Sputnik - Oliver Stone�s films have won 12 Academy Awards including two for Best Director, as well as a bunch of Golden Globes and BAFTAs. His new focus is documentaries � on Venezuela, Ukraine, and Edward Snowden � all reflecting on the dubious activities of the US government both at home and abroad.


Oliver Stone, the award-winning American director and a relentless critic of US administrations, has called his country an �evil empire�.

The term was coined by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 when he was referring to the Soviet Union and its arms race with the United States.
Things have changed a lot since then, at least for Stone. �Empires fall. Let�s pray that this empire, these evil things... because we are the evil empire,� he said in an interview to RT. �What Reagan said about Russia is true about us.�
Stone � best known for his films�Platoon�and�Wall Street�� has long criticised US foreign policy, particularly its involvement in�armed conflicts in the Middle East.

On Hollywood's evolution

In the interview, he accused Hollywood producers of subjecting him to �economic censorship� after he diverted from the mainstream pro-war narrative.

He lamented: �Hollywood has changed since 2001. It has become more censored. The military, the CIA, the depictions of these organizations has been very favorable.�

�You can take the budgets down... let�s say you want to make a film criticising the American military, taking an Iraq war story or a horror story that recently happened in Iran,� he said. �You do those kinds of stories, it�s not going to happen.�
�Now, censorship isn�t something that exclusively affects the American film industry,��Stone noted.��I can read the American media but they all say the same things ... And you don�t hear from Iran and China, you don�t hear from [North] Korea, you don�t hear from Venezuela, you don�t get their point of view.�
On warmongering in US politics

He went on to call out neoconservative US hawks supporting overseas military campaigns: �They are warmongers, in the old-fashioned way of thinking.�

�There is no party in the United States, there is no democratic voice except third parties that are small, that would say �Why are we fighting wars?���he continued.

�I don�t hear it from any of the major candidates, except one or two on the Democratic side, but they don�t have a chance of winning.�

�In other words, Hillary Clinton � and Joe Biden are just as pro-war as any Republican Dick Cheney. They just do it in a different way. Maybe it shows you how locked up America is, how so far to the right America has gone that Hillary Clinton is recognised as a Democrat. I can�t believe it.�

�There�s no real left in America in power. It�s all right-wings fighting with right-wings. As [Russian President Vladimir] Putin said in the interviews I did with him, �It doesn�t make a difference who is President of the United States.��