#1511 - Oliver Stone

[0] All right.

[1] Here we go.

[2] Thank you very much for being here.

[3] I'm a really big fan.

[4] So this is an honor for me. I'm really, really excited.

[5] I'm really excited about your book.

[6] I'm really excited about just your films, the untold history in the United States, which I think is fantastic.

[7] I mean, that's one of my favorite things that you've ever done and so thorough and so interesting.

[8] But the book, first of all, look how good you look in there on a cover there.

[9] What's an old shot?

[10] Young handsome bastard.

[11] Look at you.

[12] Looking good there.

[13] What years that from?

[14] It was 1968, November.

[15] I'd just come off the last mission in Vietnam.

[16] Wow.

[17] It was on a hilltop.

[18] We got stuck in the rain in the Ashau Valley.

[19] It was the first cavalry.

[20] And we really, the helicopters couldn't get in for 11 days.

[21] It was awful.

[22] Wow.

[23] We had leeches everywhere.

[24] And the enemy, we didn't know where they were, but we felt that they were going to close in.

[25] But it was too wet, ultimately, for them to close in.

[26] But they knew we were there.

[27] So we were praying.

[28] The whole time was kind of nervous.

[29] Because it was my last few days, you understand.

[30] I was supposed to get out of there.

[31] Wadiros leave the country.

[32] I was due out.

[33] I had volunteered for an extra three months in order to get out of the Army three months sooner.

[34] Wow.

[35] In other words, they had, normally you had to serve, if a two -year deal, you had to serve six months state -side on the backside of it.

[36] So I didn't want to do that because I was going nuts with the rules and the regulations.

[37] And I'd gotten into some trouble with that.

[38] So I extended in combat for another three months, and that ended up in this mission.

[39] How much did your time serving impact your directing?

[40] And you've had these life experiences as someone who's just a filmmaker.

[41] They really can't draw upon.

[42] Like, you've had actual combat experience, and when you're making movies about combat, I mean, that has to be a gigantic advantage, or at least it adds layers to it that are almost impossible to recreate for someone who's just trying to imagine what it's like.

[43] Yeah, and that was very important when we did Platoon.

[44] I was trying to get the exact distances and the amount of firepower is not as usual, it's not as intense, generally speaking, as the movies make it.

[45] Yeah.

[46] And that's the problem because the movies have so much to, you know, so much to show.

[47] They bring the enemy much closer.

[48] They condense things.

[49] and they amplify as much as possible.

[50] Now, I did that too here and there, so I'm guilty too, but I think overall it's way overdone, and the newer stuff that's come out since 2001, you know, with the patriotic stuff and heavily militaristic stuff, is way off, way off.

[51] And people don't die that way, like, you know, in the type of films like Mark Wahlberg made or, you know, those kind of films, they just way, way over.

[52] Overdone.

[53] In what way?

[54] Well, what was the name of the film?

[55] Loan Survivor?

[56] Yeah.

[57] Was that the name of it?

[58] Yeah.

[59] Yeah, they get dropped off whatever, 10 guys, and they manage to kill how many Taliban for each guy, you know?

[60] How much of that was based on?

[61] I mean, it's all about Marcus Luttrell's life.

[62] I haven't had a chance to talk to Marcus.

[63] I'm friends with him, but I don't know how much of it.

[64] They monkey with everything.

[65] Whenever they make a movie.

[66] It was way overdone.

[67] And what I heard and what's been.

[68] reported is that they you know they got trapped right away that was pretty quick the ambush went on and they and they got they got the shit kicked out of themselves and uh you know i can't i can't be i don't remember exactly the details but he did get away and yeah some people did scam but it doesn't look like it does in the movie where everyone's a hero right that is a problem and that's one of the things that i really loved about platoon everyone wasn't a hero yeah i mean the the tom barringer character yeah he existed it's in the the book.

[69] It's based on a guy called Sergeant.

[70] Well, I called him Sergeant Barnes, but he had a wouldn't use his real name.

[71] Real guy.

[72] Gun shot in the face.

[73] It was scarred, distorted, kind of handsome like that.

[74] But he was a serious guy, and he knew what he was doing.

[75] He was the leader of the platoon.

[76] See, I made clear that the leaders of the platoon were not really the lieutenants.

[77] They were the platoon sergeant and the squad sergeants.

[78] And they were very important in our lives.

[79] So I barely saw officers.

[80] I was dealing in the jungle.

[81] You deal with what's right in front of you.

[82] So the sergeant was crucial.

[83] Barnes is a crucial character.

[84] So is the other character, Sergeant Elias, played by Willem Defoe, was in another unit that I had combined four different units.

[85] I was in three combat units.

[86] I combined them into one unit, one platoon for this movie purposes.

[87] So the Willem Defoe character was also based on a real person?

[88] Yes, he was.

[89] It was based on a guy I knew in the Lerps, Long Range Recon Patrol, who was a great guy.

[90] He was an Apache, kind of an Apache Mexican mix.

[91] I'm not quite sure what he was because I didn't get to know him that well.

[92] But I admired him because he had that life, grace of a guy who fought a lot, had been around.

[93] He'd been in before.

[94] He was on a second tour.

[95] And very much a beloved figure.

[96] And he was killed after I left the unit.

[97] he was killed about a month later in a friendly fire accident now friendly fire is we talk about it in the book quite a bit because it's also underestimated people never the Pentagon cuts it all out especially in the movies that come from the Pentagon approval they don't like to emphasize how difficult how often I would say 15 to 20 % of our casualties in that war were friendly fire now that's not just ground fire When you get into a jungle situation, you're close to people.

[98] You don't really know where you're shooting sometimes.

[99] You don't know where the incoming fire is coming from.

[100] So it's quite a mess.

[101] It's chaotic.

[102] The radio, people screaming, shouting, noise, confusion, and a lot of fear.

[103] Yeah, that was highlighted for us when the Pat Tillman incident happened.

[104] Yeah, very important one.

[105] Pat Tillman, who is this spectacular athlete, decided to postpone his NFL career.

[106] and go over and serve and was killed in friendly fire, and it wasn't really reported that way for a while.

[107] That's absolutely correct, which is the point is that they really don't want the parents to know what's really going on.

[108] So imagine if, imagine 15, maybe 20 % are dying from that friendly fire.

[109] This is not just ground fire.

[110] This is, of course, bombing and certainly artillery fire, because that is often displaced.

[111] It's not that easy to get the cord.

[112] down in a tense situation where you can hit your, where artillery 20 miles away, 40 miles away, has to hit, you has to hit the spot.

[113] When you're making a movie like Blatoon, and this is, in many, much of it is based on your actual real -life experience, how much preparation is involved in that?

[114] How much is it different than when you're making another movie?

[115] Because this is something that's intensely personal to you, obviously.

[116] Mm -hmm.

[117] Yeah.

[118] How much preparation?

[119] Well, I got a great combat advisor.

[120] He'd been there as a Marine, Dale Dye.

[121] He came in out of the blue, and he was a real lifer type.

[122] So he remembered all the details of uniforms and fire and the firepower.

[123] I mean, it took a lot of details to put this together.

[124] But the preparation was, I'd been doing it for 10 years.

[125] I started the picture in 1976.

[126] I wrote it.

[127] It wasn't made.

[128] It was rejected by the powers it be.

[129] The first time, and then it was considered great, great script, but too realistic, a bummer, a downer.

[130] If you remember back in the 70s, they had Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter.

[131] Those were big films and mythic, beautiful films, but they were not realistic.

[132] Then they had Sylvester Stallone to his, Rambo series where he goes back and fights the war again.

[133] Do those drive you crazy?

[134] Yeah.

[135] Although the first one was pretty good.

[136] The first one was different.

[137] They're playing up the whole sympathy card, the pity card.

[138] I don't buy that.

[139] There's a lot of that veteran feeling that, you know, we were beaten, we had our hands hide behind our backs and we couldn't win and that kind of thing.

[140] Believe me, it was a badly conceived war with a lot of misinformation I go on in the book and talk about the lies that were spread by the military the propaganda that were winning the whole time they were using the body counts heavy body counts we'd say well if we're killing so many of them they're not going to be that many left but on the other hand as the years went on more and more of them kept appearing so the Vietnamese were indestructible in a way they were like ants They were fighting for their independence, for their land, man. It was their country, and they never gave up, ever.

[141] You could have nuked them, and that's what Curtis LeMay at one point suggested.

[142] You could have dropped a nuclear bomb.

[143] It wouldn't have made the difference.

[144] Thank God they didn't.

[145] But America went to extremes to win that war with poisoning.

[146] The bombing of not only Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia was intense, intense, bigger, bigger by far than World War II for this crazy war.

[147] Well, it also, it set a precedent for our lack of trust in the military, a lack of trust in the government that guides the military, particularly in how they deal with the veterans that are dealing with things like Agent Orange or, you know, people that have come back that were sick, where they denied that this was part of the problem.

[148] Sure.

[149] We didn't even have PTSD.

[150] We didn't know what that was, but it started to, prop up when I got back and I talk about it here a bit about PTSD which I'd never heard of but I think we all had it.

[151] What did they call it back then?

[152] Shell -shocked or?

[153] I guess so.

[154] But it was not a diagnosable it was not an ailment that you could officially cataloged because if you did the army would be admitting to a huge amount of insurance problems and all kinds of medical problems they would have to cover.

[155] So it was you know it was something that there was no word for it but frankly to get back to the issue of the original question was the platoon was rejected for these two almost came to be again in 1983 it fell apart again and it's a heartbreaking story it's in the book and it's resurrected I mean I forget about it I just put it in the closet after those movies came out I said they don't want to know about Vietnam and it in this country They really forget it.

[156] It's not going to happen.

[157] Fine.

[158] I live with it.

[159] I was moving on with my career.

[160] I had Midnight Express.

[161] I had Scarface.

[162] I had other things in mine.

[163] But Michael Chimino, who had directed the Deer Hunter, told me he wanted to produce it with me as the writer, as a director.

[164] And that we would resurrect it because he said Vietnam's coming back.

[165] I said, that's nonsense.

[166] I don't think it's kind of come back.

[167] He said, look at Stanley Kubrick's pictures.

[168] He's going to make a picture.

[169] It's called Full Metal Jacket.

[170] And it took three years or two years for him to make it.

[171] But the fact that he made it certainly gave us some impetus to make.

[172] We made it very low budget.

[173] And, by the way, it was made by the same company as made Salvador, my previous film.

[174] I made him back -to -back in Mexico and the Philippines, back -to -back, financed very low budget by Hemdale, a British company, led by a gentleman named John Daly, who was my mentor, I much credit in him in the book.

[175] So we were nothing film out of nowhere.

[176] I mean, we were in the Philippines and making a film that nobody really knew much about.

[177] And we were struggling to get it made.

[178] And there was weather problems.

[179] There was all kinds of logistical problems.

[180] but we'd been through hell on Salvador, as I describe in the book in Mexico.

[181] So we were a unit by this time we got used to the difficulties of making low -budget films.

[182] In between the time you wrote it and the time it actually got done, was there ever any effort by the studios to try to water it down or to try to doctor it up?

[183] Sure.

[184] No, that went on quite a bit.

[185] Everyone read the script at one point or another.

[186] Everyone rejected it.

[187] So when it finally almost got made with Chimino in 1983, we thought we were in.

[188] We thought we'd get it made now.

