Oliver Stone – “Comandante” Press Conference

Saturday 23rd August 1pm

Stone’s new feature, “Comandante”, a documentary interview with Fidel Castro, goes on general release in October, and has playing to sell – out audiences at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Here, Stone discussed at length how he came to interview such a figure of controversy, as well as throwing in his opinions on Bush, World Politics and, (naturally), his new project, the much - anticipated “Alexander”, which begins shooting in a month.
We almost managed to keep up, as the big man has a lot to say…(and he doesn’t hold back on anything!) Almost word for word, we present Mr Oliver Stone. Love him or hate him, he’s certainly not banal…

Press: You’ve shot a number of movies about icons in, why is this?

“In 1999 I did “Any Given Sunday” which I found very exhausting, and I needed a break. In the nineties budgets became so big that what had been 19 million dollars, soon ended up costing 50 million dollars - for the same thing, marketing, budgets, and egos, are all difficult things to work with, very draining”.
“So instead I did three documentaries with Fernando Sulichin (producer, also here), and some commercials, then through this I got the chance to interview (Castro) for Spanish television. We got three days in February 2002, and out of this came 30 hours with Castro, it was a small thing at first but the material grew into a 93 minute film. From this came US and European interest and HBO bought it”.
“It was then postponed from May 5th in the US, after the uproar about recent events that happened in April. It still remains postponed in the US, so will it ever be seen in the US? I hope so”
“HBO then asked me to go back to Cuba after 75 dissidents were imprisoned and 3 hijackers killed there, we went back and Castro gave up more of his time, three more full days, he was complete, passionate, concerned, upset and specific in denial”.
“This was turned into another documentary, it will probably be called “Looking for Fidel” and be about 59 – 60 minutes long. It’s more political, there’s more grilling. I gave it to the distributors this weekend and they’ll decide what to do with it”.
“I pray the US get to see him and hear his own words. The US people are mature enough to see it without premature words.”

Press : Compare Bush/Castro as a democrat (with a small d).

“Bush has a fear of democracy, Republicans are now actively changing voting systems”.
“Voting machines and computers, that remove people by mistake, relatives of convicted criminals, 65 thousand people in Florida alone.
The Republicans, in my view, are getting concerned about the 2004 election, which plays into Castro story very deeply”.
“There was the storm in April, and they went into Iraq, then the story broke on Cuba, Castro claims American provocation in Cuba.
There are apparently three major instigators in the Bush party.
That’s the thing with Castro, let him speak and he says it well.”
“He’s amazed that the American people could be so gullible about the lies of George Bush, he says he must be insane or guided by lunatics. But hopefully if Iraq turns into a debacle it will maybe mean Cuba is left alone for a while”.

Press: What’s your opinion of the recent Kelly inquiry in the UK?

“I’ve been in England recently, as Alexander (his next movie project) is being shot in England, Morocco and Thailand. I’ve been watching Al - Jazeera too, and the US coverage of war is superficial, there is little shown of the damage or injured civilians”.
“It amazes me in the UK, the people are more educated, less led by the media. As Goerbals said, “the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe it”.
“Words and thinking are more controlled in the US. In the UK people are reacting to Blair’s exaggerations…the bigger lie is that in my opinion there are no WMD in Iraq, and that the stories were hyped to begin with. By omission, it’s very hard for people the grasp the degree of the lie. We live in an age of spin, with a bill in front of parliament that means the US media system can by into the UK systems.”

Press: What do you consider your greatest film yet?

Life has peaks and valleys…they all meant something to me at the time, and all had different experiences attached to them, like different meals in different restaurants. It helps me to remember where I was, in moments of time, like a diary.

On the subject of documentaries again, Stone discussed another documentary he worked on, with leaders in the Middle East,

“The second documentary Fernando and I did was financed by Canal +, and I got good contacts through this with all of the leaders except Sharon. As it was during Ramallah, Arafat was skeptical about talking to the West, and sure enough his compound was destroyed within a few days. It was like “Roger and Me”, Michael Moore’s documentary, with Arafat, we spent all our time trying to track him down! We also spoke to a Palestinian fighter, an hour long, his dedication to fighting was astounding, but he was very articulate, and it seems that nothing has changed, the peace plan in the Middle East is all B.S!”
“If you read the headlines in the New York Times over the last fifty years, they’ve dedicated so much print to the Palestine/Israeli conflict, telling us peace is coming, but the Palestinians won’t give up. Mr Sharon set a bad example with Lebanon and now Palestine.
Anyway, the film came and went and was respectively received, it’ll maybe come to England after Venice. It’s basically a foray into the Middle East, asking questions”.

