Posted on 02/16/2003 1:35:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. film director Oliver Stone said Friday he hoped his new Fidel Castro documentary would create a more balanced view of the Cuban leader who heads one of world's last communist states.
"Is it bad to be a dictator?" asks Castro toward the end of Stone's film, which will be shown on U.S. television on May 11.
"I have seen the United States become very friendly toward some dictators."
The controversial and acclaimed director followed the Cuban leader, then 75, over three days in February 2002. His 30 hours of interviews were cut down and combined with documentary footage to produce the 90-minute "Commandante."
Stone said he hoped the film would have some influence on Americans' opinions of Castro and contested charges that he had been too soft in his questioning of the Cuban leader, who bubbles with warmth and charm in the film.
"I hope people cast aside their prejudices, not be pro- or anti-Castro, just look at it," Stone told a news conference after his film was shown at the Berlin film festival.
"America would probably take the attitude that the film was propaganda. It is easy to say Oliver Stone is asking soft questions," said Stone, who has won Oscar awards for best director for his bleak Vietnam war movie "Platoon" and its post-war sequel "Born on the Fourth of July."
Stone noted that he did ask Castro about allegations of torture in Cuba, which Castro denies, as well as the country's oppression of homosexuality, which Castro side-steps. And he said Castro admitted to having shortcomings as a father.
"In America, he is caricatured with a big beard and a cigar. I'm trying to get at the human beneath ... He's the oldest living revolutionary. We should get him on film before it's too late."
SIMPLISTIC PORTRAIT
In "Commandante," Stone covers a lot of ground, from Castro's views on shaving and sport to his love of films. Castro admits to having seen "Titanic" and "Gladiator" before declaring his admiration for screen stars Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and Charlie Chaplin.
Throughout, Castro wears his trademark green fatigues, but when the camera pans to his shoes it shows how times have changed: even a veteran revolutionary sports the ubiquitous Nike swoosh.
He discusses key moments in history from the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 to the collapse of Iron Curtain, expresses doubts about the lone gunman theory in President Kennedy's assassination, and takes pride in increased Cuban literacy.
"I say it is one of the achievements of the revolution that even our prostitutes are university educated," Castro says.
Stone's next project will be about Alexander the Great starring Colin Farrell. But he is set to court controversy again with another project, "Persona Non Grata," a film about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, set to air in June in America.
After Castro, Stone said he could imagine interviewing another U.S. enemy, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"I would try to get on with him in the same way ... Who knows who he is. The American media makes him into a monster."
Like other stars and directors in Berlin, Stone criticized Washington's build-up to war in Iraq and the media's role.
"The media has loaded the question as to when we go to the inevitable war, not as to why," the Vietnam war veteran said.
"I have no idea why we're fighting Iraq. I'm all for the war against terror. I think the war we have is against al Qaeda ... Containment of Iraq has worked for better or worse." Reuters/Variety
Undated handout shows the Cuban President Fidel Castro, left, and U.S. director Oliver Stone, right, whose movie 'Commandante' will be shown on Friday, Feb.14, 2003 in the Panorama section of the 53rd Berlinale movie festival in Berlin. The festival starts on Feb. 6 and lasts until Feb. 16, 2003. 300 movies from all over the world will be shown at the 53rd Berlinale. (AP Photo/Berlinale, HO) NO SALES
That's nothin, many of ours are sittin in Congress.
"I would try to get on with him in the same way ... Who knows who he is. The American media makes him into a monster."
"Who knows who he is?" Well, you know....aside from that whole invasion, mass murder, mustard gas, rape, looting, disappearing political enemies and their families and letting his sons kill Iraqi Olympic athletes who did not medal in their events thing, he's a prince, a real sweetheart.
-The Fire Down South...( Latin America--)--
Castro, the Carribean, and Terrorism
-Time to kick the tires & light the fires, folks- terrorism gathers across the World...--
-All Terror, All the Time-- FR's links to NBC Warfare, Terror, and More...--
Still, scholars say they wish Bush would tone down his religious references. ''The more I listen to him, the more truly worried I become about the vision for this country in the world,'' said Hurst Hannum, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. ''It's so American-centric, so Christian-centric. It's so certain. I guess I worry about anyone who is that sure he is right.'' When Bush told the religious broadcasters that he welcomes faith to solve the nation's problems, C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance in Washington, said he asked himself, ''Whose faith?''***
Yes, God ( oh! that word! ) forbid anyone believe in a power higher than himself...
