PBD Podcast
Russia vs Ukraine, JFK Assassination, Trump vs Deep State w/ Oliver & Sean Stone | PBD Podcast | Ep. 522
Wed, 18 Dec 2024
Patrick Bet-David sits down with Oliver and Sean Stone! 📺 WATCH "ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN" - https://bit.ly/3ZIQPrD 📕OLIVER'S BOOK "THE CONCISE UNTOLD STORY OF THE UNITED STATES": https://amzn.to/4glyDv9 💳 VT GIFTCARDS: https://bit.ly/3P28SnM 🎄 VT CHRISTMAS COLLECTION: https://bit.ly/4gk4yff 🧥THE NEW VT SWEATSHIRTS & HOODIES: https://bit.ly/4f5fnAM 🧢 PURCHASE THE NEW VT HATS: https://bit.ly/3ZFAPrH 📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": https://bit.ly/41rtEV4 📰 VTNEWS.AI: https://bit.ly/3OExClZ 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: https://bit.ly/4g57zR2 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: https://bit.ly/4g1bXAh 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: https://bit.ly/4eXQl6A 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: https://bit.ly/4ikyEkC 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: https://bit.ly/3ZjWhB7 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: https://bit.ly/3BfA5Qw 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/4g5C6Or 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! SUBSCRIBE TO: @VALUETAINMENT @ValuetainmentComedy @theunusualsuspectspodcast @bizdocpodcast ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Winner in the Oscar goes to Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone for Midnight Express. Oliver Stone, born on the 4th of July.
Please welcome Oliver Stone.
I went into arms as a soldier eventually in 67, 8. And I saw things that just shocked me. Open my eyes, I'd never be the same again. Combat is a searing experience. And devastating to what your sense of life is worth. Your sense of self. You have no illusions about yourself. Or what life comes down to. It comes down to a very basic thing. Survival.
And with some consideration for all the men and women all over the world who are in prison tonight, I thank you. They are what? They are a reflection of you seeking something or, in a sense, taking leave of something? Taking leave and seeking.
Both occur. You've gone through a process and you leave it. You become a bit of what you've done. And it's sort of a benchmark that tells you, I was here and now I can move on.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
All right. Okay, so are we live, Rob? Yes, sir. Listen, can you imagine we're watching the intro here together, okay, with the great Oliver Stone and his son, Sean, who is here. They're working. Sean just finished up a documentary, All the President's Men, which we'll talk about later on with Tucker, with a bunch of different guys, about Trump. And I'm going through the list.
And again, we had you on March of 2022, which when you were on at that time, the whole Ukraine thing was new. It had just happened. So we started talking about it. And, you know, it was kind of risky to give the opinions and you gave and we talked about it. But again, reminder to everybody what movies you've been a part of. If you don't mind me taking a moment and sharing this. Okay, Wall Street.
We just watched it with the kids the other day, okay? Writer and director. Wall Street Money Never Sleeps with Shia LaBeouf, director. Midnight Express, writer. Conan the Barbarian, writer. Scarface, writer. Platoon, writer and director. Born on 4th of July, writer, director, producer. JFK, all three. Natural Born Killers, all three. Nixon. By the way, I loved, loved Nixon.
I can't believe most people don't watch that. It's such a great, Anthony Hopkins, phenomenal movie with the stories you see. Evita, Any Given Sunday, Alexander Snowden. I can keep going on. Things you've done with Lula, 2024 writer, director, Putin, all the interviews. It's great to have you here again. Oh, that's right. Nuclear energy with Russia, which we'll get into that as well.
Oliver, if you want to get a little closer to the mic, that'd be great. But it's great to have you guys here. So let me ask you for you, you know.
Where's my camera? I don't see myself. You have six cameras on you.
You have so many cameras. For you, when you think about it yourself, Sean, to you, he's your dad. But I mean, what is it for you when maybe we miss it? What do you think is the most impressive thing he's done in his career?
It's a good question.
From your perspective, not ours.
What is the most impressive thing? Giving birth.
Yeah, I don't think you did that. Apparently, he got kicked out of the hospital because he was watching the Niners. He was watching the Niners-Giants game. When you were born. Playoff game, 84. No, not before.
He got kicked out of the hospital?
The Niners won, at least.
He was happy. No, that's not true. You know, it takes a long time. You have to sit there and sit there. 12 hours sometimes. And it was a Saturday or something, and I wanted to see that game. So my wife was, my wife, I said, I'm going to go out and come back. And I came back with a pizza. I'll never forget. It was nauseating, the smell. She couldn't take it. So she asked me, get the fuck out.
She was screaming. But then I came back. I saw him being born, by the way. I saw him coming out.
You saw him being born. He did. He did. That's cool. So what do you think it is? What do you think it is from your end? Because for us, again, as fans, you're on the inside.
Yeah. I mean, to a certain extent, I was more on a certain level of personal insight, but he's got a whole other life that I don't know. I think it's hard for me to say what's most impressive. You look at the films and what he's been able to do consistently across the years is be authentic and be a storyteller that's not beholden to the system.
So you can't say what, you know, JFK is the most important film or Platoon or I mean, each one is a personal experience. Right. Some people have a favorite this one more than another. No, I mean, you know, you mentioned like Wall Street, like very watchable. Right. Wall Street's kind of movie you can watch multiple times. Scarface, you can watch it multiple times.
True.
jfk i've probably seen the most i would say really well i like i like thriller conspiracy mystery and you know it's such a rabbit hole that you start going down you really you recognize there's a lot of details that you can't get on one or two to uh tries watching it because it's such a such a thorough film nixon also has that quality i just love i was surprised how many people i asked have you seen nixon have you seen nixon have you sent it no i haven't seen it like i don't know why you haven't seen it
312.
Is it 312? Yeah, it's a long movie. But I could not stop watching that film to learn the history and the acting and the 312. Wow, you know the exact minute. That's pretty wild that you know the minute.
Yeah, you got to fight for these things. What do you mean you got to fight for these things? The three hour movie in those days was not normal at all. It was a special event. When I grew up, it was a... what they called, you know, an intermission film. It was a spectacle. But by the time it's 1980s, 90s, it was turned into, you had to make it as a single feature.
And that, because they don't want to, they were playing, the theater owners were putting pressure on the studios, you know, We want quicker turnovers. We want six turnovers a day. We want to sell popcorn in between. There's all kinds of economic reasons for it. A three-hour and 12 movies are killer. You only have four shows, three-day shows a day. Okay?
So now with streaming, you're a businessman.
You should know that.
That makes sense. You can't play that many. Exactly. I can do two, five times. I can do three, maybe three or four times. Right. That's the way they think.
I got it. You get like a two o'clock, a five o'clock.
A comedy that...
Hour 45, perfect.
That's what they like. Hour 45. Hour 40 even. Well, I mean, what do they prefer? Do they prefer a three-hour hit that gets hundreds of people coming in or an hour 45 that, you know, five people show up?
JFK was a hit. Nixon was not because I think it was a darker poster and he was a darker man. John Kennedy was more popular. Also, people were interested in his assassination. Whereas the Nixon presidency was shrouded with
ambiguities and that was a problem selling it that was a problem selling we didn't have a big american star we had anthony hopkins who's just very good english he wasn't a big star at the time no he was not are you kidding what did you read this film was remains of the day and uh remains of the day was his biggest film legends of the fall
He was a father in that? No, that's not true. Hopkins had won the best actor for Silence of the Lambs.
Oh, I'm sorry. Silence of the Lambs. Yes, you're right. So Nixon is post-Silence of the Lambs? Yes. Meaning Anthony Hopkins. Yeah, Anthony Hopkins, to me, you know, do you put him up there for you with guys you worked at? Oh, I put him at the top, one of the top, you know, up there with Al Pacino.
Yeah, sure. Sure. He was a wonderful man.
What makes, because for you, we were talking and the audience doesn't see this. And I said, guys, let's go, let's go because we're already having a podcast, right? And what did you say? You said you want all of it to be, what was the word you used? You said authentic or you want it to be, you used some word where he said he just wanted to be off the cuff.
And I said, yeah, that's interesting because in your world, do it again. Second take, third take, fourth take. What's the most takes you've ever done in a scene? Not that many.
I'm not that patient. Maybe 12, 13, 14. And that's not working. I mean, I try to make change. Some directors will let it roll and roll and roll because it's tape. I don't feel that way. I feel it's a waste of energy. You've got to concentrate that energy.
One time, one actor had memory problems. He was getting there older. And you had to put the cue cards up and then basically force him to just read the cue cards.
It was pretty painful.
I don't know if that was... Is this an actor we know?
He's a good actor. Academy Award winner. Oh, wow. He reached that stage when drugs and stuff, whatever, medications had slowed him down. And then what do you do in that moment?
Are you frustrated?
Oh, yeah, yeah. The other actor was sitting across the table from him, and those people who remember this know that the other actor was eating the tuna fish sandwich. for the scene, it was a lunch scene. So he's eating the sandwich and he ate 17 or 18 of them and I was really worried about his, yeah, but he was a strong guy and he managed to absorb it.
They were ham sandwiches, I think he was getting sick. Two sandwiches.
It was really hard, hard. Those are hard moments, man.
so the director goes through some hells what you know when when you when you see stuff for for again for us who were not in it we see the christian bale loses mind clip right i don't know if you've seen it or not right we you ever seen christian bale getting upset at the camera guys at the light guys you know have you seen that on terminator uh three or four right he flipped out he was he wasn't really happy with film in general i think that he was it was not his kind of movie right
Yeah, I mean, and Christian Bale is, you know, a phenomenal actor. In my opinion, he's a phenomenal actor. But you see him, you see Tom Cruise, you see some of those. Is that pretty common with the temper flaring? Because as an artist, as a creator, in that moment, you're getting in such a unique state that you need zero, zero distractions. Is that kind of...
Well, it happens quite more than you think. People get nervous and they get upset because it takes time. And it's a grueling process over 60 days, 50 days. It depends. And I've seen many people lose their temper. Everyone loses their temper on something, right? Well, it's not fun. It's not fun to be the director of that person, but that happens. And we have to live with it. It's part of life.
They're happy sometimes and they're miserable some other times. But it's a hard process. It's a life process. Every film takes something out of you. I feel like it's a tree with rings around it. You've got those rings, they build up. I don't know how in the old days they did 50, 60, 80 films. Okay. You have to, to a certain point, you have to be insensitive and cut it off. It's just a role.
It's just a movie. And you get into a different attitude.
You used to lose your temper a lot more, though. I think you've calmed over the years. Who? You used to lose your temper a lot. Oh, not talking about myself. I'm talking about the actor.
No, but you had some big fights. Of course I did. Every director has.
What happened with you and Shia? Something happened with Shia? Shia LaBeouf?
Nothing. Shia was a good actor. Very...
know he's very opinionated that's all you know so you know save the opinions because you don't have to tell me about the screenplay and about what you think about the movie and all that you know no but you had a very funny uh conflict with val right kilmer you guys got along much better later but on the doors remember you were in my mind val was at that point at that point yeah
And so for you... But he was working very hard. I remember that. And he was doing the songs too. He was dead. He was close to dead. He cost us a fortune in massages. You know what I mean? We had about... Every time he wasn't... We had to pay somebody. It was a fortune. Seriously. We went way over budget on that.
Just for massages.
Well, the film was over budget because that was a big part of it too.
Wow. You don't think of these things, do you? I mean, is it, is it, but is, does it get like, you know, there's a story of Maradona who they said, Hey, we want you to be the coach of whatever Argentine. I don't know if you've heard about this or not, where he says, yeah, yeah, no problem. But you know what? To do that, I need a bathroom and I need my bathroom to be gold.
They said, what do you mean? You ever heard this story or no? Yeah, Rob, can you pull this up to see if Maradona gold, Maradona gold bathroom. Just you type in gold bathroom. Let's see if it comes up or not. Diego Maradona's toiled seat evokes memorable memories. Maybe you heard Maradona, zoom in a little bit.
