Oliver Stone

What is it with Hollywood personalities going to Venezuela and being swept off their feet by the thuggish dictator Hugo Chávez. They come back with these stories claiming he is just misconstrued by the media and that he’s really a great guy.

On Oct. 7, at an appearance at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. promoting her book “You Know I'm Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” the proudly libertarian co-host of CNBC's “Power Lunch” Michelle Caruso-Cabrera explained how this could happen. She told an audience that Chávez has a very charismatic, yet seductive personality.

“I was telling – my two most interesting interviews I think I’ve ever done are Milton Friedman, very influential on me, and also Hugo Chávez, because when I interviewed him I was struck by how much I like him,” she explained. “He’s very funny. He is so charming. He is smooth. He could be a stand-up comedian. He is a seductor, as I suspect most dictators are – that’s how they get to where they are.”

Is Palin bashing a pre-requisite for an appearance on the new Parker-Spitzer show?  Aaron Sorkin referred to Palin as an ‘idiot' and ‘jaw-droppingly incompetent' on Monday's show.  And now, Tuesday's show featured Oliver Stone calling Palin a ‘moron'.

Kathleen Parker asks Stone about the prospect of making a movie about Sarah Palin, and he uses this as a launching point for a PDS rant.

Parker:  Can you see making a movie about Sarah Palin?  Is she movie fodder?  I would think ...

Stone:  It's a bad idea because I think you're already empowering her.  She's a moron in my opinion.  She doesn't say anything.

He wasn't nearly content to rest on those insults however (clip below)...

Oliver Stone is discovering one of the many joys of capitalism: without it, he would never be able to make such flashy, well-produced films bashing capitalism!

Stone's latest film, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps", may have replaced Charlie Sheen, star of the original, with a younger Shia LaBeouf, but it's still as hypocritically anti-capitalist as the original.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, "Money Never Sleeps" would not have been able to muster a sufficient budget without massive product placement campaigns. The film benefitted "enormously" from the advertising technique, Stone admitted (h/t Big Hollywood headlines).

From our friends at Reason.tv - Hollywood's obsession over demonizing capitalism. Anyone notice a trend here?

Oliver Stone may strike most people as pretty radical, but not to people at The New York Times. Business columnist Joseph Nocera panned Stone's new movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in a piece headlined "When Did Gekko Get So Toothless?" Stone failed to "eviscerate the folks responsible" for the credit crisis -- and Nocera might mean actually removing their viscera, like in a slasher flick:   

There is something a little incongruous about hearing Oliver Stone, the left-leaning, blunt-talking film director, dropping arcane Wall Street terms like "credit default swaps" and "collateralized debt obligations." But that’s just what he was doing a few weeks ago when trying to explain why his new movie, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” was not the fictionalized version of the financial crisis of 2008 I had expected. 

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." That was the defining line of Oliver Stone's 1987 film "Wall Street," and his attack on the financial system that the news media would use for decades to portray businessmen as villains.

The theme Stone wants viewers to take away from his sequel, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," was tucked away in the credits of his film on a greenback. "In Greed We Trust," the bill proclaimed where the words "In God We Trust" should have been.

"Money Never Sleeps," which opens in theaters Sept. 24, uses the financial crisis of 2008 as a backdrop for the comeback of Gordon Gekko, the iconic villain of the original. This time Gekko reinvents himself as a changed man, coming back bearish on housing and speculation.

In a business school lecture Gekko warns, "The mother of all evils is speculation -- leveraged debt." He claims the economy is merely moving money around in circles and the business model itself is like a "cancer."

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, film maker Oliver Stone charged that former Vice President Dick Cheney was "a very dangerous man" and "as much of a threat to the idea of America using nuclear weapons as anybody," inspiring Behar to respond, "I agree with you," and charged that Sarah Palin in the White House would be "even worse than Mr. Bush Jr."

