Far be it from me to pull a Patrick Goldstein and be the cause of a fellow righty landing on the conservative Hollywood blacklist, but news is news and the fact that for decades now Oliver Stone has been a right-wing spy embedded deep in the heart of Tinseltown and successfully producing one pro-American propaganda film after another through the devious use of reverse psychology IS NEWS. Besides, with “South of the Border” Stone effectively outs himself.
I’m sorry Oliver, but as a *wink-wink* pro-Hugo Chavez filmmaker you can’t ask the Venezuelan strongman to let you film him pedaling around on a little girl’s bicycle and then not edit out the part where he falls off without giving away that subversive right-wing desire of yours to make a world-wide joke of a tyrant clown who hates your beloved America and cozies up to the terrorists who would do her harm. So don’t blame me. You blew your own cover.
And for those who doubt this theory, let me present to you the facts. Below are highlights from Stone’s illustrious career. Take a good look at what this patriot’s accomplished and then tell me he’s not a double agent for God and apple pie:
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SCARFACE (1983): Stone wrote the screenplay about the consequences of a feckless president (Carter) being duped by a dictator (Castro) into letting a bunch of criminals into the country. If there’s a stronger and more effective piece of anti-open border propaganda, I have yet to see it. Stone was ahead of this curve by a full quarter of a century.
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WALL STREET (1987): Pure genius. Hands down the greatest recruitment tool for Wall Street ever produced, and done so with Leftist Hollywood’s money. Stone so romanticized the business of finance that Wall Street was flooded with young men wanting to get their greed-is-good on.
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BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (1989): After winning the Oscar for “Platoon,” Stone could make any film he wanted and chose the most damning portrayal of dirty, filthy, narcissistic, anti-war hippies ever. Tom Cruise portrays Ron Kovic, a heroic individual who fought for his country in Vietnam, but the director (who would win his second Oscar) turns him into one of the most unlikable screen protagonists of the last 25 years.
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THE DOORS (1991): Stone does it again, this time portraying the baby boomer’s precious sixties as a hedonistic nightmare of drug addiction, domestic violence, and open paganism. Jim Morrison’s legions of poorly dressed worshippers (and the surviving Doors) were furious at Stone’s deconstruction of their precious idol.
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JFK (1991): An absolutely brilliant film, maybe the best of the decade, and the finest piece of reverse-propaganda ever committed to celluloid. Stone wraps his cinematic ridicule of the Grassy Knollers into a wild fever dream of outlandishly stupid conspiracy theories knowing that the result would be a renewed interest in the JFK assassination in the era of computer technology and forensic science. And now, thanks to both those sciences, we no longer doubt Lee Harvey Oswald worked alone. Yes, we owe Oliver Stone a debt of gratitude for helping to heal the deepest national wound of the 20th Century.
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NIXON (1995): Only Nixon could go to China and only Stone could ask us to feel sorry for the crook.
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WORLD TRADE CENTER (2006): This is where Stone almost screwed up and let his true self show. Like every other rational American, the director made the mistake of thinking Hollywood would finally turn around and rally to their country’s side in the war against Islamic terrorism after the attacks of September 11th. Obviously, when Stone looked over his shoulder and found himself alone he realized he had made the same mistake we all did.
But ever the genius spy, he rallied quickly with…
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W. (2008): To save President Bush from further cinematic embarrassment, Stone wisely got ahead of the Hate-Filled Hollywood Hack Brigade to intentionally produce a money-losing Bush bio so embarrassingly awful it would poison the well and make it impossible for anyone to even consider making another. Mission accomplished.
And Stone’s 4th of July gift to America this year…?
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SOUTH OF THE BORDER (2010): Stone completely blows his cover as an obvious right-winger by simply going too far in acting the Useful Idiot. No one is this useful of an idiot.
For 78 minutes that feel like a bad “60 Minutes” segment that never ends; Stone’s on-camera, running around South America interviewing Leftist leaders of various countries who hate America. After making kissy-face with Hugo, the director then heads South to chew coca leaves with Bolivia’s Evo Morales, during — ironically (or not?) — a discussion about how the DEA is just another tool of American Imperialism. After the coca leaves take effect, the subtitles should’ve read AWKWARD when Stone asks Morales to step outside the Presidential Palace so the two of them can kick around a soccer ball. Obviously star-struck, Morales agrees and the result is like a deleted scene from Chaplin’s “Great Dictator.”
Michael Moore makes an appearance bawling out CNN’s Wolf — I lost on Jeopardy – Blitzer for waiting until 2007 to get angry with Dick Cheney; Stone gushes to Chavez, “I’ve never seen such energy, never,” and later asks (no joke) Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner how many pairs of shoes she owns. But the topper is how the two-time Oscar winner continually spits out the words “capitalism” and “privately-owned media” as though they’re both bad things.
The documentary is unforgivably dull and the America bashing repetitive. “Border” isn’t even well produced. Instead of coloring the subtitles yellow, they’re white and at times impossible to read. And Stone just tries too hard to convince us he’s a left-wing dupe. The soaring, over-the-top score that accompanies every speech Chavez gives about the people’s revolucion is right out of a Zucker brothers’ spoof.
So obvious are the lies here, that the New York Times – The New York Times – felt compelled to fact check. But even they missed some obvious ones. Are we really supposed to believe President Bush told one of these leaders that war is the answer to a bad national economy? Stone never questions that little anecdote. He just shakes his head knowingly before yukking it up with Uncle Fidel’s tyrant brother.
If anything, the premise of Stone’s agitprop is all about hair-splitting. The director’s indignant that the American media, especially Fox News, refers to Chavez as a dictator. My guess is that Chavez would prefer being called a dictator on Fox and Friends as opposed to being seen on big-screens throughout the world falling off his little sister’s bike.
But that’s Stone’s brilliant right-wing master plan, right? What else could it be? The only other answer is that he’s laughably incompetent….
Nah, he’s one of us.