Oliver Stone, Super Genius

The America-hating, Chavez-loving loon makes a groundbreaking discovery. Nobody wants to watch movies glorifying Hugo Chavez and bashing America.

Sharp as a cueball, this one.

U.S. director Oliver Stone fears his documentary about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of American foreign policy, will struggle to find a distributor at home.

"South of the Border," which had its world premiere at the Venice film festival this week, portrays Chavez as a champion of the poor, and includes interviews with the leaders of Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador and Cuba.

He focuses on how a generation of leftist leaders is seeking increasing independence from the International Monetary Fund and, by extension, U.S. economic policy, which Stone criticizes in the movie.

South of the Border also seeks to demonstrate how Chavez has been unfairly demonized by the U.S. media which has cast him as a dangerous maverick who is a threat to security.

Stone, 62, told Reuters in an interview that he anticipated a struggle getting the movie to a U.S. audience, noting how previous films made about Central or South America had shared the same fate.

"'Salvador' with Jimmy Woods had a hard distribution path in America and 'Comandante' with Mr. (Fidel) Castro was taken off the air two weeks before it was going to be on cable, HBO," he said in a joint interview with Chavez late on Monday.

"'Looking for Fidel' was shown, but limited. It's always a problem and this is not just me.

"Most films that deal honestly with south of the border issues run into this logjam. It's an American complex about the back yard, the south, it's been going on for a century."

Stone wouldn't know honesty if it crashed on his head. Like most Hollywood elites his smug condescension and hatred for his country blinds him to the obvious: He's far out of the mainstream and people just don't care to pay money to be insulted. Sure, he'll be able to find an audience in America-hating hot spots like Berkeley, Ann Arbor and the White House, but good luck beyond that.