He asserted that "I think she's not going to appeal to people who think at all," and, after Behar suggested that most Americans may not think, he added, "Well, if that's the case then America deserves their leaders the way they pick them." He later sought a silver lining in Palin getting elected President: "If they're there, maybe we'll learn our lesson. If we didn't learn it from Bush Jr., we're never going to learn it."

Stone ended up invoking racist and xenophobic movements like the Ku Klux Klan and Know Nothings, presumably linking them to conservative critics of President Obama. Stone: "We have parties of Know Nothings for all our tradition. It goes way back, all kinds of rebellions. In 1923 in Washington, I believe, like, 100,000 Ku Klux Klan people dressed in white sheets walked down main street in Washington D.C., 100,000. The Ku Klux Klan was popular after World War I. That's in the heart of the country with white sheets, right, on horses. That's why the Birth of the Nation was such a popular film."

If you believed the media, you would think that hate crimes against Muslims was a growing epidemic in America.

Just Monday, the New York Times had a front page story hysterically noting a "torrent of anti-Muslim sentiments and a spate of vandalism."

"The knifing of a Muslim cab driver in New York City has also alarmed many American Muslims," wrote Laurie Goodstein in the second paragraph of her article titled "American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?"

Unfortunately, as Michael Doyle reported on August 28, the most recent data concerning hate crimes in this country paint a very different picture than what Goodstein and others in the media have been dishonestly portraying of late:

It never ceases to amaze that Oliver Stone thinks Ronald Reagan was a dunce. When it comes to judging iron-fisted dictators and anti-American despots, Oliver Stone is the intellectually incurious simpleton. He thinks Reagan was stupid because he clung to an all-encompassing ideology. But so does Stone. He thinks every evil in the world came from corporations, especially American corporations, including those he uses to make himself millions.

How else would you explain the (new) mess Stone (again) has made as he prepares a 10-part documentary for Showtime on "The Secret History of America," including evaluations of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. In an interview with the Sunday Times of London, Stone declared Hitler was a monster, but he was apparently still America's fault: "Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Doctor Frankenstein," Stone said. "German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support."

Hollywood director Oliver Stone - who previously tried to rewrite history with his ultra-left conspiracy work of fiction "JFK" is at it again. But this time he's not accusing the American government of murdering its own president.

Instead, he's simply trying to stop the "Jewish domination of the media," so that the film industry can put Nazi leader Adolf Hitler "in context," as an "easy scapegoat," and "a product of a series of actions," in his upcoming 10-hour Showtime docudrama, "The Secret History of America."

This past weekend Stone told the Sunday Times in England: "We can't judge people as only bad or good . . . Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support."

Patrick Goldstein and much of the butt-boy entertainment media have either outright ignored director Oliver Stone’s anti-Semitic comments or have dug a deeper hole for their credibility in attempting to explain why they shouldn’t have to hold their favorite anti-American director to the same standard as the director of the “The Passion of the Christ” after his 2006 incident. Unfortunately for them, this ploy might not be working. According to some excellent reporting in The Wrap, media mogul and Clinton confidante Haim Saban is showing some moral consistency, and he’s claiming that WME Chairman Ari Emanuel is as well.

Like the Anti-Defamation League, Saban is far from satisfied with Stone’s “clumsy association with the Holocaust” apology, calling it “sooooo transparently fake.” And as a money-where-his-mouth-is supporter of Israel, my guess is that Saban’s taking issue with all this crazy talk coming from Stone about how his January miniseries will prove Hitler was a “scapegoat” who deserves to be put in “context.”

A furious Haim Saban has mounted a campaign to get Showtime to cancel its planned airing of Oliver Stone’s 10-part series, “A Secret History of America,” in the wake of anti-Jewish remarks by the outspoken director.

On Sunday, Alana Goodman reported on an anti-semitic interview given by director Oliver Stone in the Sunday edition of The Times of London. Stone said that Jews dominate the media, "stay on top of every comment" and have "the most powerful lobby in Washington."