[189] But the resistance to it at the very end with the MGM was supposed to be the distributor, and Henry Kissinger was on the board of directors along with Hague, Alexander Hague.

[190] You remember him?

[191] Military guy, the Secretary of State, very bad -tempered.

[192] They were both on the board.

[193] And whether they went to that board, I don't know, but that's what the story, they cover their ass by telling me, we can't make this movie.

[194] We can't distribute this movie.

[195] because the board would be against it.

[196] Now, sometimes they tell you that without checking, but in this case, I don't know.

[197] So as a result, the film fell apart again.

[198] This was a heartbreak.

[199] Did you ever think, like, maybe I can move it a little bit or change it a little bit, or would you just steadfast?

[200] No, the Pentagon said to me, forget it, we're not going to help you at all, and this thing is completely distorted.

[201] They were upset as hell about the fragging.

[202] I mean, that's to say, you know what fragging is?

[203] Yeah.

[204] Yeah, there was a lot of that towards the end.

[205] It started in 67, 8, but there was more and more discontent when Lyndon Johnson pulled out of the presidency in March of 68.

[206] That was a big moment.

[207] I think all the soul, everyone kind of knew that this thing was not going to work out, and who wanted to be the last guy to get killed in Vietnam.

[208] Right.

[209] And so I think 6970 were more and more fractions, more fractious, and there was more and more incidents.

[210] At one point, there was a Pentagon document that came out.

[211] I've seen it, that said this situation in the army is getting so poor, so bad, the morale is so low that it's beginning to resemble the French mutinies in 1917 in the World War I. That was a big concern of the Pentagon.

[212] They knew the thing was not going to work.

[213] It was cracking from within.

[214] So we gave more and more, let's say, more and more credit to the Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, and saying that they were going to take our place.

[215] We're going to put more money.

[216] We put a fortune into the South Vietnamese Army, like we're doing now with the Afghan Army.

[217] It's interesting when you look back.

[218] What year did platoon come out?

[219] We finally made it out in 86, December.

[220] When you really think about it, you're not talking about that much distance between that movie coming out and the Vietnam War ending.

[221] I mean, in terms of how we look at the world now.

[222] I mean, if we look at it's 2020, if we look at 2000, doesn't seem like 2003 that doesn't seem that long ago but that's kind of the timeline you're looking at and so in a lot of ways it was probably very fresh in a lot of people's eyes particularly people in the panagon it was quite something when it came out it was a it was a it was like a bomb went off i mean went around the world first of all it wasn't just america this film played everywhere and was i guess it was a shock at the time because it was more realistic than any war field that they had seen And, of course, it was dirty.

[223] It got, you know, I mean, it was, we had drug use in it, which was, you know, the description of the division.

[224] There was a division in the army.

[225] We were draftees, many of us.

[226] So it wasn't all volunteer, you know, and it wasn't all like gung -ho at all.

[227] It was a split.

[228] And I just, I described, I showed the split as much as I could.

[229] I would be in the, I joined the, I joined the, camp where the people who I would say were anti -authoritarian.

[230] I wouldn't say they were anti -war because we didn't have anything like that going on.

[231] It was just the army sucks, the man sucks.

[232] A lot of the black troops knew this.

[233] So there was a lot of dissension with the black troops too, because when Martin Luther King got killed in April of 68, that had negative impact over there.

[234] So there was a lot going on in the country.

[235] People were seeing it, feeling it, and new troops were coming in all the time from the country draftees so we were you know you get a feeling for what's going on did the movie feel different to you than anything else you've ever done in terms of your obligation because i really do think that that was the most realistic at that point for sure war movie ever made and the one that left people with the most conflicted feelings and just this this feeling of as much as you can relay it in a film with notable actors You showed the horrors of war in a way that I don't think had ever been portrayed before in a film.

[236] Well, we got the details right.

[237] I mean, when you see a dead body and you see it being lifted into a helicopter, that really looks like a dead man. Yeah.

[238] The pain of death, I mean, you feel the danger.

[239] It's never what you think it's going to be.

[240] It always comes up in another way.

[241] It's like sloppy sometimes.

[242] And battle.

[243] And that's why I don't know.

[244] like about a lot of the movies.

[245] Battle is often just confusion, breaking down, things don't work.

[246] It's like Mike Tyson said, you know, your plan goes out the window and you get hit in the face.

[247] That's the way it goes.

[248] Never play.

[249] See, the Americans had a methodical way of doing it.

[250] We go to the jungle.

[251] We send the little guys into the jungle.

[252] They meet resistance, pull back bomb, artillery, do anything, take minimum casualties.

[253] That's not what the Marines did but that's what the army's idea was and that it works to a degree but it eradicates the whole, the bombing is very sloppy and not only you have friendly fire but you have a lot of civilians killed too.

[254] Imagine when you finish your final cut of that movie and it got really, it had to be a very strange almost like you're releasing a child you're you, I mean it was it had to have been so much more personal and so much so much more significant.

[255] I'd been through so much.

[256] I really, I didn't, I didn't think it was good.

[257] I thought it was a good movie.

[258] I thought it was a good script, and I didn't think, I didn't expect anything.

[259] I had just done Salvador, which was about a dirty civil war down in the, in the Central America, in which America, again, supported some pretty bad guys, some death squads.

[260] And I showed that.

[261] And that picture had not done very well because it had been, America had been very little, no interest, really, in the Central American issues of the 19.

[262] 1980s.

[263] Remember, they sent an Easter revolution in Nicaragua.

[264] There was a lot of turmoil in Guatemala, turmoil in Honduras, where I went down there to research Salvador, and what I saw in Honduras was the beginning of another Vietnam.

[265] That's one of the reasons I really committed to Salvador's heavily.

[266] When I saw the troops, the American troops, now there were women, men and women, young in uniform, many of them, National Guard troops, reserves.

[267] They were there building up for this.

[268] I think it was pretty clear that Reagan was going to attack Nicaragua in some way.

[269] But it never happened because of a fortuitous accident when the CIA got busted for flying a cargo over Nicaragua.

[270] And it was a huge scandal that led to the Iran -Contra unraveling with Reagan.

[271] So Reagan was unable to do what he wanted to do in Nicaragua, although we had mined the port.

[272] We'd done everything possible supporting the Contras.

[273] All that pissed me off.

[274] In other words, it was like 20 years after the war, 15 years after the war.

[275] Here I am back in Central America.

[276] I'm seeing the same thing.

[277] Young guys like me in a country, you know, just believing what they're hearing from their superiors.

[278] So you felt like this obligation to not just.

[279] released Salvador, but also released Platoon, as in Platoon, your experiences, showing what the Vietnam War was really like, and with Salvador saying, hey, this is happening again.

[280] Yeah, I did them simultaneously, except I didn't really believe Platoon was going to work.

[281] Yeah.

[282] Come out, so I didn't have much faith in it.

[283] Well, when it did come out, how much of a surprise was it when it was a giant hit?

[284] Well, I knew that in the moment, put it this way, the shooting was, you could tell from the young people, the actors and their enthusiasm for this, there was a hunger to me. They were so delighted to become soldiers for the purposes of the movie.

[285] We trained them on a 24 -hour basis for two weeks, and it worked.

[286] I wanted them to get no sleep, and Dale Dye helped me with that.

[287] We put them in a pivotal training situation, but a real one, I mean, where you don't sleep and you basically pulling sentry duty all night kind of you have you split your duty with foxholes three guys and Dale would stage attacks and stuff in the middle of the night real so they were nervous and they were they were tired beyond belief which is good that's where you want them so how did how did you plan this out so when you were when you were about to start filming you had it in your head we have to make this more realistic what's the best way to do it and no no from the beginning we the way i cast it i wanted i wanted young people as much as possible in the in the roles people who were fresh who didn't look like they'd done other movies right and types they were based on everybody i knew in my prisons people from the south uh a lot of people from the south of people from the midwest a lot of uh inner city people uh chicago especially uh st louis new orleans um and uh you know californians and i try to mix it all up But the whole idea from the beginning was that we're going to make this, with our little bit of money, we're going to make this as realistic as we could.

[288] So we planned it that way.

[289] The camp worked.

[290] We got the full cooperation of the Philippine Army and some shitty helicopters that they had, but very dangerous ones.

[291] But at least it was a start.

[292] Had that ever been done before, the camp, the idea of having them live like soldiers?

[293] I don't think so.

[294] Because that had bothered me a lot.

[295] Maybe in the old days, but I don't know one.

[296] What made you fall on that?

[297] like what why was that well i'd lived it right i'd lived it so i wanted them to above all i wanted them to be tired irritable it gives you a sense of what it's like you know there's bugs there's a heat it's it's it's a jungle and uh how did they respond to that at first they were a lot of biching there was a sagg the sagg unions and you you have to have 12 -hour turn around so a few of them quit Really?

[298] Yeah.

[299] And we replaced them because I had a long list, waiting list of people that I'd seen over the years.

[300] Wow.

[301] Actually, Charlie Sheen was the younger brother of Emilio Estevez, who was my first choice to play in 1983.

[302] And after the movie pealed back to 86, Emilio had gotten older, and I went with Charlie, who came of age about that time, was my age when I was over there.

[303] Oh, wow.

[304] So he was 19, 20.

[305] So, you know, that's what I wanted those faces.

[306] Once you get the faces, you can train them.

[307] And Beringer and Defoe were the oldest, and that helped enormously.

[308] They were the, you know, anchors of the operation.

[309] When the film was this gigantic success, did that, how did that feel to you?

[310] Did that validate this idea that you had and holding onto it for so long?

[311] It shocked me. It shocked me. I mean, for years has been really been.

[312] rejected 10 years, you know.

[313] I mean, I was sick of it.

[314] I was saying, I'm not going to make this movie because it's going to go wrong.

[315] You know, I didn't think it was possible.

[316] But because of this, you know, Kubrick picture and the support of the English company, John Daley, they wanted to make it.

[317] This is news for me because all my life I'm fighting to make a movie against somebody's wishes.

[318] All of a sudden, I got some people on my side.

[319] That's a big, that's a big difference.

[320] And the enthusiasm of the cast and Dale Dye and all these Great people, and my cameraman, everybody, they loved it.

[321] And we made it, and frankly, we finished it.

[322] We did it on budget.

[323] It was 50 days.

[324] We went 54 days, but that was in, we had the money in the, in the, in the, in the, that 10 % contingency.

[325] We finished it in 54 days, and it was tough.

[326] And we got out of there just in time because the bassoons came.

[327] And in the editing, right away, you could feel that people were reacting to it in a different way.

[328] We edited, there was no, we edited it a little bit, but, you know, we played with it, playing with it, you massage it.

[329] But right away, I would say, from the first screening on, you could tell, people were responding and saying, this is real.

[330] This is, I've never seen this.

[331] This is real.

[332] So it took care of itself in a way.

[333] I mean, they didn't put much money in the distributing company was Orion Pictures existed at that time.

[334] They put, they said, we'll give it a quality release, a few theaters at Christmas in 86.

[335] And it opened huge.

[336] First day in New York, there was a line of veterans young.

[337] Veterans who looked young.

[338] I mean, not World War II veterans, young veterans.

[339] They were around the block at the Lowe's Aster.

[340] And I wasn't there, but people told me that they went in quietly.

[341] There was a mute, and they sat through the film.

[342] Very little talk, very little anything.

[343] Not a lot of the gung -ho stuff you hear.

