Franziska Krug/Action Press/ZUMA PressIn case you hadn't noticed, Oliver Stone likes to get fired up over politics. And when politics and film cross paths...watch out.
"Even when James Cameron made that superb film Avatar, he was making as clear a statement as I have ever seen about the U.S. military being the bad guy, and he said, 'I don't make political films like Oliver Stone. I had no intention of criticising the empire.'
"Well, James, excuse me, what are you smoking? I love you as a filmmaker, but don't play that game," the Oscar-winning director of Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July says in a new interview with Huffington Post.
As for himself, says Stone, when he makes a politically charged film, he doesn't want to land "on the wrong side of history."
Unlike, say, Morgan Freeman?
"I would not take the money if I were Morgan, whom I respect, for espousing a false enemy," Stone tells HuffPo, referring to Freeman's role in Olympus Is Fallen, in which the White House is attacked by Korean guerilla forces.
"By the way, a recent James Bond film was ridiculous too," Stone adds. "They made Cuba the home of chemical warfare and it becomes a whole issue when they go to Cuba. And, in another film, Mr. Stallone, who is an equal opportunity offender, managed to make a film that made $100m, saying that [Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez] was a bad guy with a red beret."
"We should make Stallone watch our series with Clockwork Orange eyes," he jokes, suggesting that someone force Sylvester Stallone to stay uncomfortably glued to Stone's Showtime documentary series The Untold History of the United States.
Have any films that took on politically charged subject matter agreed with him? Films that he didn't direct himself, that is?
Yes, but apparently just the ones that starred George Clooney.
"I liked Michael Clayton, Syriana, but most stuff is deeply conservative," Stone says.
Good night and good luck to the rest of Hollywood.