Still, scholars say they wish Bush would tone down his religious references. ''The more I listen to him, the more truly worried I become about the vision for this country in the world,'' said Hurst Hannum, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. ''It's so American-centric, so Christian-centric. It's so certain. I guess I worry about anyone who is that sure he is right.'' When Bush told the religious broadcasters that he welcomes faith to solve the nation's problems, C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance in Washington, said he asked himself, ''Whose faith?''***
………………………What has always absorbed me about Fidel's fans in the West is not that they settled their admiration on such absurd deceptions as Communism's superior health care and -- even more absurd -- superior educational systems. Can one really have education without freedom? I said education, not indoctrination. Rather, what intrigues me is his fans' terms of praise. Fidel has been sexy, witty, shy, kindly, idealistic, and on into the wild blue yonder of idiocy. Now why would one say such things about a brutal dictator who made no effort to conceal his hatred of the American system of government and economics, a system that in its worst moments still was infinitely superior to Fidel's Communism? ***
No, it's an abysmal failure of the 'revolution' that they're prostitutes.
Psychologists may be better able than political scientists to explain why many American liberals idealize foreign dictatorships with institutions or values that they find horrifying in milder forms in the United States. For some reason, many American leftists who loathe the military are not troubled by the fact that Castro appears in public only in a military uniform. American liberals somehow manage to support gay rights in the United States while ignoring Castro's vicious campaigns against homosexuality, which he has defined as a "bourgeois perversion" American liberals fret about the FBI and Internet censorship, while calling for the United States to befriend a regime where culture and religion are rigidly controlled by the secret police.
American liberals opposed to the death penalty often discover charisma in this Cuban caudillo who has frequently resorted to the firing squad to eliminate his opponents. Liberals who mock the "family values" and law-and-order rhetoric of the right, suddenly discovered the importance of family values and law and order when applauding Janet Reno's seizure and deportation of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba (where he is now being programmed like other Cuban children to revere Castro and hate the United States).
As we saw during the Elian incident, liberals who would be offended by stereotypes about Mexicans or Haitians feel free to smear Cuban-Americans as a group. Last but not least, many liberals who want to stamp out sexism and smoking in their own country find themselves titillated by a macho despot whose characteristic prop is a phallic cigar.
Can anyone seriously doubt that, if Castro were a right-wing military dictator rather than a self-described socialist, American liberals would be demanding internationally supervised free elections in Cuba, calling for tighter sanctions to bring down the regime, and perhaps even demanding an international invasion to free the Cuban people?
Unfortunately, from the Bolshevik coup d'etat in Russia in 1917 until the present, all too many liberals and leftists in the United States and Europe have been willing to excuse murderous dictators such as Castro who have used the magic word "socialism" to describe their despotic rule. Even now, some gullible liberals still excuse Castro's vicious autocracy by falling for the regime's propaganda about universal literacy and free health care. (As was the case in the Soviet Union and East Germany, the glowing official reports about Cuban schools and hospitals will almost certainly turn out to be lies).
Few on the American left anymore defend Lenin, Stalin or Mao, who between them starved or executed almost a hundred million of their own people in the 20th century. But their murderous disciple Fidel Castro can still inspire a flutter in the hearts of many American liberals who are willing to withdraw their objections to tyranny when the tyrant claims to be on the left. *** WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD FOR CASTRO?
No, it's an abysmal failure of the 'revolution' that they're prostitutes.
Why did it take sixteen posts for someone to state the obvious?
Oh, there all the same, shortcomings as a father and torturing homosexuals, "Now Miguel, go to your cell without dinner!"
Some moral relativists are so perverted in their thinking.
F Oliver Stone, the Vietnam Veteran.
I think what he means is that women with universtiy degrees have to go into prostitution to find work.
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