Earlier today, The Daily Mail reported that Stone had apologized for his remarks.

He said: "In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret."

Stone told The Sunday Times "Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support."

"Hollywood may shun Mel Gibson for his anti-Semitic ravings, but the right wing in George Bush's increasingly hate-filled America won't," wrote Salon.com's Neal Gabler on August 1, 2006, four days after Mel Gibson was arrested for drunkenly spewing anti-Semitic hatred to a police officer.

Fast-forward to 2010. It's been three days since director Oliver Stone churned out similarly disturbing anti-Jewish rhetoric to the Sunday Times, and many of Gibson's most prominent critics on the left - including Salon.com - still haven't issued a word of condemnation about Stone's comments.

Similarly, the network news shows have ignored Stone's remarks, despite their wall-to-wall coverage of Gibson's reprehensible diatribe in 2006. The media blitz over Gibson's comments began the day after his arrest with ABC's World News Saturday, and continued non-stop on ABC, NBC and CBS until Aug. 4, 2006.

Director Oliver Stone belittled the Holocaust during a shocking interview with the Sunday Times today, claiming that America's focus on the Jewish massacre was a product of the "Jewish domination of the media."

The director also defended Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and railed against the "powerful lobby" of Jews in America.

Stone said that his upcoming Showtime documentary series "Secret History of America," seeks to put Hitler and Communist dictator Joseph Stalin "in context."

"Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support," Stone told reporter Camilla Long during the interview, which can be found behind the paywall on the Sunday Times' website.

Oliver Stone shocked many when his movie “World Trade Center” was released in 2006. It was a masterpiece, a meditation on two firemen trapped in a darkened tomb of broken concrete, twisted metal and shattered glass. They had rushed headlong into the collapsing skyscrapers, only to be buried alive. So many of their colleagues died, but in the end these heroes were located by searchers and rescued.

Stone maintained it wasn’t a political movie, and for the most part, it wasn’t. It was a personal story. But this movie was also a gift to our country, a reminder not to forget this dark day’s victims and its heroes. It was only political in that it was patriotic. It reminded us all across our country of how our fellow Americans in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania were mercilessly murdered. It came closest to politics (or patriotism) when the firemen were found by a man who vowed to join the War on Terror. Sadly, that was but a brief hiccup in Stone’s career, a befuddling, out-of-character career move. In most of his movies, Oliver Stone is clearly not a fan of America, both her leaders and her policies. Think “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Platoon,” “JFK,” “Nixon” and “W.”

Now he is promoting a new documentary called “South of the Border,” which debuted June 25. Its philosophy is illustrated by the poster: The American eagle’s talon is pierced by a large thorn coming out of a blood-red South America. It’s no overstatement to say Stone deeply adores the trend of Yanqui-bashing leftists coming to power, from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Evo Morales in Bolivia to Lula da Silva in Brazil.

Liberal director Oliver Stone revealed his anti-American bent on Monday's Good Morning America, praising the rise of mainly left-wing leaders across South America and even went so far to support Brazilian President Lula da Silva for "trying to strike to deal with Iran," wildly predicting "it's going to be like North Vietnam again" if the U.S. pursued sanctions against the country.

Anchor George Stephanopoulos interviewed the Oscar-winning director 44 minutes into the 8 am Eastern hour. Stephanopoulos referenced how Stone has "tackled war, Wall Street, and the Kennedy assassination" and is now "taking on South America. He says our neighbors to the south haven't gotten a fair shake from the American media, and, armed with a camera, he's set out on a road trip to try to change that."

Before asking about Chavez, Stephanopoulos played a clip from Stone's documentary "South of the Border," which included a sound bite from CNN's John Roberts that gave the impression that the anchor was condemning the Venezuelan leader: "He's more dangerous than Bin Laden, and the effects of Chavez, his war against America, could eclipse those of 9/11."

Actually, Roberts, in the January 15, 2009 segment from his American Morning program, actually was reading a quote from a book by his guest, Doug Schoen: "Right off the bat, in the very front of the book, you quote Otto Reich, who was the former ambassador to Venezuela back in the 1980s, as saying that he's more dangerous than bin Laden and the effects of Chavez, his war against America could eclipse those of 9/11."

The Venezuelan people are forced to suffer through a marathon of Hugo Chavez appearances on their own television sets. Anything less than total adoration of the weekly host of "Aló Presidente" is severely punished. So with all this unwanted overexposure to the overbearing El Jefe, is it any wonder that Venezuelans are somewhat less than enthusiastic about shelling out their money to watch yet more homage paid to Chavez by filmmaker Oliver Stone in the form of his documentary, South of the Border? As Variety reports, the latest Stone film has turned into a complete bomb in Chavez's own economically troubled country:

Despite a PR and marketing blitz that had Oliver Stone on a whirlwind tour of Latin America, his latest documentary "South of the Border" has sunk like a rock at the Venezuelan box office.

Local observers in Venezuela have reported empty cinemas, indicating a stunning indifference to Stone's pic, a documentary about South American leaders that devotes a hefty amount of screen time to the country's President Hugo Chavez. In the 12 days after its June 4 debut, it grossed only $18,601 on 20 screens, according to Global Rentrak. Showings on mobile screens in rural areas (where Chavez has more popular support) have attracted crowds, but these screenings are free.

The liberal media's adoration for leftist dictators certainly knows no bounds.

Such was immediately apparent in filmmaker Oliver Stone's love letter to Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez published by the Huffington Post Friday.

The article also shamelessly doubled as an advertisement for Stone's documentary "South of the Border." 

With this in mind, all quotes have been safely placed after the teaser to limit the gastrointestinal distress to readers that may have eaten breakfast, lunch or dinner prior to reviewing this piece (video of "South of the Border" trailer also follows with commentary):

Oliver Stone's latest attack on American capitalism - "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is finally hitting theaters April 2010, twenty-three years after its predecessor. According to Michael Lewis, who interviewed the moviemaker for his latest Vanity Fair piece, Stone's biggest problem with the sequel was making a movie based on helplessly diabolical bankers, actually watchable.

Lewis wrote that Stone - an ardent left-wing ideologue, friendly acquaintance to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, a moral relativist concerning Hitler and Stalin, and director of "W" and "Platoon" - felt an obligation to reverse the societal damage and unintended consequences of the first installment.

"As a vehicle of change ... the movie was a catastrophe," Lewis wrote. It apparently inspired, rather than deterred, a generation of young men to enter the field and become the next Gordon Gekko (the "diabolical money manager" played by Michael Douglas).

There has been a substantial push lately by some of Hollywood's big names to reeducate Americans on world history. The leftist-dominated television and film industries have taken it upon themselves to promote histories of the United States and its role in the world that portrays it as an evil, occasionally colonial, always destructive force in global relations.

The latest such effort is being undertaken by director Oliver Stone, well known for his loving portrayal of Venezuela's Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez and derisive portrayal of our previous president in "W". Now Stone has set his sights on Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. He plans to "liberalize" America's thinking regarding two of the 20th century's most murderous dictators by putting them "in context", whatever that means (h/t Hot Air headlines).

"We can't judge people as only bad or good," Stone said at the Television Critics Association's press tour, referring to two dictators who--unless this writer's understanding of history is not sufficiently "liberalized"--are responsible, in Hitler's case, for the extermination of 6 million Jews and 3 million others in killing camps during World War II, and in Stalin's, for the murders of 20 million individuals in Russia and Soviet-occupied Europe.
 
It seems, Stone's claims notwithstanding, that one is historically justified in classifying these two particular dictators as "bad".

