April 15, 2004
DON'T CONFUSE ME WITH FACTS
This is a hilarious interview with Oliver Stone about his new movie starring Fidel Castro. To excerpt any of it would be unfair -- each question and answer is damning of Stone, who comes across as the most ignorant person ever to be apathetic about his ignorance.
There is a nice lesson here about the untrustworthy narrator. As any lawyer who has ever defended a deposition will tell you, writing things down makes them true. Few witnesses ever trust their memory, however clear, against the magic of seeing something written down, regardless of whether they know the author, or his motivation, or the circumstances under which he was writing. The power of filming something is ten times as great and even those few who can be skeptical try to filter what they see through some theory of rationality. They assume that the author, even if he is trying to mislead, is doing so rationally and with foresight. This interview serves as an important reminder that sometimes there's no conspiracy. Sometimes, at bottom, there is just an ignorant idiot.
Posted by David Cohen at April 15, 2004 9:02 AMYou gotta believe that Stone CAN'T be as ignorant as he seems in this interview - if he was, how can he convince movie/TV execs to fork over the bucks for his projects? Of course, he may possibly not be the only fool in Hollywood.
Posted by: John Barrett Jr. at April 15, 2004 12:24 PMHollywood's love affair with El Maximo and his Worker's Paradise rolls on, overwhelmed by Castro's "strong moral presence". The level of naiveté in this interview is astounding; Stone shows that he knows nothing about the Cuban system, and he shows no interest whatever in ferreting out any hard facts about the nature of the regime he is serving. He doesn't even ask. This is the very same mind-set that prevailed among the artistic/literary elite in the 1930s, as they made their political pilgrimages to the USSR for Potemkin tours of Stalin's Promised Land. Their accounts show that they perceived and understood nothing and make for some hilarious reading today. They haven't learned a thing since. Stone sees nothing, and he knows nothing, which somehow qualifies him to produce an HBO special to educate the American people about Cuba. I think the right word here is 'pernicious'.
Posted by: Byron at April 15, 2004 3:49 PMOkay, I got through 40% of that interview before I couldn't take it anymore. Can anyone beat my score?
Posted by: R.W. at April 15, 2004 9:43 PMI read this interview yesterday, and while I don't believe that OS was joking around, my impression is that he must have some serious (drug-induced?) brain damage. No one could possibly be so oblivious. If he had his senses about him, he surely would have reacted differently by the point where the interviewer was openly ridiculing him.
Posted by: brian at April 15, 2004 9:58 PMThe irony is that Mrs. Bardach, was as slavishly proCastro as Stone, just two years ago. She was
the one, with the help of the NY Times, to charcterize a longtime Cuban militant, as a leading threat (OF cOURSE, WE KNOW NOW, Another
MILITANT WAS A GREATER THREAT, dON'T WE) she
was a key stigmatizer of that other great national
threat, that required hundreds of law enforcement
in the S. Florida) All the while, the real terrorist were flying at flight schools all through out the state, and in San Diego & Minneapolis. The humor is very bitter, in this
case
Great site and great information.
Posted by: government grants at May 27, 2004 8:09 AM