Me i would test myself against them and i did i didnt complain when i was there i got wounded twice i mean i did a lot of fighting i saw a lot of combat. When i brought it on myself i wasnt whining about it but i felt like i was lucky i survived and if you saw platoon you remember the end of it i found a meaning to my life in that war which is to say i really go on and teach what i know to others good teach goodness and teach experience teach the good things of life that i can garner that i can turn on and thats what ive done to the best of my ability one thing ive done which makes me very proud so i documented the war before you people knew our give me about vietnam through other sources and when it came to films and pictures it was the pain of the american saying in the in the deer hunter but he do say that he killed people and we had maybe stop the rape of van demis nels but you came back knowing the lie i just want to skip a lot on a bed to midnight express because the Prison Industrial Complex is something we talk a lot about here on going underground fact we say often that the United States imprisons per capita more people than stalin or mao why was midnight express not just about what happens in turkey if if mr a new one happens to be watching today it tried to make their point unsuccessfully at the turn but when i wrote midnight express years later this was in 1978 i come back from vietnam in 68 late 68 i had been thrown in jail myself for federal smuggling in san diego california. Right after i came in to be i was carrying no some marijuana from from vietnam because it was good and i was smoking it on a regular basis i learned about that over there. And i was busted with it and thrown it into federal slowly charged very serious but increasingly i was with 5000 young people blacks spanish panic americans and a few white people mostly old. Drug crimes nonviolent but they were being severely dont with at the time it was the beginning the very beginning of the war on drugs nixon had just been elected he handed clear that war yet but he was about to so we were the 1st wave that i could see the in the injustice of it these these kids most of them were coming from rough lives they didnt want to go to vietnam you know they they were boarded at the best of their ability but many of them were drafted the way that they were trying to make extra money on the side that was the way to do it there was a system that i saw in america which and of course i was lucky because my father got me out of jail with the with with money there was there was class there because yeah you came from a relatively wealthy new family meant your or your speech at the Golden Globes which you recount here which alas i guess is not on video. Some people may dont know that the amazing speech by tony montana and scarface where he talks about the corruption of society it was partly inspired by your own speech on the goal who were with chair of the film people he liked said no you cant go that far you cant talk like that my anger changed from there because i thought hollywood was hypocritical about. See at that time in the 1970 s. There was a lot of cop shows police shows on the air they were very popular successful and they were very simplistic the drugs were bad cops were good people were going to jail and i was protesting announces them and there were a lot of those producers were in the room they were making money off this American Television has prospered on the idea of fun foresight years about the media about criminals and doing sins it resulted ultimately in the Clinton White house and the crime bill thats put 2000000 people behind bars most of them not most of them but a significant amount or a black man Joe Joe Biden of course joe biden being the leading democratic contender for president proud path of his mass incarceration record. Joe biden goes along with it with the crowd he is thinking is not original in this regard. Even bill clinton did so i mean and Hillary Clinton they created a lot of his problems but thats another story but my anger was based on the hypocrisy you know tony montana suggested that you know drugs in america has the biggest appetite for drugs you know why because i think where theres a spiritual. Spiritual shallowness about america creates that need for drugs on film i felt victim to it too and not to be hypocrites and it was. Definitely i i had my problems with it my ups and downs with it including cocaine after midnight express and winning the oscar i made to him which i think is an interesting film to watch its with Michael Caine who was excellent in the film but it didnt succeed the box of who said i was i allowed myself to be shamed by the general into jail into money period there thats essential about scarface and itll be longer because i dont know whether theres any truth in it that some prints of it that are released dont have the female castro bit at the beginning and some people try to appropriate it you talk a bit about how well again you nearly lost your life in research for or for scarface but how in allowed you in a way to do salvador because some people saw it as a you as a person who understood violence and others especially in miami saw you as a as an apologist for female castro because it was a film about the impossibility of the American Dream arguably. Yes. Yes scarface was a was a take a satire almost on the american materialism that was prevalent at the time tony montana comes to this country and he is a free man you know thats the way hes a gangster but hes a free man and for that reason i think he was a admired and appreciated by a certain class of people. When the film 1st came out the white or it was either your beat or whatever you want to call it did not like that show not reviewing well the crowd that came in new york city where i was there were black puerto rican latino and white drug or white druggies id say you know that was the initial audience for the show it only grew through time. Because its the dialogue stood out because now to chinos performance that out and out and Brian De Palma made it really wonderful still grander like a grand opera you were saying you know no i couldnt get off the route that i was in love with violence that i and i argued back in the book you know that i was exploiting violence in midnight express and in scar face and this and that kind of the barber conan the barbarian era the dragon i understand and i write about that i wouldnt