Dare2 Magazine talks to Oliver Stone and his co-writer Tariq Ali about riding bikes with Chavez, BP Oil spills and his next project – Oliver Stone’s Secret History of America – a magnum opus that looks set to be bigger than Alexander (hmm).  Oh, and that small matter of the return of Gecko….

South of the Border looks at the socialism of Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chavez – what drew you to the project?

Oliver Stone: This is the first time in history in South America where you see a unified movement of people who have the same goals of independence and preserving their own wealth.  This is an amazing story!  And I hadn’t read it anywhere before – that’s what’s amazing to me because it’s clearly the case and it’s not reported.

What did you discover from South America that you think should be adopted by your home nation and the rest of the world?

OS: People controlling their own resources is at the very essence of what American people could do.  This BP oil spill is typical.  If America had control of its own oil, we would not be allowing these companies to make a killing on oil.  They shouldn’t make this kind of profit on oil, or on health, or on war, or on prisons.  All of these industries should really be public industries, not private industries.

So on the big issues of these resources, they belong to the people [of Latin American nations].  Oil should be public.  It’s too serious a concern with the carbon emissions in the universe right now.  We have to figure out a way to make this thing work.

You’ve come under a lot of flack from the US Media for your left-wing politics – how has South of the Border been received by folk back home?

OS: [Laughs] I’m very happy we got it out in the US!  I basically thought it would make Venezuelan television and that would be it.  It wasn’t done with a lot of hope.  You don’t do things that way, because the ball game in the States is definitely to missle-shield the entire country.

When it comes to South America we hear negative things about these people, especially Chavez, very bad stuff, and I went down there – I’m curious, I’d done Salvador the movie and two Castro movies – but I didn’t really want to get involved because I thought, as Tariq [Ali, the co-writer of the movie] said, it’s going to be a hornet’s nest.  
But you know Fernando [Sulchin; the powerhouse producer behind Stone’s previous documentaries, Comandante, Looking for Fidel and Persona Non Grata] pushed me, and it became more and more interesting.  And Hugo Chavez – who is also wonderful to interview by the way – said ‘Don’t believe what I’m saying to you.

Go out there, into the field, and see for yourself.  Speak to the presidents in these other countries and see what’s going on [in South America] because this is a big social change.”

So, where do you think American’s can go for a more balanced view of South America?

OS: To the madhouse!  To lithium!  To more drugs! I don’t know, what are you going to do if you’re an American?  You guys are lucky, you’re British!

Tariq Ali: I don’t know about that, I wouldn’t start on that!

OS: [Laughs]

TA: One thing that a British person can’t do is to advise American citizens to watch BBC World.

OS: I think that Fox and friends get high ratings, they called Obama a dictator, they call Obama a socialist, a communist.  And they can get away with it.  I mean they got away with that whole business about Obama not being an American citizen, and I don’t know where it all ends.  It’s all fiction at the end of the day; it’s all a movie.  I think you have to have a sense of humour when it comes to modern times, don’t you?

Reception of your film has been mixed with some accusing you of not asking the pertinent questions in South of the Border – how do you respond to that criticism?

OS: I’ve asked some of them.  The Big Picture I think is there.  You could quibble, about so many details, you could nit pick, and I think the New York Times has done a decent job at deconstructing it.  I think the Big Picture is what matters with the Chavez story.  All this nit-picking in the United States (and probably in Britain, and in Europe by the way), it’s just nitpicking.  It’s just looking for flaws.  This is a mindset that’s very Western.  
There are problems in Venezuela; of distribution, of re-distribution.  There are problems at all levels, because it’s a rough reform – it’s coming from a badly mismanaged government where the gap between rich and poor was gigantic.  I can say from the broad picture that the World Bank support the fact that he [Chavez] has cut poverty by 50%, and extreme poverty by 70%.  And that literacy is widespread.  That infant mortality is way down.  These basic statistics are terrific.

