Joseph Gordon Levitt: 'Only Oliver Stone could have made Snowden'
Actor Joseph Gordon Levitt insists no one was a better pick to direct the Edward Snowden biopic than Oliver Stone.
The star plays the exiled U.S. computer expert-turned-securities whistleblower in the new movie and he can't imagine making the film with anybody else, because only Stone has the nerve to take on the lawmakers and politicians who decided Snowden was public enemy number one for exposing the surveillance techniques of the National Security Agency.
"Oliver is the only filmmaker who could have done this," he tells WENN. "When you think about it, he's the only director in American cinema on a big mainstream scale, large production Hollywood entertaining movies, who is willing to outright criticize the government. That's patriotism.
"I love this country and what it stands for but the government is doing something that goes against our principles and we should all take a look at this. There really isn't another filmmaker who has done that so pointedly and so courageously as Oliver Stone. If you're gonna tell the Edward Snowden story, he's really the only guy to do it."
But the Natural Born Killers director admits he initially wasn't sold on the idea of making the biopic following a meeting with Snowden in Moscow, Russia.
"During my first visit with him he was wary and I was wary and I didn't know if I wanted to get involved," the filmmaker explains. "These contemporary stories are so difficult because things happen; lawsuits out of the blue, some new news, the current blows another way. We didn't know. It takes a year, two years to make a movie; in this case two and a half, so we didn't know what would happen. It could've blown up in our face. It still can.
"I had that option to go that James Bond road and have him (Snowden) alluding pursuers in Russia. You can have him sneaking back and hiding in the United States in Kansas or something. There's all kinds of storylines you can follow and you can tell the story in that way and make somewhat similar points.
"But, as I got to know him and went back two more times to Moscow, I felt like he would cooperate and was giving us very interesting information. So I brought Kieran Fitzgerald, my co-writer back and he shared a lot with us and he trusted us and he took us all the way through. I went nine times to Moscow and it was very helpful."
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