[344] And at the end of it, they were quiet.

[345] And some of them wouldn't get up out of their seats.

[346] Quite a few of them were sitting there still in their seats, you know.

[347] Some were crying.

[348] It took off.

[349] And then it took off like, I can't, I've never, you know, it's a phenomenon you rarely see in the world.

[350] It's like the tough, third highest grossing film in America that year.

[351] And it was a blockbuster because no children are allowed in, you know, and you don't have much of a woman's audience at first.

[352] So you don't figure on these things, you know.

[353] it took off and kept going.

[354] And then the women started to come in the third week, as it was getting more and more talked about.

[355] There was no stopping it.

[356] And even when you went to places like Paris or London, people cared.

[357] It was unbelievable.

[358] Well, it was a masterpiece.

[359] And is that your finest moment and your proudest moment you feel like as a filmmaker?

[360] Well, it's one of the highlights of my life.

[361] And it's the climax of this book, the 10 chapters here lead up to them.

[362] out because my story starts in 76.

[363] I'm in New York.

[364] I'm broke, depressed, written 12 screenplays, nothing's happened.

[365] I've come close a few times.

[366] Nothing's going on.

[367] And my marriage has ended, my first marriage.

[368] And it looks, I haven't accomplished with my life the things that matter.

[369] So at the age of 30, you kind of wake up.

[370] You say, you know, what can I do?

[371] My grandmother dies.

[372] I talk to her.

[373] I go and talk to her on their deathbed.

[374] She's dead.

[375] But in France, let them, my mother was French, she said.

[376] They lay them out, and I was talking to her.

[377] And I think it's a very moving scene where he communicates with her because she loved him.

[378] And his own family life was quite disturbing in many ways.

[379] It was for him a traumatic divorce between his mother and father.

[380] And he goes into what happened in, it's about a family too.

[381] It's about how a family life can break apart.

[382] You can become a child of divorce.

[383] So his life kind of falls apart, and he goes out, you know, hence he goes to Vietnam as a teacher.

[384] And he goes, joins a merchant marine.

[385] There's all kinds of things that happen.

[386] Comes back to school, goes back to Yale University, drops out again, he writes a book, writes his first book, about his experiences.

[387] I did this before back in 1966.

[388] I was 19 years old.

[389] didn't work out.

[390] It was rejected.

[391] It was ultimately published about 1997.

[392] It's called a child's night dream.

[393] So I was a writer from the beginning, I think, before I was a director.

[394] And when that was rejected, I just said, fuck it, you know, I'm too full of myself.

[395] I'm too much of a narcissist.

[396] You know, I can't write about myself.

[397] So I joined the army and volunteered for combat and for Vietnam.

[398] I didn't want to miss it.

[399] You know, I wanted to see it right away.

[400] For the experience?

[401] wanted to get to the bottom of the barrel.

[402] I wanted to see what this country was about.

[403] I, you know, I was inquisitive.

[404] I was, I wanted to know what life was about.

[405] I mean, I'd grown up relatively sheltered, you know.

[406] I went to, my father made a living on Wall Street.

[407] He was a Republican.

[408] Eisenhower supporter.

[409] He was a lieutenant colonel in World War II, where he met my mother.

[410] I mean, he was a strong Republican, and all his life.

[411] I grew up in that ethic, but it really, it's something that when I went to Vietnam, he had never been in combat.

[412] But when I saw what I saw over there coming from a sheltered existence relatively, it was shattered.

[413] The glass was shattered.

[414] It was just, I wasn't like, I couldn't take my father's word for it anymore on anything.

[415] So I had to learn for myself, that's why.

[416] What was different from your father's perceptions of what it was like?

[417] Well, he supported the war like many people did for several years until he got older, and then he came around one day, and he said, you know, I think it's a, I think you're right.

[418] I think it was a, it's a futile thing because the whole idea of the Cold War, he began to question it at the age of 70, about 65.

[419] He said, you know, what difference does it make, this domino bullshit?

[420] He said, you know, the Russians have a sub off Long Island, you know, they can nuke us from anywhere.

[421] It doesn't make sense to play this zero -sum game of fighting for land, fighting for one country or another, intervening in other countries.

[422] He began to question everything.

[423] So, and I was, too.

[424] I didn't change.

[425] I know you're going to go to later in my life, but basically I didn't change until I went to this trip in Honduras, which I just told you about with my friend.

[426] Richard Boyle for Salvador.

[427] In 1985, I went down there, and what I saw in Central America confirmed that we were doing it again.

[428] We were going into these countries.

[429] We didn't know what the fuck they were about.

[430] And we were fighting these, in most cases, the interests of most of the people, the majority of the people.

[431] They had a revolution in Nicaragua because it was so corrupt, major revolution in 1979.

[432] And we've been opposed.

[433] to that new regime ever since.

[434] So when you first, when you entered into the Army, when you signed up, did you, did you have clarity about this?

[435] Did you, would you just have this idea in your head that you needed to find out what it was like?

[436] No, no, I had no clarity.

[437] I was, I wanted to get out of New York.

[438] I wanted to get away from my, the whole, my parents were divorced, my father, I wanted to get away from my father, I want to get away from everything I knew.

[439] I didn't like Yale University.

[440] I was in the class with George Bush You know, I come from that generation of Donald Trump, George Bush, Bill Clinton It's the same generation But I don't identify with those people Because maybe they They didn't have that sense of service at all I did, I had a sense of patriotism But I think, I really think it was misplaced But I felt that I owe my country something I can't work just for myself The reason why I keep going back to us It's so significant that you had that moment in your life when you were involved in Vietnam and you were in combat duty because all of your films, although there are these big commercial successes, they all have a message.

[441] I mean, Midnight Express, even Scarface, there's a message in these films that's based on real live scenarios that took place that a lot of people are unaware of.

[442] You know, a lot of people got their education about Cuba releasing prisoners to America.

[443] based on Scarface.

[444] I mean, that's how a lot of people found out about that.

[445] That's too bad because I wish we had more study of what's going on in the world, more contemporary studies.

[446] Well, that's, again, what I really loved about the untold history of the United States.

[447] It's a fantastic piece that you put together.

[448] I want another chair?

[449] I can slap it on that chair right there.

[450] Excuse me. No worries.

[451] But that's something that's really flavored your life, is that your work is not just commercial.

[452] You don't just put out these commercial success movies, but they are commercially successful, but you balance it with a message, whether it's JFK or whether it's platoon, all of them.

[453] There's something to them that resonates with people.

[454] In answer to your question about whether I was clear, no, I wasn't clear.

[455] Here's what I felt at the time.

[456] I said, look, I've been, I wrote this book.

[457] It didn't work.

[458] I spent two years putting that together.

[459] My whole life's on there.

[460] It's not of interest to a publisher.

[461] So, therefore, I'm going to go into this army, and I'm going to go to this war.

[462] And I'm going to let, at that time, I was a good Christian, I'm going to let God sort this out.

[463] And he'll decide.

[464] In other words, I put it.

[465] That's how you felt.

[466] Yeah.

[467] So if I'm not meant to come back, I won't.

[468] Wow.

[469] And I went under those conditions.

[470] So, you know, you have to realize that a lot of people at 19 are suicidal in nature.

[471] Yes.

[472] And we know this from the facts now.

[473] Now they were talking about it, you know.

[474] In this country, in America, we have a surfeit of suicide among 1920s, 21.

[475] And it's sad, but that's where I was.

[476] It was spiritually desolate.

[477] And frankly, it got cleared up over there in a sense that I came out very grateful to be alive, having seen a lot of death.

[478] I had been wounded twice and I got in the Bronze Star and done 30 or more helicopter missions it seemed quite a fair share of combat which I described in the book I came back alienated and numb I didn't come back as a protester but confused How did you feel about the protest?

[479] Fighting with my father Oh fighting with your father?

[480] Sure of course I gave him LSD one time I read it on purpose Did he know?

[481] Did he know you were giving to him?

[482] No, I'd give it to him, but he knew that he was on something, yeah.

[483] How did you do that?

[484] Would you slip it in his coffee?

[485] No, it was scotch.

[486] Ah, even better.

[487] How much?

[488] Quite a bit.

[489] He was strong, though.

[490] He handled it?

[491] He drank whiskey every day of his life, so yeah, he was a tough guy.

[492] But he was great, and he was, like, swaying to the music.

[493] Oh, wow.

[494] I mean, sex fantasy.

[495] Wow.

[496] Did you tell him about it afterwards?

[497] No, actually, but over the years, he knew I kind of, after a while you figured it out, I guess.

[498] I was a long -haired, wild kid, you know?

[499] Right, right.

[500] Talking black talk to him.

[501] Did you feel like you had to do it?

[502] Because, like, you knew what kind of an impact it would have on him, opened some doors?

[503] Oh, I was fighting with him.

[504] No, we were fighting about the war, fighting about everything.

[505] Like, I just didn't like his ideas and wanted to destroy his mindset.

[506] Oh, wow.

[507] His mindset was, okay, this Vietnam is a mess, but.

[508] his mindset was, but we can learn from it.

[509] We can get armaments.

[510] We're going to build up our knowledge for the next war.

[511] That was his thinking.

[512] See, he came out of that generation of World War II.

[513] His father was wiped out in 29, and his first job was as a floor walker.

[514] He didn't have anything.

[515] He worked his way up on Wall Street, a very hard worker, research in the back offices.

[516] So when the war, the Second World War was the highlight of his life, he says, He comes back from the war, and America faced this problem.

[517] You know, what are we going to do with all these men?

[518] And now we've got the women working.

[519] How are we going to employ all these people?

[520] Everybody seemed to be scared of another depression.

[521] They thought we're going back into that.

[522] So there was this militarized economy that we had, and they kept going.

[523] It basically kept going and built up by 19 – it ended in 45.

[524] By 1950 -51, we were back in Korea, where we were building up again.

[525] So the whole concept of an enemy was important to the American economy.

[526] And the Soviet Union, of course, fit the bill, although they were our ally in World War II and did most of the fighting.

[527] They became our biggest enemy right away.

[528] Right away.

[529] There was no hesitation about us.

[530] It was often a political decision, you know, to have an enemy, to create fear, and to keep the militarized economy that we have.

[531] And it got, Eisenhower talked about it.

[532] He was the one who built it up the most, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

[533] No, no, no, we're not.

[534] I mean, it's fine.

[535] But my father came from that generation, and he believed firmly that Russia was really invading our country, threatening it.

[536] They were in our schools.

[537] They were in our state department.

[538] I mean, he wasn't Joe McCarthy, but there was a lot of that mentality.

[539] Nixon was like that.

[540] Hoover was pushing it.

[541] And I grew up terrified.

[542] I grew up terrified.

[543] But, Dad, why do we let the Russians do that?

[544] That kind of mentality of being besieged.

[545] And so my father and I fought a lot, as you can imagine.

[546] Because, you know, he got kicked out.

[547] He'd take me to a restaurant.

[548] I'd have an American tie that was made out of American flag, right?

[549] And the restaurant owner would kick me out because, you know, he thought it was a disrespectfully been an ex -marine.

[550] That's interesting.

[551] You can have an American flag anything now, and you're respectful.

[552] That's weird.

[553] Like, you can have American flag.

