Oliver Stone talked about his views on politics in Hollywood and the U.S. Government during an interview with Variety at the Toronto Film Fest where he is promoting his new film Snowden, which is very much worth seeing.
Stone, who previously took on former President George W. Bush in his 2008 film W.,said he is not interested in making a movie about the 2016 presidential election.
“Neither of the candidates are talking about issues that matter. They’re lying,” he said. “Especially, well… I don’t want to get into names… but they’re not talking about Snowden, or the surveillance state itself. They’re not… They don’t get it.”
Stone specially asserted that he is not developing a movie about Donald Trump any time soon.
“I don’t think he’s going to win because I think the media is so against him,” said adding that the two had worked together before on his film “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”
“He’s in the deleted scene — not because it was bad but just because it was too long — but I worked with him for about a day with Michael Douglas,” Stone said.
Stone said that Snowden was a “hard movie to get made,” because “We had no studio support at all — no majors.”
For Snowden, he was enthusiastic about getting his first pick lead actor in Joseph Gordon-Levitt. “He said yes, which is rare,” Stone said. “Usually you have to do the ‘movie star dance’ which I can’t stand. You get rejected by all the stars because there’s not enough money or it’s the role they don’t feel they can do, etc.”
“Hollywood becomes a factory,” he said. “When actors are wanted, they’re always working and they’re not available for the hard work that goes in before, which is the rehearsal period.”
Stone added, “That’s the real problem in this business. You see actors are turning four or five films in a year and it’s crazy because they don’t think, they don’t prepare and it hurts the business.”
“I hate this whole cycle of doing commercials, of appearing on billboards, and trying to act at the same time,” he said. “It’s not about acting.”