Press: Did you have any expectations when you met Castro?

“Not many preconceptions, really. In the 60’s he was presented to me as a bad guy, mainly by my father. Nixon was calling him a communist and anti – American. There was a chain of distrust as he went to the Soviets for support”.
“A declassified document, Operation Noah Woods, called for the invasion of Cuba by all means, many of the actions were like those supposedly considered by Osama Bin Laden…including the use of hijacked aero-planes as weapons. Hotels were bombed in Havana, there was swine fever, but the abuse and attacks were not played up…show the US what’s really gone on”.
“Fidel is like an isolated fighter, like Don Quixote, the last revolutionary, an egalitarian, everybody gets - there’s not much, but everyone has their fair share”.

“The economic embargo, tourist trade in the US. It’s one of the last non – corporate states (Cuba), very striking. He makes his point that if you allow the ethos in, once it gets a foothold it grows…Coke, Mc Donalds, it just grows and grows and then it’s over”.
“He believes you can only sell out to the US, not negotiate, there is no in-between.”

Referring again to a previous project, Stone is complacent and truthful about his reasons for moving on,

“I was going to do “Beyond Borders” about an English aid worker, Angelina Jolie would have been my choice too, but I left the project, there are some English film-makers on board now, great film-makers.
America has so many huge issues and I felt I would rather do a movie about something that I know about”.
“We’re in the situation where we have Arnie wiping out Arabs in “True Lies,” it’s the immature John Wayne perspective.
The US is shying away from things because of cause and effect.”

Press: You have a military record, how did this affect your meetings with Stone?:

“I felt that Castro gave me a lot of respect for it…he’s been involved in guerilla warfare, he thinks there is an element of truth in combat, and I think it meant that we could talk as equals as we both understood this”.
“Not many people know, but the Cubans had a lot of success in Angola, where they fought the South African army, they fought three wars in South African actually, the big one was where they lost several thousand in Angola, but they helped preserve the independence of these countries against the South Africans”.

Press: With two Alexander projects being worked on just now, do you see (Baz) Luhrman as a rival?

“Ours is going ahead in four weeks on three continents, and I think this is the biggest project of my life, there was no race for me the race was getting the script finished, I feel nervous and anxious, but we are closing the gap fast though! It’s a nice break from it to come to Edinburgh”.
“It’s a great story, I’ve been working on the script for so long. There are surface events, but you have to get into a theme and find the characters and take the shot”.
“Baz’s “Romeo and Juliet”, is my favourite, it shows he can do something really extravagant and beautiful. I don’t know about his theme, I think it would have been different if they’d gone first with Leonardo”.
“We’ve got Colin (Farrell), and I believe he’s got true grit, he’s very impressive, with a mercurial Irish temperament. In four weeks I’ll be able to tell you some more and hopefully by February I’ll be smiling!”

Press: if you had thirty hours with George W, what do you think you could get out of him?

“I think he’s scared of the camera, he never looks you in the eye, he’s always joshing and never really gets into a dialogue. He seems to be lacking in feeling and he has a shallow manner. I think he’s quite a synthetic person. The real person is, I think, a C student at Yale, and an ex – alcoholic who believes in Jesus, what could be more dangerous than that?”
“When you’ve got Arnie involved in politics, who are the bad guys? The US demonizes the bad guys, and we have to fix it from within, starting with the three basic bottom lines – Health, Education and Welfare, we should be reconstructing America, not Iraq”.

And with that, he’s off. Far more forthcoming than you would imagine, and brimming with theories and topical skepticism, he’s a hard man to keep up with, but very entertaining to listen to!

Comandante is released in October 2003 in the UK.
It has still not been shown in the US.

Terresa Gaffney