BUSH: THE MOVIE

From ABC News courtesy of the Huffington Post:

Daddy Issues, War Lust in Oliver Stone's 'W'

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.

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.

And

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.

Click here for the rest.

Okay, at first, I must admit, I thought this was a joke because the story ran on April Fool's Day. But the IMDB also has a notice on it, and this kind of thing really is up Stone's alley, so at the moment, I'm thinking it's probably for real.

And my first reaction to this news? It's waaaay too fucking early for the mythologizing of the Bush administration. I still haven't gotten around to seeing JFK, if only because I don't like Kevin Costner, but most people I know really enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed Nixon. Even though both movies took great liberties with all the facts, it seems to me that there had been enough time for historical analysis to run its course, for people to get past their emotional involvement with the real-life Kennedy assassination and Watergate stories. There's something about the passage of time that makes it easier for film makers to turn real people into fictional characters. The misty haze of the past makes poetic license work much better.

And, frankly, I'm just not ready to see President Bush as a protagonist, no matter how unflatteringly he may be portrayed. Gimme about ten years. Or more. Maybe then.

Beyond that, my bet is that there's going to be something here to piss off everybody. The article goes on to reveal more tidbits from the script, and one moment, which shows Bush as being much more willing to invade Iraq than Rumsfeld, just rings totally untrue. Rummy, the neocon, wanted to take Baghdad at least as early as 1998, when the hawk group Project for a New American Century published their open letter to President Clinton begging him to invade--Stone's playing up W's rabid revenge motive - "they tried to kill my daddy!" - appears to be pushing out one of the key factors behind the invasion, neoconservative Machiavellian machinations inside the White House before and after 9/11. And, of course, I'm sure the concept of an Oliver Stone movie about Bush will, by itself, be cause for right-wing gnashing of teeth and howls of despair.

On the other hand, none of that may matter. How could I not go see this?

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