Three-time Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone spoke about the importance of film in the search for meaning at Sacramento State’s University Union Ballroom on Wednesday.

“Making movies seems so indulgent in a world riven with desperation and need,” Stone said. “Somewhere along the line I realized that movies could serve a spiritual purpose and bring together our modern tribe.”

“Movies can inspire us forever,” Stone said. “Sometimes they can heal.” The 60-year-old Stone, dressed in black shoes, black pants, a black coat and turquoise polo shirt, spoke for 35 minutes about his life in show business.

“I was really not raised for this line of work,” Stone said. “My father wanted me to make money.”

He arrived in Hollywood as a struggling screenwriter in 1976.

“I read a very fine book called ‘Some Time in the Sun,’ about famous novelists who had worked in Hollywood, many of them without great success, and I remember thinking, ‘If only I could have some time in the sun, I would be satisfied,'” Stone said.

“As chance would have it, I had a great deal more time in the sun than I ever bargained for,” Stone said. “I was able to go further than I’d ever dreamed.”

“As you know, most of my films have come in for a rough landing in one way or another,” Stone said. “There’s often a controversy that’s hatched, and often, the controversy has nothing to do with the essence of the film.”

“It’s like a wind shear when you’re coming down on an airplane,” Stone said.

Controversial characters can be found in most of his films, Stone said, like the boy from Massapequa, N.Y., who loses his legs in Vietnam and is angry about it, or an insecure president driving himself to self-destruction as Nixon was, or two serial killers like Mickey and Mallory confronting the taboos of society.

“They’re just too controversial for our time,” Stone said.

He then went on to criticize the media.

“Everything is reduced to a John Wayne movie, this is the good guy, that’s the bad guy,” Stone said.

So many crucial things that there are to know, he said, like background, history, and depth that are disregarded as unimportant.

During the question and answer session, one attendee asked Stone where he was when he first found out about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

“It was 5:30 in the morning in Los Angeles, so I was in bed,” Stone said. “My wife woke me up and turned the TV on, and, what can I say, it was like a Jerry Bruckheimer film.”

The same attendee asked if Stone’s latest film, “World Trade Center,” was politically motivated.

“No,” Stone said. “I can’t say it enough. It’s the true story of two cops and their wives and about 40 to 50 rescuers that we hired to work with us to give us the real truth of what happened. It’s about those hours, those lives, that rescue, that faith from which 20 people survived. It’s miraculous. It’s authentic.”

“So no, it’s not politically motivated. That’s another film called ‘Sept. 12,'” Stone said.

After the lecture and the question and answer period, Stone sat at a table to sign autographs.

Music major Gina Kartsonis, while waiting for an autograph, said, “I was really touched by his humility and his sincerity.”

“I was also touched by how much of himself he gave, which is kind of indicative of the films he makes,” Kartsonis said.