Argentina World Cup, Diego Maradona reportedly requested that his two high-tech toilets, heated seats, cost $150 each, to which page he won. There's $50,000 office bathroom overhaul requesting. Anyways, maybe it's not this one. If you go to the picture, images, he wanted a bathroom that was golden, okay? His request was. Is that the one? It's one of those.
says maradona yeah what is the weirdest request an actor's made and oliver how do you handle that when they like they come to you and say hey oliver listen this guy wants us to do xyz i mean i can't imagine if they say val wants to do six massages a day six massages a day yes what's the weirdest request you got you remember i wouldn't know
A lot of that just gets moved out in the deal structure in the beginning. They'll put in these crazy requests. You hear about this stuff. Will Smith has his own private gym. He's got a trailer for his gym. I've heard people have to bring their private hairdresser, their driver. Those are the worst. They bring on their producing. They add all kinds of...
It's the wasted money. Yeah, it's the fringes, the fringes. Well, we always try to keep that down in the pictures I made because they were dedicated to a purpose. You know, we're trying to get this thing done. And the studios were never that cooperative with my stuff. It was always a struggle to get it made. You can imagine, even JFK.
So these were not movies given to the luxury system that Hollywood had in the 80s, 90s then. But Sean is right. The request would be for assistance and assistance and their publicist and that public. And by the time it grows into a little entourage of 10, 10, 8, 9, 10 people. Special people to help them with the accent and help them with the physical trainer has to go.
Sometimes the gym equipment has to go. Yeah, it's ridiculous. You know, get used to, it's not like the old days, get used to life on location, for Christ's sake.
Oliver, who is a big, big, big shot, award-winning, that's the chillest, humblest, easiest to work with? Well, I don't know.
I haven't worked with that many of them. Stop it. You work with everybody. Yeah, but they were humble at that time. Everybody was humble. Mr. Hopkins, Mr. Pacino. Tom Cruise was young. He hadn't gone into that other hyperspace. You're talking about born on 4th of July. And Charlie was normal.
Charlie Sheen you know it was Willem Dafoe has always been I can't really I don't relate to those kind of people I wouldn't hire them in the first place if possible what would it be mother if they had that reputation you hear about it you know you don't want to have all you don't want all the fringes you have to be careful So you have to set the rules at the beginning.
Listen, I'm going to make this kind of movie. It's going to cost this amount. We got to move at this pace. Are you going to be on board or not? Otherwise, you have to walk away. But sometimes you need them to get the fucking film financed.
That's what I'm saying. Some of these guys have the means.
It becomes a double-edged sword.
Or as they say, dual use. Sean, from your end, what is the sensitivity from the talent sensitivity versus the director's sensitivity? How different is that?
Well, I mean, that's...
different ways of feeling in the world you know i would just put it like this is the director is almost like uh the chess player right they're looking they have to feel but they have to be strategically looking at everything the actors immersing themselves into feelings and moods that uh sometimes are maddening um you know i did the behind the scenes on alexander uh that was my first foray into filmmaking was doing documentaries back when the dvds had the behind the scene extras you know and they would have the featurettes about the making of or
On W, we did the same thing. On Nixon, we did this real story. On Alexander, I shot Fight Against Time, a feature-length documentary. I got some really good access to be able to see, not fully the conversations, but to see a little bit of the dynamic. It's like Colin Farrell was going through deep moods and experiences and madness at some points, actually.
While the movie's being shot, you're recording him and talking to him.
Yeah, it's it's in this it's in the documentary. And you'll see like, you know, how it's like there's there are points where you start to wonder, is this guy gonna, you know, end up like James Dean? Is he gonna kill himself? Because it's he's so passionate and erratic. And, you know, he was he was a drinker at the time. And, you know, he's Irish.
And it was like, it was a little bit of it was testing his, you know, his nerves to say, OK, can you pull this off without going over the edge? Right. And I think that's that's the issue is always, you know, you pulling out a performance from an actor. It's like pushing them to a place that's uncomfortable. And that goes to the question of the conflict that sometimes occurs is that he's pushing.
He knows how to push buttons. There's a very famous story of telling Michael Douglas on the first day of Wall Street or second day of Wall Street. You know, I saw the was dailies from yesterday. What are you, like, you know, a TV actor? You know, like he'll say stuff like that to provoke, right? With a straight look or with a smile? No, it's totally straight. I think Douglas was shocked. No?
That's probably true. It's probably true, yeah. We were having issues on the first. It was the wrong. He approached it. I have to say, he may not agree with me. He's right. But he approached the movie like it was the streets of San Francisco or something. You know, one of the TV series that he did. It was just not the depth that I was looking for. I needed to. He was a major figure in the film.
He was the antagonist. And frankly, he got an Academy Award, so something happened. He deepened in that movie as an actor. What do you tell him, though? What do you tell him? Well, you have to, first of all, deal with it. You have to deal with what you're seeing. I mean, you may not be right. It might be too subjective. But tell the actor, be honest.
If it's the time to be honest, sometimes you hold back.
But what I'm saying is, as a director, is a part of the director not being afraid of getting under their skin?
You have to be. You have to tell the truth to some degree. You can't just fake it. I hate those directors who always say, oh, great job, great job. The words become meaningless. The currency, useless. You have to have some truth factor in all your relationships. Otherwise, you're a boutique. Otherwise, you're just being a showman. You're a traffic cop.
How do you manage that versus walking on eggshells around you? Was there an element of walking on eggshells around you? And is that okay?
I think I was famous for walking on eggshells.
you're walking on eggshells or the people around you were walking on eggshells so i don't know come on you know what i'm asking because to me that's a good point is is is the idea of keeping the standards so high where the actors coming and saying oh this isn't i gotta deal with him I got to be ready for it. And then, you know, he's going to say something to upset you.
No, I don't. I never said that on purpose unless something was going wrong. You know, for example, let's say an actress comes in and she's more concerned about.
Can you speak into the mic?
She's more concerned about her, the way she looks and the way she doesn't give a damn about the movie or the other people. It's just her. And when you have that kind of egocentric personality, you have to. You have to move away from that. You have to get more into the shadows.
What will you say to that person?
You have to start dealing with that psyche, and that's not easy sometimes because some people are very hung up on themselves. How much of it is private? How much of it is public around everybody? You know something? That's a good question because usually I keep everything private, but the crew feels it. The crew knows. In fact, sometimes the crew knows ahead of the director. You hear the words.
You know, the ADs, they talk, and... The Cameron crews are very sharp. They've been on a lot of movies. If the actress or actor is a dud, they know it. And they'll let you know it. If he or she is not up to par, they'll let you know. It's an interesting thing that goes on. It's dynamic. By the way, let me ask you this.
So you did Wall Street One. The main cast is all in two, right? Money Never Sleeps.
No, no Daryl Hannah, no Sean Young. Charlie just does a cameo.
Oh, you're right. Charlie just does a cameo, but he is in it at least, right? There is a cameo of him. How much when you were doing Money Never Sleeps, because the movie did so well, did you call Charlie or talk to him and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking about doing. What do you think about this? Or no, hey, Charlie, I'm doing this. I need you to do this.
Yeah, I just asked him and he was very friendly about it. Yeah, he was making a comeback at that time. Was he upset that he was not the guy playing in Wall Street? No, because he was a younger man. It was another kind of time. 20 years had passed. So, in other words, Gekko was 60. Coming out of jail and Creed and all this stuff. He's coming up with his book launch. Yes, another young man.
And Josh Brolin was playing a key role. He was playing the Gekko role as a young man. Oh, I'm sorry. So that was a whole different ballgame.
I was just upset they killed my character. Gordon Gekko's son was killed off. And he had a daughter. They replaced the son with a daughter. You were in it? No, so I was Gordon Gekko's son in the original. That's right, that's right, yeah. And the son is supposed to have killed himself in the original Wall Street.
That's part of the story. Did that kind of like, hey, what's up, Dad? What's the story all about?
If you like Gordon Gekko as a father, you might kill yourself too. Yeah, I'm looking at this. That was a great cast. And Frank Langella, I have to say, played an old tycoon. He was perfect.
By the way, I love Josh as well. Josh was great. Josh is phenomenal. And Michael is always underrated, but he was really good in the movie. So the reason why I ask this question, did you watch Gladiator 2?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yes, I did. What did you think about it?
I had empty calories feeling. It's certainly watchable. It's good, well-made Ridley film, but I didn't care about the people. I wasn't invested. Your comparison of one versus two. One was a classic. Two was empty calories. Like a commercial product.
I was so upset after watching two. I was so upset. My wife's like, babe, give it a break. I said, no, babe, I'm... You know why? Because I don't think, you know, I'm not in the world to know it, but with the risk of after you make a movie that's a 10 to come out and do another one. And to me, they show that it was the biggest movie Denzel's ever done money-wise.
I think it was a quarter of a billion dollars or whatever the money made. I saw the numbers. But I gave it a six and a half at best.
Because you're a gladiator yourself. You know, you're powerful. And you probably didn't like the physique of the guy as much.
I just, the story was okay, but there was something about it. And the reason why I'm asking this question, because did you see the clip of Russell Crowe being asked about Gladiator 2 and what he said? Have you seen this or no? No. Please tell me neither one of you guys have seen this. Okay, so then I want to get the raw reaction from you. Jesus. Can you pull this up, Rob?
Can you pull up the one I sent you? I texted you the clip. If you can play this clip. He's being asked about Gladiator. This one guy says he's doing a reaction on... Russell Crowe's question about it. And Russell says, oh my God, they better start paying me because, you know, I'm being asked so much about this movie and I'm not even in the movie.
And the question was right here, if you can play this clip and then I'll just get to it. Go for it, Rob.
Not ask Russell Crowe about Gladiator 2.
They should be f***ing blaming me for the amount of questions I've had to answer about the f***ing film that I'm not even in.
Ridley Scott recently wrapped filming for his Gladiator sequel, starring Paul Meskel, Denzel Washington, and Pedro Pascal. Meskel plays a grown-up Lucius from the first film, and let's just say Russell Crowe doesn't have anything to do with the sequel, and doesn't want anything to do with it.
I don't know anything about the cast. I don't know anything about the plot. Well, I wouldn't, would I? Because I'm dead. I have no idea what they're doing. And it's got nothing to do with me. In that world, I'm dead, six feet under. That's that. I was in Malta recently. We did a concert there. And I looked across to Fort Ricasoli, and the Coliseum's built there again, like it was in 1999.
It was like a time warp. For a couple of seconds there, I was like, what?
year is this i wasn't expecting that they would rebuild the coliseum in the same place i admit to a certain tinge of jealousy if ridley has decided to do a second part to that story he will have really strong reasons the movie comes out right around thanksgiving so what do you think about his response whose response russell's i think he's very uh diplomatic have you ever worked with russell no why
Would you want to?
If the part was right, why are you barking up this street for? I'll tell you why. I'll tell you exactly why. The reason why I'm asking this question, Oliver, is because for me, like,
gladiator is a top 50 movie of all time my opinion in my opinion you can go and debate movies it's all in the eye of the beholder you know how this works like hey that's my type she says your type you talk to mary i'll talk to jennifer we're scored away right
And for you to make the movie, is it normal when a movie is this big of a hit to not even talk to Russell and say, here's what we're... I would have never expected anything to happen with 2 without him not being asked about it. Or is that pretty normal?
He said he was dead. His character was dead. It's all fiction anyway. There was nothing realistic about it.
Why don't you put a cameo in it, though? Why don't you put something to like a... Well, they did.
Not a cameo like... They had flashbacks to the original. They had moments where you see him in the original.
But he knew nothing about what's going to happen with the movie, though. Would you have done it that way, or would you have done it too differently?
Well, first of all, I would have conceived a different script. But it's important. It's a new concept. That was the way it was created, and maybe that's good. What does the dinosaur film have to do with the previous dinosaur film? Jurassic World. Jurassic World. What does that have to do with it? Why would you talk to the previous dinosaur?