[554] a hat or a t -shirt and oh come on this was still the uh this is the height of the you know still the 70s of the older people were were offended by that yeah that's it's interesting how that's shifted right like now the more american flags the better on everything socks underwear nothing nothing is respectful yeah it's different it's so yeah it's really weird it's kind of been bastardized what was it like coming back and seeing the protest though and and and seeing these people that were your age that were, you know, angry at people like you who had been over there.

[555] I didn't have any horror stories.

[556] I didn't see that, you know, baby killer.

[557] That's been exaggerated, I think, by people looking for, you know, looking for revenge.

[558] I mean, someone yelling baby killer at the soldiers, right?

[559] None of that.

[560] I mean, I think there was discomfort.

[561] I went back to New York Society, which was I didn't have any veteran friends in New York.

[562] My friends went back to small towns in Tennessee and Kentucky and Georgia and inner Chicago so I never, I didn't see them until I made platoon and well I think the problem was it was indifference people didn't care.

[563] They didn't give a shit.

[564] I mean most people were making money it was the 60s man people were getting jobs there was all kinds of new liberating ideas the world was on fire and I think people were thinking about they Vietnam was an afterthought unless you were directly involved with a relative, at least in New York, very little.

[565] Occasionally people would wonder, why did you go over there?

[566] Like I was an outcast.

[567] Why did you waste your time?

[568] Get ahead.

[569] Make some money.

[570] Donald Trump was the Donald Trump generation, you know, that kind of a feeling.

[571] Make money.

[572] There's a thing about your films, though, that I think like I keep getting back to this, but because you did go over there, it's almost like, in your films like you have something you have to tell people but you're yeah it's like you have to give them medicine but you got to give it to them and sugar i don't think of it that way i wanted to day i take thorny subjects yeah but they're entertaining too because i want to know what happens next like you i think you have an interest in so even political matters can be fascinating yes who else would do nixon's life right i mean come on he was not the most popular guy no he's an odd man for me it was a challenge Yeah.

[573] Same thing with a JFK murder.

[574] I mean, it was so, so gnarly.

[575] That one's extra complex, right?

[576] Because you took some liberties there to try to move the plot along.

[577] Yeah, but liberties in the spirit of the, of the, I didn't violate the truth that I saw in this.

[578] I mean, I had to combine characters and so forth.

[579] That is a complex story.

[580] The story of JFK's assassination is very complex because I can learn a lot from a person in what their opinion is.

[581] like what do you think happened oh lee harvey oswald acted alone you get these very specific character types where these people have these predetermined patterns that they plug into and the lee harvey oswald acted alone is one of the weirder ones yeah sure that is one of the weirdest arguments and when when i talk to them about the magic bullet and they go well that's actually been proven that can happen i mean that drives me nuts yeah sure because i'm a guy who shoots guns i'm a hunter And I know what happens when bullets hit bones.

[582] It doesn't ever come out like that, ever.

[583] And also, I think you know it was a hell of a shot.

[584] Well, the hell of a shot can happen.

[585] I don't think it's that bad of a shot.

[586] I don't think it's that big of a deal.

[587] I think that's overstated.

[588] There's many things that are overstated.

[589] One of the things that's overstated is the scope was off.

[590] You know, people always say, well, the scope was off.

[591] Well, fucking anything can knock a scope off.

[592] You can drop a gun in the evidence room and the scope's off.

[593] That's nonsense.

[594] That's people who don't understand guns.

[595] But the bullet hitting those.

[596] two people and finding its way on a Connolly's gurney, magically, with very little distortion in the bullet at all is straight up horseshit.

[597] And the fact that that still gets touted as being, well, this is actually how it could have happened and weird things happen with bullets.

[598] Sure, weird things happen with bullets, but one weird thing that never happens with bullets is when they hit bone and shatter bone, they always distort, always.

[599] Yeah, I'm making, I've made a documentary.

[600] It's almost finished about the, we went back to the case again.

[601] taking all the information from the assassination records review board that came out of the film.

[602] They passed an act, the JFK Act, Congress did.

[603] It was amazing.

[604] And they allowed the board to exist for five years, and they went through a lot of detail.

[605] They weren't out to prove anything, but they found a lot of little detail that we put into this documentary, which I think you'll love.

[606] I'm sure I'll love it.

[607] It goes into CE399, the bullet, but it also goes into so much else.

[608] on the autopsy that's screwed up.

[609] The two autopsies, the one of Bethesda and also the one in Dallas.

[610] There was none in Dallas.

[611] Well, they did some examinations, yeah, of what happened to him and examinations in Dallas.

[612] Everybody saw a huge gaping wound in the rear right of Mr. Kennedy's head.

[613] Yeah.

[614] And that was covered up.

[615] Yeah, there was also the reason why they needed to make that magic bullet work The guy who got hit under the underpass, which is a...

[616] Oh, I know you're...

[617] I could see your enthusiasm on this.

[618] Deep.

[619] Yeah.

[620] And also, you know, come on.

[621] I mean, if you're an infantryman, it's a...

[622] You can't fire three shots like that.

[623] Why don't you're not firing at him when he's coming towards you if you're really, if you're serious?

[624] It's very unlikely, but possible.

[625] I mean, it can be done.

[626] The shot can be done.

[627] But that's one of the least ridiculous things about that story is whether or not one person could have pulled off those shots.

[628] I don't think it'd be done.

[629] I don't think the world's best marksman couldn't do it.

[630] I remember reading something about that.

[631] No, I'm not sure about that.

[632] It's a hard shot.

[633] It's a hard shot.

[634] But hard shots can be made.

[635] Hard shots can be made.

[636] Three shots in that time period?

[637] Depending upon how much he trained for it, depending on, I mean, I've, I've known some people that are spectacular marksmen that can do some ridiculous shit and do it so fast.

[638] He wasn't.

[639] He wasn't.

[640] But he was also trained.

[641] And depending upon how much training he did between his time in the service and his time actually getting ready to shoot.

[642] Kennedy, you can get a lot better.

[643] I don't know how much training he did.

[644] I mean, you could take someone who's three years ago a terrible shot and then they kill someone.

[645] Well, he couldn't have done it.

[646] He's a terrible shot.

[647] Look, three years ago, he was a terrible shot.

[648] Well, if that guy was training that entire time, well, I don't think the rifle, look, it can be done.

[649] But again, whether it's likely or not, that could be debated.

[650] But it's the least ridiculous thing about that story.

[651] Well, wait till you see the documentary.

[652] I can't wait.

[653] I think we pretty much prove that there's no chain of evidence on the rifle either.

[654] No, no, I'm sure.

[655] I'm sure.

[656] Did you read David Lifton's book, Best Evidence?

[657] Years ago, yeah.

[658] Yeah, that's what got me into the Kennedy assassination.

[659] Somebody gave it to me, a friend of mine, a musician friend of mine when I was on the road, and I read it, unfortunately, all day, right before my stand -up comedy shows that night, and I was so depressed.

[660] I didn't think anything was funny, and I went on stage, I had a terrible show, and then I had to shake myself out of it for the second show, because I was, bummed out.

[661] I was like, I had never considered it before.

[662] I'm like, Jesus Christ, they killed the president and they covered it up.

[663] Yeah, and we're paying for it to this day, because I think Mr. Kennedy was one of the, really on the road to being a great president.

[664] I think he did a lot of great things that people don't even know, and we put that in the documentary, what he was actually doing in Africa, people don't know, what he was doing around the world in Asia, in Cuba, obviously, South America, what his plans were.

[665] People don't understand that it was a big divide between Lyndon Johnson, who he, he was about to get rid of him as vice president and for the next election.

[666] There was a big divide in thinking between Kennedy and Johnson.

[667] Kennedy was without doubt pulling out of the war.

[668] There was a directive.

[669] We bring it up from the, a SET -DF conference in Hawaii from earlier that year.

[670] He was pulling out.

[671] He made that very clear.

[672] Well, there was also the Northwoods document, which is really crazy.

[673] Shocking when you actually, because this is not speculation or, kind of conspiracy theory.

[674] This is all from the Freedom of Information Act, signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[675] They were going to blow up a jet airliner and blame it on the Cubans.

[676] They were going to arm Cuban friendlies and attack Guantanamo Bay.

[677] They're going to do all this to get us to go to war with Cuba.

[678] And it's stunning that this is an actual plan by the United States government, vetoed by Kennedy.

[679] Wasn't there a plan also to fly a plane into a building?

[680] As I remember.

[681] I don't know if there was.

[682] There was a plan to blow up a drone jet.

[683] jetliner they were going to take a jetliner fly it and blow it up in the sky and and you know attribute all these deaths to that that came about actually the northwoods came about as a result of the movie because that was what they was found by the assassination records review board really yeah wow it's one of many documents that have come out that's why it's important from my safe space piece of mind to finish this thing it's kind of like okay this is the end I have to put down the evidence because I couldn't do it in a film right that's what I was going to get to like what what is it like when you have this passion for this story and this is a critical story in the history of the united states and a clear piece of i mean it's it's a clear historical record of an assassination of a president and most likely who i mean i don't know who do you who do you think was behind it i think um i'm not going to you know get a little sued because they're all dead but i think that alan dulles has to be looked at a lot closer and i think he was no longer in the cia but He had a tremendous amount of influence.

[684] And I think he needed some organized, very organized, top people to help him.

[685] So I think it could have been a group of people that were involved.

[686] And maybe involving certain people in the Pentagon, too, because there was an awful lot of strange things that happened.

[687] He certainly had some ideas that didn't jive well with the people that were in power.

[688] Dallas was fired by Kennedy.

[689] Let's call it Spade, which had never been done.

[690] This was a shock to the American.

[691] way of government.

[692] I mean, we come from a pro -military system, and here was Kennedy questioning it.

[693] And then, you know, after he was killed, I mean, it was insane for Lyndon Johnson to appoint him to the Warren Commission, where he managed to control pretty much the hearings and who was heard, who wasn't heard, and what the CIA was delivering to the, it was a joke.

[694] It was transparent, a joke.

[695] There's a couple things that are a joke.

[696] Arlen Specter being the guy who comes up with the magic bullet theory is another joke.

[697] Yeah.

[698] There's a lot of that that's just very disturbing.

[699] It's one of those things where you go over that subject and you just leave in this state of discomfort and unease, and it's very hard to relax afterwards.

[700] You're way too serious, don't you?

[701] I can't wait.

[702] Look, like I said, I love the untold history of the United States, and I think you do a great service with that series where you illustrate in a way that's both entertaining and very thorough.

[703] all the pieces that were moving and all the things that took place We really worked on it I had a professor of history Peter Kuznick worked with me Five years we spent on it Wow We rewrote it It was really A non -profit kind of enterprise But I really had to do it It's amazing I don't think it gets nearly the credit That it deserves A lot of people like it though It's great I love it It's available on Netflix Yes yes When you're doing Can I take a pee Yeah yeah go ahead We can break Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no worries.

[704] Go ahead.

[705] Thank you.

[706] We'll be right back, ladies and gentlemen.

[707] So we're back.

[708] Yeah, I mean, you're asking me about, we're back, yeah.

[709] You're asking me about, you know, why I get attracted to these kinds of subjects, and they don't seem attractive on the surface, but when the more you get into them, the more they can be exciting.

[710] So I am a dramatist at heart.

[711] Really, that is what I do best, which is to dramatize.

[712] situations, take something and bring it to life.

[713] So taking the Kennedy murder was extremely challenging.

[714] And I knew it could work.

[715] I felt like it could work.

