Legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone joins the Liberty Report from his hotel room in Paris to discuss the controversy around his latest film, The Putin Interviews, a four hour look into what makes Russian president Vladimir Putin tick. What's behind the Russia hysteria in the US and what are its dangers? Also, we discuss how Stone has shaped the thinking of millions through the years with his immense story-telling abilities. The Skype connection in this interview is not perfect, but we believe the content more than makes up for it.
Legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone joins the Liberty Report from his hotel room in Paris to discuss the controversy around his latest film, The Putin Interviews, a four hour look into what makes Russian president Vladimir Putin tick. What's behind the Russia hysteria in the US and what are its dangers? Also, we discuss how Stone has shaped the thinking of millions through the years with his immense story-telling abilities. The Skype connection in this interview is not perfect, but we believe the content more than makes up for it.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is co-host Daniel Mick Adams.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
Daniel, today we have a very special guest who's a very well-known producer.
He's been in the news recently because of a long interview he did with Putin, which I found very fascinating.
And many people know the name very well, and I would like to introduce our special guest, Oliver Stone.
Oliver, delighted to have you on our program today.
Thank you, Roy.
Well, very good.
I appreciate you being on this program, but actually, why I'm interested is because you've been instrumental in developing ideas and changing people's minds.
You've done so much in the film industry, which is crucial because that does set a standard for people what they believe in.
And of course, some of the things that we've overlapped on has been on foreign policy.
And I have been delighted to know that you're an individual who have thought this through and that you're willing to criticize our government for what we're doing.
And this is where we have an alliance that I've worked on for a long time, and that is an alliance between libertarian conservatives and those who are leaned toward maybe a progressive viewpoint, but we agree that we shouldn't be in all these wars.
So this is one thing that I would like to find out if you could help us a little bit to further understand your beliefs and maybe some insights that you have had from this recent interview with Putin.
Well, this is a loaded question.
You're asking me a big one, and it's going to the heart of where the world is going.
That's my interest.
I was born conservative in New York City, and I grew up under the Cold War.
And of course, the Russians terrified me.
My father made sure of that.
And the Cold War went away, as you know.
And I went to Russia in the 1980s as a screenwriter, a young screenwriter, out of Hollywood.
I had done Midnight Express.
I went to Russia with the idea of interviewing several dissidents, actually 12 dissidents, most of them Jewish, out of psychiatric hospitals, if you remember that period, the early 80s, under the Brezhnev regime.
And it was a terrifying trip, but opened my eyes.
I wrote a beautiful screenplay.
It never got made because Mr. Gorbachev came into office, and you see the changes of time.
Mr. Gorbachev becomes the progressive Soviet president.
The Soviet Union, of course, collapses in the burst of democracy.
And we have a crazy 1990s.
I go back to Russia as a filmmaker.
JFK and natural-born killers, I present them in Russia at different times.
And it's a mad trip.
It's a whirlwind, Russia, with gangsters, big money, and also a huge segment of the population has no money at all.
It's a complete collapse of the social network, which you probably don't agree with, but it was a terrible thing to see on the general population.
Mr. Snowden's story, which I did prior to this documentary on Mr. Putin, the Snowden story occupied me.
And of course, it's so ironic that he, the most American of patriots, is living in Moscow because he has to.
It's the only country in the world that would give him asylum.
In other words, it's the only country in the world that has sovereignty in the sense that it can deny the United States what it wants, which is Snowden.
He explained to me very interestingly that he wanted the Russians wanted an extradition treaty with the United States for years, had been talking to them, but nothing doing, because there are a lot of Russian criminals in America who sold money from Russia.
So it works both ways.
The United States wanted Snowden.
He said, he did nothing wrong in Russian terms.
So they gave him asylum.
And now it's more, he's three years, five years, whatever it's going to be.
I wish Ed well, I really do.
interview with him I saw a very good interview.
So the point I'm trying to make is that we come around now to this period from 2000 to 2017.
You've been around during that whole period speaking out.
And for some reason, a very good, an improving U.S.-Russia relationship deteriorated completely.
Mr. Putin, in his interview, goes into the ABM treaty.
He goes into the expansion of NATO, and he goes into the support of terrorism in the Caucasus, the American support of terrorism in the Caucasus while the Russians were helping them in Afghanistan.
And that's an important issue for them.
They helped him save America.
Many American lives are owed to Russians who were cooperating with them because they knew Afghanistan pretty well and the geography.
They also gave transport help.
So Mr. Putin was a naive young leader in a way, but he did feel slowly betrayed by what was going on.
And I think you talked about those three issues: NATO, ABM.
That's a big one.
And the support of terrorism.
ABM, I have to say, destroys the nuclear parity that existed.
When we were young men, Mr. Nixon and Brezhnev signed that treaty.
It was an ABM treaty.
And it was very important.
It's the foundation of international security.
When Mr. Bush tore that up in 2001, that was a signal that the United States wanted nuclear superiority or first strike, first strike option.
Very important to realize that.
And so we're back to what I showed him, Dr. Strangelove, the movie Dr. Strangelove.
I showed it to him in the documentary.
As you know, it ends very badly.
