VIDEO CARVING OUT STONE'S LEGACY.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

A few years ago in the comedy ``Dave,'' Oliver Stone played himself on a talk show, spinning a web of intrigue about the president, claiming the president wasn't the president. (The joke in the movie was that the real president had suffered a heart attack, and his ``role'' was being played by a look-alike, making Stone right.)

Yes, the man who brought you ``JFK'' - a three-hour conspiracy theory in the form of a movie on the John F. Kennedy assassination - was cool enough to make fun of his own paranoid image.

The trouble with having that image, though, is that it obscures the fact that Stone is a talented, thought-provoking filmmaker who has made some of the most powerful American movies of the past 20 years.

Sure, he's over the top sometimes. Sure, he has a political slant. And there is no doubt that he can be excessive, even when he's critiquing excess.

But there is also no doubt that he's an astute observer of the American cultural scene, and he has consistently put his keen insights up on the screen.

Many of Stone's films - ``Nixon,'' ``Born on the Fourth of July,'' ``Salvador,'' ``Platoon'' - are certainly colored by his experiences in the `60s. A Vietnam War veteran who won a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, Stone returned to the U.S in 1968 to attend New York University Film School, taking courses from Martin Scorsese, among others. By 1976, he had won his first Oscar for his screenplay for ``Midnight Express.''

His greatest success came in 1986 for ``Platoon,'' a story he had been developing for 10 years. Besides being a box-office hit, the film won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Stone was named Best Director. No matter what your views on the war are, the movie itself is, as one critic put it, a ``shattering experience.''

Unfortunately, ``Platoon'' isn't part of the six-disc or 10-disc box DVD sets of Stone's work being released this week. But there are plenty of other Stone gems, notably ``Wall Street'' (1987) with Michael Douglas's Oscar-winning performance as Gordon Gecko, a ruthless financier.

Stone returned to the Vietnam War theme in ``Born on the Fourth of July.'' Based on a true story, Tom Cruise earned a best-acting Oscar nomination for his role as Ron Kovic, a U.S. Marine who had gone off to the war gung-ho but returned paralyzed from the waist down. Kovic's condition leads to despair, but he finally overcomes his disillusion and becomes an anti-war activist.

It's a messy film, but it's a messy subject - America has had a hard time coming to grips with the war and its veterans.

Stone, though (and Cruise in his performance), should be given credit for at least trying to deal with it in an honest way.

All of Stone's films could be looked at in detail, but space limits make that impossible. But I'd like to mention one other Stone film, ``The Doors.'' Not highly regarded by many critics, the biopic of the late Jim Morrison (played with appropriate swagger by Val Kilmer), charismatic lead singer of the legendary L.A. group, is more true to the bizarre and screwed-up nature of the `60s rock scene than any other nondocumentary. Only ``Gimme Shelter,'' in which the Mayles brothers cast a cold eye on the 1969 debacle at Altamount, compares. And that's a testament to Stone - a filmmaker who does put truth up on the screen in his fiction.

``Oliver Stone Collection 10-Pack'' (Warner) lists for $276.78. The 10- disc box set plus one bonus disc includes ``Wall Street,'' ``Talk Radio,'' ``Born on the Fourth of July,'' ``JFK,'' ``The Doors,'' ``Heaven & Earth,'' ``Natural Born Killers,'' ``Nixon,'' ``U Turn'' and ``Any Given Sunday,'' plus ``Oliver Stone's America,'' a documentary look at the Stone's movie legacy, including clips, interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and Oliver Stone's student film, ``Last Year in Vietnam.'' ``Oliver Stone Collection 6-Pack'' lists for $166.88 and includes ``Wall Street,'' ``Born on the Fourth of July,'' ``The Doors,'' ``JFK,'' ``Natural Born Killers'' and ``Any Given Sunday.''

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Director Oliver Stone, right, discusses a scene with Cameron Diaz, left, and Al Pacino during filming of ``Any Given Sunday.''