{"id":35900,"date":"2016-04-16T15:56:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T19:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=35900"},"modified":"2016-04-16T15:58:30","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T19:58:30","slug":"oliver-stone-reveals-clandestine-meetings-with-edward-snowden-nsa-worries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=35900","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Stone Reveals Clandestine Meetings With Edward Snowden, NSA Worries"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Stephen Galloway
\nThe Hollywood Reporter<\/span><\/p>\n

\"snowden_joseph_gordon_levitt_h_2015-1\"<\/a><\/span>‘Snowden’
\nOpen Road Films<\/h5>\n

\u201cWe moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in the U.S.,\u201d the director says about his upcoming movie about government whistle-blower Edward Snowden, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.<\/p>\n

Fears of interference by the National Security Agency led Oliver Stone to shoot Snowden, his upcoming movie about government whistle-blower Edward Snowden, outside the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in the U.S.,\u201d Stone said on March 6, speaking before an audience at the Sun Valley Film Festival in Idaho, in a Q&A moderated by The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Stephen Galloway. \u201cWe felt like we were at risk here. We didn\u2019t know what the NSA might do, so we ended up in Munich, which was a beautiful experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even there, problems arose with companies that had connections to the U.S., he said: \u201cThe American subsidiary says, \u2018You can\u2019t get involved with this; we don\u2019t want our name on it.\u2019 So BMW couldn\u2019t even help us in any way in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n

While in Sun Valley, the three-time Oscar winner held a private screening of Snowden for an invited audience of around two dozen. Those who attended the screening, at the former home of Ernest Hemingway, included actress Melissa Leo, who plays documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras.<\/p>\n

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\nGuests were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, but that did not prevent three of them from speaking to this reporter. All praised the work-in-progress. \u201cWhat he did that\u2019s so brilliant is, he gave this kid\u2019s whole back story, so you really like him,\u201d said one audience member.<\/p>\n

When Stone (whose films include Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Wall Street) was first approached to make the movie, he hesitated. He had been working on another controversial subject, about the last few years in the life of Martin Luther King Jr., and did not immediately wish to tackle something that incendiary again.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlenn Greenwald [the journalist who worked with Poitras to break the Snowden story] asked me some advice and I just wanted to stay away from controversy,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want this. Be that as it may, a couple of months later, the Russian lawyer for Snowden contacts me via my producer. The Russian lawyer told me to come to Russia and wanted me to meet him. One thing led to another, and basically I got hooked.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Moscow, Stone met multiple times with Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since evading the U.S. government\u2019s attempts to arrest him for espionage. \u201cHe\u2019s articulate, smart, very much the same,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been seeing him off and on for a year \u2014 actually, more than that. I saw him last week or two weeks ago to show him the final film.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cHe is consistent: he believes so thoroughly in reform of the Internet that he has devoted himself to this cause \u2026 Because of the Russian hours, he stays up all night. He\u2019s a night owl, and he\u2019s always in touch [with the outside world], and he\u2019s working on some kind of constitution for the Internet with other people. So he\u2019s very busy. And he stays in that 70-percent-computer world. He\u2019s on another planet that way. His sense of humor has gotten bigger, his tolerance. He\u2019s not really in Russia in his mind \u2014 he\u2019s in some planetary position up there. And Lindsay Mills, the woman he\u2019s loved for 10 years \u2014 really, it\u2019s a serious affair \u2014 has moved there to be with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spending time with Snowden, and researching what happened to him, Stone said, \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing story. Here\u2019s a young man, 30 years old at that time, and he does something that\u2019s so powerful. Who at 30 years old would do that, sacrificing his life in that way? We met with him many times in Moscow, and we did a lot more research, and we went ahead.\u201d He added, \u201cI think he\u2019s a historical figure of great consequence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the director\u2019s involvement in the movie, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden and Shailene Woodley as Mills, \u201cNo studio would support it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was extremely difficult to finance, extremely difficult to cast. We were doing another one of these numbers I had done before, where preproduction is paid for by essentially the producer and myself, where you\u2019re living on a credit card.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, financing came through from France and Germany. \u201cThe contracts were signed, like eight days before we started,\u201d he noted. \u201cIt\u2019s a very strange thing to do [a story about] an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America. And that\u2019s very disturbing, if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-American. They say we have freedom of expression; but thought is financed, and thought is controlled, and the media is controlled. This country is very tight on that, and there\u2019s no criticism allowed at a certain level. You can make movies about civil rights leaders who are dead, but it\u2019s not easy to make one about a current man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snowden opens in the U.S. on September 16.<\/p>\n

___
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