Oliver Stone | Full Q&A | Oxford Union

thanks very much for coming this afternoon yes nice Friday I understand you be doing a bit of a tour around the UK yes I came from Scotland to Durham to Warwick I've traversed England but I missed half of it because it was a fog all day I thought it was pollution but they told me it was a fog the entire country was in a fog for about seven hours welcome to the United Kingdom I think his darlin was pretty grim grim whether they have grim weather and they were grim clothes but it's an interesting place well that's if you're welcome back soon but as usual we will start with I will ask a few questions of my own for opening up to the audience for some of your own questions and we'll jump around quite a bit of that okay and so the movie platoon was drawn from your own experience as a Vietnam War veteran and one incident you took part in was a New Year's Day battle of 1968 I was wondering if he might be able to share with us your recollections of that incident strange place to start you know right in the middle of a bloody battle a very I remember it as a very dramatic night in my life it certainly you don't go through an all-night an all-night battle where they basically the NVA was a regiment had it was if you remember a 68 was the peak year and in January that very January they was a Tet Offensive the Tet Offensive was a massive attack on all the US bases across Vietnam it was a planned attack we didn't know it at the time but that was the moment early January when they were moving toward Saigon from the Ho Chi Minh Trail from in Cambodia we were positioned right we would work out of the trail right near the trail and we would there are days we didn't even know there was no border defined it was just a jungle so I imagined me wander across into Cambodia so we'd set up a to battalion perimeter it's just too much detail and I was tell me I don't know exactly what you're looking for we set up a to battalion perimeter one was armored and we were the infantry side armored with APCs and bigger guns especially the 50 caliber machine gun we were in the foxholes on the other side and we'd been scouting we felt there was activity we saw things but you know it was New Year's Day and boom you we got a little drunk we had a little bit of it was a hoot booze for that and then the next night that was the January one to two night was when they hit us and I have to say I had been in some action already I had been wounded once but this was significant and they hit the ambush which went out the ambush goes out around five o'clock at the edge of the night because they're going to set up in the trail far as several ambushes were sent out we could hear the fire we were hitting the ambush and they were buried all night they really got into it and they just kept we knew they were coming and it was a long night I don't know how much detail you want but essentially we were attacked by I would say about two thousand three thousand troops and we were about seven hundred fifty maybe a thousand men so it was a big deal and by the time we got into it really deeply they were into the perimeter and that was what was scary because the perimeter is when they're in the perimeter means you don't have the same support artillery support or air support because you see the US strategy in these battles was to bomb the out of everything right away so if you got hit you basically stayed and then they would come bury thee and then you'd move out and try to pick up the pieces in this case because they were so inside us so quickly there was the there was an enormous amount of artillery but it was out it was not hitting them and then the bond the the f-16s came that was really the that was different because the f-16s are really they were the best of our aviation and they hit they dropped these bombs and I think they dropped a 500 pounder you can say that you talk about reverberation your ears shake and sometimes as you know there was a lot of that going on where they hit you that you're hit by your own friendly fire that's to say artillery and the planes come after you and you feel like you there's no distinction and in truth and that's what happened that night by the end of it the art the armoured division was battalion was firing beehive beehive rounds across us into them and at one point the night and I was moving from one Fox over the other I was carried by a beehive round behind me blast across maybe 15 20 feet and I don't remember I did you know I was momentarily stunned maybe for 15 minutes maybe for 10 I'm not sure but that was the nature of the battle confusion having contact with your with the inner perimeter having contact with somebody who would tell you what's going on that's always a issue in a battle you just don't know what's going on you don't know you don't know what's going on and you'd hear rumors things would fly around like C Company it was being overrun and and that's serious really overrun means that they destroyed all the communications in that but it wasn't true in the end it just went on and on and on and I have to tell you that's a long time from about 10:30 at night or to approximately 5:00 in the morning seven hours six hours we don't know what's going on so it was one of those nights and then at the end I remembered as it as the dawn was coming up we which I think was three of us left in a foxhole one of these foxholes because we moved around and it was still dangerous because we didn't know if they were because if they would come again and there's a lot of fear a lot of fear what's happening what happened be that as it may they didn't come but they did drop the bombs right close to us very close and the artillery was enormous all night out of Saigon and across the other side of the perimeter we the next day when we went out to reconnoiter I basically we in there was five hundred of them dead because why we we took the bodies and we threw them into the big crater that had been formed in the middle of the from a bomb so wait that was a scene in platoon if you remember the must have been five hundred and then we were and we're still looking around the jungle I mean there was an enormous amount of smell you smell them and and then of us we we evacuated twenty five about twenty-five dead and about a hundred and seventy five wounded that's pretty significant 175 wounded out of about eight hundred or thousand men it's pretty means we did take quite a few casualties I was I made it through that night and I was cleaning up afterwards so it was you saw the damage and I was wounded