In honour of the Soviet KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov I bring you Oscar-winning film-maker Oliver Stone:
Oliver Stone will continue his infamous tradition of films about real-world political figures with a new documentary about Hugo Chavez, the flashpoint Venezuela president whose influence the United States has publicly tried to subdue in recent years.
The news comes after Stone blithely weathered the fallout from his breezy Bush biopic W. and a wave of publicity after the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, turned down his request to make a documentary about him. (Ahmadinejad acknowledged Stone’s rebel status in his profession but said he was still part of “the Great Satan,” to which Stone famously said he hoped that the Iranian “experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours.”)True to form, Stone will focus his Chavez documentary on the leftist president’s vast opposition, and he will have plenty of material: Chavez recently introduced legislation that would allow him to remain in office until 2019. Stone has already spent considerable time with Chavez over the last several months, and his film is slated to be finished this year.
Stone’s project is also discussed by Oleg Atbashian:
Thus, Oliver Stone is reportedly making a documentary about Hugo Chavez, whom he describes as an “energetic, principled champion of change in Latin America” and hopes, in Stone’s words, to “capture the spirit of his drive to roll back U.S. influence.” The ability to claim originality while working for decades from the same moth-eaten template makes Mr. Stone an Oscar-winning genius. Is there a chance that in the process of glorifying what he calls the region’s “liberation from the United States,” the legendary director might display authentic originality by interviewing, not a leftist, but a hero of anti-Marxist resistance? Can the devastation inflicted on Latin America by socialist policies persuade Mr. Stone to look beyond the worn-out clichés? We can only wish.
