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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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 Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 9:21 am Post subject: IS OLIVER STONE'S NEW FILM ON BUSH A STUDY IN LIBEL? |
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Hollywood film director Oliver Stone is at it yet again. The man whose ego and opportunism knows no limit, who pandered to Hugo Chavez to try to get a film about FARC, who fabricated a film about JFK that only a conspiracy nut of the first order would entertain as truth, now throws discretion and veracity to the wind to bring us the liberal media's parting shot at George W. Bush:
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Daddy Issues, War Lust in Oliver Stone's 'W'
By MARCUS BARAM
April 1, 2008
It's a classic American story: In the prime of his life, a man who parties too much and lives in the shadow of his esteemed father turns his life around. He gives up alcohol, embraces religion and finds a new purpose in life.
But will his desire to impress his dad and purge his personal demons put the world in danger?
Coming soon to a movie theater near you: controversial director Oliver Stone's "W," the life story of President George W. Bush, a warts-and-all portrayal.
Though the movie is scheduled for release in 2009, there is a chance that it might be pushed up to come out before the November election, say insiders.
The movie, which starts filming this month with "No Country for Old Men" actor Josh Brolin playing Bush, paints a humanistic portrait of the president along with plenty of embarrassing anecdotes from his life story, judging by a copy of an early screenplay obtained by ABCNEWS.com.
The film's script captures purported notorious moments in Bush's life:
Rumors that his father pulled strings to get him into Harvard Business School.
His arrest during college for tearing down the goalposts at a football game.
Almost getting into a fistfight with his father when he comes home drunk one night in the 1970s.
His vow to quit drinking when he wakes up with a wicked hangover soon after his 40th birthday.
It also covers plenty of his administration's lowlights -- from Bush's reported obsession with invading Iraq, which Stone will portray as a desire to avenge Saddam Hussein's assassination attempt on Bush's father and his frustration with the failed search for WMDs to his penchant for malapropisms and cheery optimism about the chances for civil war in Iraq.
Hard Drinking, Family Feud
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.
Drinking vodka mixed with orange juice out of a trash can at the DKE frat house, Bush impresses the fraternity leader with his ability to memorize the names of his fellow pledges.
Asked whether he'll follow in the steps of his politician father and grandfather, Dubya quips, "Hell no, that's the last thing in the world I'd want to do."
Years later, after Dubya drains a pint of Wild Turkey and runs over a pile of trash cans while driving home, his angry father tells him to call Alcoholics Anonymous, prompting Dubya to sarcastically deride his dad as "Mr. Perfect. Mr. War Hero. Mr F-- God Almighty."
Stone, who mined psychological motives in his previous presidential movies, from the conspiratorial "JFK" to the dark character study of "Nixon," makes much of Bush's competitive relationship with his father and how it fueled his desire to invade Iraq.
When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld purportedly confronts Bush in 2002 about his obsession with Saddam: "What's the big deal about Saddam? Bin Laden's the trained ape that wrought this hell on us," Dubya's response sounds like a line out of "The Godfather": "You don't go after the Bushes and get to talk about it. Ya got me?"
After his born-again experience, Bush says that he doesn't ask his dad for advice because "there's a higher Father I appeal to."
When his father cries after losing to Bill Clinton in 1992, Bush sticks it to his dad by telling him that he would have won if he'd ousted Saddam at the end of the first Gulf War.
When Bush's parents tell him to hold off running for governor of Texas until after younger brother Jeb Bush has a chance to wins Florida's top spot, Barbara tells him that he can't win because "you're loud and you have a short fuse."
Stone also portrays the president as stubborn and aggressive when it came to prosecuting the war in Iraq.
Before the invasion, he tells a shocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair about alternative plans such as baiting Saddam by painting a U.S. spy plane in U.N. colors and assassinating the Iraqi leader.
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!"
The Lighter Side of Bush
Stone includes many lighter moments, such as Bush's fondness for nicknames and teasing, like calling Colin Powell "Balloon Foot" and telling Paul Wolfowitz to trim his ear hairs.