Well, I get what you're saying when you're talking to the previous dinosaur, but if you watch Jurassic Park, I don't know if Jurassic Park is tied to an actor that I emotionally was affected by. That's because you're a gladiator. That's the only reason. You don't see the movie. So how do you watch the movie? How different does a guy like you watch a movie? I watch the whole thing.
You watch the cinematography.
Everything, yeah. It's a whole experience. It's a life. No, I don't focus on one part or aspect of it.
Got it. So you just called me one-dimensional, Oliver. You hurt my feelings. Well, you're a businessman. I'm walking on eggshells around you now, right? I just got the feeling of the stories you tell. But for you, just out of curiosity, what are your favorite movies? What kind of stuff do you like?
I love movies. I love movies, too, from your lens. There's actually three, four hundred. I mean, he knows. I watch old movies along with new movies. So I mix it up, and I get confused sometimes as to what... I don't remember all the things I saw. Give me a list and I'll tell you.
What have you watched the most? The most? The most times. Over and over and over and over again.
Sound of Music. Really? You know, there are old movies. That's one of my dad's favorites. There's hundreds of movies that are great. Listen, if we stopped making movies now and no more movies were made, I'd be fine. I mean, there's enough there for the rest of time, you know, honestly. And also, I discover old movies that I didn't see, which is a wonderful experience.
I think there's a... You know what? In the Renaissance, there's a period when they all talk about Italy and they all talk about Flemish painting. That's what we're in. The movie business was that moment. We have those hundreds and hundreds of paintings. We should enjoy them all.
Right. I agree, but was there a flick where you guys- But that's the problem.
That's what critics do. I don't want to do that. They say the 10 best, the best. That's such a bullshit. That's not the question. Yeah, it is because you tend to narrow things down. People have to say, I saw that movie, but it's better than that one. Come on, just wake up.
Enjoy the whole thing. Do you know what movie I watched like God knows how many times that nobody would ever say it's like one of the greatest movies of all time? Cocktails. I swear to God. Cocktails with Tom Cruise and what's his name? Not Christopher. Who's in Cocktails? What's the other guy's name? Yeah, Brian Brown. Oh, my God. He crushed it in that movie, right?
The barman poet or whatever it was, you know? Well, there's hundreds of those movies. I get that. But to me, that movie I watched in the army probably 200 times. Like we literally at our unit.
It was really an escape for you at that point.
You know what it was? And maybe this is the part about the story because remember, what's the story of Cocktails? It's the story of this guy that's got a dream of one day being a business owner, right? And eventually, what does he do? He opens up Cocktail and Dreams, right? And the restaurant and all this other stuff. And then, hey, I bet you'll never spook me again. I bet I will. What's that?
You know, these moments, but... No one, Cocktail is not on anybody's 100 list. I feel like taste is different than criticism, if that makes sense. Criticism is criticizing this movie or that movie versus, now listen, I can watch a movie like that simple over and over again. I love it.
Ask Sean, he grew up in the 1980s. Ask him what, you remember, you saw it 20 times.
Well, in the 80s, I mean, the 80s, to me, I still go back to. If I just feel like, you know what? I just want something fun. I love the 80s as a decade, right? Because they started to mix genres in a way where it's comedy, it's adventure, right? It's sci-fi. They get back to the future, right? What genre is that? It's almost a perfect film. But like you said, it's not going to win Best Picture.
And yet it's one of the most classic. And a lot of the most classic films that we think and we want to watch every year, whether it's Wonderful Life. I don't think Wonderful Life won Best Picture. It didn't do well when it opened.
But what are some of the films that did less well in the 80s you loved? Countless, countless.
What was the horror film you loved? The Lost Boys, The Monsters Club. The Lost Boys. Right? The horror films that you loved. I mean, too many. I saw them all when I was young. Candyman. Candyman was fun. That's why I think when you ask about films, I always say to people, what's your favorite experience in your life? What's your favorite moment in your life? Go back in your life.
Because I think that's it. It's like a film is a moment and it's experience that you have. Maybe it's with the people you watch it with, right?
Sometimes it's the date you're on or just the experience of, oh, wow, that brought me to, I was in the dumps and I watched that movie or I remember being in high school and waiting for Friday night to go see American Pie because it was like going to take me out of this experience and take me somewhere else. So you can't really say this is better than that. They're just moments in our lives.
Oh, I fully agree. I agree. To me, it's the moments of Rocky IV. You know why I watched that movie so many times? My mother's side, they were communists. They were all part of the two-day party. Two-day party back in the days. You may know the two-day party from back in the days. They were communists. My dad, imperialist. So watching Rocky... you know, is mom and dad.
Can communists and Americans come together, right? Can these two guys find a way to agree? Didn't happen. They got married and divorced twice to each other, right? But there's a story to it. So for me, Rocky IV, I watched it in Iran in Farsi. Think about how Rocky sounds speaking Farsi, right?
Because that's how we would, when you would buy it, the guy would sell it to you with a guy that speaks Farsi. Now, I agree with you. 80s, to me, not only some of the best movies, but I think 80s is also Days of Thunder. You know, 80s music. 80s music is the best. I think it's the best decade of music, period.
I'm with you on that.
So maybe, let me go a different angle here, question-wise, for you guys. Yeah, Oliver. Sports. Are you a sports guy? Do you like sports? Okay. Sean, are you also sports? You're a big guy yourself.
I told you he was watching football on the day I was born. 49ers.
Is it just football or is it all sports? All sports. Okay, so, you know, when you talk about guys that play two sports, Brian Jordan, Deion Sanders, you know, you got a few of these, Bo Jackson, right? You got like a handful of these guys that did both and they did pretty well. Deion's probably one of the better ones that was able to- Michael Jordan tried it.
Michael Jordan tried it, but Deion actually succeeded. Deion was great. Deion was great on both, Braves and all the stuff that he did. But the question is, in movie- Is it a different sport to go from making movies to making documentaries, or is it the same sport?
Well, it's the same process in a sense.
Documentaries are very important to me, and I did 20 of them, or 15, I don't know. But the reason is they bring you back to the research world, the real world, the world that you're actually dealing with people who are live, and you're getting in touch with that aspect of yourself. Whereas if you live on a stage or live with a fictional film, it's another world.
It's artificial, and you're constantly trying to create realities So it's a real challenge. That's why it's important to stay in touch with the real world. And a lot of Hollywood people do not. I mean, the reason I'm into contemporary events, I mean, look at the films I did in the last 20. World Trade Center, W, the film of George Bush. I stayed current. I wanted to know what was going on.
The last one was Snowden. We did it on the cusp of what happened. And it was very important to me to know what was going on in computers at that point. I don't regret that. You know, they may not have done as well because the American century changed. After 2001, we became another animal, you know. And that affected the culture and the appreciation. And the generation changed.
And a new generation came along who didn't know the same things that the 1980s and 70s generation knew. Think about it that way. Is that fair to say that you're an anomaly for that? No, I think I cared about events that were going on around us. And when I see some of the treatment of the current events, Hollywood doesn't care. They don't base their films on that.
They don't want to reflect reality necessarily. Yeah, they'd love to get the money from it, but it's a creation of fantasy too. And the films don't deal with the American century. What did America become after 2001? Those films don't really deal with it. It's another, more imperialist, more authoritarian, more patriotic, more militaristic. I mean, come on. That has to be reflected in movies.
Maybe Gladiator reflects that, but maybe it does.
But is it common for guys at your level? There's only a handful of you guys to do movies and to do docs. That's what I mean. Is that a multi-sport type of thing?
I meet a lot of Hollywood directors, producers. We never talk about current events because I don't get any sense, a lot of interest in it. We always talk about artificial stuff, which is fun sometimes. It talks about movies. That's another world.
Documentaries as a whole, I've gotten so much introduction to the world through documentaries, meeting Chavez and Castro, meeting the Israelis, meeting Putin, and nuclear energy. That was not about a person. That was about an issue. Come on, that was a very difficult movie for me to make. All I talked to was scientists.
Just to your question of different sport, I would say acting and directing would be like playing two sports, right? Because they're very different ways of being.
documentary to film it's it's just a different medium documentary is a different way of making a movie and telling a story but it's still the same fundamental principles right you're either setting up cameras your actors are you're either your participants you know like reality show style or interview style you're sitting down you're talking to someone you're you're feeling okay what's the tempo is this boring you have to cut away to something else where the visual is coming from right
Am I going to archives or am I shooting it? It's the same principle of storytelling. It's just maybe the budget. Generally, the budget is nowhere near what you get with the film. You don't have to stage everything. It's a little bit different, but the same principles of storytelling apply. There are films that can apply the documentary style or the mockumentary style and bring that tempo to it.
Likewise, you can bring cinematic style to documentary. I think there are many different languages. And it's like you go to film school and you watch some of these things and you're like, man, you know, the Maya Deren types and the Brackistan Brackage and things like this. And, you know, there's many others. They're not necessarily the most entertaining films, but it just shows you how...
film you know how do you say we've hollywood has created a certain style for the most part right that's larger than life and you know goes back to let's say you know the epics of griffith and whatnot gone with the wind but if you go across the world there's many different styles of storytelling that
from a Hollywood perspective, would come across as boring, but might resonate more with a more documentary approach, like an Ozo or someone like this, you know, a Japanese approach to storytelling that might be a little bit more like day in the life and a little bit more focused on nuance that maybe a documentarian would be interested in, as opposed to a Hollywood filmmaker, right?
There's different approaches to that same, it's still storytelling, it's just different ways of telling.
Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to find out, like, you know, Justin Timberlake is a triple threat. He can sing, act, and dance, when they talk about that. Those are different skill sets. I don't know if Denzel can dance, and I don't know if Denzel can sing. So, okay, maybe he's not in that sense, A triple threat, right? That's what I'm saying. At this level, is it, I'm just making movies.
I'm not doing documentaries, okay? For me to go do both is not common at this level. That's why I thought, I mean, I'm asking a question about whether it's two separate sports to be played. And, you know, Oliver, what gets you to say, I want to make this movie or I want to, what is the first spark that I want to write about this? I want to go... pursue this and maybe even do a documentary on it.
What's the first spark that gets you interested?
So often it's the importance of it, you know, like to me nuclear energy was very important because we're facing climate change. If you accept that, what are we going to do? Are we providing the solution? And if you study the issue and really study it and talk to people, you have to doubt the conventional idea that we're going to be saved by renewables. It's the first thing that comes up.
People say, what are we doing? We still have, why are we not improving? Why is the carbon dioxide still the same? After all these renewables, after all the trillions of dollars we've spent. Look at Germany. I mean, the whole concept of going to nuclear was caused by that because we have to wake up and we don't. And that's why you have to make something because this is urgent. Look at that poster.
There's not a person, not a face on it, right? That poster. It's not necessarily, it looked like a Walt Disney space picture or something. I'm not going to run out and see that. That's the problem.
But again, so what got you to want to do that?
Because I had to. Because we're all going to fry. I don't want him to walk around and burn up. It's going to be very tough. Unless we deal with this energy issue, there has to be solutions. Everyone's thinking of the future. There's going to be a solution. We're going to figure it out. Well, we've got to get serious now, back then.
You may not agree with me, and a lot of people don't, but my God, I think it's a burning issue of our day. But beyond Ukraine, beyond Joe Biden and Donald Trump, this is a real, real significant. Look at the figures.
This is disgusting. Right. This is why, you know, Rob, this is U.S. nuclear power capacity.
additions by your initial operations don't go by the u.s you should go by china or russia that's a good point so your china and russia is a different story but this is for us right so for you that did the documentary do you have the other one as well rob that we we went away from it for a while whether you want to call it oh that's for sure yeah whatever the reasons are well because of the uh all the fear it was a fear that drove us away from it
So what did you learn at the end of the documentary? Among other things, the fear was ridiculous because there was none of those accidents really added up to anything compared to the other waste products of other energies such as gas and oil and coal.
This is the one that answers your question for you. Construction starts of nuclear reactors in the world. From 51 to today, the orange is China. From 95, if you look at 85, 89, you barely see one or two in China and other countries. Majority of those are us. And then when you come to the last 10 years, majority of it is China. Last 20 years. And the rest of the world isn't doing anything.
