Stone’s approach to Putin: ‘Ask around the question’
Director’s ‘Interviews’ aims for subtle touch, not ‘gotcha moments’
“If you ask a hard question — ‘Did you or didn’t you?’ — you’re not going to get results.” Oliver Stone
If you’re looking for an interrogation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Putin Interviews may not be for you.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone ( Platoon, JFK, Snowden), who has interviewed world leaders such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, believes his conversational approach elicits more information from the Russian leader during the interpreter-assisted interviews for Showtime. The interviews air in one-hour segments on four consecutive nights starting Monday (9 ET/PT).
“I wasn’t trying for a gotcha moment,” Stone says, taking issue with the more confrontational approach of NBC’s Megyn Kelly in a Putin interview that aired June 4. “If you ask a hard question — ‘Did you or didn’t you?’ — you’re not going to get results. But if you ask around the question ... often through that softer approach ... things are revealed that tell us more about himself and his decision process.”
And Putin did talk: about his daughters, their families and his hockey and judo skills. But he also made comments about women and gay people that viewers might find objectionable. “I’m not a woman, so I don’t have bad days,” Putin says, explaining there are “certain natural cycles” which men “probably have as well, just less manifested.”
After Putin says there are no restrictions in Russia against gay people, including in the military, Stone asks what would happen if submarine personnel had a problem showering with a gay crew member. “I prefer not to go to shower with him,” Putin says, laughing. “Why provoke him?”
Putin closes the second episode with a jaw-dropping cliffhanger, declaring Russia innocent of meddling: “Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere with the domestic affairs of other countries,” a claim disputed by former FBI director James Comey in his Senate Intelligence Committee testimony Thursday.
Stone, who met Putin during one of his nine visits to Russia to speak with accused classified-documents leaker Edward Snowden, explored many topics, filming about 25 hours of interviews over four visits between July 2015 and last February, shortly after President Trump’s inauguration.
Much of the first two hours made available for preview traces Russian history over the past 30 years, from the fall of the Soviet Union and Boris Yeltsin’s tumultuous presidency to former KGB officer Putin’s political rise and consolidation of power. Stone says he hopes to convey Putin’s and Russia’s perspective on issues viewers usually see from a Western viewpoint.
“Chapter 1 was breaking the ice and the earlier days. Chapter 2 goes deeper, bringing us up to modern times with Snowden,” says Stone, filmed with Putin against the backdrops of the Kremlin, Putin’s wooded dacha outside Moscow, in a former czar’s throne room and at a skating rink where the president plays hockey. “The whole idea is to see the way his mind works. ... You get a feeling for his body lan- guage, how he is as a person. You can talk to him instead of making him into a bogeyman.”
Stone says that in the final two episodes, he addresses Putin’s thoughts on Trump and U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment that Putin oversaw a concerted Russian hacking effort during the 2016 presidential election.
“I pressed him as much as I could in different settings, but I was more interested in finding his explanation: What is the truth he sees? If I can get there, that’s a big step,” Stone says.
Putin didn’t like all of Stone’s questions, which weren’t submitted for approval, but “he was always able to control his temper. He’s learned through many years in office how to negotiate.”