First Look: 'W,' Oliver Stone's Bush Biopic
Entertainment Weekly goes inside the director's dark, comic, and already controversial movie about George W. Bush's rise to power, starring Josh Brolin
All AboutGeorge W. Bush By Benjamin Svetkey
''Where is George Bush's bedroom?''
Oliver Stone is flinging open French doors inside an enormous brick man¬sion in Shreveport, La., inspecting loca¬tions for his new film about the 43rd President of the United States. ''This one is too small,'' he says. ''This one looks like George Tenet's bedroom. Where did we decide to put Bush's bedroom? It's around here somewhere, isn't it?''
Shooting begins in less than two weeks on W (or dub-ya, as it's spelled out in the initial sketches for the poster), but not everything is exactly where it should be, and not only here in the house where the First Family's residence will be re-created. The 32,000-square-foot soundstage the production is rent¬ing across town stands empty, waiting for the Oval Office and Cabinet Room sets to get trucked in from Los Angeles. The screenplay still needs work too. It's gone through two rewrites since an earlier draft leaked to the press last month (some skeptics took it as an April Fools' joke), but Stone would still like one more pass at it (''It's evolving,'' he says). And while most of the cast has been assembled and outfitted with prosthetic noses and hairpieces Josh Brolin will play President George W. Bush and Elizabeth Banks will star as Laura there is one major character still in search of an actor: a heavy named Dick Cheney.
Stone is famous for courting controversy with dramas like JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995). But with W, the 61-year-old filmmaker isn't merely courting it he's grabbing controversy by the lapels and giving it a big wet smacker. For the first time, he's turning his cameras not just on a living president but on one who'll still be knocking around the White House when the movie premieres late this year. As if that weren't provocative enough, Stone could end up releasing the film as early as October, at the height of a presidential campaign in which one of the major issues will undoubtedly be the legacy of the guy on the screen. The movie has become a lightning rod before Stone has shot a single frame. If that bootlegged script is any indication, the film will feature such flag-waving moments as the Commander-in-Chief nearly choking to death on a pretzel while watching football on TV and a flashback of him singing the ''Whiffenpoof'' song as a frat pledge at Yale, not to mention scenes in which he refers to his advisers by dorky nicknames ''Guru'' for Condoleezza Rice, ''Turdblossom'' for Karl Rove, ''Balloon Foot'' for Colin Powell while discussing plans for the invasion of Iraq with the coolness of a late-night poker game.
Stone has publicly promised W will be a ''fair, true portrait of the man,'' but already there are those accusing him of the politics of personal destruction and, worse, of trying to influence the election by painting the current Republican administration as reckless doofuses (although presumptive Republican nominee John McCain makes no appearance in the script). Naturally, Stone vehemently denies all charges. ''Bush may turn out to be the worst president in history,'' he declares as he peeks into room after room. ''I think history is going to be very tough on him. But that doesn't mean he isn't a great story. It's almost Capra-esque, the story of a guy who had very limited talents in life, except for the ability to sell himself. The fact that he had to overcome the shadow of his father and the weight of his family name you have to admire his tenacity. There's almost an Andy Griffith quality to him, from A Face in the Crowd. If Fitzgerald were alive today, he might be writing about him. He's sort of a reverse Gatsby.''
As it happens, Oliver Stone went to school with George W. Bush. They both attended Yale in the mid-1960s until Stone dropped out and served in Vietnam although they didn't mix in the same circles. ''If I met him there, I don't remember,'' Stone says. ''But I do remember John Kerry. He was big man on campus, head of the Political Union. I definitely remember him.'' Thirty years later, in 1998, Stone had a closer encounter with then governor Bush at a Republican breakfast. ''I don't usually go to breakfast with anybody,'' he says, ''but I wanted to prove that even though people thought I was a leftist I wanted to hear what they had to say. It was funny, though the minute I walked in the room the sound of the silver¬ware kind of died. People were like, 'What's he doing here? Satan has walked in.''' He laughs. ''But I met George Bush and I remember thinking that this man was going to be president. There was just a confidence and enthusiasm I'd never seen in a candidate before, especially in a Republican.''
It was another conservative Bruce Willis who inadvertently pushed Stone into making W. Originally, the director was planning on spending this spring in the editing room splicing together Pinkville, an ambitious drama about the notorious My Lai massacre of 1968. But last December, three weeks before shooting was set to start in Thailand, Willis pulled out of the film, and a jittery United Artists shut the production down. Suddenly jobless, Stone turned his attention to a scrappier script he and his Wall Street coscribe Stanley Weiser had been working on. Stone concluded that W could be made fast and relatively cheap (for around $30 million), with no need for unpredictable above-the-title stars or difficult international locations (Louisiana tax breaks shaved millions off the budget). ''Some movies are symphonies,'' Stone says. ''This one is a concerto.''
Judging from that early script, W can also be a lighthearted minuet one moment and a sobering dirge the next. It's not an entirely unsympathetic portrait. Toggling back and forth between Bush's hard-partying youth and his current stint as leader of the free world, it hits the high notes of the president's rise to power, but also lingers with deadpan detachment (or is that amusement?) on many of his lows. 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 sonofa*****,'' Bush informs the horrified prime minister.
Stone insists that every scene in W will be rooted in truth, and that he and Weiser drew from more than 20 diverse books although, it should be noted, some accounts may have come from disgruntled former staffers. 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?'' A few people, it turns out. Even before actors have arrived on the set even before there are any sets debate over the movie's accuracy is already heating up. The Hollywood Reporter even asked historians, including Robert Draper, author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, to vet the early script. ''My quarrel with the script isn't that it departed from factual reality here and there, but that it just misses the guy,'' Draper tells EW. ''You come away with an even more hyperbolized caricature of Bush the Cowboy President than is already out there.''
It's no secret in Hollywood that Oliver Stone movies have a knack for stirring up trouble even his 2004 pansexual epic Alexander was threatened with a lawsuit by Greek lawyers claiming it damaged their national heritage and not a single major studio wanted anything to do with W. ''When push comes to shove, all these media companies are chickens---,'' Stone says. ''They're all part of conglomerates.'' There may be other reasons: Movies about politics and the Iraq war have proved box office poison, and with Bush's approval rating hovering at 28 percent, there's not much reason for the studios to think the president will draw moviegoers to the multiplex. And despite Stone's three Oscars, he doesn't exactly rake in record grosses. His 2006 Nicolas Cage drama, World Trade Center, earned a respectable $70 million, but his films seldom top that domestically. In any case, W is being financed independently, with Chinese, German, and Austra¬lian funds and Lionsgate is rumored to have struck a deal to distribute it.
W didn't just make studios nervous; the script gave lots of movie stars cold feet, too. Stone denies rumors that Robert Duvall turned down Cheney. And he won't comment on reports that he's talking to Paul Giamatti about the part. But casting has clearly been challenging. ''You'd be amazed how many male stars of a certain age in Hollywood are Republicans,'' says Bill Block, CEO of QED, one of the film's producers. ''I'm not going to name names, but a lot of them just didn't want to have anything to do with it.'' According to Stone, even some of the town's young Democrats couldn't be persuaded. ''They hate Bush so much, they can't understand why I'd want to make a movie about him,'' he says. ''They hate him so much, they can't even imagine themselves playing him or playing anybody around him.''
Luckily, Josh Brolin got over his qualms after all, his father, James, managed to play Ronald Reagan in a TV miniseries, and he's married to Barbra Streisand. ''When Oliver approached me about George Bush my initial reaction was 'Why would I want to do that?''' says the 40-year-old actor, lately on a career roll after performances in American Gangster and No Country for Old Men. ''But Oliver pointed out certain simi¬larities I had with the character. We both have well-known fathers. We both grew up in the country. We both have strong mothers.'' Stone's pitch worked like a charm, and for the past couple of months Brolin has been driving his wife, Diane Lane, crazy, struggling to master the president's inimitable vocal style. ''I'm talking to myself all day long,'' Brolin says. ''Sometimes I'll call hotels in Texas and talk to the people at the front desk just to listen to their accents. And I've been watching a lot of video of Bush walking. It changes over the years, how he walks in his 30s, how he walks in foreign lands, before 9/11 and afterwards. People hold their emotions in their bodies. They can't fake it. Especially him.'' Elizabeth Banks, best known for turns in The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Spider-Man 3, takes a more straightforward approach to portraying First Lady Laura Bush. ''I don't want to do an impression,'' she says. ''I just want to honor her voice, her stillness, and her hairstyle.''
But what, exactly, is Stone honoring with this film? What's his agenda? ''Listen,'' he says with a groan, ''I'm tired of defending the accuracy of my movies. I'm past that now. JFK was a case to be proven, Nixon was a penetrating biography of a complex and dark man. But I'm not bound by those strictures anymore. Bush is not a complex and dark man, so it's different. This movie can be funnier because Bush is funny. He's awkward and goofy and makes faces all the time. He's not your average president. So let's have some fun with it. What are they going to do? 'Discredit' me again?''
This, apparently, is the new happy-go-lucky Oliver Stone. Or at least a more go-with-the-flow, maturing one. The old war wounds over Nixon and JFK still flare up on occasion (''You know, JFK is a lot more solid than people make it out to be in the press''), but clearly the man has mellowed. Or maybe it's getting back to a seat-of-your-pants production like W that's putting the director in such a good mood. ''It's like my Salvador days,'' he says cheerily. ''It's good for me. It's reinvigorating.'' Even his attitude about politics sounds shockingly low-key, especially when it comes to the current election. ''I don't follow the details,'' he says. ''It makes me sad.'' In short, Stone hardly seems like a man looking for a fight.
Still, he's about to find himself in a doozy, especially if he manages to complete and release W before November's election. His producers insist the film will be ready by then; they're already planning to run TV spots opposite McCain's ads this fall. Stone hedges, but agrees it's theoretically possible. ''I could have it in theaters before the inauguration without a problem, but October?'' he says as he wanders into a large, airy room with an ornate fireplace and several floor-to-ceiling windows shaded by flowing drapery. ''It depends on how fast an edit I do. It would cost money to rush it, but I've done that kind of thing before. This would be the fastest of my life, but it's not impossible. I can do it.'' Especially now that he's finally found George Bush's bedroom. (Additional reporting by Adam B. Vary)
TALES FROM THE SCRIPT
Stone and co-writer Stanley Weiser are still polishing the W script. Judging from an early draft, though, the movie will be darkly funny at Bush's expense. Highlights:
Oedipal Wreck After his father is elected president, Bush tells Laura, ''I'll never get out of Poppy's shadow.... I wish he'd LOST.... No matter what I do, it's never going to be good enough.''
Tough Talker Bush, 26, drunk-drives his car onto the lawn of his parents' D.C. home, and challenges his dad to a fight, ''Let's go mano a mano! Right here. Right now!'' Then, in 2003, when France fails to back the U.S. on its invasion of Iraq, Bush says of French president Jacques Chirac, ''I'd like to stuff a plate of freedom fries down that slick piece of s---'s throat.''
Practical Joker During a prep meeting on Iraq, Bush playfully locks Colin Powell out of the room. He then steals a mint from Condoleezza Rice and tells Paul Wolfowitz to trim his ear hair.
Man of Faith In 1999, Bush confesses to a televangelist, ''The truth is, I really don't want to run [for president].... But I feel that God wants me to do this, and I must do it. I MUST.''
Brother in Arms In a 2003 sit-down with Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, Bush explains that he has given up sweets since the beginning of the Iraq war. ''This is my personal sacrifice to show support for our troops,'' he says.
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