Well, they are doing.
New countries are coming into it. Yeah, Russia is doing a very good job of constructing reactors abroad in other countries. They're selling the product. China is doing it. And they're also devised. They're working very hard. China and Russia have SMRs. which are the small modular reactors, they have them. The United States is still working on it. We're way behind.
But I do believe we'll come up with a design for an SMR that will be accepted through our regulation process, which is tedious and costs... That's why it costs so much. We don't approve anything. It's like a bad business, right? We're... We're choked. We don't allow new stuff unless it's fancy and has a purpose. It's just very hard to get new designs in. We have to change our ways.
And I think the SMRs, hopefully, will be there by 2030. Hopefully. I know Westinghouse is working on one, and General Electric. They have good stuff coming. What do you think about China? China is great. They're doing so much in terms of building, not only nuclear reactors, but they're building... I lament their use of coal still. Yes, that's very evil.
But they are doing better and better and better, and they're amazing, some of their buildings. Amazing. They're the future. You're saying China's the future. It looks like it. They're doing the best, most modernistic work. And I have high hopes for the rest of the world. I mean, if you go to your countries, I mean, go out there to the stands.
Go out to that, you know, I did a documentary about Kazakhstan. It's an amazing place. It's very future thinking. A whole new generation. building things, creating new cities.
It's interesting when you're going into something like this, because for me, like, you know, it's getting into a business. We run nine companies. Okay. So, all right. So nine goes, how do you get into this company? You find a problem and then you look for the solution on how you would fix it. That's maybe different than others. And then what demo are people not in?
And then maybe use a certain strategy, blue ocean strategy that, you know, Hey, they're not in this market or whatever. And then you make the adjustments. In a movie sense, what is that process? What is the process of doing a movie or doing a documentary? Is it let me see what story hasn't been told? Or is it, man, I like the story. I'm going to write a script.
What's that process of starting a business? Because each movie, I remember sitting down with Aaron Spicer. He said each movie is a business. That's right. You're an entrepreneur. You've got to look at every movie as a business, right? Yeah. So what is the process of saying the next business I'm going to build is is going to be Wall Street. The next business we're going to build is going to be XYZ.
What is that process?
That's the way you think. Movies are a bad deal. Every time you have to make a new business every few years, it just doesn't work. You make a movie and they don't accept it. They don't understand it. It's ahead of its time, behind its time, whatever. It's not that easy, you know. So you spend two, three years of your life making a movie. I don't think it's an economical business.
I wouldn't go into it for that reason. You go into it as an artist, and frankly, you say, I want to make this. My passion is here. It's the most important thing in the world to me right now, and blah, blah, blah.
But there are people that look at it just as a business. And they're very mercenary. And they just take whatever the gig is. And I think that's the really hard thing to navigate. I mean, Scorsese always said he did one film for himself and one film for Hollywood. It's like a compromise.
One film for himself and one film for Hollywood. Right. And Hollywood is the money one. For himself, it's the art. Right. That's what he said, at least. Interesting. Would you agree with that? Like that format?
No, it didn't work for me. It doesn't work for me because you have to have a certain, he does what he does. You have to admire him. He was my teacher at NYU. Scorsese. He's lasted this long and he's great. He's good. Listen, he's made his deal.
He's found his way. You're a disagreeable man is the feeling I get, which is needed to be a strong man. That's a compliment. I don't say that in a... The only reason you would be willing to entertain these documentaries or movies is because you don't give a shit what the market thinks. You're trying to find out what you're interested in, right? My impression... I follow my heart.
Yeah, that's exactly the point. So to me, one of the qualities of an alpha male... is that you disagree, you debate. You're like, no, I don't know if I agree with that. I don't think that's the right way to go about it, right? So when you did go through Scorsese and you're learning from whoever it is, were you at any point as a young man coming to want to get into space?
I don't know if I agree with that. I wouldn't do it that way. Did you have those moments as a young man? In his class? Not that, no, because I was learning the trade.
I was paying attention. How about later on?
Well, no, his dad used to say, right, your dad used to always come out of the movie and say, we could have done it better, right? And so your dad kind of put that into your mind of starting to think about maybe how you would have done a film differently.
Yeah, my father would always talk about, we could have done it better, meaning there was something wrong with the hole in the movie and the hole in the story, the logic, the logic of it. But then you become too logic-ridden, and sometimes that undercuts you.
And that's happened to me, I made films so, in a way, they wound themselves into a complicate, a knot by the third act, and then you gotta get out of the knot.
So your father, you're talking Lewis, your grandfather Lewis? Okay. So I just looked it up right now. He passed away March 16th, 85. Right. Next year it'll be 40 years. What movie did he get a chance to see? Did he get a chance to see anything, any of your work or no? Not the features.
You saw The Hand, my horror film, and Seizure, my first film out of NYU. Okay. Yeah, no, but I had written Midnight Express, so he knew that I was on my way in that business, and I'd written a Conan and my screenwriting stuff.
83?
Did he watch Scarface? Yeah, yeah, sure you did. What did he say about it? He got a kick out of him. But when you watched it with him, were you uncomfortable? Were you like watching him watch it or no? Were you just, hey, here's the art we made, let's watch it?
No, I never saw it with him because my dad was, you know, he was an economist. He was very much a Wall Street man. But even at the end of his life, his conservatism was vanishing. He said at the end of his life, he said, you know, we made a big deal about Russia all my life. That was the thing of the Cold War. It was a really big deal. He scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.
So by the end of his life, by the late 70s and early 80s, you know, after the... Well, Reagan, it's true, he was in the middle of the Reagan era, but even Reagan started to let up after the near scare of Abel Archer in 1983. We had a near nuclear war with Russia. It was ridiculous. It was out of fear.
And after that, if you remember, Reagan and Gorbachev got together in 86 and started the whole process of detente, which we've forgotten about. But we almost had a moment when we banned nuclear weapons completely from the earth. That almost happened. They'd reached a friendly moment when Reagan was a very affable man that way. And he said, why not? He said, why not? Why don't we get rid of them?
And then, of course, the guy's on his spot. That's my father. And the guys behind him said, no, you can't do that, you can't. But George Shultz was in favor of that. He was the Secretary of State at that time. So it's possible. I mean, we can think differently, but sometimes we close up into our balls of fear.
Did you write Wall Street based on stories he would tell you from Wall Street or no?
No, that was based on the fact that we had all those scandals and all those young people were starting to make money, you see. My dad was the old Wall Street. I pictured that in the picture with Hal Holbrook and the father figure of Martin Sheen, who was a union leader. The younger crowd was amoral. A lot of them were into the business. People were making... Big money.
I mean, I don't know if you remember, 83, 84, 85, people were making millions of dollars at the age of 28, 29. That was outrageous. We never had even seen that kind of money before. Young people were supposed to, you know, you don't make big money until you're 40s, 50s, right?
It all changed. Yeah. And later on, the movie that a lot of guys watch that was, you know, form of Wall Street was Boiler Room, right? Where the J.T. Marlin, I don't know, I think that's what it was called. They quoted a lot of Wall Street.
J.T.
Marlin or whatever. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So this was a first time, you know, we got a chance to watch Vin Diesel on what he did. You know, Noah Wood or whatever the call was. Ben Affleck, you know, talking about his... You know, Ferrari, this is my house, this is my this, this is my that. It's a phenomenal movie, but it shows the world of penny stock.
And I think I even remember somebody saying this was depicting what Jordan Belfort did that later on ended up being the Wolf of Wall Street. I read that somewhere. I may be wrong. That's true.
Yeah, that was a penny stock crowd, but they were never mainstream. They were the sidestream. The people I'm talking about were mainstream. They were joining the mainstream, and they were controlling the stocks. We had those people. They were coming on.
And if you look very closely at the whole, the Gordon Gekko types ended up being the banks by the 2010 period when I did Wall Street Money Never Sleeps because that was the idea, is that the independent traders became this, by 2010, had so gamed the system and so inflated the system that they were the new chiefs. What do you think about Joseph Kennedy? What about him? I like him.
I mean, he did amazing stuff. He created a clan. He nourished his kids to become leaders. And he was a very good father in the end. He turned out to be a very good father.
Did he ever inspire you to want to do a movie on him or a documentary on him?
No, he was the progenitor of a family. I admired John, as you know, and Robert very much, and Ted too, as well as the sisters.
So you wouldn't have interest in doing a movie like that? I'd love to see you do something on Joseph Kennedy.
why why you are you what angle do you think are you kidding me like if there's a yeah so if I ever wanted to get into in two to five years we're going to get into movies not right now we're building this whole thing we're going to you know build the Burbank of east coast here in Fort Lauderdale we think that's a great market for it I suggest a book if you're interested in Joe Kennedy there's a wonderful book fiction by Richard Condon who wrote Manchurian candidate it's called Mile High
Is it on him? It's a wonderful book. Yeah, it's about Joe Kennedy, but it's a fiction. Fictionalized version.
Mile high. What does it say? Rob, can you send that to me so I can buy it? I'm looking right now. That's a great story. That'd be great. It's a wonderful story. Is it called Seat of Destruction? No, Mile High. I don't see Mile High anywhere. But anyways, if you find it, send it to me. Richard Condon, C-O-N-D-O-N. Come on, Rob, you find everything.
There you go.
1969.
Oh, wow. Oh, there you go. Yeah, send it over to me. That'd be great. So it's an older book that was written. Nothing wrong with that. No, I love it. I don't have any problem with that. That's why you're here. I'm borrowing your wisdom. But Joseph Kennedy, why not, right? To me... like what is a bigger last name than the Kennedy last name? Who was the visionary behind it?
The amount of stories of him sitting down with the kids at night, who's going to be the president, all these different things you hear about and never wanted to get, at least from the books I read, didn't want to give credit to the family that he came from, a family of money where he wanted to kind of, there's some of those stories that comes out that he went to Harvard, president of a bank, 28 years old,
Laura Swanson. I don't know. I think it's a very interesting story. I think it's a very, very interesting story. And it's got such a long lifespan that it's an 80 years into... Yeah, but that's hard for movies. Remember that. I know. So you have to go like 20 years, right? You have to go like to a scene. Is that kind of... No rule. No rule at all.
But why are you saying it's hard to do it like that? Because of the span, the time span. So then you can pick an era to go through, right? But you just limited it. then if you're gonna make it, I trust you to do it. I'm not. You gotta find your significant points that you wanna make.
Yeah, I just think that guy is one of the biggest power players we had in America, and he'd be a very interesting guy to study. I think the new era doesn't know as much about him to realize the impact he made.
There was a long period, and he was on the outs. Roosevelt wouldn't talk to him. He was down on his luck. He couldn't get the impact he wanted. He became frustrated during the war. He wasn't respected. And then after the war, he bounced back with his... His oldest son died, killed in an accident in war. And then his second son, he groomed belatedly for the presidency. He won the Senate.
He won the House in 47 or 47, yeah, about 47. And then Senator in 52, right? So he groomed John as his replacements. And you don't want to do anything on them? It's a great story, but it's, I kind of, I know the story. I mean, I don't, the world doesn't know the story. There's another story about Kennedy I would like to sell. What's that? But they won't let me do that.
I can't tell you that one. Okay. All right. Well, listen, your thoughts, with all these total amount of hours you put into the JFK assassination story, investigating it, right? All the hours that you put into it, okay? Yeah.
I'm not going to give you a quick summation.
There's this guy that just, I don't know if you've been following it closely. I'm sure you're very busy making movies, so maybe you're not following the news. There's this guy named Donald J. Trump that just became this guy, this thing they call in America. What do you mean I don't follow the news? Right? And, you know, Bobby is now involved. He's got a pretty heavy job, right? Yeah, I know Bobby.
Do you think, you know, since his involvement being in there, we're finally going to get to the bottom of the CIA documents to see what really happens?