actually in the same place this is the Vietnam War NIT the nature of it I went out back to the same place fifteen days later on January 15 and we patrolled the same damn area again and that on that particular day I was wounded again the second time on a patrol they ambushed us they got a few of us maybe two or three dead and 15 wounded but you know this these are significant numbers in a small group of men and it adds up and it does affect your mind that second wound is what got me out of the field at that point I just want to say it historically the battle seemed was not reported on we were the 25th Infantry Division and it was not a glamorous division it was there's very little press we never saw press I didn't know what had happened we don't know the size of it but what's interesting about the battles that it grows in perspective because I was approached by a young man who had interviewed a lot of people there had was writing a book about it and it was the beginning of the Tet Offensive and we didn't know it you see the what they were doing the Vietnamese were doing all all through that October November December was gathering intelligence and moving munitions moving men moving all kinds of things down to the south Saigon if you if they had cut Saigon if they cut across Saigon and and taking it the way they wanted to or at least damage it enough to psychologically destroy us and cut off our sense of unity with the north they would have that would have been the objective I always believed that all the activity in the north between the Marines who got all the press and the NVA like the bombing at Khe Sanh those bounds are quite a few battles ugly battles but that was where this seemed like the hottest action was but the in a fight and the Vietnamese were very smart you throw the left you throw the left you'd save the right and I think the right hook the right hook the knockout blow was to Saigon because they came so close to taking Saigon they took Saigon almost the entire night and it was a bloody battle for Saigon so that was the objective and I think we were the one of the first to encounter them I the other thing that is in aftermath you are aware of as we kept finding intelligence we'd be in the bush and we'd find stuff bunkers lots of supplies but we found a lot of paper and a lot of intelligence at which the we would gather and how many stacks of it and they would come out the the the intelligence people from Saigon would fly out and there they collect all this stuff and I was wondering later in time where did this go you know why were we so surprised and I do think that we had very poor poor analysis in fact general Westmoreland came out to the to that battle to that and he stood there I don't know what he was saying but he examined any left on his helicopter but I heard later that he criticized us for not having been well dressed and not having looking like like like troops which in a way exemplifies the American attitude towards the war we here our leading general though I think was not very bright saying you know counting bodies body count was crucial in Vietnam it didn't matter if it was a civilian or not sometimes but that was what added to the body count and he was like saying well if we kill enough of them how come they keep coming and that was indeed what happened because the Vietnamese kept replenishing themselves I don't know how they were like the ants and that's true and they could not solve this war through body count and of course his concern about uniforms and communications and discipline in the in the wrong sense of the word is what led us to this awful strategy of setting up sending out troops as bait always getting ambushed and then trying to kill as many of them as possible so it was an endless cycle and then you give up the position go back to base camp in your helicopters and come back out a few days later and run into the same problem in some ways again it was a cat-and-mouse game but we were playing the Karkat was like an elephant this was a war that you signed up to serve and specifically requesting combat GC yeah why did you do that well it's another story I wrote a novel when I was 19 which I was published 30 years later in 1997 child's night dream and I talked about that I was at Yale University I was in the class with George Bush 62 the class of 68 I dropped out it was the people like Bush it drove me out I was I mean I I would say that it was a certain I you would know very well I'm talking about a sense of privilege sense of entitlement I just couldn't accept that I had been through that East Coast thing most of my life I'd competed went to a great college worked like a dog was exhausted and wondered what it was all about and basically didn't like the atmosphere at Yale it was all men back then and I left the first time they go to be an I became a teacher for six months of English in in a high school and then went into the Merchant Marine that's why I was asking you about Conrad and we were talking a bit about the literature and I went into Lord Jim had been a very big influence at that time in my life I wanted to see that with the Merchant Marine was like well I got a heavy dose of it I was a wiper lowest job on the ship but anyway I came back and wrote this book and the book had failed and I really although I loved literature I just did not believe in what I was I couldn't go on with it I went back to Yale I flunked out because I was working on the book and the Dean said I had to go to class I was eros and all my classes or felt was failing everything and I realized that my my time had not come I was just not ready to go to college so I dropped out again and I went to Vianney because I wanted to go back to where I had been and see it on a ground level I didn't want any special treatment I didn't want to be an officer which was offered to me I didn't want anything I didn't want to go to Germany or Korea I wanted to see what the bottom of the barrel was like that in platoon I mentioned that and I saw I wanted to be anonymous because I had brought as a writer you you're thinking so much about yourself you're so self-absorbed in the literary world and I wanted to get out of that forever cleanse myself so I ended up there in the military survived and went back to another combat unit went back to the field again did 15 full months 15 full months most of them in combat and so I saw a lot of things but came back and I started taking pictures the last part of my tour as much as I could because you could keep it the camera free from the rain I mean that was it was hard to keep paper so I was taking as many pictures as possible and that I think was a basis of a cinnamon to graphic impulse a desire to be more visceral not to come off the page and I think it served me instead because eventually after having difficulties readjusting to a civilian life I went back to NYU film school which is more of a trade school than a classic education and there I really started to marry the word and the image and you you just mentioned it that the when you write often it's easy to kind of focus solely on your self and yeah get into yourself know this book was you should read it it's it's about a young man and it's a very vivid illustration of a 19 year old mind and I loved I went back 30 years later took a year and a half away from filmmaking to finish it in 1997 and it did me a lot of good because I visited myself when I was younger and I got to know him and I think the book really is an insight into that kind of so it's an ego centric it's a you're at the center of the universe you have to be at 19 it's sort of like you you're figuring out your parents you're figuring out in the beginning of a long journey as you know my father I don't know what you know but basically it's a beginning of a long journey to the other side which means the other side of yourself wherever that lies so if you start one place you go to another you have to otherwise you haven't lived I I'm sorry for kids who stay the same for I'm sorry for kids who grow up in a certain environment and they never question it to a certain degree and they just go on and on and on with success or not and it's kind of keeping on the theme of writing about yourself and you know one of the has most famous scripts you've written for Scarface it was based on your own experiences reportedly with cocaine do you find it easier it's hit hit it with artistic license I'm sure but dear do you find easier or more difficult to write about your own experiences well there's a bit of you and everything you know when Midnight Express was prior to that and I had incorporated my own experiences with with the I had been busted when I came back from Vietnam that was another nice thing about this I saw the new world the new society the new what they called at that time America with a K I was thrown into jail within ten days I returned and charged with federal smuggling and I was up for five to 20 years and it was really a vivid the prison as they are now was completely overcrowded way past capacity all most of the people were young most of the people had been on drugs because it was a Mexican border near San Diego it was a frightening experience I they it just woke me up in certain ways to a new reality the drug war was just beginning within that Nixon which was about to be elected so a prison and played a role in midnight expresses you know but with Scarface yeah I had fallen after the success of that film I had fallen into a fallen as a strange word I embraced with joyfully the cocaine culture in Hollywood there was a lot of it and people were having a ball and having a knew it was a new experience but I had taken psychedelics before that certainly a fair share of it and I'd certainly smoked a hell of a lot of grass so cocaine was a detour in a way from what I thought were positive experiences and I can't say in hindsight that I miss cocaine at all I saw so many demons that so many people were really I thought I felt as a writer that I was destroying my mind that am I writing mind was not my scripts were not as good so I I consciously pulled away and I actually moved to France to write to Scarface after doing all the research because that's when I had to I had to go cold turkey because I knew that my mind was not going to deal with it so knowing what I did I I went cold turkey because France at that time was not infested with it so I was able in France through with my wife who had a same problem as I had to to cut it off and write the script sober and if we may sadly be jumping around that's okay we're jumping around if we may fast forward to the present with the unique film Snowden it's about to come out you said something really interesting recently about how it's difficult it was difficult to finance Snowden and finance production the film to quote it's a very strange thing to do a story about an American man and not be able to finance this movie in America and that's very disturbing if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-american why is this the case for this movie and not the case for other movies you've made which i think is fair to say also hardly overtly pro-american Ron Kovic for my example that who wrote born is worth of July was highly was a highly motivated individual he went to Vietnam and he was paralyzed I don't know if you know the novel or the movie but he was a patriot even that movie and he was a boy from Massapequa small town America that was a beautifully beautifully written script and we could not get anywhere with it it was all German money is what started to finance it and that was in 1978 when I wrote a 79 when I wrote it it was cancelled two weeks before production so the this is and because of those issues it was the German money was suddenly no studio supported it except reluctantly so I finally made it 10 years later in 89 with Tom Cruise who was a movie star and even then we were limited on the budget and we were pressured and people just don't in America are very it's a culture as you I know if you travel to America it's a culture that you have to embrace sort of the the flag I don't know how much there's so much flag waving now it's it's disproportionate there's so much praying over prayers in the military which I've been in and it's everybody who serves is it is a hero that's not the way it is in reality so and that's led to this overindulgence in war we love tourism we don't know it we we become we have always been but we've become increasingly an aggressive military culture to solve problems using military force and worship of the military and I call it worship with the the flyovers of the football games the flags the endless amount of say our heroes our veterans and we cut to these hospitals and you see that all the veterans and disabled and miserable and struggling it just for television next to keep a good faith yeah it's a it's a it's as Kovac said it's a lie we're lying to ourselves the the sisters the situation is terrible the same veterans are coming back that we had in my day and they're as it's as tough as it ever was for anybody who loses a lose or something over there sometimes it's better to be killed it's just it's a culture of self-congratulation that is lying to itself and leading to tragic consequences for the and for the families too I mean you know what war does so I say that advisedly I know I'm not I think something is mentally wrong I got there because your original question excuse me was what it was about financing yes nice army this issue has come up again and again in my life come on Dante my documentary which was extraordinary interview with Fidel Castro which we got was taken off the air before it aired two weeks before was advertised by HBO it was Sunday removed they claimed for a recent political issue that occurred down there not a big deal but they had a reason to take it off never appear it again this camp this was because they got so much complaints from the right-wing Cuban community and in Florida which is extremely powerful and anti-communist to the max so these are you know it's been going on with me for a while we were able to make JFK it caused quite a few are and after that another scandal was Natural Born Killers blah blah so we I don't want to revisit them all but Nixon I picked the president that was not especially he was divisive but a family certainly and by the time we made any given Sunday in 1999 I mean foot here we are at the sacred cow is football and we did I thought we did a very interesting probe into it we had no cooperation from the National Football at all we tried but they wanted us to change so much in the script including the injuries the the domestic abuse issues the use of players you know almost to work him to the death bone anyway we arrived at this place where we made the movie we had to use different uniforms different teams and create a alternate universe what else there was a well W and that will won't talk about that somewhere else but that's the bush story by the time we made Snowden I guess I was a betting war or something I don't know but nobody wanted to touch it not one studio and they read the script script was reasonable at that was good and they thought so and executives creative executive said we're interested we want to see the script we like the actors we like to budget four days five days go by no no response there's no talk about no negotiation which means they went to the corporate boards upstairs and each of these corporate boards is there now all these film companies have changed they're all part of some conglomerate somewhere and each of these conglomerates essentially said don't touch it don't touch them this man is a was at that time regarded as a very dangerous subject matter because he was seen as a he was - he was seen by many people as a traitor so it was either that or the other excuse was the documentary said everything we need to know we don't need to know more which is nice to say it's a nice documentary but there's so much more to say anyway you never know why no one ever tells you why ever so you have to live in you just sense that the climate was hostile we've got our financing from France we got it from Germany and eventually we got it we got a sales the sales agent out of Europe was able to to book enough enough sales for us to make the film American company came in later open road they were very good they they were but a smaller company they an independent company they last year they distributed spotlight and they did very well with it so there are very good coming in that they had no hesitation so we were distributed in America I we have no British sale yet that's what's bizarre considering but I understand giving that most of the Britain is accepted the surveillance state but every other country in Europe has has bought on but can I take it from what you just said then you don't think that added Snowden is a traitor at all you have another cell tell you I want you to go to the movie to find out my answer would you describe yourself as a patriot of course I am I love I love America I loved what it what he can stand for I did the untold history of the America of America in nineteen 2014 it was a five-year deal for me it was a non-profit thing where I worked I went back to graduate school really with my partner Peter kuznick who teach teaches American history of the last 30 years in American University he is East we're talking about the best of America in this in this history I mean and then we have many heroes in the movie who resound to me starting with Roosevelt and Henry Wallace and John Kennedy we repeatedly go back to good examples for Americans but we can't we deal with a myths and we puncture I think quite a few this was a radical reinterpretation of American history because my children myself I never got a good history education in America I got all the all the the flag-waving I got all the but this isn't hard look at what we did a hard look from 1890s when we started to go abroad in the Philippines and Cuba through the World War one through Woodrow Wilson saying we have saved the world for democracy after taking credit for winning World War 1 when the empires were clashing - so much blood was shed in World War one and then basically culminating in World War two was the bastard child of World War one and from there on we accelerated into a global security state beyond any known proportion in human history and if we may just return to Snowden and also born the 4th of July it since we have paralleled that the way in which you're able to secure well maybe not very much but a major contributing factor to producing the film and getting it done was having the big-name actors or not big names no Joseph gordon-levitt is hardly a big name but he's a good actor and I wanted him force note he was my first choice because he resembled him in certain ways he had that attitude and young he's the same age close and I brought him the to Moscow and introduced them and I thought it really vitalized it galvanized and shailene Woodley's a young actress who is coming I think it would be a major star but she was not hardly known to the public so neither of them would be considered I think he was a Jessica Letta as a big name they want anything I will to you but not to the industry now it's he was either supporting right but he's not considered a leading actor except in lower budget films which we were not we were medium budget and he wasn't difficult to convince and so no I won't write too much I told them you know there's something about you I just would like to owe you you you're the first person I thought of and I would I thought I'd bring it to you early you know are you interested and given that he had apparently supported ed Snowden already in his actions he was very intrigued and went and he said yes wonderful thank you will now move to questions from the audience if that's okay so if you have a question please raise your hand high in the air if we could please come down to the front thank you very much given your sustained interest in Vietnam I'm wondering what you would say to students looking to research there today particularly in conflict prevention in this kind of era of climate change and that sort of thing and also just how you feel in general about the West's continued involvement in Vietnam that's a question I've never heard before what is your angle are you a climate scientist I'm going on a research trip which is really looking into the Mekong Delta and other locations areas where people's lives are very likely to be influenced by climate change and making sure trying to look at how conflict can be prevented sorry I thought I would think having been walked through all those areas where Agent Orange was dropped on us in huge quantities I mean we walk through rain bones of it I'm sure I have some form of Agent Orange whatever but I'm you know I haven't sued the Veterans Administration yet but having seen so much of the devastation because they they were really out - how do you say DeForest the place so that they could see the enemy that's the problem in these wars they but they didn't solve it by going to the desert did they they couldn't find them anyway no it's it's the complete breakdown in mental intelligence I don't understand it I don't understand it the the climate exhibit I thought the rainforest it was beautiful Vietnam was beautiful and I served in three of the four provinces so I saw quite a lot the A Shau Valley I don't remember it being as bad as as some of the places I saw in in Middle East and in even in in France after World War one there was a young man I saw a lot of devastation I don't know I'm not an expert on that but I can't help you I can say you know it seems to me that after and the northern climates would be the much more threatened by climate extinction in Vietnam which has enormous regrowth so much regeneration of the I drove through there a few years ago and I was quite amazed at the way the forest comes back until about the forest especially from Saigon to Phnom Penh and up through the meat - you got allows you'll see that forests and we bombed the out of a us for six years I believe seven years it was horrible devastation I haven't been to allow us recently I would imagine they've come back but I do you know I mean I'm sure there are landmines there but that's different you've been there and but the the forest is compact you know yeah I said and as to the west continued involvement in Vietnam is the way it could be I mean positive conducting research that sort of thing there was a just got a title track history you know the West is tricky and when you make a deal with the devil you know you had a suffered a long spoon the the United States would like Vietnam to be an ally they don't care about what happened in the past they want to Vietnam as an ally because they want to contain China and they see Vietnam as a valuable ally against China I'm sure there's a lot of mixed opinion from the Vietnamese but certainly a generation of yummies I'm told have forgotten the past well that's hard for you know McNamara finally admitted a u.s. bombing killed 3.5 to 3.8 million Vietnamese there's a plus beyond that the Viet Cambodians and the the Cambodian war was started basically by us was caused by us and the Laotian war which was a secret war there was many laotians killed so we owe a huge record out there we have a record some people call it a genocide but in any case it was ruthless behavior and I don't think the Karma is very good from that and I don't see anything good coming from an alliance like this i eights and I think it's for nefarious reasons I don't think it's we I don't think it's because we care about Vietnam we care about money and power and if we can make money with Vietnam doesn't matter thank you for your question and if we can please go to remember that in greater thank you my question is about directing as a profession as I'm sure you know it continues to be a very male-dominated profession with notable exceptions like Kathryn Bigelow who is won an Academy Award for directing and my question is what advice would you give to women who would like to penetrate what continues to be a very male-dominated profession well I I know that's a huge issue I know Kathryn when she was a young filmmaker in fact I produced one of her films blue steel I co-produced so I've seen her journey and I my opinion may clash with the the popular one but my belief is that Hollywood is really gender blind and colorblind they don't see you they see money it's all about that green how green are you and if you can deliver it doesn't matter if you're a first-time filmmaker or a veteran if they feel that there's money there and that's on paper and there's a cast of some kind and it might work they'll give you that shot now some people say that's not true I got screwed out of this but that's that's the nature of the business a lot of men also got screwed out of things so but I've always believed in writing writing is the core and I think if you have it on paper they will that way sometimes you have to be screwed the first time if you write it on paper but the second time if you can deliver that woman the young a woman who's done the Nancy Meyers she's really amazing amazing job of one thing after another that made a fortune you know and she's a shrewd filmmaker but she's exceeded out of the business and may and created highly entertaining movies at the same time may not may not be to your taste but if you're going to come with something that's unexcited to them it doesn't matter if you're male female black white Chinese done there thank you for your question if we can please go out to the member in the bed in the bed with the pit I thank you for coming I I don't know anything about filmmaking or right thing but I like you I spent some time in working in western interventions military interventions in Afghanistan and western Africa my question to you is when I look at your movies it seems like you're the themes of human weakness lies killings etc do you think that we have more to learn from studying the dark side of humans than than than the Thunder nice sights I would agree with you I think that I wouldn't have started the movie it was only the dark side I think that there's people in those movies that who express love who seek it I do believe and I am optimistic that if you live by the standards of your heart that what they what your conscience tells you you can have a life and you can have a society around you of decent people I think that most of the world is pretty decent people I think that the leadership and we go into detail on this an untold history of the United States all twelve hours it's a leadership of this country has been askew it's awful it's an awful leadership they should be run out of office I don't understand how the perpetrators of Iraq one Iraq two rather are still there the same media supporting them the same people are back they call themselves liberal interventionists like Hillary Clinton or they call themselves neoconservatives it doesn't matter these people are running Washington and they got they really compromised Obama considerably in those eight years they're still there they're still plotting against Syria these are malignant people they should be run out of office in any decent democracy but the system doesn't work that way and the American media has contributed to this continuing live contributed heavily has has the English media by the way which is also most of it it seems to be owned by a few people including Mr Murdoch but I hear the Daily Mail is even worse is it too presumptuous to ask who you anticipate voting for in November there's not well right now if you ask me directly I would have I would endorse Bernie Sanders he's the only one who has a chance to turn America around to to put it back on a human path a path where we are not going to war where we're not intervening in foreign countries and that's intervention is a big theme in America you have to understand that I'm looking at it from a historical perspective where you really have to follow and understand that what the CIA has been doing since 1947 and realize how many countries were involved in and also economically how many countries we are involved how we're how many bases do we have abroad 130 or 70 country hundred and seventy countries not quite sure anymore because their secret bases everywhere but since the mr. Bush father and that was a huge mistake in 1989 put 500 thousand US troops into the Mideast because of Hussein's invasion of Kuwait those 500 thousand troops have never come back we're out there that was enormous decision and it was unexamined by the media because you have to remember 20 years before when mr. Johnson hit sent 500,000 troops to Vietnam that was a huge issue huge issue it was big number and this but not since world war two had we done something like this so the students came out the protestors came out in big numbers but in 1989 they I'm sorry in 1991 when we went to war are with hussein it was a unexamined and it went why smoothly and it was celebrated as a victory you have to re-examine all that period because i was a period in which the Soviet Union disappeared is our supposed enemy in 1991 1991 should have been the peace dividend we never got it the United States never stopped building this military-industrial complex they kept right on going and defender Clinton gets the nomination as it's expected I don't know I you may be wrong there's always surprises in politics she's definitely endorsed all these wars she was all for Syria and all for Libya and all for Iraq and Afghanistan and you know whatever she claims she's a war monger and she certainly is she's she recently told Israel that she would go even further than America has ever gone in support of Israel in view of the fact that what we've done for Israel it's just shocking they what more can we do it's reached a place where nothing is examined on this regard it's not examined so if you don't learn from history history is going to teach you again your friend another question from doing this town and can we please get right to the back I can see nothing except the other back thank you very much I would like to ask you a question about your film on Alexander louder please sir I'd like to ask a question about the film on Alexander yeah and I know that your chief adviser or one of your advisors was Professor Robin Lane Fox of Oxford University and I watched one of his interviews because he's very interesting and he said that he asked you to allow him to lead some of the cavalry charges in the film instead of war apart from compensation so my question is have you ever been asked for something so weird Oh believe me I've been asked so many different weird things but I love Robin Lane Fox he teaches here he's written a new book of fabulous what a journey on era on on excuse me uh Augustine on st. Augustine the opposite of Alexander but Augustine despised Alexander but he he's he's a big broad he loves drama and created a great book in Alexander he wrote it as a young man 1973 I believe I was fascinated by it and bought those bought the rights to it I'd also had read all the mary renault books and although they were drama historical drama they were in the right spirit and i used a lot of that so we went on a long journey and i and it's never it hasn't quite ended for me you understand because the film was released in 2004 and now was unhappy because it was my fault I accepted the rush conditions and we had very little time to edit the film and it didn't do as well as I'd hoped but I went back in 2007 and did a no DVD new version and then in 2014 ten years after the release I did another version of Alexander the ultimate cut which I wish was available in England it is available in Amazon in the US so is a huge effort I made the film longer with an intermission and I made it the way it should have been made with the original distributor I I was really pressured to cut the sex and homosexuality and especially the big oeis stuff the eunuch stuff and the violence - they were very much did not want at that time where now they are but things have changed but it's also my timing was terrible I mean we were invading Babylon we were invading Iraq at the same time whereas Alexander had gone to Babylon and beat the Persian Empire and became the Empire the Emperor of the Persian Empire as well so it was quite a horrible timing to just to release that movie the Robin wood yeah Robin led the charge and he learned a lot on the movie because he loves horses loves hunting fox hunter and he learned the sir Issa he you know when you hold these long Lance's they're really long you have to be very strong and he understood a lot from then he came to me afterward you know the dust the dust alone that we were raising in the desert of Morocco matched the dust of Gaugamela and you can't see where you're going is basically it and the battle I've been told by his many historians is as accurate as I've seen in any movie to what they think happened at the Battle of course what we think we know and what we actually happen is a question but there's no question that was the first time one of the first times that Alex Alexander used cavalry to decide the battle that had been never been done before and his cavalry broke the broke the the Persian Empire which was the battle was they were outnumbered tremendously how is robbing anybody know he was supposed to be here later I'm well thank you for your question I look for another question now please if we could go to at the end there in the red could you please talk a bit about your creative process briefly I don't want to bore everyone research and then let it go I'm doing historical dramatization I am taking the essence of what I think is the truth and trying to get it through in two hours I'm taking enormous amount of information condensing it simplifying it for film purposes but not losing the essence of the truth this is true in all these films whether it was JFK or Snowden Snowden comes to my mind because I am NOT a computer expert by any means in fact it kind of bores me but it was I got a dosa Johnson I mean there's so much I had to research with my co-writer that I was my head was spinning it at the end of the day I probably lost we lost about that we shot a lot of it but we lost about 30% of it because why turns out to be kind of boring and people are not as impressed when they see it on the screen is when they as when you as you are impressed when you get it because you understand the mental breakthrough so it's very trick tricky to shoot computer movie and I didn't want to falsify I don't have any chases I don't have any shootings there's no murders in the movie it is as realistic as we could make it but we probably heightened a few things and dravot on us a few things we had to is that is unanswered enough for now thank you feel broad question um if we could please okay this song is kind of fluttering with the hand yeah there again you mentioned your belief that Hollywood is gender blind or gender blind and race line especially for directing however what are your thoughts in the fact that only white actors were nominated in the Academy Awards this year is it because of merit or barriers to entry yeah there'll be no end to that discussion I mean you have to remember how on the other side of the equation as I said to the young lady earlier cash is blind and they want good ideas and if you can provide what they want they'll go with it it is very difficult still for anybody a male or female to get a movie made very difficult look at my struggles with all this the supposed successes I've had it seems sometimes that you start with zero it's a memory the memory is not there and a lot of people don't have good memory they don't remember you so I you know I sound like I'm apologizing I don't have to apologize as when I grew up there was enormous presence of the black actors in Hollywood they were growing and growing it was clear to me I went through Sidney Poitier when that was he was uh he was doing movies more and more and at that point when Stanley Kramer made guess who's coming to dinner that was a big thing for America you have to take things in relative perspective during the 70's the 1970s black television boomed the huge amounts of money were made off Bill Cosby off the Jeffersons off Sanford and Son Redd Foxx was these were Eddie Murray became a huge movie star Richard Pryor was a huge movie star I mean they were paid receiving the maximum because they were hot and black humor was discovered and and that has preceded you know there's been television Jamie Foxx came from so many shows you know in movies now in the 1970s there was a huge black exploitation trend enormous success the shaft movies among them but there were several many other kinds and many athletic heroes made and the television shows were integrated Cosby was in a show with Culp just you know it wasn't seen it wasn't an issue it was just going on and two three years ago what was it the 12 years of slave was the best picture so all the actors have received victory Awards although that's not the judge of it but Jamie Foxx Will Smith should have been nominated but he has been nominated several times Denzel Washington I mean I'm not even including so many names but there was and the comedies the Kevin Hart stuff and I can't keep track of it Ice Cube it's been a lot of movies and they make money that's all it's about so they keep making them now the fact that a few few people you don't think should have won Oscars this year didn't didn't make it it's caused such a this scandal I beats me it seems like it's incited by by anger that's deeper than just because these choices every year people's hearts get broken there's a lot of Academy Award nominees or people who should have been nominated white black female male that just don't get it and it's part of the game it's part of the you have to realize that Kennedy Awards are not the only judge of value there they're a popularity contest to a large degree it's like going back to high school and being in a high school you know who's going to be student president of the class you know you it's not really a fair election and I never saw it as such I think I was extraordinarily lucky because I came along at the time they didn't know who I was I was a Vietnam veteran that suddenly became hot okay come on Oscar I got a second Oscar they were shocked and then you know like we don't want to hear from him for a while you know so I it happens it happened so I'm sound like you know probably you don't want to hear that but I don't know what to do you can't give Oscars to people for things that you don't particularly admire you can't you have to vote your conscience and I don't know Hollywood people are the last people to go to on the other they don't think like that they tend to be far more liberal in the rest of America when you talk about Ferguson and you talk about cities then you're on to something but you know not at the Oscar level in Ferguson what's happened in America is horrifying the jailing of black men and black women the criminalization process has deepened through the 1990s Clinton also has a lot the Clintons have a larger role in this the belief in the three-strikes-you're-out kind of system and militarization of the police force this I've seen constantly I've traveled a lot of small towns in fact we were involved in a riot where they arrested one of our black actors it was ridiculous and before you know it you know the cops have every kind of equipment now that the Pentagon gives them basically they even getting them tanks apcs Humvees that you can't believe that are built for Iraq to withstand the force of an ie D these weapon these these what do you need in what do you need Humvee for in the streets of Ferguson this is going on all over America this is because of the war mentality there's a callousness in our society that's much more important to it to me is the the callousness that bounces back from Vietnam bounces back from Iraq wanna rock to the where easy acceptance of huge bombings drone strikes it's like a game a video game to Americans I've traveled enough and I've been in a war I read the Russians have been through a war they know what it means the France and England have been through wars this I think more memory in the DNA of what it's like to have a whole generation a half of a generation wiped out in France and in England you suffered huge casualties there has to be a memory for compassion to exist for empathy to exist so I worry about the states because most people have not experienced war and they accept to easily violence thank you for your question what time for I have two more questions if we could please go to the members that you mentioned some of your television such as documentary and you have worked on you have worked on television in the past but I was wondering given the supposed Renaissance in the television industry caused by on-demand services and cable whether you actually considered doing more of your work through television rather than the more difficult to finance perhaps well that's a good question and certainly it's on your mind I wish I hope it helps you because you're coming up and people who want to start can have a better chance maybe of getting through the TV racket but it's a racket and don't kid yourself it's whenever there's a new baby discovered the people who get there first you know make the most money so it plays out that way the problem is for example I like movies because I like to hear the story in two hours I understand that sometimes you need a 10 hours to hear it or if you Pat it out you can go several seasons and make a fortune and you because you're repeating you're you're giving the people what they want I understand that but most films I I'm a person who likes to read a book and get it done and have a movie and see the whole where it resolved for example this year a big short is a great example for me of a movie that worked I'm a surprised it worked it worked at the level it did and presented a very intelligent suspenseful movie in two hours but if you look at the book by Michael Lewis the big short is a natural for television that's one oh yeah we can do this for ten hours we can make more money so that's where the problem lies because you're getting more and more of these padded shows where you're making something into ten hours and it bores me because I come on move on I got it they're stylish they're better shot by camera men who shoot features and so forth but it's not the solution for me it makes it makes the first draft longer you know in other words everything in the news right now everything is going to be shot for television I predict and it won't be good most of it because it will be a first draft of history like like a journalistic account so you have to go deeper and that's what makes movies interesting because once you get to a movie usually years later you really can go in there and try to see the patterns at work but you're going to get a lot of this OJ Simpson this happened this murder that murder it's gonna be a ton of that and I think it's really going to defeat its own purpose but the new distributors are interesting but do you want to see a movie in on your home screen or do you want to see in the theater this is a decision that many people are going to have to make I prefer to see it in a certain movies I want to see on a home screen but most of them that I'd like to really want to see I want to say for a theater but I'm old-fashioned thank you a question there are one final if we could please get done it thank you you mentioned that studios are product predominantly motivated by money up interested what is your motivation what keeps you going in making your movies the truth what do you think I'm a I'm a Virgo I don't know if you know those astrological signs but I've always had a thing about got a lot of trouble trying to say well dad mom it's not what you say it is you know and my parents were married and they told me they were very happy together and I suppose at that young age you believe it and I really was shocked when they divorced and that's a good example of white lies which is what you hear and when you get to school all you hear is white about history and I think the smarter ones start to figure it out or they question or else they go off into mathematics or some specialty where they don't want to hear about it but I think it's a great delusion so I've been haunted increasingly so but you realize I grew up very conservative my father was a Republican through and through an Eisenhower man I was taught to hate Roosevelt I was taught to despise Castro John Kennedy was a bad guy so all this turned gradually in my world I went to the other side of the in many ways the universe Einstein was right it wobbles and you know I'm still learning but I grew enormous Lee after the Vietnam War by listening to people talking to many people such as yourself who many women informed me of things I never thought of you know about their extreme like and so forth but that goes on through your lifetime you really you don't know what you're going to learn next I've reached a place where I love my father but I realized that he was limited by his conditions and he never went beyond those certain conditions I hope to that's what I'm motivated by so that's why like I hope I keep renewing because I keep renewing my learning and my consciousness grows thank you very much for your question and thank you to everyone who has asked questions evening and if you could all please remain seated as our guest lism join me in thanking for the final time mr. Oliver you

Channel: OxfordUnion

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Length: 61min 18sec (3678 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2016