i didnt direct the films but i really put on paper real violence in my head i mean i have seen a lot of violence in that time and get another version wearing 2 and i was trying to and in the prison i tried to reflect the real life that i saw i just couldnt as they were there were scenes and you mentioned i mean for those in the know tell you a fascination in washington d. C. Of the high end as ambassador in washington some are smuggled in to scarface how is it that i wouldnt have any way a person voted reagan would you dead didnt know what was going on in Central America and then end up creating salvador argue me one of the greatest films about u. S. Intervention in the western hemisphere. When i researched scarface in 1903 i did not i did not go i did not know Central America because it the connection was from colombia to miami so it was not about politics for me at that point i did throw in because i had a political bone in my body the end emerge from 76 the chilean. Ambassador it was a very outspoken critic of the of the regime in chile which was fascist eat was boned and killed in a car 3 blocks from the white house or so it was outrageous so in my mind i made i combined that with tony much and it being the it was supposed to kill him but doesnt kill him because tony has a conscience in the end about family and so it becomes an involved story the message didnt get out and it wasnt understood so what im saying is when i did i dropped out of the business essentially after 980 i was you know i was dead no water i was just a screenwriter living in a broader in new york so i wanted to get a make a movie i didnt want to so i deal with hollywood i wanted to write make this movie salvatore and it was based on now i had gone to salvador with Richard Boyle who was a great journalist but an oddball journalist to oh it was intro to countries hed been in lebanon and in ireland hed been everywhere nicaragua salvador and he had a story in salvador with a woman and it was a fascinating thread for the movie he took me down there i saw enormous amount of corruption i saw a pathetic situation in Central America where all the reformers teachers the unions were being busted were being oppressed they were the ruling class was old aristocratic families owning all and youre talking about the eightys and you know as he was coming from ecuador from bolivia the whole people had to mars johnson he recognizes in venezuela. Maybe they havent seen your film that film salvador has anything changed since those days you frank. Im not up to date on but it seems not it seems that whoever is in worse shape said i think what Hillary Clinton did the intervention was a disaster and why does america keep intervening in the wrong for the wrong side in all these countries is a very good question for history and we will be we will be held to account but going back to the south this sounded or story we got there still may i mean i got into the fascist Party Headquarters arena major bob who it was responsible i believe for the murder of our tradition a mirror i go almost to meet him i was supposed to meet him but something happened but they gave me their cooperation because they love scarface in other words i was getting the car operation of the desk lights because they loved scarface for having balls and being what they thought was a fascist youre almost done ill stop you there after the break more from all of us stone on intellectual neoliberalism an alleged attempt by Henry Kissinger to stop platoon from ever being made and why his next project where turns to have j. F. K. Assassination all of them all coming up in part 2 of going underground. In a troubled 19 seventies a group of killers rampage through parts of Northern Ireland that was coordinated loyalist attacks the technion the catholic population in belfast tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes a mob was striking to put these attacks was that the r. U. C. The Police Actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing it they were active participants and the purging of whole streets in belfast at the time more than a 100 innocent civilians were. As the you can see in your arms and we found out more i was surprised about the extent and of the cranes which the killers and i was involved in some cases the killers wouldnt. To be named. I think it went to the very very top i think it is crossed the water where politicians knew. And gave the go ahead. Seemed wrong. But all roles just all. Begin to shape out these days because as a kid and engagement because of the trail. When so many find themselves worlds apart. Just to look for common ground. There is no such thing as money and there is no inflation and there is not deflate and the only thing there is to think about are Interest Rates and Interest Rate a part of the value to feel money is a poor girlishly goal in that you can keep Interest Rates near 0 so that if you are a white guy like on wall street your cost of borrowing is 0 if youre a black guy living in the ghetto their cost of borrowing is 2000 percent its called Interest Rate apart and its practiced right here in america and all over the world they get no a high Interest Rates if you dont mark borrowing money to 0 percent of you living in the ghetto and thats. Welcome back youre watching going underground lockdown edition im still here with all of a stone discussing his memoir chasing light i mean if anyone thinks its easy making movies this book isnt off of them because he clearly shows it isnt but how how seriously should we take the accusation that the military Industrial Complex interferes with the distribution of movies as you seem to allege you dont going to very much detail but you talk about kissinger there in the shadows Henry Kissinger xander hey i mean they actually acted to interfere with you know me dont really think they did because well its a 2 term story im in the middle of the end of my career so to speak i want to be can you ward so what im 38 thirties its 3839 they take everything and it will not resources and it was a mint. To make this movie for no money now this is very difficult because 93 speaking courts i mean 2 countries see us. Tricks or charges murder. Assassinations civil riots im shy to include everything a 3000000. 00 budget and i keep it in started that started a 300000. 