Will Oliver Stone see success with his George W. Bush biopic?
Forty-three years ago, two men enrolled at Yale University. One of them dropped out a year later, volunteered to fight in Vietnam, then made a movie about his experiences entitled Platoon. His name is Oliver Stone. The other dodged combat and went on to become the 43rd President of the United States. His name is George W. Bush.
If all this sounds like the premise of a Hollywood blockbuster, then it is – sort of. The movie is W., a Bush biopic that – and here’s the twist – is directed by Stone. It will be released in America a mere 19 days before the 2008 presidential election and is the Times Gala film at this year’s Times BFI London Film Festival.
Of course, with Stone being a peacenik Buddhist liberal and Bush being a militaristic evangelical Christian Republican, the result isn’t expected to be in any way flattering to the departing leader of the free world. Then again, the pair have an awful lot more in common than you might think. Both, for example, are world-famous hedonists. Bush’s cousin once confirmed that the President is “a riot” when loaded up on beer. Stone’s Hollywood parties, meanwhile, were once described by a participant as “basically pagan Rome, AD26”.
Both have also been accused of lying to advance their careers: Bush on Saddam Hussein’s WMDs; Stone on the circumstances of John F. Kennedy’s death. And both have suffered from what can be described only as biblical-scale “Daddy issues”. Bush Sr cracked the whip so hard that Bush Jr once challenged his old man to a “mano-a-mano”. Stone’s father hired a prostitute for his boy when he turned 16. Hence Bush invading the country that his dad had declined to conquer 12 years earlier. Hence Stone spiking his father’s whiskey with LSD.
But that is where the similarities end. For while Bush exits the White House a pariah, Stone hopes that W. – a $30 million project funded partly with Chinese money because no big Hollywood studio would touch it – will salvage a career that has been taking on water for more than a decade. Indeed, Stone’s previous movie about an American president, Nixon, cost $44 million to make and recouped barely a third of that at the American box office. This time, Stone is betting that the saleability of Bush’s failures will serve to guarantee his own success.
When I meet Stone at his office in Santa Monica, the 62-year-old film-maker is rubbing his eyes after another epic editing session. W. is being made under extreme pressure: only 46 days of shooting, a mere 300,000ft of film (as opposed to the usual million), and barely two months of post-production. A tall order for a movie that jumps back and forth in time and promises to tell three stories – the Bush bum years, the Texas governorship and the presidency – simultaneously.
“I’m not sure that we’ll succeed,” Stone concedes when I ask why the very same electorate that has made Bush the most unpopular President in American history would want to hand over money to see a two-hour biopic about him. “But this movie is not for the 12 per cent who still approve of him – it’s for the other 88 per cent. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s anything in the movie that the other 88 per cent would have any reason to detest. It is a human portrait of a man, not meant to insult people who believe in what Bush believes in.”
This, claims Stone, is why he made W. – to understand, to walk in the man’s shoes. “It’s my job . . . if I’m dramatising his life . . . to step above my hate,” he says.
Stone never even knew that he’d been to Yale with Bush until the two men met at a function in 1998. Stone says that the then Governor of Texas knew more about him than the other way round.
Republicans will almost certainly use W. as an opportunity to burn Stone as an effigy of the liberal media. But Democrats might also very well attack him – for giving them a bad name on the eve of the Most Important Election, Like, Ever. But Stone can’t seriously be afraid of exile. That fate befell him a long time ago, as is demonstrated by the location of his company, Ixtlan Productions, a long and sweltering drive away from the all-powerful studio lots of Hollywood and Burbank. Stone lost a lot of friends during the mega years. The blow-ups, the manipulations, the bollockings – they’re part of this town’s folklore now...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
If all this sounds like the premise of a Hollywood blockbuster, then it is – sort of. The movie is W., a Bush biopic that – and here’s the twist – is directed by Stone. It will be released in America a mere 19 days before the 2008 presidential election and is the Times Gala film at this year’s Times BFI London Film Festival.
Of course, with Stone being a peacenik Buddhist liberal and Bush being a militaristic evangelical Christian Republican, the result isn’t expected to be in any way flattering to the departing leader of the free world. Then again, the pair have an awful lot more in common than you might think. Both, for example, are world-famous hedonists. Bush’s cousin once confirmed that the President is “a riot” when loaded up on beer. Stone’s Hollywood parties, meanwhile, were once described by a participant as “basically pagan Rome, AD26”.
Both have also been accused of lying to advance their careers: Bush on Saddam Hussein’s WMDs; Stone on the circumstances of John F. Kennedy’s death. And both have suffered from what can be described only as biblical-scale “Daddy issues”. Bush Sr cracked the whip so hard that Bush Jr once challenged his old man to a “mano-a-mano”. Stone’s father hired a prostitute for his boy when he turned 16. Hence Bush invading the country that his dad had declined to conquer 12 years earlier. Hence Stone spiking his father’s whiskey with LSD.
But that is where the similarities end. For while Bush exits the White House a pariah, Stone hopes that W. – a $30 million project funded partly with Chinese money because no big Hollywood studio would touch it – will salvage a career that has been taking on water for more than a decade. Indeed, Stone’s previous movie about an American president, Nixon, cost $44 million to make and recouped barely a third of that at the American box office. This time, Stone is betting that the saleability of Bush’s failures will serve to guarantee his own success.
When I meet Stone at his office in Santa Monica, the 62-year-old film-maker is rubbing his eyes after another epic editing session. W. is being made under extreme pressure: only 46 days of shooting, a mere 300,000ft of film (as opposed to the usual million), and barely two months of post-production. A tall order for a movie that jumps back and forth in time and promises to tell three stories – the Bush bum years, the Texas governorship and the presidency – simultaneously.
“I’m not sure that we’ll succeed,” Stone concedes when I ask why the very same electorate that has made Bush the most unpopular President in American history would want to hand over money to see a two-hour biopic about him. “But this movie is not for the 12 per cent who still approve of him – it’s for the other 88 per cent. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s anything in the movie that the other 88 per cent would have any reason to detest. It is a human portrait of a man, not meant to insult people who believe in what Bush believes in.”
This, claims Stone, is why he made W. – to understand, to walk in the man’s shoes. “It’s my job . . . if I’m dramatising his life . . . to step above my hate,” he says.
Stone never even knew that he’d been to Yale with Bush until the two men met at a function in 1998. Stone says that the then Governor of Texas knew more about him than the other way round.
Republicans will almost certainly use W. as an opportunity to burn Stone as an effigy of the liberal media. But Democrats might also very well attack him – for giving them a bad name on the eve of the Most Important Election, Like, Ever. But Stone can’t seriously be afraid of exile. That fate befell him a long time ago, as is demonstrated by the location of his company, Ixtlan Productions, a long and sweltering drive away from the all-powerful studio lots of Hollywood and Burbank. Stone lost a lot of friends during the mega years. The blow-ups, the manipulations, the bollockings – they’re part of this town’s folklore now...