[716] And it was a surprise.

[717] Yeah, like platoon.

[718] I mean, basically, how can you take this?

[719] War is boring.

[720] There's a lot of details.

[721] I was in four different units, you know, time, not much happens and then suddenly things happen.

[722] It's not that easy to make it happen in a movie time, movie space.

[723] So I took, I took.

[724] two different sergeants from two different units and I imagine what would they be like if they were in the same unit.

[725] They would clash.

[726] One would be the law and order guy and I was a guy who believed in what he was doing and he fought it viciously.

[727] And the other guy is the guy who was an anti, who was a rebel.

[728] It was a bit like my own character.

[729] My father was much of a law and order guy.

[730] My mother was very much a rebel.

[731] And I kind of put that into it.

[732] this conflict, because I saw it in every platoon, there was people who were like doing marijuana, people who were doing alcohol, you know, there was that split kind of.

[733] And a lot of the black guys I hung out with were doing marijuana, and they were doing music.

[734] The music was unbelievable.

[735] But they had a different kind of music than the oaky music.

[736] So it was all the split in these platoons.

[737] I saw it constantly.

[738] Black, white, and country, city.

[739] sensibilities.

[740] Also, a very important point is that I found over time that the law and order guys often were the most racist in terms of coming down on the Vietnamese civilians.

[741] Because we used to, we did jungle duty, but we also did a lot of civilian villages, search and destroy, search and whatever stuff.

[742] Search them.

[743] We find stores, weapons, this, that.

[744] Not necessarily they were cooperating, but sometimes they were forced to.

[745] But a lot of guys screwed with them, you know, didn't like the Vietnamese.

[746] at all, which was not the black problem.

[747] That was, you know, that was more of a, it was a white problem.

[748] So I found there was a lot of that going on.

[749] And I couldn't, that was not my thing.

[750] And I just really didn't like what I saw.

[751] There's a lot of cowardice, too.

[752] I could only imagine.

[753] And that's a shock education.

[754] I mean, you talk about like a no escape, just thrust into this completely volatile, chaotic world and then introduced to a bunch of different people.

[755] people that you weren't around.

[756] Yeah, and then when I got out, I got thrown into jail.

[757] It's in the book, too, you know.

[758] What for?

[759] For federal smuggling, marijuana, coming back from Mexico.

[760] How much did you have?

[761] I had a few.

[762] I just an ounce or two.

[763] Really?

[764] That's it?

[765] Federal smuggling for an ounce or two?

[766] I'd taken some Vietnamese grass home.

[767] Oh, yeah?

[768] But I never went home.

[769] I just went right to Mexico.

[770] Oh.

[771] So it was a few days later, I was in the jail.

[772] Wow.

[773] I called my father.

[774] I said, hey, dad, you know, I'm in trouble.

[775] He said, what haven't you called me?

[776] Where have you been?

[777] We knew you got out two weeks ago at Fort Lewis.

[778] I said, Dad, you want to hear where I'm at, you know, blah, blah, blah.

[779] And he got me out.

[780] He got me out with some money.

[781] Without it, I would have been sunk into that prison.

[782] It was awful.

[783] Prison was filled with blacks and Latinos.

[784] I mean, there were 5 ,000 people in there for 2 ,000 beds.

[785] That was the beginning of the drug war.

[786] Nixon had been elected but had not yet declared that war on drugs, but it was filled.

[787] Most of them were nonviolent crimes.

[788] times, you see.

[789] And I saw that side of America coming out.

[790] So we have a lot of law and order types here.

[791] Yes.

[792] Well, that law and order stuff was instituted when they passed that sweeping psychedelics acts of 1970.

[793] Oh, God.

[794] Yeah.

[795] Well, what they were trying to do is they were trying to squash the civil rights movement.

[796] That's a big part of what they were trying to do.

[797] They were trying to make everything incredibly illegal, schedule one, so that they could have a reason to infiltrate these groups and start arresting people and break the groups up that's absolutely correct yeah yeah and uh j Edgar Hoover was still around unfortunately he was a lot of influence on this marijuana had been the devil drug what a fascinating character he was yeah just yeah they never got him yet on movies no no god almost impossible to really get i i really wish there was more i mean real personal footage of all the crazy shit that he was actually into yeah we can get an understanding of how nuts it was that this guy was in charge of spying on people.

[798] And Lyndon Johnson, you have to ask, you know, did Lyndon Johnson really believe the bullshit he was talking about the black civil rights movement had a communist basis, that the communism was supporting it?

[799] I mean, that was very much Hoover's thesis.

[800] Yeah.

[801] Well, that was a great way to get people motivated to see your side of things back then, you know.

[802] During the whole Cold War scare and the red scare, it's like.

[803] communism being a motivating factor for any group yeah yeah no so when you put together JFK you have this film that is about this incredibly important subject but yet you want to make it interesting and you want to make it a great film and you succeeded in doing that but what is what is that like doing that balancing act of having so much information to tell yeah like that story is so complex.

[804] It was three hours in 10, 12 minutes, and I got it through the system, which is unbelievable.

[805] I'll tell you how later, but at the time, I needed a protagonist, and the protagonist, and who was the guy?

[806] Yeah.

[807] The only person who ever brought any kind of charges publicly was Jim Garrison.

[808] Yes.

[809] In New Orleans, he was a district attorney, and I read his book.

[810] He wrote two books, and I actually got to know him, and And he was a man who, like, 20 years after he did this and went through hell, came back to it and wrote another book, and that's the book I bought.

[811] In other words, he was devoted to this subject like you are.

[812] He believed...

[813] A lot more than me. He'd been a patriot in World War II, and he'd served in Korea.

[814] He'd been sheep, I mean, he'd been called every name in the book.

[815] But as a patriot, he firmly believed that Mr. Kennedy was killed by, these intelligence forces and he went after it and in those days you just couldn't do it you couldn't prove a covert operation he got killed by the press killed and that's a now we've found out a lot more about why what was going on we know a lot more facts about how the media went after him with bullshit, a lot of bullshit accusations and made him look as bad as possible well Kevin Costner did an amazing job of playing him in your movie too well he was the basis of that once you get a costner in the middle of it, then you can start to move.

[816] You've got an interesting central character.

[817] Then you bring in all these crazies that you read about people like Jack Lamb and Walter Matthau, all the lunatics around New Orleans, Dallas, involved in the war against Cuba.

[818] Yeah.

[819] And you get Lee, and then I wanted the Lee Harvey Oswald character, which was to tell a little bit of his story.

[820] So I had two stories, Garrison and Oswald.

[821] I got to know Marina.

[822] I didn't, you know, the tract of a lot of the Oswald story.

[823] Not enough of it, but there's more now.

[824] But he seems to have been definitely in the employ of the CIA when he went to Russia the first time and when he came back again.

[825] There's too much evidence of it.

[826] Yeah.

[827] We want to bring that out too.

[828] But that story becomes, and then the third story would be the Dealey Plaza, the actual assassination.

[829] So Garrison's not there.

[830] He has to go back into the past to find this out, right?

[831] So he has that thread, that whole Dallas section, is part of the structure.

[832] It starts the movie.

[833] But it also, we go back to it at the right time, and at the climax, we go back to it for the final time, the way it probably happened.

[834] So then that's three stories.

[835] And then the fourth story, if you want to know the truth, and my thinking at that time was a Donald Sutherland business.

[836] He comes into the movie at the halfway point, and he gives Garrison a lot of new information because Garrison thinks he was dealing on the local level.

[837] He's thinking he's dealing with something that's in New Orleans.

[838] He's not sure what beyond it.

[839] So he, and now, Hohen says it's a much bigger story, which sends Costner into the last act going to Dallas.

[840] And it's too much for the Costner character.

[841] He's blown away by it.

[842] He knows he's up against forces of much larger than he ever thought.

[843] And this trial, who was the, what was the motivation for the Donald Sutherland character?

[844] Fletcher Prouty.

[845] He was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force.

[846] He was the focal officer between the CIA and the Pentagon.

[847] An old -timer World War II did a lot of service, and he was in charge of basically providing the CIA with military equipment for covert operations.

[848] He worked in Tibet.

[849] He worked on a lot of the operations in the 50s and the late 40s.

[850] We had operations going on in Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, and, and, you know, and, you know, China, Tibet.

[851] He trained Tibetans in the Colorado mountains and many stories.

[852] He's written several books.

[853] He was a keen observer of the differences that were going on.

[854] He knew Dulles.

[855] He used to brief him.

[856] And told me stories about then.

[857] Everything changed after Kennedy was killed.

[858] So you got to meet him.

[859] Oh, yeah?

[860] Yeah.

[861] Oh, yeah.

[862] I hung out with him.

[863] He had Garrison, too.

[864] I mean, both of these were authentic men.

[865] Fletcher described, you know, the difference after November 63.

[866] He felt it right away.

[867] He left the Pentagon a year later.

[868] It was over.

[869] There was something that changed in the country.

[870] And sure enough, we were in Vietnam faster than you can imagine the combat troops.

[871] Yeah, another crazy character in that whole, that whole historical record is Jack Ruby.

[872] Oh, yeah.

[873] He's a very strange one, and I just read a book called Chaos by Time.

[874] Tom O 'Neill.

[875] It's about the CIA and Manson in the 60s.

[876] Oh, yeah.

[877] I know the book, yeah.

[878] Yeah, it's very interesting.

[879] But Ruby is in that book as well because Ruby was actually visited by, I forget his name, Jolly, something Jolly.

[880] Jolly West.

[881] What's his name?

[882] Jolly West.

[883] Jolly West.

[884] Thank you.

[885] Who was the central character in M .K. Ultra, who they believe was involved in these various Yeah, that's a plastic cell.

[886] No, it comes off.

[887] My arm, don't worry about it.

[888] I'm listening.

[889] But he was a central character in the CIA's use of LSD during the whole Operation Midnight Climax in San Francisco.

[890] And they ran a free clinic in Hayd Ashbury that's connected to Manson where they were prescribing people LSD and running studies on him.

[891] Yeah, and he went to visit Ruby in prison.

[892] And Ruby, who had shown no psychological trauma or distress after he left was a mess, curled up in a fetal position on the ground and was thinking they were burning Jews in the streets and literally was in a psychotic state.

[893] And they think they dosed him up while he was in jail.

[894] Yeah, he seems to be the mob connection to this thing.

[895] Yes, yeah.

[896] You can put your arm back?

[897] I'll fix it back.

[898] It's a...

[899] No, Ruby's, his contacts alone, he's...

[900] He goes back in many years to the 40s.

[901] He was mobbed up completely and didn't want to do it.

[902] He was forced into doing it.

[903] Why do you think he was forced?

[904] What do you think it was?

[905] I think he was scared.

[906] About what?

[907] Well, I have never followed that in depth because, you know, people say that organized crime killed him.

[908] I don't believe that because they didn't have the power to pull this thing off.

[909] I think that they're an element to it.

[910] Yeah, you wanted somebody to rub out Oswald.

[911] Right.

[912] Probably Oswald was intended to die.

[913] there on that day you see there's a lot of things that pointed that direction but he didn't and he couldn't be allowed to go to it's crazy that they got Jack Ruby to do it I mean they killed off everything that Oswald said in that station police station is gone yeah it's hearsay but what he said in the corridor outside it's very interesting and we know that Ruby was there so Ruby I think was pushed into this thing because they had to make it it was a quick operation we got to get to him you know And it's really crazy.

