Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has turned down Oliver Stone’s request to make a documentary about him. Seems that Stone, despite being a popular whipping boy for idiot conservatives in America, is still too Satanic for our Persian enemies-in-waiting. Says the LA Times:
"It is true that [Stone] is known as a dissident in the U.S., but he is still part of the Great Satan," media advisor Mehdi Kalhor told the Fars News Agency, according to a report on the English-language section of Baztab, a popular Iranian news site run by rivals of Ahmadinejad.
Apparently Ahmadinejad said that he would only allow Stone to follow him around for a documentary if Bush allowed an Iranian filmmaker to do the same with him. Considering that the Bush administration doesn’t even like dealing with our homegrown media, you can imagine that was a non-starter.
"We believe that U.S. cinema is devoid of culture and that their art is only a stratagem," Kalhor said, according to the LA Times. He must have seen a DVD of Crash.
Actually, it’s likely that Kalhor has seen many American films – bootlegs of US movies are very popular in Iran. According to the LA Times, Iranian state-controlled TV runs Steven Seagal movies during holidays. These people could be tougher foes than we had previously imagined.