Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“Oliver and I were having dinner in late 2007,” said Peter Kuznick – author, historian, collaborator – “talking about history and politics as we often do and he said to me ‘Peter, let’s do it. Let’s really do it. Let’s do a documentary.’” And so they did. Five years later, Showtime presented 10 of the 12 part series of “The Untold History of The United States.”
Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick
John Hanshaw of the Washington Film Institute welcomed hard core movie junkies and history buffs to a screening of “Bush and Obama,” part ten of the series, at the Goethe Institute Among them were Kai Bird and Aviva Kempner. Bird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer whose new book “The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames” will be released by Crown/Random House on May 20, 2014. Kempner was born in Berlin, Germany and is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her new DVD version of her Peabody winning documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg with over two hours of extras is out. Her new film, The Rosenwald Schools with Rep. John Lewis, Julian Bond, Cokie Roberts and Eugene Robinson should be finished by the fall.
Kai Bird
“We’ve given out a lot of suffering and we are suffering,” said Oliver Stone commenting on the ‘state of the union.’ “But it’s easy, of course. Greed drives power, power says we want, we want control and we want to rule the world and it’s easier to do without boots on the ground. It’s far easier to use drones and the NSA.”
In the making of the series, they integrated many clips from past movies that exemplify history and capture decades in a short period of time. “We had to really move and keep to the big picture. In so doing, it occurred to us to use movies because they are fun and they also break up some of that narration and break up sometimes the tedium. Looking at a lot of archival footage, no matter how good it is, can become tiring. By putting in movies of the times, movies that are pertinent, whether they are pro or against our message, films cut through and break up the monotony.”
Stone re-examines under-reported events in American history by delving into Presidential decisions, character vs. personality, historical fact vs. fiction, how history repeats itself and the rise and fall of empires. As for Stone, he plans to stick around. “I like gravity,” he said.
A conversation with Oliver Stone:
One on one with Peter Kuznick:
