Moscow, February 3 (RHC)-- Award-winning American film director Oliver Stone has said the United States is “the Evil Empire."  He recalled that in 1983, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.”  The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

“Empires fall.  Let’s pray that this empire, these evil things... because we are the evil empire,” Stone said in an interview with RT broadcast on Thursday.  “What Reagan said about Russia is true about us.”

Stone has long criticized U.S. foreign policy, particularly its interventions in Latin America and wars in the Middle East.  He accused Hollywood producers of subjecting him to “economic censorship” after he stopped making movies highlighting the mainstream pro-war narrative.

“Hollywood has changed since 2001.  It has become more censored.  The military, the CIA, the depictions of these organizations has been very favorable,” he said.

“You can take the budgets down... let’s say you want to make a film criticizing the American military, taking an Iraq war story or a horror story that recently happened in Iran,” he said.  “You do those kinds of stories, it’s not going to happen.”

“Now, censorship isn’t something that exclusively affects the American film industry,” Stone noted. “I can read the American media but they all say the same things ... And you don’t hear from Iran and China, you don’t hear from [North] Korea, you don’t hear from Venezuela, you don’t get their point of view.”

"The CIA realized – after World War II, basically – they [went into] the business, the news business, they put their people, their agents at newspapers, at magazines and television."  He called neoconservative U.S. hawks that support overseas military campaigns “warmongers.”