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.
And he compares the troops' ordeal in the deserts of Iraq to his ability to run in 100-degree heat. At one point, Bush describes giving up sweets as "my personal sacrifice to show support for our troops."
He interrupts a meeting with Prince Bandar, in which he informs the Saudi ambassador about plans to invade Iraq, so that he can catch the rest of the 2002 Miami Dolphins-Baltimore Ravens playoff game. Bush is later shown choking on a pretzel and passing out during the second quarter.
But the film also strives to paint a humanistic portrait of the commander in chief, with Bush once telling the Rev. Billy Graham that "there's this darkness that follows me."
"People say I was born with a silver spoon, but they don't know the burden that carries."
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.
Is it Accurate?
Stone, who was accused of reanimating long-discredited conspiracy theories in "JFK" and bending the facts in his other films, might come under fire for his portrayal of Bush as an impetuous leader.
Already, one former Bush administration official objects to the accuracy of the film.
One explosive scene in the movie features press secretary Ari Fleischer complaining to Bush about longtime reporter Helen Thomas who questioned the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Bush explodes in a profanity-laced outburst , "Did you tell her I don't like motherf-- who gas their own people! Did you tell her I don't like a-- holes who try to kill my father! Did you tell her I'm going to kick his & a-- all over the Middle East?"
"It's fantasy," said Fleischer. "He used to talk like that before he was president? But he never talked like that around me. He mentioned his father once, in a public setting, at a fundraiser in Houston in 2002. "
Fleischer doesn't blame Stone, explaining that the screenwriter did his research and that there are erroneous accounts of the administration in books and magazines. "Hollywood is Hollywood."
The White House declined comment on the movie and its portrayal of the president.
How Will It Do?
One film columnist, who has read the script, thinks that it's a well-written story that could do well.
"The lifeblood of this film is not content, there's nothing revelatory or stunning in it, but acting opportunities especially for Josh Brolin as Bush," said Jeffrey Wells, who runs the movie blog Hollywood-elsewhere.com.
"It's about a guy who's got a life-long identity crisis but he finds himself when he goes to war. He uses the Iraq War to assert himself and make him feel like he's his own man."
If the movie, which also stars "40-Year-Old Virgin" star Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush, comes out before the election, it could have an effect because John McCain's support for the Iraq War remains a central part of his message.
"It's happened before where movies such as 'All the President's Men' have had an impact on an election," said Robert Brent Toplin, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and the author of "Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11: How One Film Divided a Nation."
"That movie hurt Gerald Ford by revealing the investigation and focusing on the corruption of the Nixon administration. He lost by a few points in 1976 and the movie came out early that spring."
Moore's" Fahrenheit 9/11" came out before the 2004 election but it didn't prove to have much of an effect. "The right-wingers did a good job of discrediting the message and the messenger," said Toplin.
Many political movies, such as "Primary Colors" and "Wag the Dog," didn't have much of an effect and didn't do that well at the box office. "But if Stone can make this entertaining, the timing could be superb." |
Oliver Stone evidently has no shame, and will spare no effort to make a quick buck off conjecture and sheer fantasy in his zeal to discredit a President. If ABC News is correct, Stone and crew will pull out all the stops in their pseudo-psychological portrayal of the current President. How much fact-checking is going on here? How could anyone know what he said in the privacy of the Bush home anyhow? Depicting him as a closet Nixon is good drama but cheap artist directing. Whether one supports his policies or not, it should disgust anyone with an ounce of decency that he would co-write a script he knows is shot full of holes.
Bush will probably look the other direction, as he has for seven years against every kind of below-the-belt bashing because in this arena at least he's a class act like his father. He's not going to stoop to Stone's level, which is somewhere in the gutter.
The release of the script's highlights begs the question: Could the Bush family actually sue for libel?
Yes I know Bush is a public official and they're fair game--but only to a point. And while he was a drinker and errant father in his 30's he has certainly shown himself to be a family man since. And yes, he was on the verge of obsession about Saddam, but even that is open to doubt by all but his most cynical and willful detractors.
I just wonder if enough Americans still have the respect for the office he holds if not the man himself to stay away from this miserable attempt at historical fiction on film.
Some needs to call Stone on the carpet; this is not excusable as poetic license but a license for character assassination.
Should Stone get his comeuppance this time around? Is enough really finally enough? |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 9:36 am Post subject: |
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Bush explodes in a profanity-laced outburst , "Did you tell her I don't like motherf-- who gas their own people! Did you tell her I don't like a-- holes who try to kill my father! Did you tell her I'm going to kick his & a-- all over the Middle East?"
"It's fantasy," said Fleischer. "He used to talk like that before he was president? But he never talked like that around me. He mentioned his father once, in a public setting, at a fundraiser in Houston in 2002. "
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If Bush did in fact use obscenties at one point in his life, I don't really see how it can be too huge a libel to take dramatic license with the date. It's like if you were known to have kicked a puppy in 1999, and I say you did it in 2004, can that really be said to tarnish your good name?
For what it's worth, Bush was on record as using profanities as recently as the 2000 election.
http://tinyurl.com/phs4r |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:46 am Post subject: |
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Most of Stone's films are entertaining even plausible but historically invalid -- as we can expect from any conspiracy theorist, Stone exceeds the evidence and alleges things entirely taken from his imagination.
On the other hand, his film treating Nixon struck me as a first-rate look at the man -- and he says he used to see Nixon as the antichrist himself. So I imagine that the more Stone hates his subject the better his film will become. Let us hope that he hates W. Bush more than he hates Nixon, then. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:05 am Post subject: |
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| Yeah, Nixon wasn't at all the demonography that one might have expected. It's actually quite honest about the liberal aspects of Nixon's agenda, especially when he's counterpoised against the far right. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:15 am Post subject: |
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| That is right. It is about looking at the man as a human being, with good sides and dark sides, and not a demon. If Stone's film treating W. Bush accomplishes this, I cannot see how we can fault it. |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject: |
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Aside from the fact that Bush is still alive, you can bet that Ollie's hatred is still fresh and running strong, which would lend itself to a rather biased treatment of the man.
I'm betting that Ollie knows exactly two things about the President: jack and shyte.
I'm no fan of Ollie's....he's like Michael Mooron in the real movie business. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Oliver Stone made some great movies. Let' s not compare him to Michael Moore. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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I also liked the Nixon film. I read the first part of the quote in the OP and didn't find anything that hasn't been reported before. The quality of the film will depend on the treatment, emphasis and a lot of other things, but to denounce a film even before it has started filming strikes me as just a wee bit premature. Stone is a good director, maybe even a great one. He knows how to tell a story on film in 2 hours.
I don't know why there aren't more historical dramas about the various presidents. Many of them lead dramatic lives. There is one terrific one that I know of: John Ford's "Young Mr. Lincoln" with Henry Fonda. There are several episodes in Jackson's life that could make good movies.
PS: There was one major oversight in 'Nixon'. There was no scene of Nixon and my mom in Ottumwa in World War II. Yep. My mom knew him. (Slightly.) |
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Cheonmunka
Joined: 04 Jun 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 3:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Moore's" Fahrenheit 9/11" came out before the 2004 election but it didn't prove to have much of an effect. "The right-wingers did a good job of discrediting the message and the messenger," said Toplin. |
Vote tampering would be a more plausible reason. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Cheonmunka wrote: |
| Vote tampering would be a more plausible reason. |
Care to back that up with any evidence at all? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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| I haven't seen the movie, how the hell should I know? |
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ED209
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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Who's going to play Bush?
Maybe they could CGI him in like JarJar Binks. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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| The article said Josh Brolin. |
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Milwaukiedave
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Location: Goseong
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:32 pm Post subject: |
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| I haven't heard much about the movie, but it sounds like a battle could be brewing in terms of a lawsuit. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:54 pm Post subject: |
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Libel?
Yah, well ... could be somewhat "libel" to lower his poop-u-larity rating ever further  |
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