Vladimir Putin Watched ‘Dr. Strangelove’ With Oliver Stone
Image by Getty Images
By Talya Zax May 3, 2017
If you were given exclusive access to Russian president Vladimir Putin, how would you make use of that time?
Filmmaker Oliver Stone had an interesting answer to that question: Show him Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”
Yes, really.
As The Washington Post reported, Stone, interviewing Putin for the upcoming Showtime feature “The Putin Interviews,” showed the former KGB agent Kubrick’s famous Cold War satire. Putin, apparently, had never previously seen the film.
To learn how he responded, we’ll have to wait for “The Putin Interviews” — which will air in four hour-long segments beginning June 12 — to catch scenes of the screening. (Stone previously interviewed Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, both leaders who had strained relationships with the United States. As far as we know, with them, he kept “Dr. Strangelove” in the vaults.)
And what would Kubrick think of the rendezvous? We’ll never know. But it’s a good excuse to return to “Dr. Strangelove” — if only, you know, to look for clues.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
