I just read an interview with Stone(d) about the Bush movie. Oy vey...
he really tried to convince the reporter that he could be fair and accurate. He also admitted that it will be filled with dramatized accounts. So, fake but accurate like all of his films.
I doubt he'll make the election given his obsession with editing and reshooting.
EDIT TO ADD: I actually found the text of the article. It was in a magazine but it's also online. Check out the snippets -
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.''
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.''
In any case, W is being financed independently, with Chinese, German, and Australian 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 similarities 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.
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20198476_3,00.html