00 budget it would have been a disaster for me it would be wiped out thank god it was an englishman who came in it was john daly with him do you read salvador and put 2 and he asked me literally which film do you want to do 1st of all or he was even a boxing promoter at the alley fight in the congo no american studio would touch the show either as a script to produce or as a Distribution Company of john put up all the money nobody would do it this is disgusting to seize on the studio to which all the studios would say well we were an interest in the film an artistic merit had you know ive never tell anyone not just its a past but this you know if you think about it politically this is a film with revolutionary sympathies which was totally against i guess the American Dream real revolutionary sympathies where the left wing were the heroes of the film. And nobody would touch it it was a painful experience painful i cant tell you they turned off the projector in the middle of the film it was too violent too sexy too everything the film only got out because john stuck with Johns Company distributed and not not to Great Success or anything but he also at the same time said oliver go to the philippines make it to him he had that amount of confidence in me i went to the philippines on the back of salvador and i made this low budget movie little bit more money with the best of my ability to get it for 56000000. 00 as opposed to 3 and nobody expected anything i mean it was i didnt i was happy to make it but you know theres something very disturbing in this book when you talk about salvador the reception when you say a 1000 or didnt make him care this side of this bond and i think one for serving as you say a creeping intellectual neoliberalism in the way in the 1980s i thought offense or as identity politics. Through an idea of what what constitutes politics just explain that a little because of course that debate is here about Council Culture and all the rest of it then it isnt the culture of George Orwell that didnt inspire you but theres Something Else going on that the violence and so on get confused in some of you you may mean we saw jonathan racist even though what youre saying is actually anti imperialist well mixed as frequent roselles and i was a traitor to my class. The i dear this is a speculation i was making in the book about europe changing because the old europe that i knew from Charles De Gaulle grew up a lot of the time in france it was much more independent they were separate countries they were not into a Common Market to go it was very independent and tough with america he threw the he exited nato as you remember so when he escaped along and meter or was a socialist but you could feel i feel that there was. When reagan came into office in america that was a breakpoint that was a beginning of a reaction to the liberalism socalled of jimmy carter etc and john kennedy and reagan took it back to a worship of the market in any cost get rid of the unions get rid of regulation same as trump kind of thing and free up the whole thing it would do Better Business and everybody be happy well its a nice idea and to some degree my father of course believe that too but not to the point of reagan my father you mentioned him earlier did believe in a regulated capitalism and he would not have approved of this breakout that happened with reagan in fact he called reagan a dope and my father started the changes and as a result even and i said our man and now he thought reagan was miss and was green back the cold war when there was no need to bring back the cold war it once said you know what difference does it make who got who how many arms you have when youre in a soviet when a soviet nuclear sub can be off long island with one you know and do so much damage to our country its just it doesnt make sense to build keep building up his arms surplus to tune was also had many problems on its way to be made daily said my ass but it almost been made by another producer 983. 00 and it was with there at that point the producer was putting up his own money 3000000. 00 to make the movie and all thats thats not a lot for platoon and the distributor his deal was with m. G. M. And on the board of m. G. M. Was Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig i do i believe that because either they were consulted or not but whatever happened the distributor said no to the film and this was outrageous because he was making films like blue velvet with which is very risky all kinds of other films were being made that time with the video revolution. I film was thrown out so i had only you have to realize rambo was being made. Chuck norris missing in action we were refighting the vietnam war going back to save our p. O. W. s that was a big issue back which is i think totally misplaced and that the American People did not really get a true picture of yeah it was like the idea was we could have won the war if we really wanted we had our hands tied behind my back our back like like hitler said about the germans in world war one was the same. Me i was living in a benighted but knighted Society Communication was not possible they would even release life so thats how desperate i was thats why john daly is a dedicated the book to turn down that hes hes an english lower class guy who says you know were going to do what we do and i think we need that spirit really need it especially now when no ones going to do anything with any guts because they dont want to see the the media in this country which is doing the governments work for them. Because jamie helped a banana but i lucina for marcus on lost to ampara bella so many different ties between you i would say and they have and the left wing european ville making money didnt really understand you perhaps when it came to top gun he wanted you to direct top gun is a term no oh yes not directed to write to write it in 1903 you know that you want to be 2 i couldnt do it i had gone i wrote bore the 4th of july and put to that point and i was in ron kopeks corner i had made a film but it was no way i was going to do talk and i was heartbroken because it was a lot of money i see in the book you worked also with robert bolt famous from arthur amy i dont have aagot and he tells you in this book how terrorism can be used by the state to to change the minds of people within within a. Fate i dont know whether thats premonition of snowden later on when impact and bolt have on your thinking when it came to most minority i spent it was sold to his company or a company was partnered he brought me to it they brought me to