Vladimir Putin Watched ‘Dr. Strangelove’ With Oliver Stone
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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.
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