Yeah, possibly. Well, there's no bottom to it because the CIA doesn't put that stuff on paper. But there are a lot of files on people in the CIA at that time, such as James Angleton. That was a big place to start. That's a counterterrorism chief. of all those years. James Angleton, you've ever heard of him? A very important figure. And you have to go into him to begin.
And then there's other people like Bill Harvey and Phillips, David Atlee Phillips. There's Howard Hunt. There's the other guy, Joe Anides, George Joe Anides. Those guys you should track. And they've done nothing. The CIA has done nothing to cooperate with any official. They've been the most hidden organization ever. Only one time have they ever been examined, and that was in...
Frank Church's Committee of 1973-4. Frank Church, great, great, great senator. And they found a nest of evil that was so intense, with so many assassinations, sabotage, Against America's interests. Against America's interests. And they told us the whole time it was for our interest. We killed people who ended up being heroes. And we paid the price.
I mean, we're paying the price now insofar as we have no idea what's our own history. No idea about, we've thwarted history and we're aiming, we're going towards a very dangerous moment right now, but that's another discussion completely.
You know about the forces involved in the coup against the Shah in 79, I mean, 78, 79, that time period, right? You saw it. I have my impression. I want to know which one you think. Which direction are you going? Oh, I think it was a coup. I think the U.S. and British wanted to see him go. I agree. I think he was too independent and powerful. I don't know if it came at the moment.
Well, they put him there in the first place.
yeah but that doesn't mean that he didn't become too independent and powerful for their taste and i think that i don't know if it happened at the moment they discovered he had cancer which was i think like 75 six they said okay he's weakening we gotta replace this but i would say that the arc of crisis story remember the arc of crisis that huntington and brudzinski were talking about in the late 70s of this idea of this radical islam they were already perpetuating the notion of clash of civilizations at that time
And it's not just saying there's a clash of civilizations between Orthodox Christianity and Islam. They were pushing for these rifts, as in Lebanon, as in, well, not Syria at that point, but in Iran in particular.
I think the fact that Khomeini was being protected in the West is very indicative, and that the BBC was broadcasting his messages from all of his messages being broadcast by the BBC in Iran is indicative. Because that's intelligence. That's how it works. It doesn't just work with a guy going in coup. There's different dimensions to it. You've got to prepare the population.
You've got to put money towards this. You've got to make sure that you fly the guy in and say, okay, now he's your new leader. I mean, they knew who Khomeini was. You know how crazy it was to send him back, right?
Twice in exile, you know, living in France, Paris, making tapes that they're spreading all over Iran, spreading the message. Very, very interesting what happened with that. And the Shah had the 25-year all-year agreement that they had from 54 to 79 that was expiring. So these guys had a meeting because they knew when it, he was about to be a very, very powerful man.
And that was a concern of theirs, of what happened there. But I wonder, like, some of these, for you, like, do you have selfish reasons on things, you know, like even right now, it just happened where I said I can't find a book. And it's a mile high. Richard Condon, can you go look it up? He looks at it and says, here we go. We found it, right?
You have a, you know, the element of doing a doc to say I was right. This is what happened. You know, all the criticism that they write about whatever you make. Is there a desire for you to see, get to the bottom of JFK? Of course.
Of course. Well, it seems like we have already accumulated such evidence. It's prima facie, it seems. How can you deny it? How can you deny it? Especially now that we're going through so much revelation on conspiracies left, right. This is what the world is. It's like been working that way.
The United States has been working duplicitously for years to create this empire that we have, that we deny that we have. We have 800 bases. We're all over the world in every single spot. We have our finger everywhere. And we're stirring this constantly. We're busy like malevolent dwarfs, but we're there everywhere. And what concerns you about that?
We're heading towards a nuclear war with, we created enemies that are not necessary. That's what mostly affects me. Because if we blow up this thing, it'll be like that scene on the beach when Fred Astaire says, I don't know how it started. It'll be like that. But we, I know how it started because it started here.
These people who are running Washington right now, these neoconservatives that are in charge, are the most dangerous people we've ever had in the world. They're the antithesis of what America was about. Antithesis. Who? Who? Who? Well, right now, in this time period, it goes back to the 1990s when they formed up. But before that, it goes way back to the 1940s. Before that, to the 1919s.
Right now it would be, you know, the Biden administration is playing with fire. They've taken this thing to the edge with Russia. They're now the neocons?
They're the liberals or the new neocons?
How weird is that? Yeah, isn't that so bizarre? How weird is that, Oliver, for you? The real liberals, people who are really into liberalism like me, who care about it, the John Stuart Mill kind, are disgusted by these people who are saying... a pro-war, they're pro-interference in other people's affairs. They're trying to tell people how to live. That's not the way Mr. Mill described liberalism.
Leave them alone. Let live and let live is my philosophy. Get along with your neighbors. What's going on now is Mr. Blinken and Sullivan and all these people that are in the administration are very dangerous people because they pushed this thing with Ukraine to a place where it had no American interests at stake, none. But Mr. Biden, without a mandate, declared that we have to –
weaken Russia without a mandate. He didn't put it up for voting. He said, do you want to go to war with Russia? Do you want to have American missiles flying into Russia? This is outrageous. It never would have happened. You realize in Kennedy's time, it would have been a declaration of war. That's what's going on without our knowing it. We're asleep to that because it's like boiling the frog.
They take it up, you know, a little incline by incline. Yeah, yeah.
How do you feel for you? Because the documentary you did with all the president's men, this is, Sean, as a guy in this documentary, you have Steve Bannon, Kash Patel, right? You have Roger Stone. You have Tucker. You have a bunch of Giuliani. Flynn. Flynn. Okay, you got all these guys where, you know, the media would say, Sean, what are you doing talking to all these people?
conspiracy theorists, you know, they're all, you know, MAGA and all this other stuff, you know, for you. And they went through this. What was it for you going through it as a director at the beginning with the level of skepticism you had when you're hearing about election interference, election for all this other stuff?
What did you go personally yourself as a director and evolution from the beginning to the end on Trump, your impression of Trump?
Well, so 2015, 16, I started working for RT America, right? That was a DC-based group that had Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. It had Tom Hartman, a leftist progressive guy, Jesse Ventura, Larry King. We had a lot of really interesting journalists, right? And we were a dissident because at that point, as you know, the media is controlled. I've understood this since I was...
uh seven years old you know being in jfk watching the fallout from jfk seeing the media reaction to jfk how you know how it was dismissed by the mainstream media obviously some historians got it but a lot of the mainstream never accepted that that narrative right they said it's a great film but it's bad history and it's a conspiracy theory fantasy
So I understood from seven, eight years old that the media was lying to us. From the first Iraq war, through the bus, the Serbian war, through the second Iraq war, I knew all this stuff. I was watching it, you know, I literally would try to tell people.
So when I got a chance to work for RT, that was a way of actually having a platform for us dissidents to say things that were not acceptable on ABC, NBC, you know, CNN, right? And they turned that in 2016, they demonized RT America into this Russian
propaganda outlet, that was the, remember when they said that the Russians interfered in the election, half of that report, which was only like 12, 13 pages was about RT America. That was the Russian interference narrative in the Trump election was that RT America was pushing stories that they didn't like about fracking or Syria, whatever it was. And they're saying, we interfered in the election.
I'm sitting there going, we're Americans. We have the right to speak our, it's free speech in this country. We can say what we feel and think, you know, we're doing journalistic work. So I understood this plot, this idea of the Russia interfering with the election was so thin at that point in 2017, that after the election, they released the ICA, you know, focusing on RT America.
And I go, where's the Russian collusion there? What did the Russians do? Did they hack into our election machines? There's no evidence of them hacking into our election machines to switch votes. So what does that mean to say they interfered in the election? It's one of those CIA kind of words, you know, interference, Russian interference, misinformation.
These are all CIA words that they put out there to confuse people. So at that point, I didn't pay attention.
Do you know that because you and your dad always talk about this stuff and you've been curious about this topic? Or through investigating it, you're like, this is the CIA words they use.
Yeah, I mean, I wrote a book on the New World Order. It was my college thesis. I did Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura as a host. I did Buzzsaw as a host for many years before RT. So I've been familiar with history and untold history of the United States. His docuseries, I worked as an editor for a year on. I gave him contributed ideas about some of the angles and points for it.
So a lot of this is just my background. So again, when I saw the Russian collusion narrative in 2016 for Trump, I... I liked Trump coming in because I liked the fact that he was an outsider. I thought it was Bush, Clinton. We're stuck in this rigged game. And someone came in who said, hey, Putin, why don't we get along with Putin? We can talk. We can work with him. We can negotiate.
I said, good for him.
as soon as he said that the whole russian narrative starts to boil over in the media and everyone starts saying you know he's a russian puppet so i didn't pay attention in 2016 to 2020 i didn't really pay attention to the whole allegations against the papadopoulos and manafort and parter page and flynn and roger even though i knew roger i just didn't pay attention to it because i felt like okay this is going to boil over
There's nothing there. If there's anything really there, it'll come out. But this is kind of ridiculous, right? This is years going on, years of these accusations. People like this idiot Schiff, who's now our senator, out there saying there's Russian collusion and you just got to see it. With a certainty.
There is proof. I don't know what word he used, but saying the fact that we have proof that there was collusion.
Yeah, and it's so embarrassing that this guy, he should be like a McCarthy type, right? I mean, he should have been called out and said, you know what, you're an embarrassment. He should be nowhere near Congress or Senate. And the fact that California elected him, it just shows how brainwashed people are over there, right? It's pretty sad.
I mean, McCarthy at least got to a place where he was making accusations and they couldn't back it up and they basically said, you're done. This guy Schiff now wins Senate. It's disgusting. So Pelosi also would say things like that. It's certain with probability or something. She would say these things where it's like, we know that the Russians probably interfere. They would use these words.
But it worked, though, if you think about it. It worked on so many people. Yeah, it worked. But what did you learn at the end of it? You're spending time. Kash Patel has now got the head of FBI job, right? Yeah. Steve Bannon, who strategically, that guy's brain, the amount of credit he gets on the right for being strategic, he's up there, right?
What they did to most of these guys, now they're in there, right? What was it at the end for you? I'm assuming you didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. Is that a fair assessment?
I voted for him in 2020. Because 2020 was very obvious what they were doing with the COVID to me.
So when he lost, you voted for him then?
Well, did he lose? I'm a believer that they rigged 2020.
Oh, you're from that camp? Oh, yeah. Are you there as well?
I'm in the middle. I don't know. But there was a lot of evidence on Sean's side.
No, I think Rudy had good instincts, but he didn't have the time. His forte is not, he's going after mafia. He sees the conspiracy, but he's not an election guy. When it comes to election fraud, there are certain ways of presenting and there's certain evidence. And I think that to this day, we know a lot of these things have been buried, right? Let's be honest, whether it was certain districts.
And if you can look at it very simply, you think 2020 wasn't a weird thing. Trump got 75 million votes in 2020, right? He won all the bellwethers. He easily won except for the five or six states, counties that shut down for the night. And to me, that's, you know, I go back to 2000. I didn't like the 2000 election, because I felt like, you know, this is weird. The chads, right?
It all takes us one county to throw a whole state, right? The same, if you shut down elections and say, we're gonna come back tomorrow, And then the next day, they basically have – they know exactly how many votes they needed to overcome Trump's lead in those five, six states.
And that's the problem to me is when you stop counting and then come back the next day and, well, we got just enough to beat that lead. That's suspicious, right? Come on. You've got to say that doesn't add up to a logical person to say you would stop counting at any point. Stop the observance at any point and then come back knowing how many points.
It's like a football game where they say, two minutes to go. Your team's up by two touchdowns. We're going to come back tomorrow. And then you come back the next day and you go, yeah, we scored three touchdowns last night. I didn't see it. Where was the observers? That's my problem with the 2020 election.
If your friends from 10 years ago who were closest to you hear you say something like that, would they say, yeah, Sean would say something like that? Or do you have anybody from 10 years ago that are like, Sean, stop it?
You know, in 2004, a lot of people suspected that the machines were rigged against Kerry. There was articles written about that in Ohio. It was a very controversial state. Because people started questioning the voting machines back then. And many Democrats were the ones questioning it all the way through 2018.
