Look, it’s a quiet day. The nearest thing to news that’s happened recently is some Venezuelan bloke going to see a film.

So let’s try to pad that out into a story. Of course, it helps that the Venezuelan bloke was Hugo Chavez. And the film he went to see was a movie about himself. And it was directed by Oliver Stone. And he went to see it a red carpet premiere at the Venice Film Festival. And his presence alone gave everyone who’s ever worked for Fox News a debilitating aneurism.

But let’s pad that out into a story.

Some have said that, thanks to his movies like JFK and Nixon and W, that Oliver Stone is a political director. This is nonsense, of course. Oliver Stone just likes good stories, whether they’re boggle-eyed political conspiracy theories or, in the case of Alexander, three-and-a-half-hour-long entries in the imaginary Longest, Dullest, Least Essential Movies That You’ll Eventually Blame For Stealing An Unnecessarily Large Percentage Of Your Life When You’re On Your Deathbed competition.

But at the moment Oliver Stone is back in political mode, as demonstrated by his new documentary South Of The Border. South Of The Border is, it’s reported, a rebuttal of the general American viewpoint that South America is led by a gang of crackpot cartoon dictators. Or something. It doesn’t really matter what South Of The Border is about, for two reasons. First, you’ve already seen the words ‘Oliver Stone’, ‘political documentary’ and ‘Venezuela’ and have come to a deeply entrenched decision about whether you’re going to like it or not.

And second, it doesn’t matter what South Of The Border is about, because Oliver Stone managed to get Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez – who much of the movie is centred around – to attend the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival and generally lark about on the red carpet like a kitten in a meadow with predictably hilarious consequences, which included this write-up by Fox News. It’s much better if you read the next paragraph aloud while making a noise like you’re trying to stop yourself vomit, by the way:

Hundreds of admirers, some chanting “president, president,” gathered outside of the for the leader’s arrival. A few held up Venezuelan flags and a banner in Spanish that read “Welcome, president.” Chavez threw a flower into the crowd and touched his heart, and at one point took a photographer’s camera to snap a picture himself.

Still, whether you plan to see South Of The Border or not, you have to admit that it’s got a fairly genius marketing strategy. Getting Oliver Stone (who conservatives hate) to fanny around gleefully on a red carpet with Hugo Chavez (who conservatives hate) at a film festival on mainland Europe (which conservatives hate) probably won’t be bettered any time soon. Unless of course Michael Moore decides to promote his new movie up the Eiffel Tower alongside Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf and an industrial-sized keg of Sauerkraut.

Which he’s actually doing, we heard.

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Once any potential threat subsided we might become brave enough to ask her if we could please see the splinters in her knuckles that she's carried since the time she smashed her boyfriend's yacht to smithereens in less than ten punches.

We hear some of those splinters come together to form the image of Peppermint Patty playing tennis with several eight-armed holy people from Indian folklore. People might pay to see that Naomi!
Upon her death we really believe that splinter-hand should be severed, laminated, and displayed proudly in the Smithsonian – it sounds so beautiful! Despite her intrinsically flawed knuckles and the money they could bring in, Naomi Campbell can't be bothered with that kind of tripe right now. She's far too busy basking in the glow of having just interviewed Hugo Chavez, a guy who rules some country from the business end of a blackberry. We think it's Mexico.

Campbell has just interviewed the dictator, and she loved every minute of it. She got to touch his muscles, laugh about Fidel 'Estoy muy sick now' Castro, and perhaps they listened to a bit of Spice Girls.

That last paragraph, well it was all non-fiction if you can believe it. 

Naomi Campbell and Hugo Chavez have a lot in common. For instance sometimes Naomi Campbell hits maids in the face with cell phones, and sometimes Chavez's mom launders sheets at the Red Roof Inn. Also, both love interviews. In this case though, Campbell takes on the role of interviewer while Chavez just sits there looking pan-faced.

Her first time out with a pencil behind her ear Campbell sat directly across from Hugo, a man who came to our world on an asteroid in the mid-seventies when scientists didn't yet know they should check that kind of stuff out. And for the record Chavez seemed quite fine with a woman talking in his house, which is a tremendous step forward for the Foundation For Women Being Able To Speak Freely Inside Of Houses In Latin America. That's FFWBATSFIHILA for short – it was founded in England.  

Campbell was working on GQ's payroll, and her goal was as follows:

"I didn't want to judge Chavez, or probe him for his political views, even though he gave them freely. I simply went to interview Hugo Chavez the man."

Her interview of Hugo Chavez the man may have turned disappointing for Campbell when he would only answer her questions in between Wii tennis swings and bites from his foot-long triple stacked submarine sandwich. Our mom hates that too. The Chavez/Campbell conversation did take some fascinating turns though, turns like these ones – according to Metro:

"The famously outspoken leader declared George W Bush 'completely crazy', hailed Fidel Castro's fashion sense and said the Duchess of Cornwall was unattractive. Asked if he would like to go topless, like Russian president Vladimir Putin, the ex-parattrooper replied: 'Why not? Touch my muscles."

And touch his muscles she did, but not before he covered them in Vaseline to make the light reflect just so.

We think we heard that's true.

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Naomi Campbell's Interview With Hugo Chavez Talks Fashion, Politics – AHN