In today’s L.A. Times director Oliver Stone discusses his upcoming documentary “South of the Border,” about the “warmhearted” Hugo Chavez. [emphasis added]:

Oliver Stone is shown warmly embracing Hugo Chávez, nibbling coca leaves with Evo Morales and gently teasing Cristina Elizabeth Fernández de Kirchner about how many pairs of shoes she owns. …

“I think he’s an extremely dynamic and charismatic figure. He’s open and warmhearted and big, and a fascinating character,” … ”But when I go back to the States I keep hearing these horror stories about ‘dictator,’ ‘bad guy,’ ‘menace to American society.’ I think the project started as something about the American media demonizing Latin leaders.

Guys like Stone are forced to rationalize that the American media is right-leaning in order to avoid their head exploding due to an acute case of FacingTheTruth-itosis. But maybe the doc will be more critical than we’re led to believe in this article. During their warm embrace, it’s possible Stone whispered hard-hitting questions in Hugo’s ear about reports such as this from the not-so-conservative Human Rights Watch.

Dear Oliver,

Many years ago, when Bill Maher’s comedy show was hosted by Comedy Central and he was funny, his formula for success was truly unique. Every week two sets of political and/or cultural opposites were pitted against each other, and he refereed with humor. It was all designed for a good laugh and succeeded because once upon a time Bill Maher was truly funny.

Some producer really thought in extremes when they pitted Oliver Stone and Brent Bozell for one episode. I have to say that you were gracious, charming, engaging, and we enjoyed ourselves – except for that moment when I chastised you for claiming you’re an historian. You bristled and denied ever claming that moniker. I cited the source, an interview in some West Coast paper (I can’t recall which one now). “I’m a filmmaker, that’s all,” you told me.

Film producer/director Oliver Stone, a far-left promoter of conspiracies who is working on a sequel to his 1987 'Wall Street' movie, declared on Friday night's edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that “Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch” and “I really think George W is dumber” and so, after producing movies on the CIA conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and a dark look at President Nixon, he won't create a movie on Ronald Reagan because “by doing the W movie I kind of put all my efforts behind dumbness.”

Stone, who earlier in the pre-taped show made up of three one-on-one interviews Maher conducted (other two were with Cameron Diaz and Billy Bob Thornton) characterized President Obama as no better than Bush (“a sneak Bush administration with different words”), also asserted: “I do think Nixon is the father of Reagan and I think Reagan's the father of Bush. There's sort of a very strong line.” Whatever that means.

Audio: MP3 clip (55 secs, 340 Kb)

How does a liberal, America-hating movie director follow-up a hit-piece on a sitting United States president?

With an adoring documentary about one of our nation's greatest enemies of course.

I mean, what else should Oliver Stone create as an encore for his box office failure "W" but a love letter to America-hating tyrant Hugo Chavez (as reported by Variety, h/t NBer Wilbur747, picture courtesy Variety):

This is a story of hope and reality. First the hope from Bloomberg News 10 days ago with the very hopeful title of Oliver Stones' W May End Political Films' Drought:

``W.'' distributor Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. is betting the movie can break a box-office drought for political films. None of the five released in the weeks ahead of the Nov. 4 election has brought in more than half of the $55.3 million in sales generated by Walt Disney Co.'s ``Beverly Hills Chihuahua,'' the current box-office champ, since Oct. 3.

``A lot of eyes are on `W.,''' said Gitesh Pandya, editor of New York-based Box Office Guru LLC. ``There's certainly a lot of interest in it from the right and the left.'' The film ``has a shot at finding box-office success,'' he said.

The movie, which opens tomorrow, may take in about $34 million in its first four weeks in U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Los Angeles-based Cantor Fitzgerald LP's HSX Research, which tracks film performance.

Ah, the good old days. Remember way back when filmmaker Oliver Stone lamented about his even handed portrayal of George W. Bush in his disappointing new hit piece, W?