We've got video in the Giuliani episode of Kamala and all these people saying, you know, the voting machines right now, I can take you down there and show you how to hack these machines. So why is it in 2020 we couldn't question the voting machines anymore or the issue of – How much do you think this is going to backfire on the Democrats?
but already dead. Well, I mean, election for sure, but that's one term, right? But do you think this is going to be the types of an event that happened with Barry Goldwater, 60-64, where Democrats, Republicans lost the African-American vote for decades and from 60, 64% of African-Americans voted Democrat. The rest were conservative or independent.
Four years later, it went from 60% to 92% voting Democrat, and they got the black vote for 60 years. Do you think this was so monumental that Democrats may have had a blow to them that could last decades, or do you think it's just one term?
I think Trump has the opportunity to create an historic presidency. I mean, the people around him, like we talk about Tulsi Gabbard in our series, you talk about Kash Patel, you talk about Bobby Kennedy, you know, and many others that are solid people with good instincts, right, that could transform our deep, they could fundamentally drain the swamp.
Now it's not gonna be easy, but if they create the cultural shift, and I think is there a lot of people, that's why the red wave came in a way that even the popular vote won. People are sick of the system, right? But the elections are key to me. And it's not about Trump versus Kamala or anybody. If we don't have a clear, like a blockchain style of transparency when it comes to elections,
That's what scares me the most is that we get to this place where you can rig machines, where you stop counting and say, we'll come back tomorrow. We need to get a clear way of doing an election where it's like a blockchain where you can see the results. Because I think there is suspicion, by the way, around some of the down ballot votes this year to this day in some of the states that-
You know, there are questions. I think if you can have blockchain transparency, right, where it's like every vote is there, it's it's accounted for. You can go and you can check your vote and you can see where that's what we need to have as a modern society. And all done in one day, not over the course of a week or three months of voting. I mean, it's just got to be really clear and simple.
Who doesn't want that?
Democrats don't. Oh, I know. I'm saying, but now is the time to change it. If we don't change it, I'm very concerned about our freedom.
Sean, would you consider yourself an independent or libertarian?
I'm independent. I don't fall into any category. I consider myself a constitutional Republican. I like the Constitution of the United States being a limited republic, being a limited federal government.
You're a constitutional Republican. Yes. And Oliver, what would you say you are? Independent?
Now, with the world shifting as it is, I'm certainly independent. But I'm leaning back like my father to the Republican side because I'm disgusted, disgusted with the Democrats. And they're a constant attack. Actually, it's all their extremism of their attacks on Trump that have turned me off. The extremism of their attacks.
Such as?
What are you talking about? Everything he said was... I mean, I've seen it. In the newspapers, they say, falsely, he falsely says, or they constantly give him an adjective, which is unfair. In other words, there's nothing objective written about him. And... I saw Sean's documentary. It's wonderful, actually. One of the most affecting chapters is the one on Giuliani, who I did not like.
Giuliani had reached that place because of his rah-rah patriotism in 2001. I thought it was disgusting. He was overboard. I really did. When he was most popular is when I hated him because I thought he was taking advantage of this thing. He was no longer a prosecutor. He was... He was an opportunist. And what happened was that he actually makes sense in this documentary.
His whole position makes sense. He explains himself. And it turned me around. I said, you know, I understand. And now the newspapers are attacking him constantly like some kind of fraud. That's when I appreciate what he went through. You understand? It's like I'm a contrarian, I guess you could say. But it's good to have contrarians in our society. We need them.
And I admire Sean, who is my son, who's done this on his own. I have nothing to do with his thinking. He's read his own books. He's formed his own conclusions. I was very impressed with what he just said. He explained these elections in a very clear, logical way to me. And frankly, we've been interfering in Russia so many times.
I mean, Hillary Clinton is known for that 2006 period, the 2014 election. They were all over Russia.
and here we don't we never judge ourselves we always say that's the the other side is doing we're known to rig elections like it's known the cia has rigged elections abroad right we know that for a fact so it's so hard why is it so difficult for us to fathom the cia having rigged elections abroad i'll get you could be involved and it's the same chicken chicken come home to roost which raises of course the assassination attempts on trump i don't know man it's so strange
What do you think about it? Is there a party that's skeptical about it? You have to be disturbed by it, and there's still time to go. Look at all the damage that Biden's administration is doing to Trump right now. They're putting him in the spot. The problem is they know Trump is a hothead. I think he's smarter now. I think he's a little bit. But he's got to consider this as a threat to him.
They want to go to a war. or some kind of war, they trap them. Israel has blown up the Middle East, blown it up. It's just like they're remaking the Middle East. That's what they said they'd do. Netanyahu vowed to do this, and he's done it. So many of these countries are out of commission now. And now Iran is the fucking next target of this guy, this madman. And we're in his pocket.
We have no apparent say in what he's going to do.
Netanyahu.
Yes, and AIPAC and all the Israeli mechanism that operates in the United States. Our vote, our Congress means nothing. Netanyahu comes and addresses them three times. They stand up like dogs, clapping for everything he says, like dogs. It was disgusting.
It was a disgusting moment. There's a good point that these wars in the Middle East, as Wesley Clark pointed out, it's basically the neocon agenda. And a lot of these neocons are dual Israeli citizens. And so it's like, who has benefited? We were with Shimon Peres when he said... The Iraq war benefits us.
You know, he said that during the, I remember very clearly, he's like, secures our border against Saddam, right, on the Iraq side. The wars are all, you know, it's, as Jeffrey Sachs pointed out, this is all Israel's policy with the Middle East. It's almost like we've basically said, okay, whatever Israel wants in the Middle East, we'll do.
up and including the Syria thing, which I'm curious your position. But in the series, we get into this, how much, as we know, we supported creating these Al-Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS groups, right? Jihadists, which we did in Afghanistan, by the way, in the 80s. And we've done it in Libya against Qaddafi, which was insane, right?
And we did the same thing now with Syria, where again, another terrorist group is now in charge. I mean, it's pretty... wild to understand that we've been fomenting these jihads against going back to the days of Nasser, by the way. Actually, there's a long history.
I think Devil's Crusade is a good book on the topic about CIA sponsorship of Muslim Brotherhood types and others against any nationalist, any Arab nationalist. And who does that ultimately benefit? Unfortunately, it's is Israel, because Israel hated Nasser, right? An Arab nationalist. It's not from the American perspective.
Why do you think they're able to do that? Why do you think they're able to do that? Because the part about the dual citizenship, when you ask somebody who is pro-Israel Zionist, they'll say the reason why... we have the dual citizenship is because when Israel became a country, they want a lot of Americans to go back, but they didn't want to give up their U S citizenship.
So they made it where you could have dual citizenship. So that's the argument for that.
They'll say, right. We have dual citizenship with France. I mean, I don't think there's an issue with dual citizenship. The problem is that the loyalty that we find tends to be a Zionist approach. And Israel itself is not to me. It's like, I don't, I don't think there's any issue with Israel's existence, but the Zionist position is oftentimes greater Israel.
But what I want to ask you, Because in order to be able to do that, okay, so you're in a space where the controversy came out about Harvey, right, in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein. And for the longest time, you saw pictures of Michelle Obama. You know, Harvey Weinstein is such a, you know, I don't know if you have this clip or not, Rob.
It's such a wonderful, you know, beacon of, I mean, she would use some words that you talk about a Billy Graham type, right? Is that the one, Rob? Can you play this clip? You know, go back and play the clip.
Thank you, Harvey Weinstein, for organizing this amazing day.
More a little bit drop
This is possible because of Harvey. He is a wonderful human being.
Wonderful.
Good friend and just a powerhouse. And the fact that he and his team took the time to make this happen for all of you should say something not about me.
You see this, right? You see Oprah. You see all these guys in Hollywood. Hillary. All of these guys that would say stuff about Harvey Weinstein. What a freaking great guy. And then all of a sudden, Why are people saying all this stuff? What control does he have over everybody? You want a job in Hollywood? You want a job in this? You got to go, no, no, no, no, no. And then disruption shows up.
Oh, shit. Now everybody wants to throw him under the bus. What happened to those 30 years you said nothing about? Sure. What happened? Because he had power and control. So this is where I'm going with it. He had leverage. The leverage was if you want a job, you got to do X, Y, Z. For me, and I'm a boss, okay? I'm not in the world. I've read about it just like what everybody else has read about it.
If Israel is Israel, AIPAC, all of these guys, right? And, you know, Sachs, the interview that was done with Tucker, you know, there's many of these right now that are coming up. If they have this much power, what leverage do they have to be able to constantly negotiate more favorably for themselves over the American people?
I think you have to think about it as a... It's like a club in a way, right? And the amount of financial influence, think about the banking side of things. Think about the infrastructure of banking. A lot of this does connect to Judaism. And it's not to say that they're bad people, but essentially, yes, there is a deep, deep, deep love and loyalty to Israel.
It's interesting because we could be Israeli citizens based on our ancestry. Our ancestry of Lew Stone is not Zionist. Our ancestry is much more cosmopolitan. And this kind of goes to the heart of a lot of the issues, I think, at the beginning of Zionism, where the cosmopolitan Jews who said, we want to assimilate into the cultures, right? Of Germany, of Europe, of America.
And those who said, we want a nation, a land. And I think that there is a psychological factor to Jewish people basically saying you have to give to Israel, you have to be part of Israel, you have to, that's your nation.
When did that happen, though?
That starts in the Zionist phase of the late, but it picks up after World War I. Late, what were you going to say, late? Well, late 1900s is the birth, right? But then it picks up after World War I, but not really. It becomes, remember, the Zionists made deals with Nazis.
The Zionists actually said Hitler was a good thing because they made a deal, various agreements, to start to move Jews because they wanted to take Palestine. at the time that Palestine was mostly Arab, right? So they knew they were a small population. They had to bring more Jews in from Europe.
And so I hate to say it, but the Holocaust, they used that Holocaust to basically say, we can now create a state. And that was obviously the energy that was given by Russia and America and all the UN countries to say, Israel can have a state.
And by the way, you know what I'll say to that? So here's... I trust my enemies very well. By the way, I trust my enemies more than I trust my friends sometimes. You know why? Because what does your enemy think about next movie coming up? I don't know the competitive space. I'm assuming there's competition with... your name and all these other guys that are making movies, right?
I'm assuming the competition, if they can find a way to have 7,500 negative reviews written on Rotten Tomatoes about a movie you come out with, I'm assuming the dirty enemy would probably do something like that to hurt you, right? Yeah.
I'm assuming the enemy would do whatever they can that I'm trying to raise a billion dollars from somebody or half a billion dollars from somebody to find a way for that deal to not get done if it becomes public, right? I've experienced this with guys.
When I was trying to sell my company, the enemy would call the guy that wanted to buy the company and say, hey, you sure you want to go through this? And then boom. We were able to get the deal done and we sold it for a quarter of a billion dollars, okay? But I know, I trust the enemy. All I'm trying to ask, I'm not surprised that Israel did that. Good for them that they're doing that.
I applaud you for being a good negotiator. Great. But all I'm asking is, if America, you read these books, you know, and we've all read these books. When you go through the book, the question I want to ask is, what leverage do they have for America to continue to cave when negotiating. We also want this, and this, and that, and this. Okay, okay, that's not how negotiation works.
Like earlier, we were talking about when you're signing a talent, right? Hey, I want six massages a day. I want my gym to be here. I want that, I want this. No, at some point, we're not doing that. But what leverage does this person have for you to say yes to 80% of their requests? What are we getting in exchange to say yes to this? And no matter how many people I ask that question of,
Well, I think there's a couple of factors. As I mentioned, financial. I think you do have a lot of Jewish banking. We know that. That's historical. They're deeply tied into the banking system, including to the Federal Reserve. I mean, you look at even in Europe, the Rothschilds were the ones that got the letter from Balfour.