A human mistake destroys the planet.
And it's a very sober experience.
And he watched it and very, very serious about it.
And no laughter from his side.
And he said simply that this movie was very accurate to that time and it's still accurate today, even though the weapons are much more dangerous.
So these are issues that concern me.
I'm saying I have reached that age when I am really concerned, not just about the United States, but about the whole planet.
And I fear a nuclear confrontation then.
An accident could happen tomorrow because the United States is strangling Russia.
We have troops on the Russian border, NATO troops training.
We put ABMs into Poland and Romania.
This is gigantic mistakes and they're imbalanced.
So in other words, Russia is living, as Putin explains, that ABM can be converted overnight from a defensive missile into an offensive missile.
So they don't know what's incoming.
They don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
They're living surrounded by from the north, the east, and the west, essentially by U.S. missiles.
Very dangerous situation.
And we don't seem to realize it.
I think this documentary helps to understand the stakes.
We Americans have forgotten what war is.
We think it's, I think many people think it's a fantasy game, like you win, you lose.
Mr. Trump says America needs to win a war as if you can win a war.
I doubt this.
I don't know what your position on this, but I'm very scared of the present situation.
Oh, well, there's no doubt.
I am very frightened.
I think it gets worse.
Even as we speak, I believe it's getting worse.
But I believe Daniel has a question for you.
I know our time is not unlimited, that we have to be careful with the time, but he has a question for you.
And I hope I can get him to give us that question.
Well, the film is a four-hour film.
It's available on Showtime.
I've seen the film.
I thought it was a fantastic film.
It was enormously interesting.
I think if it was any other world leader of his level of interest, not only would it be praised, but we'd be talking about awards and these sorts of things.
It goes into such, you know, the psychological makeup of the men, the era, fascinating era, the end of the Cold War, which we've never revisited.
We've gone on as if it never happened.
But I do have to ask you, Mr. Sonar, are you, the mainstream media has treated this film as anathema.
Are you surprised at how harshly, for the most part, they've treated it?
I just saw the Marcia Gesson piece in the New York Times, which was so absurd, accusing you of getting questions from Putin to ask him.
I just think the whole place has gone insane.
No, I think, you know, it's a good thing I went through JFK when I was younger.
It's a good thing Nixon and W movie and all the, I mean, there's been a lot of controversy in my documentaries with Mr. Castro, Mr. Chavez.
I'm not surprised.
The venom, I'm scared, not for myself, because I'm past that age.
They can't destroy me anymore.
But what I'm scared of is for America.
I'm afraid that they've lost their senses.
And I worry that there's a lack of foresight and leadership.
Mr. Putin talked very clearly, in very clear terms.
That's why you have to visit it for four hours.
You can really listen to a man who's been there for 16 years talk about politics with the world, balances of power, and so forth.
The United States does not seem to think 25 years ahead, 50 years ahead.
They think like, I got to get elected tomorrow or the money won't be there.
It's always about tomorrow.
And tomorrow we live in this spin cycle like a laundry.
Every day is a crisis.
And I think that's the way we like it because it creates more money.
But this is not a view of the world.
It's not a balance.
You know, Oliver, there's a lot of people in this country, a lot of people in this country who believe, because I come across them, who believe that how to stimulate an economy and help a weak economy is to have a war.
And people say, well, that's how we got out of the depression with World War II.
I don't happen to buy into that.
And I happen to believe that the economy, though, moves a lot of things.
And yet the economy is also involved in what I call military Keynesianism.
That is, we build weapons for the benefit of the military-industrial complex.
And some people, and I believe our president may agree or endorse this idea that when you have weapons, you ought to try and use them, which is, to me, total insanity.
And yet people aren't talking a whole lot about the economy related to foreign policy and the problems that we have.
And if the economy is the big issue, I believe that people vote from their bellies.
You know, if they're hungry and need a job, they'll be influenced.
And even war becomes secondary to the fact that they're hungry.
But could you give me a little insight to a problem that I mull through my mind, and that has to do with Venezuela.
They have economic problems down there, and I know you've had some interest in that, but where do you place the blame on what is happening in Venezuela?
Well, you went from one question to the other.
Well, you started with the military-industrial complex, and I'm fascinated by that.
I think that's where the story lies.
And you've been talking about it for years and years and years, and I admire you for telling it as it is.
But as Mr. Putin pointed out in the documentary, our budget is now an overt $600 billion for defense and security.
But in reality, we all know it's much higher.
We're approaching a trillion with all the hidden and the wars that are paid separately.
Anyway, we're close.
We're insane.
We are 10 times the budget of declared budget of Russia, which is $66 billion.
It was the fourth largest military country in the world.
China is second at $270 billion.
And in the report from last year, it's changed now.
Saudi Arabia was third, but now has slipped down to fourth with something like $60 billion also.
So here we have this insane 10 times Russia.
And we're saying, and Russia has a weak economy, much weaker than ours, one-tenth of ours, or maybe more.
And we're saying that Russia is the greatest threat to the United States.
This is insanity.
This is insanity.
They don't have the military.
In fact, the big fear is that because Obama in 2009 said we must remodernize, modernize our nuclear weapons, we're going to spend trillions of dollars.
