolic images and foreshadowed plot points that American audiences might have enjoyed figuring out.
Stone is trying to figure out his next project, with his long-held plans to adapt Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" dented by "Alexander's" poor U.S. box office - "I think so, yes. I can't possibly do something of this size, nor do I want to. It is rare to get your dream. I did and if I were not allowed to work again, I would live with that. Maybe I'll direct somebody else's script, do the best job I can."
Thanks to 'Pelegis'