[914] The story plays out 12 years later when on the Geraldo Rivera show, Dick Gregory brings a Supruder film and introduces it to the American public.

[915] Yeah.

[916] And then they get the chance to see Kennedy's head going back into the left.

[917] Yeah.

[918] And everybody's like, what?

[919] Yeah.

[920] That's a disgusting story.

[921] But, you know, on the Ruby affair, don't forget that he was urgently asking the Warren Commission to get me to Washington.

[922] I want to talk.

[923] Jesus.

[924] What he knew, he didn't know everything.

[925] I don't think anyone knew everything.

[926] He knew his part of it.

[927] So the whole idea was, how can you get cancer out of the blue like that so suddenly?

[928] Yeah.

[929] So suddenly and die so quickly.

[930] Now there again, there's a lot of cancer experimentation going on at this point in the 60s.

[931] Sure.

[932] Doctors in the MLK.

[933] Cancer too.

[934] There was a huge, huge experiment.

[935] There was a doctor in New Orleans, I forgot his name, but working on it.

[936] And David Ferry was one of these people.

[937] who knew him.

[938] Ferry had a lot of mice and he was operating on his, he was using his mice as cancer feeding them huge doses of cancer.

[939] The idea was that they said they were going to kill Castro with it, you know, inject Castro with a needle and kill him because they'd make it so strong and they're getting this cancer to play.

[940] They're building up through these mice and a cancer that was so powerful that could kill.

[941] I mean, I heard everything on this right but that seems to be truth to this do you feel like you're going to put it to bed with this documentary in your your mind like you can it's the best we can do is i mean i have jim de eugenia working with me he's he's followed this thing like he's a fifth generation researcher and he's very very up to date but uh when is this coming out it's i don't know yet well i don't know if we can get it out we're going to try now when like scarface is another movie like we're saying that that that is the introduction for a lot of people uh they a lot of people especially outside of Miami really just didn't understand how crazy things had gotten there.

[942] And I have a good friend of mine who was an ophthalmologist who did his residency in Miami.

[943] And he would tell me stories.

[944] Like he was there in the 80s when all the crazy shit was happening.

[945] And just he was like, it was a war zone.

[946] You would just, everybody was, you just, everybody coming in was shot.

[947] People were all coked up and all these overdoses.

[948] Well, that's, I think there's a lot of sensationalism in that, you know, America likes war.

[949] They like to play up the machine guns and all that.

[950] That was 1930 Chicago.

[951] Time magazine went out of its way to sensationalize it.

[952] I was there.

[953] I saw, you know, it wasn't wild that way in the sense of shooting in the streets.

[954] What happened rarely, but they happened.

[955] People would be gunned down.

[956] Families were killed.

[957] Drug dealers went after families of each other.

[958] There was a lot of that kind of internecine warfare.

[959] Well, my friend saw it because he was in the ER, you know, so he was seeing.

[960] He was doing his residency there, so he was seeing it.

[961] I think in any American city, there's a lot of shootings every week.

[962] That's true, especially right now, right?

[963] But definitely there was a new element.

[964] It was the Colombian element, and the Mario Litos came in, some of them, Cubans who were a gangster element out of Cuba.

[965] Yeah.

[966] And it got bloody when the Colombians were not playing around, so there was a lot of cut throats.

[967] They used to, they used to Shivato's.

[968] Colombian necktie.

[969] Yeah, that's right.

[970] Yeah.

[971] And when I was there, I heard about a couple of these guys.

[972] It was interesting because I was working both sides of the case.

[973] I was trying to get to know the crime element is more than.

[974] So I knew all the lawyers.

[975] And I went over to Bimini one day to get some real information about them because they couldn't.

[976] In the U .S., they were scared to talk.

[977] So I located through a defense lawyer, a couple of some guys in, in Bimini, I went down there and I met with them.

[978] And they were talking, because Bimini was another kind of world.

[979] The government was on the take there, I think.

[980] And they had a lot of speedboats going out of there every night at the hotel.

[981] Pimini is very close to Miami.

[982] And I was doing Coke at that time.

[983] And with my wife, she was my cover.

[984] And I, you know, a Hollywood screenwriter, he wants to talk to, he did Midnight Express.

[985] They like that, you know.

[986] They want to know about the business.

[987] But then in the middle of this, we're all coked up in the hotel and, you know, the way conversation goes.

[988] And I drop a name just like that, you know, a guy I talked to.

[989] Well, he'd been a defense lawyer when I talked to him.

[990] But in the past, he'd been a prosecutor because prosecutors often flipped to defense attorneys to make more money.

[991] So when I mentioned that name, two of these three guys got really uptight.

[992] And they excused themselves, went in the bathroom when I said, I fucked up.

[993] I knew I'd fucked up.

[994] And I didn't know what was going to come out in that bathroom, you know, if they thought I was some kind of cop, some kind of under -informer.

[995] Because they hated that prosecutor that put one of them away.

[996] So a few minutes went by there, and it was pretty hairy.

[997] But I think I was paranoid because they came out, and they didn't have guns in their hands, but they cut the meeting off.

[998] And, you know, I went back to my room.

[999] They were staying in the same hotel.

[1000] all night I was tense because I knew they could come and get me it was their hotel they owned the island right but it was nerve wracking and I got out of there first thing in the morning the whole point is you say the wrong word sometimes and you're dead that's the kind of tension I wanted for this movie I put it into the scene early in the picture where Mr. Pacino Al goes in to make a pickup make a trade and he says you know he senses something's off in this meeting And it becomes that blood bath with the dismemberment, you remember?

[1001] Yes.

[1002] And the chainsaw.

[1003] The chainsaw.

[1004] Yeah, I was going to bring that scene up.

[1005] Yeah, there was a chainsaw murder at one point there.

[1006] There's something about the way you filmed that was so excellent because it was obviously gory and disgusting, but you didn't have to show it.

[1007] I didn't direct it.

[1008] Brian DePama did a great job directing it.

[1009] Grand Opera.

[1010] No, that's right.

[1011] He did an amazing job.

[1012] That's right.

[1013] You, when you are talking about someone who is in that world, when you're trying to make a film about a guy who is in that world who is not a good guy, you're your main guy, Al Pacino's Tony Montana, is a bad guy, but he's the hero.

[1014] It's a very strange movie.

[1015] Well, yeah, it is because he is a hero because he's free in a way.

[1016] He's a free man. That's where people liked it.

[1017] white people did not like that movie when it came out.

[1018] I was disappointed at first.

[1019] There was the blacks and the Latinos in the inner cities that went and they loved it.

[1020] And also white people who were doing some drugs they went.

[1021] That was the kind of audience we had.

[1022] We were a bad boy movie.

[1023] So the movie didn't do as well as they'd hoped because it cost a lot of money.

[1024] It went three months over budget.

[1025] It was a very tedious shoot.

[1026] I was there the whole time.

[1027] But over time, the film garnered a reputation and made money for the big money.

[1028] Well, it's become this iconic drug war movie.

[1029] I mean, it's the movie for gangsters, right?

[1030] It was bold, yeah.

[1031] In fact, wherever I go in the world, I mean, I pretty much people, you wrote Scarface, you know, I can, I got into Salvador.

[1032] I got into the fascist party that way.

[1033] So I could do some research.

[1034] Yeah, they thought I had Muih Kuhonis.

[1035] Well, and you're writing about a movie, or you're writing, about a guy like Tony Montana, how do you, you did, you walk this fine line of, uh, telling, telling the story accurately, but actually making him likable in some strange way.

[1036] Well, he's not a hypocrite, you see.

[1037] He tells the truth as he says, even when I lie.

[1038] He's a, he's a man who's free unto himself.

[1039] And I think that's what worked because the people around him are so corrupt.

[1040] I mean, the cops are corrupt in Miami.

[1041] the system, the bureaucracy that pressed down on, by the way, let's be honest, let's talk about the drug war.

[1042] I mean, this is an invention that's come about that's a disaster.

[1043] It's a bureaucracy of enormous billions of dollars are being wasted on fighting drugs with this super DEA and now they ice and all that, whatever they want.

[1044] We always create wars.

[1045] We call a war on drugs, war on poverty, war on this, war on that.

[1046] That's the problem.

[1047] We make too much of a bureaucracy.

[1048] I noticed this in Vietnam.

[1049] It bothered to shit out of me because we were sending five people, non -combat people over there for one, every combat person.

[1050] We had an infrastructure, Las Vegas of the material.

[1051] We had PXs, we had everything we wanted.

[1052] They sent cars over there.

[1053] A lot of this stuff was, you know, sold on the black market in the end by master sergeants making a buck on the side.

[1054] You know, there was a lot of shit going on, crime stuff.

[1055] and the Vietnamese were benefiting from it.

[1056] They loved the Americans, of course, they loved us.

[1057] It's the same thing Afghanistan, Iran.

[1058] It goes on and on and on.

[1059] It's like we create these super bureaucracies around events.

[1060] So what happened in the war on drugs is the same thing.

[1061] And then I think that Pacino's a hero because, in a way, he sees it all.

[1062] He sees it's all bullshit.

[1063] And he calls it out.

[1064] And I think people, I think a lot of people just picked up on it.

[1065] They knew the war on drugs was a lie.

[1066] Yeah, well, most people today at least have a sense that it's not going well.

[1067] Back then they thought, I think in the East.

[1068] How many countries have we pissed off?

[1069] How many countries have we told, hey, you got to do it this way?

[1070] We're coming down there.

[1071] We're going to bust you.

[1072] Speaking of Geraldo, did you ever see the footage where Geraldo was in Afghanistan and he's walking through the poppy fields that are being protected by U .S. troops.

[1073] Yeah, sure.

[1074] And it's on Fox News, so he's trying to do this weird propaganda job of explaining why, in order to get these poppy farmers to give us information about the Taliban, we have to somehow or another protect their crops.

[1075] So we've got American soldiers.

[1076] It's a crazy story.

[1077] Well, then you find out that spectacular growth of heroin.

[1078] Yeah.

[1079] Like heroin, just heroin sales and heroin use.

[1080] worldwide went up in an amazing manner.

[1081] This was born on, by the way, in the 1980s when we were supporting the Mujahideen against the Russians.

[1082] Yeah.

[1083] That's when it started.

[1084] They were fighting for the poppy fields.

[1085] Yeah.

[1086] We're talking about billions of dollars here.

[1087] Billions.

[1088] It's not like...

[1089] Some of these drug dealers, we don't even know their names, but they're well known in the Pakistani -Afghani world.

[1090] Yeah.

[1091] Some of them are unbelievably rich.

[1092] But it's so transparent.

[1093] The poppy fields being guarded by U .S. troops and them talking about it openly on Fox News and some, well, don't worry, folks, this is why they have to do this.

[1094] Like, it's one of the weirdest parts of the war.

[1095] Yeah, as was Dan Rather doing his stand -up at the beginning of the war about how we're fighting the awful Russians.

[1096] They got us going on that.

[1097] You didn't see that clip.

[1098] When was that?

[1099] Early in the war.

[1100] Yeah.

[1101] He brought the flag to Afghanistan, you know, making heroes out of them.

[1102] Actually, the guys we support that we gave the most money was to Hector Hercmater, who was a drug dealer.

[1103] We gave him the most amount of aid.

[1104] Hachmaterer.

[1105] He's like the killer, killer warlord.

