Stone making _Snowden_
September 5, 2016 6:15 PM   Subscribe

He didn’t recall pretending to strangle Poitras. How Oliver Stone's Edward Snowden movie came about, a shambling story of egos, deception, and geopolitics. (SLNYT) posted by doctornemo (14 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm dubious he'll nail the suspense as well as Poitras' Citizenfour did.

I'm stoked about seeing Risk eventually :
Laura Poitras on her new Julian Assange film: ‘Few people could stand the pressure he is under’
posted by jeffburdges at 7:06 PM on September 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


im sure ollie will bring the same respect for facts that he did with jfk
posted by entropicamericana at 7:08 PM on September 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


Stone's JFK movie isn't a biopic, at least not of JFK, and anyone who thinks it is is foolish.
posted by hippybear at 7:18 PM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Snowden-voice sounds like a kid trying to sound like an adult on the telephone.

Perhaps not 100% relevant, but it's been bugging me lately. Probably enough that I'll skip seeing this one in the theater.
posted by paulcole at 7:21 PM on September 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


The one thing about the article that I find totally unsurprising is that Stone and Poitras did not "get each other" or particularly get along.

It's probably a net positive that the Snowden saga gets a boost from a big time hollywood production, it's tough to keep serious important violations of our civil liberties on the front page (perhaps it'll be "Breaking News" for a few cycles) but I do hope that the big time drama does not do an injustice to Snowden personally or hurt his chances for a pardon.
posted by sammyo at 7:40 PM on September 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


The press tried and continues to try to do a lot to make heroes like Snowden, Assange and Manning look like traitors or worse. Any work of mass media that puts whistleblowing in a heroic light seems like a good thing, in this day and age, if not entirely surprising. I wish Stone much success at the box office.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 8:31 PM on September 5, 2016 [8 favorites]


im sure ollie will bring the same respect for facts that he did with jfk

you can’t spell “second gunman” without n, s, and a.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:45 PM on September 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


To be fair to the press, Assange does a great deal to make himself look like a terrible person. I suspect a lot of time is going to pass before he leaves that building.
posted by um at 11:09 PM on September 5, 2016 [15 favorites]


While I have a lot of respect for Stone's technical skills, his editorial choices, not so much. His "I'm not making a documentary" argument when he's depicting real-life events makes me uncomfortable. I'd spend the whole movie wondering what was true and what wasn't. That's true of any non-documentary, I realize, but especially with Stone.

Which I guess is a long way of saying I agree with entropicamerica.
posted by pmurray63 at 4:50 AM on September 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'd spend the whole movie wondering what was true and what wasn't.

You should do this with all movies based on "true stories", TBH. Unless you're enjoying them purely as fiction, which is fine too.
posted by Artw at 5:48 AM on September 6, 2016 [1 favorite]



I'm pleased to read that Levitt has donated his earnings to causes he respects. If Stone's movie helps keep Snowden in our thoughts, then fine; he's welcome to hire any number of flunkies to count his bags of loot. What Snowden did was in itself dramatic, but why he did it is the story. If we lose track of that his heroism, and sacrifice, mean nothing. I read nothing in this article that pointed in that direction.


But, back to the real world: I guess Tom Cruise was not available to play Snowden in this flick. Angelina Jolie could have been the NSA. Stone could have Cruise paragliding off Mauna Kea to hook up with a low-flying helicopter that would take him to the submarine. A few car chases in Honk Kong at night, a couple of machine-gun duels when he changes planes in Rio, and baddabing baddaboom, he's in the Kremlin, wearing an eyepatch, hacking into one of our satellites--probably the one that controls the drones carrying dirty bombs. Well....as it turns out, the mole in the CIA is the one that has the NSA spying on us for Russia, see, so Snowden has built this elaborate ruse where he pretends to steal classified info so he can gain access to the evil Russian gangsters...time is running out....(much better plot).
posted by mule98J at 12:19 PM on September 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


You should do this with all movies based on "true stories"

Oh I know that. But my wariness goes up to 11 when Stone's involved.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:55 PM on September 6, 2016 [2 favorites]




Is there a more inaccurate cliché than "young people don't care about privacy"? The numbers show the exact opposite.   - Trever Timm
posted by jeffburdges at 1:49 PM on September 25, 2016


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