Oliver Stone compares cancel culture to witch hunts, blasts NFL as 'arrogant,' and says Hillary Clinton wants to be a man

Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director Oliver Stone revealed some eye-opening observations on a variety of topics in a new interview. Stone condemned cancel culture, sneered at the NFL, and delivered his opinion on female politicians such as Hillary Clinton.

Stone reminisced about his film, "Any Given Sunday," a 1999 movie about professional football players, but the NFL refused to give Stone its blessing to use any aspect related to the National Football League. "Any Given Sunday" was reportedly delayed four times and production crews were locked out of NFL stadiums.

"They (the NFL) are arrogant, very rich people who close down any dissent, so I had to change uniforms and names … but they got the point," Stone told the Independent.

This isn't the first time that Stone has bashed the NFL for not allowing him to use the league in his sports film.

"At that time, the commissioner of football [Paul Tagliabue] was an a* **hole. God, what an arrogant a**hole, I'm sorry," Stone told The Ringer in 2019. "The NFL's attitude is: 'This is our domain and no one can f*** with us.' They're all private and they have billionaire owners and they're pretty tough. They didn't want anything to do with the movie. It was like the Pentagon on 'Platoon.'"

"The NFL didn't want people to see that these football players are just like the rest of society," former NFL tight end Jamie Williams told Complex in 2015. "These are guys that do too many drugs or spend their money unwisely, but then they go out on Sunday and are gladiators. None of these guys are boy scouts, not even the quarterbacks."

The 74-year-old Oscar-winning director of "Platoon" and "Wall Street" also talked about female politicians, where he made an eyebrow-raising remark about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. When asked about the #MeToo movement and the "challenging of old gender norms," Stone replied, "It cuts both ways, though."

"There are reasons for patriarchy through the centuries," Stone responded. "Tribes tend to have a strong leader."

"You need strong leaders, but I do see the feminine impulse as being important, especially when situations become too militant," Stone said of female politicians. "The feminine impulse, I'm talking about the maternal impulse not the Hillary Clinton/Margaret Thatcher version of feminism. They're men. They're not women. I don't want women in politics who want to be men. If a woman is a woman, she should be a woman and bring her maternalism. It's a leavening influence."

Stone is asked about Julian Assange, the imprisoned founder of WikiLeaks.

"He has two children. He can't even touch them or see them. It's barbaric," said the filmmaker who has a cozy relationship to Vladimir Putin. "It indicates America is declining faster than we know. It is just cutting off dissent."

Stone is asked about cancel culture, to which he replied, "Of course I despise it."

"I am sure I've been canceled by some people for all the comments I've made…. it's like a witch hunt," the filmmaker said. "It's terrible."

"American censorship in general, because it is a declining, defensive, empire, it (America) has become very sensitive to any criticism," Stone claimed, and then cited the banning of former President Donald Trump from nearly all significant social media platforms. "What is going on in the world with YouTube and social media. Twitter is the worst. They've banned the ex-President of the United States. It's shocking!"

Stone is the latest celebrity to rail against cancel culture. Previously, Joe Rogan, Sean Penn, Kevin Hart, Chris Rock, and Jon Lovitz have warned how toxic cancel culture is for society.