American University professor Peter Kuznick isn’t thrilled about the title of his new project, a documentary series to air on Showtime.
“Secret History of America” conjures up conspiracies, says Kuznick, who created the series with Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone.
“This is solid, serious history. It’s not going to be entirely secret to historians of the last 60s years,” Kuznick says.
The new series will discern the patterns of the country’s recent past, like why America became the world’s policeman and how national security evolved over time.
“It goes beyond partisan divides into how intelligence capabilities have been systematically downgraded,” he says.
The project isn’t the first time Kuznick and Stone have teamed up. The professor says a screenplay he worked on with Stone has yet to be funded.
“We’ve got other projects we hope to develop sooner,” he says. And Stone has repeatedly dropped in on Kuznick’s class built around Stone’s historical dramas.
Kuznick also plans a follow-up series to “History,” one focusing on unsung American heroes like Vice President Henry Wallace, a progressive hero. It’s one way to counter potential charges that the Showtime series will be too harsh on the U.S.
The professor says working with Stone through the years has taught him a great deal about the often controversial filmmaker. Stone tries to push Kuznick on verifying the information in their jointly created projects.
“He’ll say, ‘that’s pretty out there, Peter. We have to multiple source this,’” to make sure its absolutely supportable,” he says. “I want this to fly with [other historians]. They may not agree with our interpretations.”
That will come in handy given Stone’s recent press statements concerning “Secret History.”
The director told a gaggle of press members the series would put Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in context.
“Oliver’s comments were completely misinterpreted to sound as if we were going to humanize or contextualize Hitler and Stalin so as to mitigate their crimes and atrocities. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Kuznick says.
What Stone meant, he says, was that the show will reveal them as “the product of social forces that were set in motion by various causes not simply the product of personal pathology or disembodied evil,” he explains.
“We will have nothing positive to say about Hitler,” he adds.
The show’s portrait of Stalin will include not just his “murderous brutality” but the role Russia played as a key U.S. ally in World War II.
“I expect to be challenged on some of our critical interpretations of U.S. history, but being accused of being apologists for Hitler truly boggles the mind,” he says.
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Stone has described himself as a “guerrilla historian”, particularly after doing “JFK”. If you examine that bit of “secret history” historical film making you find it full of distortions, hearsay and contradictions to fact. Even so, it had a huge influence on subsequent politics by energizing the left with myths of a vast conspiracy. Which undoubtedly was his intention all along.
Clearly, Stone is going for round 2 of the “JFK” effect. Since that movie has been well exposed as a fraud it would be necessary to bring “historians” on board to do the dirty work.
With Stone you don’t need to know much more than he’s a drooling fanboy of Chavez and Castro. If he recommends any kind of politics, the best course would be to run away from it.