los angeles and i met with Robert Robert love my treatment my treatment was based on a story id heard back there in 7374 of the patty hearst kidnapping that the people which in the person who led the gang that kidnapped many years donald. To freeze i believe was the name was a black man but it ive heard the story that hed been in the f. B. I. Informant and i went with the idea that he was a provocateur one of those people and its this is common in america where you find an under cover agent working to create. Still chaos for example like kent state there was always this rumor its been strongly supported that there was the 1st shots were fired by an undercover f. B. I. Guy who worked with him he may not have been an f. B. I. Agent but he was certainly associated with these stories about so thats when you have to be careful when you have these chaos situations is its very much in the interest of the state to start chaos to start fires to start this concept of destruction because it brings the wrath of the public on the demonstrators and before you know it the government can do what they want with the damage it is going on and to some degree in america right and so you understand the robert will pick up on it right away he was a dedicated much more socialist than i was and the cover of never actually came out as i for as far as i and found i should just say by the way if any one thing in portland is full of national provocateur though here were having an inquiry into just what he went talking about by going to how you know he has so decide who havent had twice and you see it in the book a sudden leatham comes up and some money and then here all ready to go and then stopped at the last minute a couple of times it broke my heart i mean each time i cant tell you you know youve got to have a strong resolution to stay in this business you have to suffer or you take the pain because it hurts and even if you succeed and you make a film and then it gets burned at the box office you youre going to have a heart fashions change all the time this is popular as the popular and its in the long run what matters i love watching movies i watch old movies a lot because they last i like movies and last i love the long range the long picture but thats not economically a viewpoint the. Most producers have because theyre going to make money in the short run so its a tough business ive run into a lot more heartbreaks but i was steeled for it i was disciplined by the early years and thats why i ended book at 40 i said this dream was real honest and i appreciated it very much because i knew this i knew the last side of it the rest is a hell of a story as you know its a lot of other things happen i know nearly a threesome between gore and allen make jagger and you you the fan are about all 3 lethal documentary on j. F. K. Most people new generations are they as concerned im not sure but it is it is your contention that based on evidence the cia willing to the assassination of john f. Kennedy. Pretty a lot of evidence when we get into it its a 4 hour documentary its a legacy piece i dont care if the young generation doesnt care they should care because it was the beginning of a period in American History when the intelligence agencies essentially grown brag grasp the reins of government and if you look behind the scenes ever since the intelligence agencies have a lot to do with what happened in a look at their role in the in vietnam only i mean all the misinformation all allies out of vietnam came from them and also in iraq twice afghanistan theres no end to what theyre going to mess is they get us into syria certainly and libya doris goes on and on you know its getting worse when i 1st talked to you years ago i thought it would get better and i cant believe its getting worse or hasnt caught why has it got better because obviously dollar jump of elected on a socalled and hand to mention effect if hes pulling troops out of germany or not but he did exactly that war in france and anything like that or any recent like it was for that but i was dead wrong he cant do anything about it because its a system as mr putin says documentary said the american president they come they go weve seen eating 5 of them now or for them 5 he said. It doesnt make a difference we have to pollinate russia has a policy what we have in america is a changing spectrum of personalities we demonize our enemies which is not a policy of is horrible castro is horrible horrible we whoever in our shipping is the next villain you know who are the villain of the day is pure or well whats important is the military Industrial Complex must still want must be budgeted in anything besides that is unimportant including the welfare of the American People that therefore one of your favorite shows of the last season will be back for use he is going to govern the fairfield id like to show you dont miss an interview and join the other guy by following up with an instagram and sound cloud saying. Throughout its history the hardest with the selfproclaimed Islamic State terrorist group have uprooted up 230000 following us from all over the world to fight for. What purpose in war. Thousands of russian citizens left their country to join the terrorists often bringing wives and children with them. As a good. Morning to the. Hundreds of children and windows were held captive all disappeared. From my path. Back in russia those children families wait. Has changed american lives but pharmaceutical companies have a miraculous solution. Based drugs to people who are chronic pain and believe that their opioid prescription is working for them on the remedy be set to. Price at the. Grocery dependency and addiction to opiates to long term use that really isnt scientifically justified and ill study actually suggest that. The long term effects might not just be the absence of benefit but actually that they might because we want to. Ask about. Us republicans report physical harassment by black lives much leaving the Partys National convention yet those very same politicians sponsored laws to stop the abuses of the big the rest of. Us who looked out not to be a sin germany slab authorities reluctance to allow their rallies over supposed social distancing fears well having no problem with the huge black lives much of demonstrations. And covering this to public alarm as the pentagon develops an Artificial Intelligence project to replace generals in life or death decisions we put that but