The movies Oliver Stone believes made a genuine political impact
Oliver Stone has always been a man who believes implicitly in what he says and does. He is also fiercely adamant that movies have the power to affect real political change in the world. Hell, he’d even convinced a handful of his own movies have done just that.
During an interview with Playboy in 2004, Stone was asked about Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary. Interviewer David Sheff drew a parallel between Stone and Moore, as Stone had also gone on record with some controversial opinions about the motivation behind the terrorist attacks. He called that devastating act “a rebellion against globalisation, against the American way” and was dubbed “a moral and intellectual idiot” by journalist and author Christopher Hitchens.
Stone had no issue being compared to Moore, either, stating, “I’m glad to be lumped in with such great company. We fucking need him. He’s becoming a folkloric Mark Twain figure. The movie is very powerful.” When Sheff wondered if Fahrenheit 9/11 could tangibly affect George W Bush’s 2004 presidential re-election campaign, though, Stone mused, “It’s hard to know, but I think a movie can make a huge difference.”
Stone then ran through three of his own movies and detailed the lasting effects he felt they’d had on the world of American politics. He claimed: “JFK helped Clinton win. It came out right before the election. Salvador and Platoon may have had an impact on Reagan’s downturn in popularity. Salvador took shots at Reagan, which led to an early sense that the Reagan thing was going to end. A month before Platoon, Ollie North got booby-trapped. The whole thing turned.”
Could any of these claims truly be proven? Probably not. But Stone was defiant in his beliefs. When Sheff pushed back slightly by reminding him, “Yet Reagan remained popular,” Stone volleyed back, “At the time, though, he lost a lot of power. He couldn’t do as much evil.”
“The movies were part of a change in sensibility,” concluded Stone. “Movies can help evolve consciousness, as Michael Moore’s movies have. You risk a lot when you speak out, though.”
Interestingly, the Stone movie which arguably affected the consciousness of its audience the most was JFK – and not entirely in a good way. For example, an ABC News special in 2003 – the 40th anniversary of the assassination – revealed that a large number of Americans still believe the President was killed as part of a larger conspiracy. This belief was largely attributed to Stone’s incredible 1991 movie, which delved into the notion that Kennedy was taken off the board as part of a coup d’état involving the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, the Military Industrial Complex, the Secret Service, and Vice President Lyndon B Johnson.
In response to this, though, Stone claimed audiences and critics didn’t pay close enough attention to his movie. He explained: “JFK doesn’t say the things some people say it does. It’s very much a hypothesis. It’s a philosophical inquiry into what is truth, what is reality. If you look closely at the film, it’s written precisely with conditional tenses, ‘What-ifs.'”
He lamented, “We put out an entire book with footnotes to explain our sources. We made every effort to be honest, and we were raked over the coals.”
