As you may or may not know, Oliver Stone is making a film based on the life of the president, entitled W , starring Josh Brolin as Bush. It’s way too easy to begin with the jokes—not about W, but about W , and the director’s “gift” for creative re-imaginings: Think JFK and Nixon .
Slate has come across Stone’s (actually Stanley Weiser’s ) screenplay and offers some snippets . It reads like an SNL skit meets a Nation editorial meeting wherein the participants, drunk on righteous indignation and still recovering from the failure of that whole communism thing, imagine how decisions were made in the Bush White House. (Warning to the fainthearted: The “president” uses really icky language when he’s angry. You won’t like the fake W when he’s angry. I’m sure there are some of you who don’t even like the real W when he’s clement.)
In short, I doubt the film will have much to say—or imagine—about the president that hasn’t already been said and imagined over and over and over again. How much is truth, speculation, satire, or outright baloney is anybody’s guess. The final product will most probably fall somewhere between a Michael Moore mockumentary (the dime-store psychology stuff and invented intra-family dialogue) and a sad-to-say all-too-accurate depiction of how decisions were made in the Bush White House.
In any event, the film won’t open until the real W is out of office. I suspect that, by then, most people will be Bush-bashed out and happy to focus on the future.
BTW: The L.A. Times offers photos of the cast .
Update: Biographers question Stone/Weiser’s portrait of Bush 43. Ya think?
