W.(2008)

Artemus WardDepartment of Political Science

Northern Illinois University

• This early promotional poster for the film as well as a leaked early version of the script (with co-writer Stanley Weiser) suggested that Stone’s portrait would be one-sided, harsh, and unflattering.

Father and Son: In Three Acts• Oliver Stone depicts the

personal, political and psychological evolution of George W. Bush in three acts: 1. Bush's hard-living youth; 2. His personal and religious conversion; 3. And finally his first term in the Oval Office.

• Stone suggests that it is the intricate parent-child relationship between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush that helps explain the latter’s life choices and ultimately his rise to power.

Josh Brolin as George W. Bush• Brolin spent countless hours studying the president's speech

patterns and body language but said he wasn't trying to concoct a spitting-image impression, which ran the potential of becoming a "Saturday Night Live" caricature.

• "It's not for me to get the voice down perfectly," the 40-year-old Brolin said, even though he came close. More important, the actor said, was to unearth Bush's inner voice -- "Where is my place in this world? How do I get remembered?"

• Like other actors approached for the film (including Robert Duvall, who was asked but declined to play Vice President Dick Cheney), Brolin had more than vague misgivings about starring in "W." He was, in fact, dead set against it. "When Oliver asked me, I said, 'Are you crazy? Why would I want to do this with my little moment in my career?' " Brolin recalled. Then, early one morning during a family ski trip, Brolin read the original screenplay, which covers Bush from 1967 to 2004. "It was very different than what I thought it would be," Brolin said, "which was a far-left hammering of the president."

• Brolin said many friends still weren't buying it. "There were a lot of people I tried to get involved, who were very, very reluctant to do the movie," Brolin said. While noting Bush's low approval ratings (23% in a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll from June 2008), Brolin, like Stone, said "W." isn't intended to kick the man while he's down. "Republicans can look at it and say, 'This is why I like this guy,' " Brolin said. "It's not a political movie. It's a biography. People will remember that this guy is human, when we are always [outside of the movie] dehumanizing him, calling him an idiot, a puppet, a failed president. We want to know in the movie: How does a guy grow up and become the person that he did?"

Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush

• Banks said that she took a straightforward approach to portraying First Lady Laura Bush. ''I don't want to do an impression,'' she said. ''I just want to honor her voice, her stillness, and her hairstyle.''

• W.’s marriage to Laura is portrayed as central to his personal conversion from reckless youth to successful politician.

• Laura and George are shown in caring, real dialogue in their bedroom. Is this meant to ridicule them or is it sweet and endearing? When Laura soothes George by promising to take him to his favorite play, Cats, should the audience snicker or appreciate her gesture?

Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney• In one of his weekly lunches with Bush,

Cheney uses a ham sandwich to explain the “One Percent Doctrine” and says “You have the capacity to do anything you see fit.”

• Cheney explains that Iraq should be invaded for its oil: “Nobody will fuck with us ever again!”

• Cheney represents the incarnation of one of Stone’s recurring film motifs: “The Beast” – a set of forces greater than a single person or even the presidency.

• Yet Bush tries to tame the Beast: ''Just keep your ego in check,'' Bush snaps at Cheney during one chilly exchange. ''I'm the president. I'm the decider.'‘

• Yet ultimately Bush is unable to tame the Beast and overwhelmed and consumed by uncontrollable forces.

Act I: Reckless Youth

• The opening Act shows how W. squandered his privileged circumstances.

• W. is portrayed as a hard-drinking C student whose failed career choices are a sharp contrast to his larger-than-life father and successful younger brother Jeb.

• We see the 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. Fucking-God-Almighty!'', while another scene set a few years later finds Bush nearly crashing a small plane while flying under the influence.

Act II: Personal and Religious Conversion

• Many have suggested that Stone’s portrayal of W.’s spiritual counseling by Earle Hudd (Stacy Keach) in the film is far from the self-righteous stereotyping of Christians. Hudd tells Bush that “We’re all wounded sinners.” Bush looks contrite and earnest. From then on out, it’s hard not to believe his praying at meetings as cynics might want to do. As Bob Dole once told the National Catholic Register, “I think Bush’s faith is authentic, and that will be useful to us.”

• In 1999, Bush confesses: ''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.''

• "He won a huge amount of people to his side after making a huge amount of blunders and really lying to people," Stone said.

Act III: The Improbable President

• Why does Stone leave out 9/11 - or at least 9/14, when W. visited Ground Zero? Isn’t this central to understanding the man and his presidency? Why or why not?

• The movie’s W. clearly believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He also clearly had the best of intentions when he ordered the invasion.

• Yet in the final scene, Bush seems to be imploding amid the fiasco in Iraq where no WMDs were found.

• Should Bush have been re-elected? Was he re-elected? Did it matter to us in trying to understand him or to his legacy as president?

Father and Sons

• W.’s younger brother Jeb was a model student, taught English in Mexico where he met his future wife Columba, and embarked on a career in business and lobbying. Jeb was well-positioned for a future career in politics.

• After George H.W. Bush is elected president, Stone shows W. telling 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.''

