Oliver Stone tries, tries again to help Iran
Filmmaker renews request for permission to make Ahmadinejad documentary
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Posted: August 17, 2007
1:16 p.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
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An Iranian news agency is reporting that American filmmaker Oliver Stone is offering to help Iran improve its image.
Stone, whose earlier request for permission to make a documentary about Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was summarily rejected, is renewing his request, according to filmmaker Alireza Sajjadpur.
"Stone's publicist referred to the bad image that the U.S. media has given to Islam and Islamic countries and said that the documentary could assist in countering such negative propaganda," Sajjadpur told the Mehr News Agency.
He said the new request has been submitted by Stone's publicist via e-mail to the president's office.
Mehr reported that Sajjadpur is consulted regularly by Ahmadinejad's art and cultural advisers and is secretary of Iran's Islamic Society of Artists. He told the agency that the western media and Hollywood are responsible for creating a bad image for Islam.
"We should see how Stone can manage to improve this image within such a bad atmosphere which has been created by the media," he said.
Javad Shamaqdari, identified as Ahmadinejad's art adviser, also told the agency, which was begun in 2003 to "provide accurate and up-to-the-minute information to the public" about Iran and the Islamic world, the president has not yet responded to the request.
As WND reported earlier, when his first request was rejected, Stone took a swipe at President Bush.
Ahmadinejad's media adviser had said that while Stone may be a member of the "opposition" in the U.S., he's "still part of the Great Satan."
Stone shot back.
"I've been called a lot of things, but never a 'Great Satan,'" the director said in a statement.
"I wish the Iranian people well, and I only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours."
As WND reported, an Iranian news service said Stone made the initial request a few months ago, and the Iranian president's office had studied it.
But the media adviser, Mahdi Kalhor, charged the U.S. and Britain have distorted Ahmadinejad's image.
"We believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture and art and is only used as a device," Kalhor said. "In the last two years, the global arrogance (the U.S. and Britain) has made a lot of effort to portray their own image of Ahmadinejad, not the one which exists in reality. Hollywood and other Zionist media react to phenomena they don't like through different processes."
A report by the Iranian Student News Agency suggested Stone had the credentials to make the film, noting he has made statements opposing "U.S. hostile policies" and already has experience with a documentary of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in his background.
Stone has won several Academy Awards, including best director for "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July." He won wide acclaim for his depiction of the heroic rescue of two police officers on 9/11 in "World Trade Center."
Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and repeatedly threatens Israel and the West, urges Iranians to prepare for the coming of an Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, by turning the country into an advanced Islamic society and by avoiding the corruption and excesses of the West.
As WND reported, some fear a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic could trigger the kind of global conflagration Ahmadinejad envisions will set the stage for the end of the world.
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