[1106] It's so strange.

[1107] It's so strange how history repeats itself in different forms, just over and over and over again.

[1108] In Vietnam, there was a whole, you know.

[1109] In Laos, there was a whole poppy growth.

[1110] Yeah.

[1111] And the shipping, there was CIA shipping out, Air America.

[1112] I remember that movie?

[1113] Mm -hmm.

[1114] Yeah.

[1115] Yeah, there was a, I had a guy on who was in denial of this, and I showed him the CIA drug plane that crashed in Mexico with several tons of cocaine in it just a few years ago.

[1116] I'm like, this is a plane that had been to Guantanamo Bay multiple times.

[1117] Like, this is still going on.

[1118] All that shit that happened with, uh, Barry Seals and...

[1119] Yeah, you're talking about Iran Contramus.

[1120] Yeah, I mean, that's stuff still going on.

[1121] That's an ugly story.

[1122] Yes.

[1123] Very ugly.

[1124] Yeah, the Barry Seal movie was okay.

[1125] Oh, the Tom Cruise.

[1126] They got a piece of it.

[1127] Yeah.

[1128] But it was uglier than that.

[1129] We were basically, Reagan was selling arms to Iran, taking the cash and splitting it with the Contras.

[1130] Yeah.

[1131] The Contras were one of the most brutal, brutal groups, terrorist groups in Nicaragua, They were killing civilians, blowing up farms, scaring people.

[1132] And we supported them.

[1133] We supported a lot of bad guys everywhere in the world.

[1134] You have a very comprehensive knowledge of history.

[1135] And is this one of the reasons why you decided to make that documentary series, the untold history of the United States?

[1136] Because you obviously get some of it out in your films, but did you just feel like...

[1137] Well, yeah, I've done a lot of films about subjects.

[1138] around it.

[1139] So at a certain point in my life, I said, I really like to know more about American history because something's weird here.

[1140] And I think I went to school, kind of back to school.

[1141] I never studied.

[1142] I never got a college degree in normal subject matter like history or mathematics.

[1143] I got a film school degree.

[1144] So I had to.

[1145] I thought I knew things, but I learned a lot with going back and learning by with historians who were throwing out all the myths for me about American history.

[1146] And I made that film with just five years it took.

[1147] We had to rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it.

[1148] It was complicated.

[1149] We started with the Philippines because that was the beginning of overseas imperialism.

[1150] And we worked our way up through the Obama administration from 1898 to 2013.

[1151] It's an amazing series.

[1152] It goes too fast, if anything.

[1153] But I think people can watch it two times and learn each chapter is revealing stuff people don't know about how this country really got off I don't know I mean it got off maybe he got off on the wrong start with earlier but you know it really got off the bent in its purposes and assuming we're the good guy assuming you know this exceptionalism that we have that we're somehow motivated in a different way than other countries Yeah, that's the, that's the way we excuse it, right?

[1154] We're the number one superpower and we do awful things, but better us than them.

[1155] There's no excuse for that, no excuse and it doesn't hold up to history and it won't hold up to God either.

[1156] Yeah.

[1157] When you're making a series like that, is it difficult to edit it down to a palatable sort of version?

[1158] I feel like it's, I feel like it moves fast, you know, you can't accuse that series of bored.

[1159] if anything, it just has to because there's decades to cover.

[1160] But I'm so proud of that.

[1161] I think I'm glad you mentioned it's one of, frankly, it's one of my achievements of my life.

[1162] It stands up there with JFK for me in Platoon.

[1163] Now, when you've done so much, I mean, you've had this amazing career between writing and directing and putting together all these incredible films.

[1164] What motivates you now?

[1165] What gets you going when you're trying to make a new project?

[1166] Well, this book is a lot of work.

[1167] I memoir is a chance to rediscover I went it was going so fast at times between films that I didn't have that leisure time to think about what I'd done and I think by reliving it each film each film for me is important by reliving it I'd rediscover a lot I thought a lot about the Vietnam War for example and came to a lot of the conclusions that I put here that And I wouldn't have been so cogent before.

[1168] Also, I realize that I'm a fundamentally flawed character.

[1169] I mean, I understand this for, really understand, the contradiction in myself between my parents, my fundamental nature, which is, you have to do that with yourself.

[1170] You have to look at who you are.

[1171] My mom being who she was, my dad being, I mentioned earlier the writer -director side, there are two different people.

[1172] You can't be the same person when you do it.

[1173] Writing is very much an inner loneliness solitude.

[1174] My father was like that.

[1175] And directing is very much being external, being warm, being inviting, working with people, collaborating.

[1176] It's a totally different exercise of your mind.

[1177] And those two, I think I'm double -minded, I say in the book, and I think that's a good thing.

[1178] do you prefer to do both do you prefer to write the film and and direct it or how much how much satisfaction do you get out of just writing a film like scarface or writing a film like platoon and directing it I think that for me it was the both.

[1179] I mean, that's why I wanted to direct.

[1180] I went to film school for that.

[1181] So the writing I'd always been doing naturally in directing is what I wanted to do.

[1182] Then don't forget editing.

[1183] There's editing process.

[1184] I worked very closely with my editors.

[1185] And then there's the whole process of selling the film, which is another category completely called marketing.

[1186] It's a crazy fucking business.

[1187] It's hard.

[1188] I've done 20 of them, and they're killers.

[1189] 20 films and eight documentary, nine documentaries.

[1190] And what am I going to do now?

[1191] I don't know.

[1192] I think there's another book in me. That's for sure.

[1193] Oh, absolutely.

[1194] Because this ends in 1986.

[1195] The story is not over.

[1196] It takes another turn.

[1197] As to films, documentaries satisfy me. Do I need to make another film only if I really needed to?

[1198] What was the last film you did?

[1199] Snowden, 2016.

[1200] Oh, you interviewed him.

[1201] Yes.

[1202] Yeah.

[1203] I like that.

[1204] You understood his, you understood his point of view.

[1205] It's a crazy story for our times that, that, that, that this man is persecuted, this guy who I think is a hero.

[1206] He's exposed things that are unconstitutional, things that no one signed off on.

[1207] He exposed that there's this widespread surveillance of law -abiding citizens who've done absolutely nothing wrong, and this data collection.

[1208] and the fact that this man is hiding in Russia is to me crazy and I mean I don't know I don't even know if at this point in time anybody could pardon him but it's stunning to me that no one has it's stunning to me that Obama didn't it's stunning to me I mean he pardoned Chelsea Manning um god damn pardoned Snowden yeah but Obama he went after the whistleblowers yeah with a fraud that was crazy using the espionage act from 1917 i mean it's it was really ugly and he was zealous i mean he he was actually like he did more damage in bush in many ways overseas well it's very counter to his image i mean if you look at the hope and change website do you remember that they had a whole thing about empowering whistleblowers to come out and tell their stories oh jesus they had to delete that i supported him at the beginning boy seemed perfect I mean, he's a statesman.

[1209] He's a brilliant speaker.

[1210] It seems like an amazing guy.

[1211] But whatever the fuck happens when you get in that office.

[1212] You can't change things.

[1213] You know, I mean, it seems to be every president since Jack Kennedy.

[1214] You see, Kennedy tried on a fundamental level.

[1215] He wanted to change the CIA.

[1216] You wanted to change the Cold War.

[1217] It seems like you can't get off that path in this country.

[1218] I can't.

[1219] It seems very hard.

[1220] No one's been able to do it so far.

[1221] When you see a story like the Jeffrey.

[1222] Epstein story, which is playing out right now.

[1223] Oh, boy.

[1224] You should talk to my son.

[1225] That is one of the craziest fucking stories of our time because it's a conspiracy theorist wet dream.

[1226] And no one would have ever believed is an island where a guy brings prominent scientists, celebrities, and politicians to fuck underage girls.

[1227] They film them all and use it to somehow another blackmail them or...

[1228] Did they film?

[1229] they filmed them apparently according to galane maxwell there's tapes you know um i mean there's so much to this story that's so crazy oh for sure so that's going to be the next uh the next mystery well the next mystery is how they're going to kill her that's that's the next mystery i mean how long is it going to last yeah i mean there's supposed to the whole trial doesn't take place for a year that's a lot of time and that tombs you feel it was a murder from outside for upston when yes 100 % yeah he's like the guy's on suicide watch the the film doesn't work the the surveillance cameras don't work and uh michael badden the uh forensic scientist reviews the autopsy and he's like this man was strangled look at the the break in the bone of the neck that's consistent with strangulation look at the position in which uh he was choked like which which part of the neck that's not consistent with hanging oh there's all the fact point to the fact that the guy was killed.

[1230] And then the fact that, I mean, the guy's on suicide watch.

[1231] And, you know, how, how is it possible that this guy was one of the most important witnesses in a case against a gigantic number of very powerful people just winds up committing suicide?

[1232] Whoops, no worries.

[1233] Sorry.

[1234] Well, if I'm staying away from that, frankly, it's such a mess.

[1235] It's a mess.

[1236] It's a mass, but that's one that I would think would intrigue you.

[1237] I mean, at the end of all this, when the pieces all fall into place, is that something you would think about covering for a film?

[1238] Well, if I had to write it, I had to get very interested in the subject matter.

[1239] It seems it doesn't, you know, I mean, it's, I don't know what it's about.

[1240] I mean, if it's really what they say and there's all these world leaders and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[1241] I mean, it just doesn't really lead anywhere.

[1242] It doesn't make sense.

[1243] I mean, the world is a much more important place is a sense of world peace.

[1244] And this is the most important issue, peace in our time.

[1245] And we are building up nuclear weapons at an incredible rate under this guide Trump.

[1246] And it's a huge, it's a return to the worst of the Cold War.

[1247] And that scares me. That's an issue I would like to, I think if I were to get involved again in another movie, if not a documentary, would be that one.

[1248] about the accumulation of arms and the building up towards.

[1249] And the madness of our leaders, Democrat and Republican, constantly pushing for more sanctions, more pressure on our perceived enemies, China, Russia, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela.

[1250] I mean, it's just why?

[1251] Why are we doing this?

[1252] We don't have to.

[1253] The world could be a much more.

[1254] peaceful place.

[1255] If we take our foot off the pedal.

[1256] Is there anybody that has stood out in recent memory as a politician that gave you some hope?

[1257] Kennedy.

[1258] Oh boy, we've got to go back to 63.

[1259] Obama, well, I was there.

[1260] I mean, Obama gave me a hope.

[1261] Yeah.

[1262] And I was hoping for Clinton too.

[1263] It just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

[1264] In other words, the office is not as important as you make it out to be.

[1265] I think there's a system in place.

[1266] It's a system that I, you know, a system that I Eisenhower quite well described as the military, industrial.

[1267] It's a corporate complex that drives money, profit, greed.

[1268] That speech is so amazing.

[1269] That speech that he gave upon leaving office.

[1270] It was a warning.

[1271] Yes.

[1272] He knew that he'd fucked up.

[1273] He said, I leave my successor a legacy of ashes.

[1274] This is famous quote.

[1275] Eisenhower did not, horrible things, Eisenhower.

[1276] He started intervening much more in other countries than ever.

[1277] He appointed John Foster Dulles, who was a psycho, in my opinion, as his Secretary of State.

[1278] He's like Pompeo now, Mike Pompeo, and Alan Dulles at the CIA.

[1279] There were brothers.