I mean, the Rothschilds obviously are a very wealthy, influential family, right? And that's not the only one. There is the Warburgs and others that were very influential in building our Federal Reserve system here. So Schiff and all these families. So again, you're talking money, but you're also talking about a base. From a strategic perspective, I think that the U.S.
and British saw Israel as a base into the Arab world, which I call Israel the last crusader, the crusader kingdom. Because remember, as you know, historically, we fought the West, the Catholic Church sent crusaders out to try to recapture Jerusalem. in 1095, and they did, and then they got kicked out a couple hundred years later, right? But they never forgave that.
So I think that the Catholics and the West, psychologically and militarily and historically, actually see Israel as the crusader kingdom that gives them a foothold into the Middle East. So this is a thousand year war. And that's actually also how a lot of the Arabs see it, which is why people get caught up on the Jewish thing.
And they miss the point of the Arabs looking at it as the West trying to have a crusader kingdom called Israel in the Middle East. And most, as we know, most of the Jews that are there are from Europe, right? They're from, you know, whether they're Kazarian or whatnot. So they're not from that land, at least maybe they were thousands of years ago, maybe they weren't.
But the point is that this is an issue in the psychology of the Arab world, right? the Crusades coming back to haunt them. I think that's a big issue and people don't look at it that way because they think of it as Jewish versus Muslim. And I think it's much deeper because as you know, the Jews and Muslims have gotten along.
The Jews used to go to the Muslim countries when they were persecuted by the Catholics. When they were persecuted in Spain, the Jews and Muslims both were persecuted in Spain and kicked out by Ferdinand and Isabel in 1495, 1492 when Columbus was sailing. They kicked the Jews and the Muslims out of Spain at that time. They kicked them out of, as you know, across Europe. Many times they purged them.
They would go to Muslim countries, Jews would. And they all lived together side by side in Palestine and obviously in Turkey and other countries. So it wasn't a Jewish-Muslim thing. I think this is a West versus East thing very much.
I don't know if I disagree with that. But I think the question I ask is, The leverage, what leverage should it have? Is it just money? Is it really just money? What about APAC?
You don't even mention APAC.
But even if you go with that, right, and you look at how much APAC gives, for example, okay. And again, I'm just playing devil's advocate here to get to the bottom of the argument. You always do. Yeah, and I enjoy that. I think that's the right way to be. But think about Elon Musk, right? Okay, so how much did APAC give? Total contribution 2024. Can you pull that up, Rob?
I actually don't know the number.
This is according to Open Secrets.
So pro-Israel, is this AIPAC? Two Republicans, they gave $2.2 million. Two Democrats, they gave $2.2 million. So a total of $4.4 million and they gave it to pro-Israel PAC candidates. So they give $29,000 more to Republicans than Democrats. Not a big difference. But can you tell me, look up total how much money AIPAC gave to everybody last year. Total money AIPAC gave. In 2024. In 2024.
Yeah, just typing in 2024. I actually just want to know. I guess you pulled the first one out. It's the same number? Really? So the number is how much? Okay, they give $2.4 million in lobbying. The amount of contribution they got was $43 million. Okay, that's a PAC. By the way, I thought the number was in the billions. So $43 million.
Can you go type in how much Elon Musk gave Donald Trump to a PAC?
Does this include the PAC expenditures or is a PAC excluded from that?
So watch this. Elon Musk spends $277 million to back Trump and Republican candidates. realistically, one could say that's 50 times more, right? 55 times more. So again, for me, I really want to know. You're ignoring the concept of influence and how long APAC is going to run. I don't think it's the right number you're pulling up because I think, Rob, they spent $25 million to get rid of Bowman.
So that's why I don't think that's the right number. Type in how much did APAC spend to get rid of Bowman. Can you just Google that? Go for it.
And are these PACs private? I mean, we don't know the numbers on the PACs.
Well, the NGOs are the ones that we don't know who the contributors are, right? The NGOs which, okay, there it is, that one right there. AIPAC has spent over $100 million on 2024 elections. That's the number I want to see. So very bad sign for democracy. AIPAC has spent over $100 million. AIPAC billionaire funded. Super PAC has helped defeat two of the most vocal,
opponents of Israel, which one of them was, yeah, Jamal Bowman. And they spent a lot of money to get rid of that guy. How much was it to get rid of him? Can you pull up that number? I don't know why I think it was $25 million. Could have been a little bit more than that. But the reason why I'm making this argument is I'm making the argument to say,
Some may not say anything about Ilan because maybe Ilan is supporting what you support. It's like, okay, hey, great. And by the way, I'm pro-Ilan. I like what Ilan is doing. But all I'm trying to say is I get the frustration with the Israeli. I lived in Iran, so I have my own story with Muslims. I saw what that was like. And I witnessed it every day, 11 years.
I went to Germany, lived at a refugee camp. There's a lot of Muslims there, a lot of them, Pakistani, Afghanis, a lot of them, okay? I saw what happened there. I've had an insurance company I built from zero to 60,000 agents. We have a lot of Muslims in the company. Guess what? Phenomenal experience. I had the experience there. But it's not... 100% across the board with everybody, right?
America's 13% black. Our agency was 24% black. America's 24% Hispanic. Our agency was 51% Hispanic when we built the insurance agency. And I got a chance to watch these guys because we're in 50 states. But sometimes, you know, it's... it can go in a direction where I just want to know what is their leverage? Is the leverage holding people hostage? I wrote a book, fiction book called The Academy.
And The Academy is about a secret society that's been around for a couple thousand years that they recruit young kids and they build them into the future leaders of the world. Many presidents, many have gone through this. you know, secret society called the Academy.
And one of the stories in there is about the villain is a former deputy director of SAVAK in Iran under the Shah, who left early and he was working with the Shah. His name is Parviz Sabeti. I think if you can look him up, it's a very common American name. Rob, you should be able to spell that out easily. And this deputy director of SAVAK, who ends up having some of the qualities of the villain,
eventually finds me, okay? And he reaches out to me. He says, you wrote a book. I said, yes. He reads the book. Type in P-A-R-V-I-Z, and then P-A-R-V-I-Z, right, P-A-R-V-I-Z, right there, okay. So this is him. He was a former deputy director of SAVAG. And... You know, you watch documentaries on him and what the SAVAK did in Iran.
Yeah.
You know, these guys had, well, some of it is awful, but some of it is, you know, where they were the CIA, the Mossad, the, you know, so all of it can be said awful. CIA, Mossad, you know, SAVAK, MI6. They were all training them too, the Mossad and CIA. So we can say all of them are awful, right? They've all been trained by. And then you hear what he was able to record with MOLOS.
and Hezbollahs, who were these clergy, and then he would get stuff with women. And so he had this footage on them, right? And that's a form of hostage. You better say this or else. I'm trying to find out, is there anything Israel has as a leverage? I'm not just saying Blackman, that's one of the forms.
Epstein was apparently Mossad and CIA, right? I had his brother on our podcast for a few hours, yeah. Does he think that he was both?
I asked him. He was very gray, and he was uncomfortable answering that. We did a two-hour podcast. He did tell me that he had a mentor. Who's the mentor that he talked about Epstein? Do you remember the mentor he brought up? He talked about a mentor that taught Epstein everything. And then when I brought it up, he got very, very uncomfortable very quickly. That guy right there. Steven Hoffenberg.
I don't know if you've ever heard of this guy or not. He helped... He was one of the guys that apparently played a role of a mentor, but there was another guy as well, Rob. Epstein's mentor right there.
Found dead. Yeah. Were you reading that? He was found dead in his apartment.
Yeah, he was found dead. Jeffrey Epstein convicted fraudster, found dead in his apartment. But meaning he learned his model. So on the Epstein side, Mark never told me anything about Mossad. I asked him, I said, were you also Mossad himself? He was uncomfortable answering that directly. I wouldn't be surprised. But that's the question. My biggest question is the leverage. What did they have?
There's no way... Do they have it on Congress so many times? I think it's both.
The threat of saying we're going to campaign against you, that's just enough.
Exactly. It's both private and public. I mean, look at... We just saw the Jeff Sachs interview. Today, all these newspapers are saying Jeffrey Sands is anti-Semitic conspiracy theories for saying that Israel's basically foreign policy is what we're running in the Middle East, which is pretty evident. I don't think that's anti-Semitic to say that.
I don't think that's a... anything bad to say right i think go research it and investigate it i mean march 2022 when you were here and ukraine had happened when did russia ukraine happen a month prior to that february and if you remember you were uncomfortable like you know at first you're like ah and you and i were both a little bit skeptical about Zelensky in Ukraine.
And at that time, when you said it, everybody's like, oh my God, you know, how could you say that? The dictator Putin is the next Hitler. Oliver Stone is so out of touch.
The ghost of Kiev was still riding high. And then that was a CIA story, remember? And all these different things.
Zelensky calling and saying... The documentary you did was just insane. Ukraine on fire. Yeah, Ukraine on fire was phenomenal.
I learned a lot because we actually paid attention to Ukraine after the Putin interviews. That helped me. He said to me, I said, what's the big deal about Ukraine? I thought it was another Eastern European country that had gone to NATO. He said, for you it's not a big deal. For us, it's a very big deal. He says that on the tape. And I think
I finally understood the importance of Ukraine because they've been invaded twice through the underbelly, through Ukraine, twice by Poland. And they were invaded by Napoleon. They were invaded by the Woodrow Wilson troops. Sixteen armies fought against the Bolshevik Revolution. Sixteen armies led by Britain and the United States. France, Poland. Poland sent a huge amount of men to Ukraine.
You met a lot of people, right? World leaders. You met Putin. You met Maduro, I think. You met Chavez, Lula, Castro, Netanyahu. Which one of them?
Yeah, you're right.
Which one of them that after you spent time with them, walked away, you had a bad impression of them first, but later on you're like, well, now what? I don't have a bad impression. Which one of them were you like, oh, I was neutral, but I walked away saying, I don't know if I like this guy.
Netanyahu. Netanyahu, yeah. I thought he was a mad... He was very extreme back in 2002. He was going on, and then the bomb went off as he was talking to us. It's in the film. It's called... Persona non grata. What? Persona non grata. Persona non grata. Persona non grata. Yeah, because he goes over to the window, and he says, look, that's... And he's right.
There was a bomb that was going off in a grocery store. So he was, like, very concerned, but he had suffered greatly because his brother, John and Johan, was killed in the raid in... Uganda, wasn't it?
Uganda raid against... They made a movie about it. What was it called? Yeah, I don't remember the film.
Yeah. Yeah. The dictator of Uganda had taken hostages and the Israelis went in with a commando attack and they succeeded and they made two movies about it. One with Charles Bronson. It was wonderful. But his brother was the only one killed in that raid from the Israeli side. He was killed at the very end. So he's a hero in Israel. There was a lot of vengeance, personal hatred of the Muslim.
I felt that with him, that he did not trust them at all. And I felt that it was echoed by, but other people like Rabin and I also, Perez, Shimon was saying, you know, we have to get along, always.
That was his, but at the same time, he also said, you cannot trust the Arabs because what they write, what their handwriting, the way they write is very flowery and it doesn't, it's not objective like scientific. That's his interpretation. It was an interesting viewpoint. Even Shimon, who was as humanitarian a person as I know, had distrust of the Arabs. And it's fundamental.
My wife, my first wife, was Lebanese, so I felt differently. I liked them. I spent time in Lebanon before the war, 75. So I have no problem. And like Sean says, I feel like it's closer to the Crusades than it is to a religious issue.
Mm-hmm.
So Netanyahu was the only one that he walked away. Yeah, he was dangerous. Because he had such passion. Such passion. And he had a desire. He was young and strong and amazing stamina. Look at this. He's lasted like Putin. He's lasted 23 some years in business like this. Look what he's done, though. He's... Taking this closer to the nuclear winner than ever.
There's no other person alive that is as dangerous. He's lobbied actively for a war against Iran, which is going to be a war not just against Iran. It's going to be a war against China. It's going to be a war against Russia. It's a very dangerous... Man, I mean, Syria, he's gloating. He's gloating over Syria, but that's not over. He's going to come back and haunt them.
