"There is enough incense burning here to make you cough way out in the hall. There are also a meditation cushion, a stationary bicycle, and a shelf filled with ... journals; he writes in them, he says, for at least twenty minutes every day.... The apartment walls are a jumble of paintings: a Warhol 'Last Supper'; a Francesco Clemente self-portrait; a fine, small Bierstadt; some awkward pieces by the Native American activist Leonard Peltier; and some even more awkward ones by ... Sergio Premoli. The incense sticks on the mantel are surrounded by photographs: John F. Kennedy, Jim Garrison ..., Jim Morrison. It is a kind of altar to Stone's dead," described Stephen Schiff in the New Yorker.

These photographs, and other objects in the apartment, also serve as an altar to several of the films created by writer/director Oliver Stone. One of the most controversial filmmakers working, Stone makes...