You say that Chavez has been treated unfairly in the Western media and that you have an attraction to picking characters who you think have been demonized.  Rumour has it Iranian President Mahmood Ahmadinejad is next on your list?

OS: That’s a very hot potato for me.  Obviously he’s had a lot of bad press in the West, like Chavez…. But if I did want to make a film about him [Ahmadinejad] or the Dear Leader [Kim Jong Il of Korea] why don’t I have the right to do it?  Why doesn’t he have the right to speak?  You know, I would love to know what this man thinks.  He seems like a strange fellow, I agree, but wouldn’t it be great to see a film about him?  The same thing is true about Ahmadinejad.  
I did make an offer about three years ago to talk to him and the answer was no.  Then when I was about to start making ‘W’ the answer was yes.  And then I couldn’t come at that time, so it’s always a bit of mixed signals with Iran you know.  They’re a bit screwy you know, like North Korea. You can’t quite communicate.  So I don’t think it would happen right now, I really am overloaded with documentaries;  a third Castro one has been shot and coming out in the Fall, and I’m doing this 10-hour Secret History of the United States which is a big deal.

Do you consider Secret History of the United States to be your magnum opus, and your mark on the planet?

OS:  It is a legacy. I looked at my children and I said, ‘They’re getting the wrong history, they’re all screwed up.  You know, I don’t have a history degree, but I read history books and I can see a lot of flaws in the them, so why can’t an amateur get in there and give it a shot?  If you can make a film that’s interesting to the eyes of a young person, that is somewhere resembling the truth, because the truth is such an elusive thing – you know, we don’t all agree with what happened in history – but if I can make some semblance of the historical interpretation that holds the mark, then that would be a good thing to leave behind.

After ‘W’, do you have any plans as yet to make an Obama film, or do you need to wait until the end of the administration?

OS: I would say no.  But I would say never say never.  You never know.

Apparently Will Smith has expressed a desire to play Obama…?

OS: I think the tyranny of now – you know, if you make that film [about Obama] you’re always going to run into that issue.  When I did ‘W’ I was attacked from some quarters by not making it strong enough or critical enough, but I looked at the future, and I was trying to look at the character of the man, and his decision.  Once he goes to Iraq it’s very clear what kind of man he is, and what kind of fool he is too.  When you show one time and one decision that’s enough – you don’t have to go into all the embarrassments.

Were you excited about returning to make a second Wall Street movie?

OS: Well, I love the idea of it because Wall Street is my first franchise movie!  To make a business movie and it turns into a business is pretty amazing. Actually, I was nicely recompensed to come back 23 years later to follow up the story which I wanted to do, because we have reached a new level of greed.  Greed is still good.

What do you think has changed on Wall St since your first Wall Street movie?

OS: I’m shocked of the exaggeration of wealth.  I thought that era was coming to an end in 1987 and it kept going, and going. And going!  
Certainly the banks have changed their mandate, because banks are no longer banks.  There’s no stability in the economy.  It’s all volatile.  You pick up the paper tomorrow and you really don’t know what’s going to happen.  It’s potentially a disaster everyday.  And I think that people have to live like that and that’s not a healthy way to live.  It’s possible that you’re going to see side effects now of people dying, because who wants to live to be old and try to put money aside in this economy?  You can’t make any interest.  I mean, how do we live?  These are big issues for the whole world and Wall Street is at the centre of it because of the greed, the volatility and the Banks are just no longer banks; they’re casinos.  
They’re bookies that can’t lose money because they can bet long and short at the same time.  They can make money going in and going out.  They never lose money.  They take it for granted that they have a private mandate to be banks.  And this is a big issue.  
No bank in the US right now is willing to lend any money, or anything resembling a public business, or anything that’s half-way good.  Even for housing.  So the bank thing is a disaster, and it has to be fixed, and it hasn’t been fixed with this Reform Bill.

by Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani