February 12, 2012

EW: Oliver Stone Biopic Depicts 'Awkward and Goofy' Bumbling Bush

By Lynn Davidson | May 09, 2008 | 16:08

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Entertainment Weekly interviewed professional conspiracy theorist and filmmaker Oliver Stone about “W,” his upcoming George W. Bush movie. Stone told EW, “I'm tired of defending the accuracy of my movies. I'm past that now.”

While he told EW “he had to speculate” about dialogue, “Stone insist[ed] that every scene in 'W' will be rooted in truth.” Instead, the movie is a hodge podge of supposed eyewitness accounts, third-hand gossip and fantastical guesswork mixed with “awkward and goofy” caricatures. EW pointed out that “some accounts” “may have come from disgruntled former staffers.”

If the left frothed over ABC's “Path to 9/11” and the media criticized “its invented scenes, fabricated dialogue and unsubstantiated accounts,” then surely they'll immediately knock Stone for these scenes that could come directly from Will Farrell's old “Saturday Night Live” Bush skits (all bold mine):

There's a scene of 26-year-old Bush peeling his car to a stop on his parents' front lawn and drunkenly hurling insults at his father (''Thank you, Mr. Perfect. Mr. War Hero. Mr. F---ing-God-Almighty!''), while another scene set a few years later finds Bush nearly crashing a small plane while flying under the influence.

Some of the bits inside the White House are even more harrowing. ''Just keep your ego in check,'' Bush snaps at Cheney during one chilly exchange. ''I'm the president. I'm the decider.'' In one Strangelove-like moment, he tries to sell Tony Blair on the idea of provoking war with Iraq by flying a U.S. plane painted with U.N. colors over Baghdad, baiting Saddam to shoot it down. ''Plan B is assassinate the sonofab****,'' Bush informs the horrified prime minister.

I certainly don't think anyone should pressure the studio not to distribute "W," even though Stone described the same conjecture and creative writing that critics used to demand that ABC scuttle “Path to 9/11":

''The director acknowledges that he had to speculate on some of the dialogue and delivery. "You take all the facts and take the spirit of the scene and make it accurate to what you think happened,'' he says. ''But if you take one speech from Cincinnati and one speech from the U.N. and turn them into one scene, who cares?''

Black helicopter-friendly Stone blamed the lack of interest in his biopic on “chickensh**” media companies, instead of his low box office numbers or the public's dislike of the president as well as far left movies. No, it's those fascist corporations, man. They just won't let the truth get out.

In addition to hesitant studios, supposedly, great hordes of older Republican male actors turned down supporting roles and young male Democrats fretted about getting movie cooties by acting in a Bush film. Finally, hunky Josh Brolin quashed his “qualms” and took the role of the president, although he looks more like a cadaverous Martin Landau in his EW photos.

Considering the opposition to "Path" and Stone's pattern of distorting history and pushing agendas, I'm sure the media will treat this movie with the same skepticism as the 9/11 miniseries. Below are ABCNews.com's excerpts from Stone's leaked script so that readers can judge whether movie will be hyperbolic and biased or fair and balanced:

The first scene, in which Bush and his advisers brainstorm different terms to describe their global enemies, from "Axis of Hatred" to "Axis of Unbearably Odious," is followed by an early glimpse of the hard-drinking young man when he was a college student at Yale.
When he hears about French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac's desire to give weapons inspectors 30 more days to work in Iraq, Bush explodes: "Thirty days! I'd like to stuff a plate of freedom fries down that slick piece of s--'s throat!"
In one scene, Bush practices his parachute landing in the White House pool but forgets to properly release the harness and sinks to the bottom. In another scene, Rumsfeld doodles a drawing of Condoleeza Rice standing on a piano with a globe spinning on her finger.
During the planning of the war, Bush and his top advisers are shown locking the war-wary Powell out of a room, erupting into laughter when they finally let him in.
Other times, Bush's light touch seems blithely out of touch with reality. While he munches on bologna and cheese sandwiches on white bread, he brags to Cheney about how his running time has improved since the Afghanistan invasion.
Soon after a disastrous news conference in April 2004, Bush retreats to the White House den to watch a Texas Rangers game in the final scene of the script.
Popping open a nonalcoholic beer, he lapses into his favorite dream: playing center field for the Rangers. Hearing the crack of the bat, he looks up for the ball but he can't find it in the sky.