[1280] But anyway, Eisenhower knew, I think he felt bad about what he'd seen happen over those eight years.

[1281] I do.

[1282] And I think Kennedy was a great hope because it was a new man, new generation.

[1283] He changed, too, Kennedy, in office.

[1284] how so he moved more and more to the left as he as he stayed in office he saw the problems he couldn't believe what he saw he saw the lies and he was lied to a lot the bay of pigs was the first one but he was lied to about a lot of other things we get into it's the great mystery right like what happens to a candidate once they win the presidency and once they're in office like what is the process and Well, that's where you have to have courage, and that's where Obama really failed.

[1285] I mean, when he appointed Hillary Clinton as a Secretary of State, you knew it was over.

[1286] I mean, you have to make decisions, and you have to go in a new way if you're going to be there.

[1287] And it's just so, it's such a, become such a bureaucratized office that it's almost impossible to appoint a thousand people when you come in to work with you that are going to be on your side.

[1288] But as a guy who's a storyteller, this is one of the great stories of our time is how impossible it is to be a president.

[1289] I think it's very hard, very hard.

[1290] But you need guts, you need guts, and if you have guts, it makes a difference.

[1291] Remember, Kennedy had been in war.

[1292] He'd saved people.

[1293] He was a hero in the Pacific.

[1294] Yes.

[1295] Those are the kind of guts you need.

[1296] Right.

[1297] when you put together the Snowden movie what was your aim like what were you trying to get out of that film well I knew it was important story because surveillance had never imagined surveillance at this level I realized that it could be every with this new technology we had that it could be everywhere I mean beyond my imagination beyond anybody's imagination and when I did the movie it was to reveal what he revealed which was shocking in its implications We went even further, and we showed how the control of information, the use of information can destabilize many regimes.

[1298] And they went after regime change, became the new modus operandi for the United States.

[1299] It was okay to change regimes.

[1300] We were good at it.

[1301] And the way we did it, it was soft power, subtle.

[1302] What happened in Brazil a couple of years ago, typical, you know, the whole forcing out the president of Lula, getting rid of the, Dilma, bringing in this, well, this other guy came in from the right, but essentially Brazil was completely changed, completely changed.

[1303] They're still working at it in Venezuela.

[1304] They got, they worked in Bolivia.

[1305] They got rid of the guy illegally.

[1306] Honduras.

[1307] Libya.

[1308] Libya.

[1309] That's the most spectacular failure, right?

[1310] Well, that was one of.

[1311] Yeah, it's a failed state now.

[1312] But it was, yeah, but that comes down to our policy in the Middle East, too.

[1313] Yeah.

[1314] When you make a film like that, how hard is it to put together?

[1315] I mean, the Stodin film is so disturbing because it's current, right?

[1316] We're dealing with things that are happening right now.

[1317] How hard is it to put it down and make it this dramatic piece that's going to be enjoyed?

[1318] It was hard.

[1319] It was hard.

[1320] You have to judge it for yourself.

[1321] I like the movie.

[1322] I think it's a, it's tense and it keeps the tension throughout the movie.

[1323] of course I got to no stone very well I went to Moscow several times and met with them oh really yeah how does that get arranged well do the bandana over your eyes no I've done that too but that was you yeah that was a terrorist groups in the Middle East what was that for that was for a persona non grata it was a documentary I did about in 2003 four about uh about uh the leader of the PLO.

[1324] Whoa.

[1325] Arafat.

[1326] Yeah, I got to meet.

[1327] Yeah, I did an interview with him.

[1328] Wow, what was that like?

[1329] I was more, I didn't, because of my connections, I had more contact with the Israeli side.

[1330] I was in Ramallah.

[1331] So, I mean, I was talking to Netanyahu before he was prime minister.

[1332] I was talking to the leader, the ex -prime minister, the prime minister, and all that.

[1333] And then I went to Ramallah, which was the capital of the PLO there, And actually, I was there the day the Israelis, the day before the Israelis came in and knocked out that, knocked out the lights.

[1334] Wow.

[1335] They isolated Arafat and the Ramalapal.

[1336] We got out at the last second, actually.

[1337] But we were seeing Arafat and showing his side of the equation, showing what he was thinking.

[1338] So part of that, part of that I went to see a terrorist group.

[1339] they became quite famous later than they're well known they were young guys and they had their masks and i went at midnight i was more scared of the uh israelis than them because the israelis could be tracking with their all their they have all this equipment you know blow the shit out of us when we're in there that's what i'm scared of so the israelis were dangerous you thought the israelis would do that knowing that you were a filmmaker i don't know what they're thinking you know no me i'm not sure they they knew what we were doing we saw they saw people going into a underground bunker with people with masks and, who knows what they thinking.

[1340] They have great reconnaissance, so you have to be careful when you fight them.

[1341] And so they requested that you wear a mask when they transported it.

[1342] No, not the, not the Israelis, but I mean the territory.

[1343] Yeah, when they transported me, yes.

[1344] But when I got there, I took it off.

[1345] Did you, but that decision, was that a tough decision to make to let them drive you around with a mask on?

[1346] No, I was very anxious to meet them.

[1347] They were, They were, well, they call them terrorists, but, you know, who's a terrorist these days?

[1348] Right.

[1349] You know, we can bomb other countries to death and call ourselves the good guys, but we kill a lot of civilians around the world with our bombing.

[1350] That's true, but this message that you have, that you, you're not just a guy who makes movies, but you're a guy who makes movies and also a guy who's very outspoken about all of these issues in the world.

[1351] Do those two get in the way of each other sometimes?

[1352] Of course.

[1353] Yeah?

[1354] Of course, yeah.

[1355] There was people that think sometimes my outspokenness overshadows my work, and it might be true for them.

[1356] Well, they try to label you both ways, too, which is very fascinating to me. The world is complicated, and I did speak out, and some people think that's.

[1357] They say, I'm a filmmaker, stick to being that.

[1358] But, you know, it's very hard if you care.

[1359] You know this.

[1360] Well, it's very important that you don't, and I'm glad that you have the courage to not stick to that.

[1361] Yeah.

[1362] I mean, I think it's when someone...

[1363] I'm sorry.

[1364] Please, go ahead, Snowden.

[1365] Snowden, we couldn't get support for it.

[1366] It was financed ultimately from France and Germany and Italy, and we got some small money at the end from the U .S. with a small distributor.

[1367] I mean, this is the biggest story, one of the biggest stories of our time, and we couldn't get support from any of the studios.

[1368] We went to all of them.

[1369] Well, people are terrified of it.

[1370] That tells you a lot about what a mess we're in.

[1371] We don't even have the guts to talk about stuff.

[1372] We shut up.

[1373] We censor ourselves.

[1374] We self -censor.

[1375] Yeah.

[1376] In the 1980s, I probably could have gotten it finance, but not now.

[1377] Well, it's such a tense time, and that issue is so polarizing, and I don't understand how it is.

[1378] I don't understand how it doesn't have universal support by American citizens that this story needs to be told.

[1379] I mean, even when he was discussed as a podcast guest, a lot of people were saying you should really stay away from that.

[1380] They don't understand.

[1381] They think he's some kind of Russian agent.

[1382] It's crazy.

[1383] He's been very clear about it.

[1384] Well, it's very clear when you listen to all of the interviews with him.

[1385] And then when I got a chance to talk to him myself, He is who he says he is.

[1386] Exactly, a Boy Scout.

[1387] Yeah, I mean, he has a story, and it's a spectacular one.

[1388] And it's one of the most important historical moments of our time that we recognize that this overwhelming surveillance state has existed without us even knowing it.

[1389] And cyber warfare, too, raises the whole issue of who's doing what to who.

[1390] We were very quick to say, they're doing that to us, China, Russia, this, that they're doing this steel blah blah blah blah what are we doing yeah you know you've had difficulties in making films but is there ever a film that you wanted to make that you never could yeah sure what is that uh several uh mili mili i got very close we're about two three weeks away from shooting it in 2007 in uh Thailand and some of it in vietnam i'd been to mili and in vietnam great story because the massacre is unknown they don't know we don't people don't know the real store.

[1391] It was investigated that massacre.

[1392] You've heard of it, right?

[1393] I've heard of it.

[1394] Five hundred civilians were shot down in cold blood.

[1395] Babies, mother, everybody, old people shot.

[1396] And not one enemy bullet was fired.

[1397] Not one.

[1398] And we've heard all the obfuscations of that.

[1399] The whole thing was, you know, basically a misplanned operation because of basically CIA was guiding the war and they were torturing to death some, no, torturing some poor soul who gave them information that was faulty.

[1400] Happens all the time, right?

[1401] Torture works, right?

[1402] Torture doesn't work.

[1403] And as a result, the operation, they were told that there was NVA in that village.

[1404] They were not there.

[1405] So the guys went in thinking they should kill.

[1406] Did you write a screenplay for this?

[1407] No, someone else did, and I was about to direct it.

[1408] And it was a, it almost happened.

[1409] just ran into the fiscal crisis of 2008.

[1410] Oh, okay.

[1411] But that's not an excuse.

[1412] Nobody wanted to make it.

[1413] Have you thought about trying again?

[1414] I did.

[1415] Yeah.

[1416] No, no go.

[1417] I also tried to make the Martin Luther King story years ago.

[1418] Many years I worked on it.

[1419] Martin Luther King's a great story, but it's too tough a story to tell.

[1420] I mean, I think there's a lot portion of the black community that's really kind of treats it like a saint, a martyr.

[1421] whereas this is more of a human man and his failings and this and that but he's a hero in this but you know his relationship with women is fascinating and we were into that whole aspect of it and what happened with that it just never got together it might be a good time to revisit that now no I think a black filmmaker could revisit it but it's definitely moved into that direction I've also tried I tried for many years to do a Vita and I wrote a script for that but another director made it.

[1422] How far down the road had you gotten with the Martin Luther King story?

[1423] Twice, I went.

[1424] Yeah.

[1425] I wrote a, me and someone else wrote a whole script.

[1426] I think it's very good.

[1427] But gone.

[1428] You know, you can't, so many films get planned and not made.

[1429] For every film you do this, like five, five abortion.

[1430] Damn.

[1431] That seems like a great one, though.

[1432] Yeah.

[1433] I mean, he's such an incredible and important character.

[1434] Boy, does a world need of Martin Luther King, Jr. right now.

[1435] Yeah.

[1436] Well, things are changing all the time.

[1437] Well, listen, Oliver, I've taken up a lot of your time, and I really, really appreciate you being here.

[1438] Your book is called Chasing the Light.

[1439] It's your memoir up until 1986.

[1440] I really hope you make another one, because you have had one of the most interesting and spectacular lives and show business.

[1441] You're a bad motherfucker.

[1442] I appreciate you.

[1443] Thank you, Joe.

[1444] I really enjoyed today.

[1445] I, um, I, um, I, I, I, I didn't, I was, if this is a clean copy, I can give it to you, I guess.

[1446] Okay.

[1447] What do you look, what, what, you mean writing as far as you wrote in it?

[1448] Oh, wait, no, that's my copy.

[1449] It says Oliver copy.

[1450] I have to send you one.

[1451] I have one.

[1452] I have one at home.

[1453] Oh, you have one.

[1454] Oh, okay.

[1455] I'm good.

[1456] But thank you.

[1457] Thanks for everything.

[1458] Appreciate you.

[1459] Thank you.

[1460] Bye, everybody.