"I tried to be fair and balanced and compassionate," Stone said. "I don't take sides. I don't take political sides. I'm a dramatist, and this is the movie I've made."

Yes, that was way back on October 12th, barely a week ago.

Now however, it appears being fair and balanced means comparing the President to someone like, say, Adolf Hitler.

An Arkansas TV reporter that had a bit part in Oliver Stone's movie "W" was found beaten unconscious in her Little Rock home on October 20 and in its report on the crime the Associated Press seemed to decide that she was beaten merely because she had appeared in the movie though this impression the AP seems to have is not supported by the police. One wonders why the AP decided to spend almost half its story focusing on her movie role when reporting this crime? Is the AP trying to say her connection with George W. Bush got her attacked? It sure seems like the AP is seized by another bout of Bush Derangement Syndrome with its unnecessary emphasis on this reporter's film role.

The APs obsession with the victim's movie role was odd, indeed. Even in its first few lines the AP ties KATV anchor Ann Pressly to her movie work saying in its first sentence that she "had a small part in the Bush biopic 'W.'" The AP takes pains to point out that in the movie, Pressly "speaks favorably of President Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' event on an aircraft carrier shortly after the start of the Iraq war." The report speaks about how she won the role in the film and then adds this odd sentence:

Entertainment Weekly's Joshua Rich reported on the weekend's box office returns for the latest releases on October 19 to let us all in on Hollywood's successes and failures, because, you know, Hollywood is important and all. We find that the Chihuahua movie is still going like gangbusters ($70 million in three weeks) and the horrid movie "Max Payne" led the weekend's receipts with $18 million. Oliver Stone's slamfest "W," though, earned a disappointing fourth place on its debut weekend.

So, what was EW's excuse for this disappointing finish? According to Rich, "W" is failing at the box office because of "tough economic times.” It’s curious, though, that people have spent $70 million on the Chihuahua movie in these same "tough economic times" -- and let us not forget that the latest Batman movie has made over $300 million. Still, the excuse for the fourth place finish for Stone's pseudo-biopic is "tough economic times," just the same.

But, Rich’s excuse is a claim that even Entertainment Weekly itself has recently disputed, at least as far as the box office goes. Only a few weeks ago, the weekend that right-wing comedy "An American Carol" debuted, the same Box Office Report column said that the "economy may be tanking, but the box office remains healthy, with probably the only year-on-year metric that's seen an uptick."

Finally a movie review that takes on Oliver Stone's "W." on its cinematic merits or rather the lack thereof.

Far from being "illustrated journalism" as Time's Richard Corliss lamented or "sunny and sympathetic" history as Newsweek's Alan Brinkley argued, it's simply an "old-fashioned train wreck," concluded Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow in his October 16 review.

The film critic -- who gave the film just one and a half stars -- cracked that the script sounded like recycled Maureen Dowd cartoons and scoffed at the "uneven pleasure" of seeing "first-rate" actors portraying political figures they "don't respect" (emphases mine):

Its shortcomings are remarkably similar to those of its major characters. Near the beginning, Donald Rumsfeld ( Scott Glenn) proclaims that he doesn't do "nuance." Neither, alas, does Stone.

The "Today" show has yet to promote the conservative satire An American Carol, that spoofs Michael Moore but they did find time to invite on Josh Brolin to plug Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic W. on Tuesday's show. Co-anchor Matt Lauer interviewed Brolin, who plays the title character, and noted critics were expecting "a political hatchet job" of the President, to which Brolin, defended Stone as he claimed the controversy surrounding the director of such factually murky films like JFK and Nixon, was "hogwash."

However Brolin admitted that one of the reasons Stone tabbed him to play Dubya was because there was something sort of "mean" about the actor. And in describing how he perfected his Bush impression Brolin observed there was an "apish quality," about the 43rd president.

The following is the full segment as it occurred on the October 14, "Today" show: