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Future Press Conference: Oliver Stone’s“9/11”

Whats this? Hollywood is going to make a 9/11 Movie! Well, Its about time!

Oh,no. The Director is OLIVER STONE!

Well, I cant wait to see how this comes out. Well, I dont have to, I had Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman hop into the "Wayback machine" and pick up any sort of materials he could so I find about how the movie looks when it comes out. Mr. Peabody managed to return this transcript from the Cannes Film Festival where Mr. Stone released his film.

TRANSCRIPT

Times Reporter: Sir, Your film depicts the wall street buildings on 9/11 as festooned with both Nazi swastikas and the ‘star of David’, what were you trying to say with that particular piece of playful visual imagery?

Oliver Stone: Well remember this is Hollywood, I’m not responsible for history, we are just telling a story here. I just wanted to set the tone for how I wanted the audience to see as the clear enemy, the fascists on wall street the control all of our lives, the ones the killed JFK and sent me and my generation to Vietnam.

Times Reporter: The scene where large white bulldozers with the name “Halliburton” painted on their sides mow down Mohammed Attas village and begin placing oil derricks that are painted with star of davids directly through the bodies of Palestinian women and children?

Oliver Stone: Again, This is just storytelling, but I have to say I think that particular scene works very well. You know the one part of the whole September 11th story that hasn’t been told is how the people in Mohammad Attas family have suffered. Think of how his character has been maligned by this government. Think of how Mohammad Attas father feels knowing that a Mossad agent has appropriated his sons name so as to discredit the Muslims. Its just despicable the things this government has done to the people of Egypt.

Post Intelligencer Reporter: Oliver, I was particularly moved by your scene in the Oval office on September 10th, I think it captured exactly what many of us who voted for Kerry and for Dean were thinking during the last 8 years of occupation of our country by the Bush Regime. Would you take the audience into how you constructed that particular masterpiece of filmmaking?

Oliver Stone: Well I’d really prefer that you see the movie, (Audience Laughs) but the basic make up of the scene is when the Bush family owned Carlyle group, the buildiburgers, the illuminati, Saudi royal family and aliens from Area 51 meet in the Oval Office with their bought and paid for government puppet, George W. Bush for the purposes of laying out the actions of their agents the next day. I chose to shoot the scene from the perspective of a ‘floating specter’, concentrating not on what they were saying on that fateful day, but on what they were doodling on their notepads, trying to get the general ambiance of the room and the characters in it who are playing with our lives like the way that cats play with a mouse just before it pounces in for the kill. At one point the camera hesitates above Dick Cheney’s notepad, which shows him doodling swastikas and cartoons of airplanes shooting into women and children, a big doodle in the middle of him pulling the strings on a wooden Pinocchio with the letters GWB above it, while the gepetto character is saying “Dance you bitch”!

Then we move on to the Saudi Prince, who is doodling big dollars signs all over the page, but if you are paying attention, the notepad also says “ call Osama at his pad in Miami”. The scene ends with the group standing and facing the Presidents Desk, when the fake paneling behind the Presidents desk opens to reveal the preserved head of Richard Nixon floating in a jar. Nixon’s Head is attached to electrodes, and those are attached to computers that allow him to give orders to his minions in the room with all sorts of lights flashing and holographic displays. As he finishes rallying the troops with a speech we cant quite hear as it were, they all snap to a perfect “Sieg Heil” salute to their true leader, Richard Nixon, the man who by the way, personally created the orders that sent me and my generation to Vietnam.

Sun Reporter: Sir, How did you manage to get Kevin Costner to play to role of Moahmmed Atta in the film?

Oliver Stone: I just had to call him up and say “ dude, listen I got the perfect role for you, it’s the story of a rebel who is out to set things right in the fight against the ultimate wrong. He’s a family man who is a combination of Tom Joad, Elliot Ness, Wyatt Earp. This guys begging to have his story told by you. This guy deserves to have you tell his story. I’m telling you this is the role that put you back on top. I didn’t tell him what the project was or who the character was, he just signed up right away and said it sounded like “a sure win”.

Luckily I had him under contract before he read the script.

Sun Reporter: And Woody Harrelson as George W. Bush?
(Auidence Laughs)

Oliver Stone: Well, that was inspired wasn’t it? Woody did that for scale. By the way, It was his idea to wear the vampire teeth, he just went and did it. It works great. I never would have thought of that. Its like Brando packing his cheecks with cotton for "The Godfather".

Time Reporter: Can you tell us what the opening montage was made of?

Oliver Stone: Well it’s all done silently, and we used as much from documentary films as we could. We start with a scene of 'America as Eden', with Native Americans frolicking to and fro in their perfect society. Then we start with Columbus landing on the shore, then we show the Indians dying of syphilis and being enslaved and taken back to their new masters in England, then we move on to the persecution of witches in Salem, then we move on to the death of plains Indians, then we show Henry Ford as he enslaves the workers into his factories in Detroit, then we show America baiting the Japanese into a war, then putting them into concentration camps, then the wanton destruction of Germans in Europe, then we show soldiers from my platoon torching village in order to save them, the united fruit company killing people in El Salvador to use them as fertilizer for bananas. Its all done in quick cinema verite style cuts with a great song by Leonard Cohen called “ I’d kill myself if I could, but I don’t have the ambition”. I think its could be the new National Anthem. I love Leonard Cohen; I can’t understand why he’s underappreciated by American audiences.

I think its sets the tone for the film perfectly while the credits are going. It’s a great way to get the audience into the mood of the film.

...END TRANSCRIPT

Posted @ July 09, 2005 11:43 AM | Current Affairs