Oliver Stone takes aim at Hollywood: “People in showbiz are idiots”
Oliver Stone, the legendary filmmaker behind such triumphs as Platoon, Snowden, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers and more, has offered an unfiltered opinion on modern Hollywood. Not mincing his words, Stone concluded that “people in showbiz are idiots”.
The 76-year-old director was interviewed while visiting Romania to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Transilvania Film Festival. The annual event also scheduled a short retrospective on the three-time Academy Award-winner’s career, including a look at his latest movie, the pro-nuclear energy documentary Nuclear Now.
“I like nuclear. You can eat it for breakfast,” Stone told Variety in relation to his latest project. “But they don’t like nuclear energy [in Hollywood] because nuclear scares them.”
He continued to describe making Nuclear Now as a “fucking ballbreaker beyond belief” due to being declined by so many potential stakeholders. “It was rejected. It was rejected at birth,” he said. “No financing. No company wanted to do it. No Netflix. It’s crazy.”
“People in showbiz are idiots,” he added in a more public appearance, addressing festival visitors the following morning. “They just go with the trend, they just go with the fashion — it’s a fashion business.”
For many years, Stone’s strong, unwavering opinions have seen him become a pariah of sorts in the Hollywood microclimate. Despite such friction, he insisted that he had no ill feelings toward the establishment. “I’ve gotten along in the business,” he commented. “I’ve always survived”.
Elsewhere in the interview, Stone launched an attack on the recent fourth instalment of John Wick. “I saw John Wick 4 on the plane,” Stone began. “Talk about volume. I think the film is disgusting beyond belief. Disgusting. I don’t know what people are thinking”.
He added: “Maybe I was watching GI Joe when I was a kid. But [Keanu Reeves] kills, what, three, four hundred people in the fucking movie. And as a combat veteran, I gotta tell you, not one of them is believable. I realize it’s a movie, but it’s become a video game more than a movie.”
“It’s lost touch with reality,” Stone continued. “The audience perhaps likes the video game. But I get bored by it. How many cars can crash? How many stunts can you do? What’s the difference between ‘Fast and Furious’ and some other film? It’s just one thing after another. Whether it’s a super-human Marvel character or just a human being like John Wick, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s not believable.”
Watch the trailer for Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now below.
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