'Natural Born Killers': A Look Back at 1994 — Most Sensational Year Ever!

With JFK, a dizzying collection of conflicting and oftentimes ridiculous ideas and conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s assassination, Oliver Stone yanked on his trunks and took a nice swim in controversial waters. It was quite a high-wire act, a three hour movie that careens from idea to idea, never stopping for a break. Somehow the movie entertains, against all rational and reasonable expectations, and if nothing else, we owe Stone a debt of gratitude for making that Kevin Bacon game just a little bit easier.

Stone returned to the familiar territory of Vietnam with 1993’s “Heaven and Earth,” and the world said, “eh.” Claiming that film wore him out physically, mentally, and psychologically, he went looking for a more conventional movie to direct, and wound up with Quentin Tarantino’s script “Natural Born Killers.” He was going to make a popcorn movie. We should have known he was just messing with us. After all, he was mentally and psychologically deranged way before 1993.

Unless Stone’s definition of a conventional, crowd-pleasing movie is a psychedelic art film with a flimsy story and unlikable characters, the only explanation for Stone’s claim is that he was lying. Still on a controversy high from JFK, Stone, slapped footage of OJ and the Menendez Brothers on the end of the movie, and helped Warner Bros. market the movie as a comment on America and the media’s obsession with celebrity and sensationalism. Ironically, if he’d stuck with Tarantino’s script, it would have been a stronger comment on all of the above, and it probably would have been a fun time at the movies.

I admit I really loved the movie when I saw it, but I’m pretty sure I fell for a load of horseshit. And I wasn’t the only one. Not that I don’t find certain sequences mesmerizing and others intense and involving. But back then, I thought the use of so many different formats (film, video, super-8 film) worked with the inter-cutting of snippets of commercials to give the impression that the viewer was channel surfing. The kineticsm of the editing and camera work effectively conveyed a mood and tone that reflected these themes. So, then, why did he make “Nixon” and “U-Turn” similarly kinetic and shaky and intense? Those films don’t employ all of the same techniques, but enough of them to wonder why he thought they would fit in any movie other than NBK (as a cooooooool guy I knew in college used to call it).

Still, I remain impressed with the interview sequence that ushers in the ridiculous prison riot climax of the film. We half-expect Mickey (Woody Harrelson) to be deep just because of movie conventions. But he’s an idiot to the end, claiming that he’s hardly responsible for his crimes, because, like a wolf, he’s simply doing what he was put on earth to do. He can’t help it, you see, because he’s an NBK (maybe that guy I knew was actually a dork). He’s a sort of victim, see, born a killer incapable of accountability which makes him a liberal hero, which explains the liberal media’s fascination with him.

In this sense, Mickey Knox is a great character for his time. He would have been totally at home on the Ricki Lake Show next to morbidly obese people who were not fat because they stuffed anything and everything they could find down their gullets, but because of their upbringing, genetics, or God.