• “Maybe better you stay out of the barrel," the senior Bush told W., and leave the family's political legacy to younger brother Jeb. "Well, son, I've got to say I was wrong about you not being good at baseball," the father ultimately said, tossing him a scrap of a compliment. George W. realized that he would have to prove himself to his father.

• W. blames his father’s 1992 re-election defeat to Bill Clinton on his father’s failure to depose Saddam during the Gulf War. George W.’s grievances further escalates when George Sr. pleads in vain for W. to postpone his run for the governorship of Texas so as not to coincide with Jeb Bush’s running for governor of Florida. Ironically, W. wins and Jeb loses. No matter. W. complains that George Sr. is more disconsolate over Jeb’s defeat than gratified by George’s victory.

The Gulf War (1990-1991)

• Why did the United States go to war against Saddam Hussein during George H.W. Bush’s presidency?

• "You need to back him down and take him out -- like you did Noriega," George W. tells his father about Saddam, referring to the Panamanian dictator and one-time CIA asset who was forcibly removed from power after a U.S. invasion, tried in a U.S. court, and convicted of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering.

• The elder Bush wasn't sure he was going to be that rash with Saddam. "You know I've always believed in leaving personal feelings out of politics," the 41st president told his son. "But Saddam -- this aggression cannot stand. Not gonna allow this little dictator to control 25% of the world's oil.”

Imagining Act IV: Redemption?• Beginning in 1998 Jeb easily wins two

terms as Governor of Florida.• Many talk of a “Bush Dynasty” with

Jeb as a future president.• Yet W.’s unpopularity in his second

term make it impossible for Jeb to run for president in 2008.

• As Jeb’s son George Prescott Bush remarks: “Bush fatigue” made it impossible for his father to run.

• Can the family legacy be redeemed? Will Jeb or another Bush make a bid for the White House?

• In 2004, George P. Bush married Amanda Williams. They are both attorneys and reside in Austin, Texas. George P. and Amanda Bush

Jeb and Columba Bush

Oliver Stone

• Stone is an openly political filmmaker (e.g. "Platoon," "Salvador," "Wall Street," "Born on the Fourth of July" and "JFK”) who actively backs liberal causes and candidates.

• His controversial track record scared off at least three potential major studio distributors and any number of actors, including, initially, star Brolin, and even Major League Baseball, which declined to cooperate with the production.

• Because of his political views, can he be expected to portray Republican politicians such as George W. Bush or Richard Nixon in anyway other than a partisan fashion?

• Is W a sympathetic portrait of George W. Bush?

• "We are trying to walk in the footsteps of W and try to feel like he does, to try to get inside his head. But it's never meant to demean him," Stone said. "W. isn't an overly serious movie, but it is a serious subject. It's a Shakespearean story. . . . I see it as the strange unfolding of American democracy as I have lived it.“

Stone’s Necessarily Censored, Toned-Down Portrait

• Stone has been criticized in the past for playing fast and loose with the truth in his political films.

• Yet W. was based on twenty books, dozens of articles, and employed consultants who worked for and/or knew Bush. Articles in both the New York Post and Slate checked the depictions in the film against these sources and found corroboration.

• But what is even more surprising is that W. is the rare Oliver Stone film that had to tone down the historical record because the truth was too lurid.

• For example, Laura Bush threatening to divorce her husband if he did not stop drinking, an account of Governor Bush mocking a woman who was to be executed, Bush Administration officials pressuring a hospitalized Attorney General for a signature on an illegal wiretap plan, and near-mandatory prayer and bible-study at the White House were left out.

• So the question is how do you tell the uncensored story of a guy like George W. Bush? The answer is that you don’t. No one would believe it.

Conclusion: I Like Bush• Perhaps the ultimate reason why Bush was so likeable to many

filmgoers in this movie was that Josh Brolin made him likeable.• His W. is an earnest guy who overcame his partying youth by self-

discipline, the steady and tolerant love of a woman, and real faith. • He saw his life as part of a larger plan, and invaded Iraq because he

thought it was the right thing to do. He’s a sincere striver who tries to do right by God, his country, and his family, and is startled and crushed when things don’t go the way he hoped.

• Then who are the films real villains? All those around the president who, the film suggests, work with duplicitous motives for dishonorable ends they really don’t believe in. And they found in Bush a vehicle to further their interests. In this sense, Stone’s indictment isn’t of W. but is instead of “The Beast” – the larger political process and those who attempt to use it for evil ends.

• Stone’s movie carefully makes the argument that all of America was put in danger because Bush was able to get to the presidency with no real experience after political handlers took him over following his failed attempts at various careers. It suggests that Bush has iffy military experience, and the script hurls Cheney’s “four deferments” in our face. If the lesson is, “Don’t put an Ivy League cushy career-jumping reinvented politician with little or no executive experience in office, and only turn to those with military experience in times of peril.”

Sources

• Horn, John, “In Defining Bush, Oliver Stone Goes Where Others Fear to Tread,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2008. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/29/entertainment/ca-w29

• Hoopes, Tom, “Oliver Stone’s ‘W.’ Backfires,” National Review Online, October 26, 2008. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/24/opinion/main4544588.shtml

• Noah, Timothy, “Dubya, Stoned,” Slate, October 17, 2008. http://www.slate.com/id/2202341