In a film directed by Oliver Stone!
Josh Brolin as George W.Bush in an Oliver Stone film?
Hell yeah, sign me up!
If there’s anyone that can pull of Bush – besides Cheyney – it’s Brolin. By playing two total opposite characters in both “Planet Terror” and “No Country for Old Men”, Jim’s boy has proven what most of us have suspected for a while now…. He’s capable of playing anything, and anyone. He mightn’t look a helluva lot like Bush… but it’ll be all be in the mannersisms, if not the ‘Bush-ims’, I reckon.
“Josh is actually better looking than Bush but has the same drive and charisma that Americans identify with Bush, who has some of that old-time movie-star swagger,” Stone told Daily Variety.
“It’s a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to ‘Nixon,’ to give a sense of what it’s like to be in his skin,” the controversial filmmaker said “But if ‘Nixon’ was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone. People have turned my political ideas into a cliche, but that is superficial. I’m a dramatist who is interested in people, and I have empathy for Bush as a human being, much the same as I did for Castro, Nixon, Jim Morrison, Jim Garrison and Alexander the Great.”
Stone, who will co-write the script with Stanley Weiser (“Wall Street”), declined to give his personal opinion of the president.
“I can’t give you that, because the filmmaker has to hide in the work,” Stone said. “Here, I’m the referee, and I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It’s like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I’ll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors.”
The “Bush” project is moving nicely along – if only because UA pulled out of Stone’s planned next-pic “Pinkville”.
“On ‘Pinkville,’ I had a great script and one of the best casts on any of my films, with 40 young actors and Bruce Willis,” Stone said. “It’s a shame they lost faith in the film, and that they unemployed 500 people right before Christmas. We were three weeks from shooting.”
