Oliver Stone.

• Author: Rampell, Ed
• Position: THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW - Interview

The Motorcycle Diaries is about young Ernesto Guevara's 1950s Latin America road trip, which eventually led him to Guatemala, where reformer Jacobo Arbenz was president. Three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone makes a similar sojourn in South of the Border with one significant difference: Today, to paraphrase Che, "one, two, three, many Arbenzes" have been created in South America. In this provocative documentary, Stone interviews the region's left- leaning leaders: Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazil's Lula da Silva, Argentina's Cristina and Néstor Kirchner, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, and Ecuador's Rafael Correa.

Stone's documentary highlights an essential if overlooked story: This is the world's only region where the Left has been successful since the Soviet bloc's collapse, as Latin American leftists swept to power and implemented far-reaching reforms. Stone has dared to make a "counter-myth" to the establishment's official line on these Latin American leaders, recording a sort of alternate people's history of the Southern Hemisphere.

One of Stone's biggest bêtes noires, the corporate-owned news media in both North and South America, comes in for a beating. Ecuador's Correa asserts, "Knowing the North American media, I would be more worried if they spoke well of me." Bolivia's first indigenous president, Morales, declares: "The media will always try to criminalize the fight against neoliberalism, colonialism, and imperialism. It's almost normal. The worst enemy I have is the media."

A Vietnam vet, Stone won Best Director Academy Awards for the 1986 and 1989 Indochina war movies Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July . But Stone has cinematically ventured to Latin America before. In 1986, he directed the Central American death squad drama Salvador , which took on Reagan's policies there and scored James Woods a Best Actor Oscar nomination and Stone a Best Writing nom. Stone co-wrote the 1996 musical Evita , starring Madonna as Argentina's Eva Peron and Antonio Banderas as Che. In 2003, the feature filmmaker turned to documentary, directing the Fidel Castro biopic Comandante , which Stone laments HBO has never aired, followed by 2004's Looking for Fidel , which is less flattering to Castro (the cable channel played that one).

On September 24, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps --Stone's sequel to 1987's Wall Street --opens, with Michael Douglas returning as Gordon "Greed Is Good" Gekko, the role that won Douglas a Best Actor...