Hearts of stone: Putin’s Hollywood pals

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Steven Seagal, Vladimir Putin

Back in April, Buzzfeed ran a useful and perceptive study of the use Vladimir Putin makes of his useful American-showbiz stooges. The focus was on washed-up lowbrow-movie headliner Steven Seagal, whose friendship (Buzzfeed called it a “bromance”) with Putin we’ve already rehearsed here, but the insights were widely applicable.

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Sharon Stone with Putin and unidentified girl

“Putin’s unlikely bromance with Seagal,” wrote Max Seddon and Rosie Gray, “speaks to a core tenet of his rule: that political power is star power, and the president is the biggest celebrity of all. Under Putin, politics has become a carefully stage-managed TV show where spectacle takes the place of substance.” Seddon and Gray quoted Brookings Institution scholar Fiona Hill as saying that Putin “plays an action hero as president.”

Hence the systematic “ferrying” of “foreign celebrities to Moscow to meet Putin, staging displays of his virility and star pull.” Case in point: a December 2010 event in St. Petersburg that was billed as a benefit concert for children with cancer. That night Putin not only mingled with the likes of Sharon Stone, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner, Paul Anka, Gérard Depardieu, and Mickey Rourke, but also (sort of) sang “Blueberry Hill” and (sort of) played a Russian song on a piano.

Did the stars all show up out of the goodness of their hearts? Not according to Shaun Walker of the Independent, who, noting that “Russia is fertile ground for celebrities of all hues to make pots of extra cash,” underscored that the star who’s “been popping up more than any other of late” is Stone:

At anything Russia-related these days, her grinning face seems to put in an appearance, like some kind of recurring nightmare, supporting whatever it is that the particular junket is about. A trusted source told me about the prices to bring different “entertainers” to Russia for events – Stone is one of the more expensive, reportedly coming in at as much as $250,000 a time. But pay that, and, calendar permitting, she’ll likely be there.

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Putin onstage with Sharon Stone, Paul Anka, Goldie Hawn, and others

It has to be said that Stone gives plenty of bang for the buck: at the purported child-cancer benefit, she actually sang a duet with Putin and cheered his own “performance” lustily. But then again, so did Hawn, Russell, and the rest.

This disgraceful conduct didn’t go entirely unnoticed. In a livid commentary, Russian-born adult-film actor and producer Michael Lucas condemned the Hollywood luminaries who attended the so-called benefit for showing such

Stone giving Putin the “V” for victory (or peace sign?) at the 2010 gala

adoration for a man who really is a swell guy — when he’s not ordering people to be thrown out of windows or shot in their doorways. When the camera cuts to the audience during his nails-on-chalkboard performance, the stars have enraptured, ecstatic looks — like they were at Frank Sinatra’s final performance…. Don’t they — or their handlers, know how to use Wikipedia? Did Sharon Stone not realize she was flashing a victory sign to an ex-KGB agent, an eternal Communist, and a historical revisionist? (Now he is forcing Russia’s teachers to portray Josef Stalin — who murdered at least 8 million of his own people in Siberian gulags — as a good leader and the savior of Russia.)

But there’s more. Tune in tomorrow.

6 thoughts on “Hearts of stone: Putin’s Hollywood pals

  1. Leave Sharon Stone alone! She’s my gurrrl! Just because she’s paid for a PR stunt doesnt mean she’s betraying anyone. Has she endorsed anything Putin has done? And who are we to criticize Putin when our own government cant figure anything out?

  2. It is difficult to call him a Russian revisionist when JFK honored Stalin in a speech. Stalin was even on the cover of Time magazine. Stalin was a brutal dictator, but a brutal dictator was required to beat another brutal dictator: Adolf Hitler. Also, JFK pointed out that it was the Soviets who were most victorious in WWII. That’s not revisionist history, it’s actual history. If it weren’t for the Soviets, we’d be speaking German. Americans have been indoctrinated to believe we were the saviors. Churchill’s famous quote should’ve given the truth away – “History is written by the victors.”

    I am tired of the Russophobe rhetoric scattered on the internet by Westerners. It’s pathetic. If celebrities were paid to attend events, then good for them, or if they chose to attend because they support the advancement of Russia in their sovereignty, medical infrastructure, or technological advances, then good for them also. Their lives, their choice.

    Just because you live in the West doesn’t mean you must hate the East. But, if you must discuss glaring national flaws, look at your own. I’m American, and I can see clearly that we have many flaws. We should attend to our own issues and leave others alone.

  3. It’s ironic that you criticize these celebrities for not doing research and then yourself call Putin an “eternal Communist”.

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