Oliver Stone’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t just talking heads. According to the Washington Post, Stone was working on The Putin Interviews, a documentary that will air next month on Showtime, when the Snowden filmmaker screened Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The 1964 political satire, which Putin had never seen, is a comedy about nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. If you’re wondering if Vlad, a former KGB officer, found Peter Sellers and George C. Scott to be a laugh riot like the AFI does (and really most movie buffs of discerning taste), the Putin Interviews will include a segment of the two watching the cinematic classic together.
While Stone made a name for himself with features like Platoon and Nixon, as a documentarian he previously interviewed two other world leaders with adversarial relations with the United States, Cuban president Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The four-hour taped interview covers Putin’s relationship with various American politicians. It is scheduled to air over four consecutive nights starting June 12.