George W. Bush – the movie

Oliver Stone is at it again. After taking a run at the JFK assassination and Nixon, he’s wading back into presidential politics with a fast-tracked production of a film about George W. Bush. Josh Brolin, fresh off his blank turn as Llewellyn Moss in No Country For Old Men gets the nod for the lead role.

Rumors are already flying about the project, which supposedly spans the life of W. from his frat boy party days at Yale, his battle with alcoholism, conflicts with his father, and ends with the invasion of Iraq. The first four pages of the script have been posted online by Steven Zeitchik on his Risky Biz Blog, and they reveal almost nothing of import.

Stone’s “Bush” – the first four pages

That’s about all that is known concretely about the project. Scripts change during shooting, and again during the editing, and what’s on the page often is a far cry from what winds up on screen. There’s bound to be months of rumor, hype, accusations, and inflammatory rhetoric that circle the film, and what lands in theaters won’t resemble any of it. Here’s what we do know about Oliver Stone:

He often confuses his talent for creating controversy with his talent for filmmaking.

At his best, he is infatuated with institutionalized power and machismo – the army, Wall Street, the NFL, and politics.

And he is much too smart to produce a one-sided hatchet job that blindly excoriates Bush. It will be far more controversial if he steers clear of the bumbling-fool image perpetuated by late night comics and delivers a portrait of a powerful, troubled man.

It’s way too soon for any film to offer a reasonable insight into the last decade of American politics; television is still the better medium for assessing the damage done (a point made in my review of the tedious In The Valley Of Elah). Still, Stone works best when he strips away schmaltz, and with the high probability that this film will alienate both ends of the political spectrum, I will be hoping for more of a Wall Street and less of World Trade Center.