This thing is so ugly, it's gotten out of hand, and that's because of us supporting Israel blindly without ever questioning them. Kennedy questioned them. That was the whole point that, you know, Kennedy said this nuclear thing is going to stop. We're not going to give them nuclear weapons. And he was adamant about it, and he was going to stop it.
When Johnson took over after the assassination, Johnson turned a blind eye to it. When we knew for sure that they had a weapon in 67, Johnson made sure they didn't announce it. The Pentagon did not announce it.
We think also about this policy shift. It wasn't like it was always adamantly whatever Israel wants until 2001. That's when the neocons take over. That's when the 9-11 justifies...
all these wars in the middle east so-called justifies obviously what did it do did it bring benefit to the american people did it bring stabilize anything no we destabilize that region but as i said it's been all israel policy and mostly in netanyahu policy and netanyahu is closer to hamas i mean that's what's really curious you know when you look at the history that as you know
Netanyahu and company hated Arafat, right? So they, back in the 80s, they actually allowed Hamas to grow. That's now known that Israel was essentially allowing Hamas to grow into this beast because it played off against Arafat's PLO and those guys. So they used that. And I think that's what's so curious is that Hamas is almost... it truly is Netanyahu's best weapon.
I mean, at the moment that he was being indicted in the Supreme court, I think there's a new documentary about, uh, BB's, uh, file. I think it's called, it's nominated. Yeah. It's being nominated for best picture, exposing all this corruption that he was in charge with. He was gone. And then October 7th comes and it justifies everything.
It's, it's like these moments, you know, that justify war is, you know, very much provocative. You should study that. The BB files, the BB files, I think.
Well, It came at that very strange moment when he's about to go. Remember how close he came to being evicted?
So the angle you're taking with him is the moment you realize what happened to his brother in Uganda, which was the only one you're saying that died, from that moment on, this went from being... you know, just a job or a career that I'm going to do because I love Israel to... Personal passion. A personal passion crusade caused correcting an injustice.
Well, we didn't know him before, so you can't say what he was. Well, I knew him at that point. But I'm saying, but before, and he was a, you know, those guys were true believers from the beginning, but he, you know, people say he was part of killing Rabin. He created that atmosphere, if nothing else, Netanyahu did. Remember when Rabin was killed? Netanyahu was playing up that atmosphere.
So Yontan was an Israeli military officer who commanded the Seyret Matkal during the... He was a Harvard graduate, I think. Was he a Harvard graduate? Yeah, he briefly attended. He was a real hero. After serving in the Israeli military during the Six-Day War, he briefly attended Harvard University before transferring to Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1960.
76.
Is this his older brother?
Yes.
This is his older brother. Yes. How many years apart are they? Can you check to see when B.B. was born? Because he's 46. I don't think B.B. 's into it. Okay. So three years older. Got it. Interesting. And this has been a commitment he's made to his brother to seek his vengeance. Is that kind of how you process it? It's the origin of this passion. Don't you think for somebody to get...
to that level of power, you almost need something like this to get to that level. I mean, look at Trump. He doesn't drink any alcohol. Why not? You know the story with his brother Fred, right? We hear those stories, right? Although it was a decision before. It was a decision before, you're right, because he told him, look, listen to me, never drink alcohol, never drink alcohol.
And he finally, he's like, I'm not going to do it. And he tells his kids.
Did he learn that from Roy Cohn?
I don't know if Roy Cohn was told.
Roy was a drinker, remember, in the movie.
Would you watch The Apprentice? Yeah.
What did you think about it? I saw it twice.
Me too.
I saw it twice in the first week. I very much enjoyed it. Very well done. What was your impression? I didn't walk away thinking that Trump was the monster of all time. That was part of that whole campaign. That's why the Democrats overdid it. They overdid everything on Trump. The movie flapped. I don't know why it flapped.
I always said to you, if you remember correctly, I said the worst president we've ever had was George W. Bush, George W. Bush. And I told you why. Because he started the whole war on terror. And I said, what's Trump compared to that? Why are the Democrats having this hysteria about derangements? And no one paid attention. But wait until this thing is cleared, if we ever get through it.
We're going to have to look back at that period from 2001. And that phony election with the Chads and all that. That was the worst moment for me in this century. I remember that night so well when I was going south with Scalia jumping in on the Florida thing and saying, there's an irregularity here. And then they suspended the recount. You wanted Gore at that time? I did want Gore, yes.
And I think it was a key election. I thought it was a whole century turned on it in a way. It was a strange date. It was one of those things like the McKinley election in 1900.
How different do you think the relationship's going to be? When you're saying Kennedy and Israel, how do you think the relationship's going to be Trump with them?
Kennedy was monitoring them and saying, what are they doing?
I get that. We're not allowing them to be the power in the Middle East.
How do you think it's going to be with Trump? I'm worried about that part of it the most. Because I like the possibility. Trump could be, as Sean said, a crusading president. He could be really a change against war. He could move away from all these policies. But his commitment to Israel is insane because it's wholehearted and he has no modification on it.
And he doesn't understand the Arab position. He doesn't understand history, frankly. I wish Sean could spend some time with him.
Well, his daughter's husband's father is Lebanese, right? Isn't he the new coordinator for some of these affairs? Well, that'd be nice, but the Adelson money is huge, isn't it? But I do think, you know, I feel that if anyone can negotiate peace, I don't think that Trump likes Netanyahu.
I think he has to remember that Netanyahu was the first person to call Joe Biden in 2021 or 2020 and congratulate him.
He won't forget that.
I don't think Trump forgets that. I think Trump doesn't. I don't think Trump likes Netanyahu. I think that he will, if anyone can bring peace, it is Trump because he has to factor the Saudi position.
the saudis have gotten closer to iran it's not it's not what it was years ago they're actually making peace their bricks are here i think he has to realize that this escalation would lead to world war iii he has to see that now and so if anyone can start to work out a deal to say okay how can we accommodate the palestinians give them some livelihood give them some economy it's got i mean trump's got to understand that's the only future he knows that he knows you know you just you start bombing things you start destroying it ruins economies it ruins cultures
He has to see the path forward now is going to be negotiating with the neighbors, getting them involved.
Well, this is a key moment then in history, isn't it? But I don't think – here's my impression of Trump. I was on Jesse Waters two nights ago, and I said, you know what happens when you're handsome, rich, and met every famous celebrity in the world? You know what edge you have? One, no girl can sway you because you've been around beautiful women your entire life.
Number two, there's nothing you can give him financially for him to be, ooh, oh, my God, what a great painting, all this, nothing. so he can't buy him. And number three is he's not enamored by anybody. There is no celebrity he's going to meet where he's going to be like, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm.
Give him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Well, I think, but I think after he does what he does. But don't give it to him like Obama prematurely. But I think one thing with him, every single time I've heard him talk about Netanyahu, it's always the will see. And that's key. I hope so. Because we'll see is the pressures on who? You. Yeah. Bibi. Meaning you can't try to abuse this relationship.
Yeah.
We'll see. Yeah. We'll see what you're going to be doing. Delivered Syria. That's right. But that's. That's Biden. Right. That's not under his watch. That's under Biden's. I wonder. Yeah.
It's a very key moment.
Well, again, it goes back to seeing if there's one thing we learned from Trump in first term, he's not a guy that likes war. He's just not a fan of it. And how many people he said the other day in an interview,
after winning he's spoken personally did you hear how many world leaders he said he's spoken to he said he's spoken over a hundred world leaders already world leaders this is not jamie dimon this is not billionaires this is not jeff bezos this is not tim cook although he's met with them as well and look at trudeau canada all of a sudden you're getting stories about the fact that he may be stepping down and designing and all this stuff yeah
That was interesting, as well as Don't Forget Venezuela, which, of course, has a lot of oil. You've said some good things about Maduro sometimes. I've said good things about Chavez, yes. Why Maduro, though? I don't know Maduro. I met him a few times with Hugo. Listen, I'm... Again, I told you earlier, the Democrats were so hysterical about Trump that it turned me off.
If you look at how hysterical the United States has been on Maduro and the Venezuelan revolution, it turns me off because we've lied, cheated, put other people into, called them president. We played every dirty trick on Venezuela we can, starving them, suffering them. And they've withstood this as best as they could. And for that... They're the underdog, man.
They're the revolutionaries in this case, believe it or not. Yes, they're not a tyranny because people can leave. They leave all the time.
You don't think Maduro's a tyranny?
No, because they can leave whenever they want. They can walk across the border. Those people are there because there is a Bolivarian revolution.
He has destroyed so many people's lives.
And how many people did they make? I mean, you have to go back to the beginnings when he educated that population. He gave them a life. They didn't have a life until 1990.
See, that's why you're unique.
98, 99.
The reason why you're unique and it's tough to put you in a place is one minute you'll say one thing.
No, I'm for the people.
I know, but what I'm saying is this guy's not for his people. This guy's not for his people. Not the man I met. The inflation, lifestyle. The inflation has a lot to do with the United States too. The lifestyle, I don't know. Yeah, but it has to do with the United States. You're saying we put the sanctions on buying oil and doing all of that stuff.
And all the dirty tricks that go on with that.
He just lost the election to... How do you know? That's America's interpretation of it. Not necessarily. His interpretation is the fact that he won 51.2% or something like that.
You know who the other candidate was? Mario Corino Machado? Right-wing lady. She's pretty wild. She's pretty much the old way. She's very clear distinction going back to the old Venezuela. There's no hope there.
Yeah, I had her on the podcast.
Well, I haven't met her. Please don't fall for the propaganda.
I'll tell you this. Here's what I would tell you. Maduro, if you are able to go to Venezuela to do an interview with him, I'd love to join you. I'd love to talk to him.
Maybe I'll investigate that. I'd love to go talk to him. If Trump turns his capacity on Venezuela, then we're going to have another war. That's going to be ugly, too. We don't want that. Yeah, this is not a... Those are the two threats right now.
Iran and Venezuela. I have a lot of educated Venezuelans who are good family people. Yes, I know those people. Who escaped, who came here, who will say things about Maduro that is absolutely... Yes, I've heard them.
I've heard them. Believe me, I've heard that.
He's a socialist, essentially.
Not just any kind of socialist. He's a Bolivarian. Well, socialist. But I think that's the question. Is that really the best path forward at this point? And I think holding on to the socialist ideal feels antiquated.
Well, what do you think about Millet? I think he's working in his way. Absolutely. Everybody from Argentina tells me that. Not everybody. Some people are suffering, yes. But the truth is you can feel both ways.
Respectfully, you are weird, different, and I love it. They're not necessarily a contradiction. Well, I know you got a flight to catch. By the way, Sean, before we wrap up, where can people find All the President's Men?
Yeah, for sure. All the President's Men is on Tucker Carlson's network at this time. By the way, I thought it was ranked. Is this the one that was number one on Apple? No, not yet. We haven't gone to Apple. It's only here. My website, seanstone.info, has links to all my work, documentaries, books. Can we put all of that below Rob? That might be a good place that people can link to.
Okay, so go to your website, and then from there they can go directly to this. Exactly.
We'll put both of those links. They can find other documentaries and projects. Hollywood DC is a documentary. You're talking about the influence of... politics and the media, right? And journalism and Hollywood and film. We get into that in the hour long special. Actually, that's a good documentary as well.
Well, we're going to drive to that. And Sean, I've spent time with your dad. I hadn't spent time with you, but dude, you're freaking interesting as hell. And I really enjoyed talking to you as just talking to you. You know, it was interesting hearing your perspective. We know the great Oliver Stone, but this was phenomenal having both of you guys here. What a great conversation.
And, again, put the link below. Till next time. And maybe our next time we'll be in Venezuela sometime. Maybe so. Maybe we'll go to Venezuela together.
Maybe we'll come around.
You might not make it out, though, Patrick.
Well, then that would validate my point. I'd call Oliver. I'm like, Oliver, come get me. You've got to come get me.
I'm joking. Anyways, guys, God bless everybody. Take care. Bye-bye, bye-bye.