‘A Storm Foretold’ is another, even better documentary about Roger Stone
“I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. Guldbrandsen”
“That's why they lost. They don't know what they're doing.”
Those words are spoken by Roger Stone, late in the new documentary A Storm Foretold, on the morning of January 6, 2021. Stone, the longtime political adviser to former President Donald Trump, is shown acting in a fit of pique after discovering that he had been omitted from the list of speakers from that day’s rally.
The acknowledgment that “they lost,” from the self-proclaimed founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement — a man who had spent the previous weeks organizing efforts to propagate the notion that the election had been stolen from Trump, some of those efforts turning violent and illegal — would seem to give away the whole game right there. The “they,” as opposed to “we,” says a whole lot more.
A Storm Foretold is a documentary directed by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, who had close personal access to Stone for a large chunk of the Trump presidency. The new film, which comes out in some cities this week, is not to be confused with Get Me Roger Stone, the highly-regarded 2017 Netflix documentary that covered the majority of Stone’s long career, from his time as a low-level Nixon staffer to the part he played in Trump’s 2016 victory.
The 2017 film, directed by the trio of Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, was filmed over six years; it seems clear that Stone loves being followed by a documentary crew. At one point, it appears, he even hired a second one, although he still falls short of the magician The Amazing Johnathan who, according to The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, once hired at least three documentary crews simultaneously.
A second Stone documentary is justified, mostly because Stone had a very eventful four years, including a criminal indictment in the Mueller investigation, criminal trial, conviction, and eventual commutation and pardon- and, of course, January 6. Also, this one does a pretty great job using its subject’s own words to damn him.
A Storm Foretold is a riveting nonfiction film in which a major figure agrees to be profiled by a serious, possibly adversarial filmmaker. That film not only provides a front-row seat to these major historical events but ultimately exposes Stone. It shows him not only as a fraud who doesn’t believe what he claims to but possibly catches him in the act of committing crimes. We see him at various times with specific leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, thuggish and violent men who have already been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their January 6 misdeeds.
There are also lighter moments; Stone reveals that Trump is a surprisingly big fan of Sunset Boulevard and the film sprinkles in various references to that film.
Some will say it’s wrong to make a film that “platforms” a figure such as Stone, but such claims should never, ever be taken seriously. But that’s especially the case here, in a film that shows Stone for what he is.
Stone, as the earlier documentary – and, let’s face it, the entirety of his multi-decade public career — makes clear, is a prolific slinger of bullshit. He says many, many things that are outright false, starting with the notion that he “did nothing wrong” in his Mueller-era criminal case, and later all sorts of 2020 election conspiracies with not a scintilla of evidence to back them up.
A jury disagreed on the “did nothing wrong” part, as Stone was caught red-handed committing crimes, but was pardoned by the very person on whose behalf he committed them. (“Roger Stone did nothing wrong” may be an obvious lie, but it later ended up on T-shirts, as part of chants, and even in the lyrics of at least one rap song.)
Guldbrandsen’s approach is heavily influenced by the documentaries of Werner Herzog, from the outsider approach to the heavily accented voiceover. And while there’s not a lot of on-camera pushback from the filmmaker to Stone’s endless rantings, he does speak often, in that voiceover, of “baseless stolen election claims” and the like.
A lot of things from this film have surfaced before, including in media reports going as far back as the fall of 2022, in the January 6 hearings, and in various criminal investigations of Trump and others. But there is some surprising, juicy stuff.
At one point, Kristin M. Davis, the “Manhattan Madam”-turned Stone political adviser, tells the filmmaker that Stone wants to be paid for his participation, to which Guldbrandsen balks, at which point Stone drops him and hires a third documentary crew. Then, after the filmmaker suffers a heart attack, Stone agrees to resume cooperating with filming, although he still denounces Guldbrandsen and his crew as “communists" every chance he gets.
We hear candid audio of Stone talking to Matt Gaetz, in which they both call Trump “The Boss,” in a discussion that sounds practically indistinguishable from the kind of talk a couple of Tony Soprano associates might have. And for Rudy Giuliani, Stone states that he “likes booze and pussy a little too much.”
And Stone, after many years of presenting himself as the ultimate Trump loyalist, is seen demanding that Trump be impeached — and his son-in-law Jared Kushner prosecuted — when it looks like he’s not getting a pardon on Trump’s last day in office. “Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter,” he says at one point, before threatening to murder the director if he uses the footage (he did use it.)
To be clear, Stone was granted clemency in the summer of 2020 and was subsequently pardoned, that December, in the matter of the Mueller charges. What he’s angry about is that he wasn’t further pardoned for anything related to January 6, seemingly aware that, amid all that “Stop the Steal” planning with the Proud Boys, he may very well have committed crimes.
I keep returning to anti-Trump rant, delivered in the back of a car, in a phone call to an unknown party, on Trump’s last day in office. It recalls Robert Durst’s shocking confession in the closing moments of The Jinx. No, Stone is not confessing to murders, but considering his entire grift going forward depends on the appearance of unshakeable Trump loyalty, it could end up just as damaging.
What’s especially fascinating here is that Stone, if he wanted to, could have some right-wing hack make a documentary about him, for Newsmax or Epoch Times or Fox Nation or something. He wouldn’t be challenged, the embarrassing stuff would likely be left out, and he’d be honored as a decades-long hero of the right. But a doc like that would get no mainstream attention and bring Stone no notoriety, which is clearly what he’s most after.