Photo by Leon Neal/Getty
Oliver Stone said he was shocked to hear Christopher Nolan stars on Friday Oppenheimer It pulled out of its London premiere the day before after SAG-AFTRA officially announced strike action.
“I know many producers are starting films Oppenheimer. Chuck Rowan, he was in London. I heard it was going to be canceled,” Stone said, when asked his view on the strike.
“I don’t know if it went ahead, but all the actors left. It was shocking that they really meant business and cut off all promotions right away, which was huge.
Commenting on the ongoing 11-week WGA strike, Stone suggested that the current industrial action has its roots in an agreement reached in 1988 to end a five-month writers’ strike.
“When Brian Walton was president of the WGA, there was a fundamental miscarriage of justice when we gave up. I wasn’t on the front lines, but I supported that strike,” Stone said.
“We agreed with the producers. They got away with murder on one of these deals where all that DVD money was deferred. They said they were holey, red, and wanted a refund on the DVD.
“I forget what the percentage was, but they took something like the first 75% from the top. The DVD business was especially big for my films. So, the total was never divided fairly.
Stone said the trend continued with residuals and profits.
“There really isn’t much profit. Residuals are important to some writers who don’t make a lot of money. But the ones who make money, don’t touch the film’s profits, the studio does,” he said.
“The studio is always telling you they’re losing money, but they always find a way to make a new level of profit for 10, 15 years … It’s a perpetual industry problem of a capitalist group that overpays its executives and screw over the average writer.
Looking back on past industrial action, Stone recalls that the 2007 writers’ strike initially led to the postponement of his 1968 My Lai Massacre play. PinkvilleIt was later canceled permanently.
“We had three weeks to go and it got cancelled. We got hurt,” he said.
Stone said he doubts there will be a quick or easy resolution to the current writer-actor dispute.
“I don’t think it’s going to end anytime soon, because I don’t understand the economics of Netflix and these new guys, but it’s the same old crap you have. You know they’re making money and they’re always saying they’re losing money. It’s a classic conflict in America in the 1880s.
Stone was speaking with Deadline at the Jerusalem Film Festival, where he was showing his documentary 2022. Atomic now, Arguing the case for nuclear power is the only viable way to tackle climate change.
Based on the book A bright future: How some countries solved climate change, and others can followThe work premiered in Venice last year.
The work is a passion project for Stone, who says she was inspired to make the film by fear of climate change.
“I’m not a science expert, I have no relationship with nuclear power. Rather, you could say I was a moderate believer in the 1980s Jane Fonda, Ralph Nader concept that nuclear power is dangerous,” said the director, who also has co-writing credits with American scientist Joshua Goldstein.
“But from my travels around the world, it’s clear to me that it’s getting hotter and hotter and hotter. We were in Italy two, three days ago and they said it was the hottest day on record.
Stone presented the Jerusalem Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award alongside Helen Mirren and Belgian director duo Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne at Thursday evening’s opening ceremony.
The director last spent an extended period in the country in 2002 at the height of the second intifada to make his documentary. Non-personal grataIn it he interviewed Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Al Aqsa Brigades in the Middle East conflict.
For two decades, he suggested, the situation has remained unchanged.
“It’s a repeating cycle. I’ve been here many times. I planted an olive tree for peace in the 90s with my then partner Arnon Milson and came back in 2002. Non-personal grata… I don’t know the difference. This is bad. Like getting hot. It gets more and more stifling.