And from 2009 on, we committed to this.
This scares me, and it should scare everybody in the world because where are we going?
The Russians are not going to be able to keep up.
The Chinese may be able to because they have the money.
But what happens?
What kind of weapons do you build?
You have to, to survive, you have to build crude weapons, very crude.
Gaddafi in Libya made a huge mistake.
The United States talked him out of keeping his nuclear arsenal, if you remember correctly.
What happened?
He died in a bloody coup d'état that was abetted by the United States, bombing of Libya.
So, in other words, there's no incentive for anybody to disarm.
The United States is a leading arms supplier to the world.
We spend a fortune on it.
Our economy, as you say, may depend on it to some degree.
And this is an issue for economists, but we would die without it, it seems.
We need to produce weapons.
But the problem is when you produce these weapons, you use them, as you say.
You militarize the regions.
You've got to sell them in Africa.
And now we're doing that.
We're starting to militarize Africa.
You have obviously militarized the Middle East.
We gave Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey tons of weapons, very dangerous weapons, TOW missiles, and they sent them up to guess who?
The terrorists in Syria.
Where do they get their weapons?
They get them from, they're supported by the United States, but basically from paid for by Saudi Arabia.
And we gave Saudi Arabia, what is it, $110 billion on the last visit of Trump.
In comparison to all these numbers, you realize the Venezuelan situation is minor.
And we can talk about that.
But I did spend time with Mr. Chavez.
I made a documentary I wish you had seen called South of the Border, which celebrated that movement in 2008-09 of the socialism in South America.
You know, I think what you're sort of heading back to is the neocons, you know, and every time we turn on the television, if you're going to talk foreign policy, you're going to feature an expert who happens to be a neocon for the most part, 99.9% of the time.
These are the experts, as you point out, who told us Iraq was going to be a cakewalk.
We've got to get rid of Gaddafi.
We've got to knock out Assad.
We've got to knock out Saddam Hussein.
Why is it, in your opinion, that the neocon stranglehold on power is so seemingly unbreakable?
I'm not an expert, Dan.
I think Ron can tell you more.
He was in Congress.
It seems Congress has become more militarized.
Obviously, you know, you're dealing with huge amounts of money.
Politicians and the Camera00:02:52
People are getting elected.
You have the AIPAC lobby, which is the Israeli lobby.
They're threatening any representative or senator who goes against them on Israel issues.
They'll go against him, and they will campaign against him.
They will put a candidate there.
This is serious business.
Politicians themselves, the Congress has gone, been militarized.
The whole economy, the political action around Washington, the power of the CIA, we haven't even talked about that, but we know the black budget that they have and the amount of power that they have wielded.
And they are now, I believe, politicizing our political election.
But how do you stop it?
You guys, you tell me.
I know the people who can best stop it and demilitarize it are the people who are in it.
They know it.
And there are some of them, I guarantee you, who have an Edward Snowden streak who want to see a better, cleaner, purer, more efficient, less corrupt military budget.
Oliver, do you have concern about the militarization of our police departments at home?
And what is that relationship to, you know, the runaway war on drugs that doesn't seem to be slowed up any under our new president?
Ron, I'm down the line with you on both issues.
You can articulate it far better than I. I'm a dramatist, and I, you know, I can put the camera on Mr. Putin and you can study him for four hours.
I think you'll learn a lot.
He's a, I think I should make a documentary about you, sir.
You look great at your age, and I think the camera should be on you.
I think you can tell.
You talk very well.
Well, you know, somebody suggested that when I left Congress, and I reminded them, you know, I lost the election, so that didn't happen.
Why did you lose?
But why did you lose?
Oh, I didn't get enough votes.
That was one of the reasons.
But it also had to do with the establishment, you know, on how I was handled in the campaign, how I was kicked out of debates, how I was ignored, and how we didn't have the coverage.
And it was universally in there was opposition universally, you know, with the media and all the politicians.
So it wasn't in the cards.
And I deal more with changing ideas rather than changing politicians.
I've had too much to do with the politicians.
I don't trust them.
And I think all you hear are the lies and innuendos.
So I believe you have to change people's minds.
And my goal, of course, on foreign policy is to try to find allies, whether they're libertarians, conservatives, or progressives, to understand why non-interventionists, minding our own business, following some of the advice of the founders, stay out of entangling alliances.
Why this is the road to peace and prosperity?
Educational Key to Peace00:01:00
That's what our Institute is all about.
The Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
I don't know why anybody could be against that.
And of course, I think the education is the key thing.
And that's why when I look at your films and the work you do, that there's an educational benefit because you bring a message to people that I don't reach as easily.
You know, I've had a very small bully pulpit, but I've reached a couple, and I am pleased.
But I will continue to do it in this format.
And I understand that your staff had said that you had a limited amount of time, and it sounds like you're very, very busy.
And I do want to thank you, Oliver, very much for being with us today on our Liberty Report.
Well, it's an honor to be here, Ron, and really an honor to meet you for the first time.
And keep at it.
Keep up the good fight.
Thank you.
All right, very good.
And I want to thank our viewers today for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.