According to The Hollywood Reporter, controversial director Oliver Stone is up to his old tricks. This time, it’s a 10-part documentary giving us the “secret origin” of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
Oh, this is not going to end well. (Thanks to Big Hollywood for the tip-off, by the way.)
In the upcoming mini-series for Showtime (the same guys who happily aired a hit piece movie about the Reagans–this just keeps getting worse), Stone wants to examine the two dictators, and as he puts it, put them into “context”.
“Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy — these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.
Somehow, I don’t think he’s going to give McCarthy any breaks. After all, he was hunting communists (even if he did go overboard) and I don’t think Stone would like that. (Hollywood was a big target. Funny that.) I’ll grant you that Mao Zedong isn’t as well known as his contemporaries (I include myself among those who know little about him), but I doubt that this is the director to bring us that history.
“Stalin has a complete other story,” Stone said. “Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can’t judge people as only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’ “
You had me until that last part. Why can’t we judge them? Hell, anytime the left want to vilify the right, they break out the Nazi comparisons. (Ask Bush 2 or the Tea Party crowd. Pelosi dropped the Nazi comparisons first.) Besides, I’d say that someone else had more to do in the fighting Hitler department. Ever hear of Winston Churchill? George Smith Patton III? I think they did more to unseat the Nazis than Stalin.
Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He’s the product of a series of actions. It’s cause and effect …
You need a 10-parter for that? I heard all about young Adolf’s Jew issues (like the doctor who couldn’t save his mother was Jewish) in a 10 MINUTE filmstrip back in middle school. (Remember filmstrips? Kind of like an oldschool Powerpoint presentation, only you couldn’t get the pictures to lineup right, and only older models moved themselves to match the audio.) You’d have to be Skeletor to make me care less about WHY he was evil!
I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes and Hitler’s shoes to understand their point of view. We’re going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated.”
Sadly, he wasn’t. Do we really not know that Hitler pulled the wool over a lot of eyes? Had more people read Mein Kampf during the early years, they might have known better. They didn’t and now we have the subject of half the “first person shooters” on the game shelf and a recent YouTube meme. Also, a way to slam conservatives, or end any internet argument on message boards, blog comments, or chatroom/newsgroup.
The controversial director’s 10-part documentary series for Showtime promises to focus on events that “at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America’s unique and complex history of the last 60 years.” Subjects in “History” include President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
“You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate,” Stone said during the show’s trailer, which promised to put historical villains “in context.” “I don’t want to put out conventional History Channel product where it’s easy to like it.”
Empathy? Depending on how you use that definition, it could connect to “pity” and “sympathy”, something you SHOULD NOT HAVE when it comes to Adolph Hitler. Anything else I post from the article leaves the realm of storytelling (and thus this blog) as he goes on to comment against Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and even President Obama’s turning up the heat in Afghanistan. That doesn’t exactly win him trust from anyone that his documentary is going to be any less slanted than his previous works.
All I can say is that this won’t make we want to get Showtime anytime soon. I barely watch the HBO, Encore, and Starz content as it is.
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