Oliver Stone Biopic Features Obsessed Bush

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 9:04 AM By: Newsmax

An upcoming Oliver Stone biopic about George Bush depicts him as a foul-mouthed reformed drunk who was obsessed with Saddam Hussein and has such a conflicted relationship with his father that he once challenged Bush Sr. to a fistfight. The movie �W,� which Stone is set to begin filming on April 21, opens in the Oval Office with Bush and staffers discussing the term �axis of hatred� and deciding that �axis of evil� sounds better. It then intercuts between various stages in Bush�s life, following him from his twenties to the White House and the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. The Hollywood Reporter sent a copy of the screenplay to four Bush biographers for their comments, although the script is said to have undergone at least two rewrites since then. The biographers� reactions were mixed. According to the Hollywood Reporter, specific scenes are largely based on fact but others are inaccurate or over the top. The script �leaves you with the impression that the White House is run as a fraternity house with no reverence for hierarchy, the office itself or for the implications of policy,� said Robert Draper, author of �Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush.� But the screenplay�s portrayal of a tense relationship between Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is largely on the mark, according to Peter Schweizer, author of �The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty.� At one point Bush tells Cheney to �keep your ego in check.� Schweizer told The Reporter: �I would say: true on the conflict. I don�t know specifically about the �ego in check.� But there is no question you are dealing with strong personalities and there was tension and conflict.� The film by the director of such movies as �JFK� and �Nixon� contains a good deal of stock footage and stars Josh Brolin as Bush and James Cromwell as his father. Newsmax has learned that the �W� screenplay draft includes these highlights: President Bush frequently uses nicknames for aides, including �Turdblossom� for Karl Rove and �Balloon Foot� for Colin Powell. Asked if he planned to follow in his father�s footsteps and run for Congress, Bush tells a fraternity friend: �Hell no, that�s the last thing in the world I�d want to do.� George Bush Sr. has harsh words for the younger Bush after he gets arrested for helping to tear down the goalposts following a Yale football game. President Bush boasts to Cheney that he's �the fastest president in history� and says of Bill Clinton: �Hell, my mother waddles faster than he can run.� Asked how likely it is that Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons, Cheney tells Bush: �Personally, I think it�s close to a hundred percent.� Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld informs Bush that the American excursion into Iraq will take �six months at the most, as long as we don�t run into heavy camel traffic.� In a Texas bar, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking Bush in 1967 tells a young blonde named Judy that he wants to marry her � then dances drunkenly across the top of the bar. He later tells his father it was �just a fling.� That same year Bush Sr. tells his son that he �didn�t exactly serve your time in the National Guard� and urges him not to �drink and party your life away.� He also tells Bush Jr.: �You�ve disappointed me. Deeply disappointed me.� At age 26, a drunken Bush crashes his car into shrubbery outside the family home and when his father chastises him, he strikes a boxer�s pose and challenges Bush Sr. to �go mano a mano� with him. Bush terrifies a friend by taking him up in a single-engine plane and then nearly crashing it while under the influence of alcohol. Discussing with press secretary Ari Fleischer Bush�s justifications for going to war with Saddam, Bush declares: �I don�t like a�holes who try to kill my father.� He later tells Rumsfeld that Saddam tried to bomb his father�s car in Kuwait and �you don�t go after the Bushes and get to talk about it.� After his loss in his 1978 race for Congress from Texas, Bush � drunk again � tells a friend: �No way will I ever be out-Texaned or out Christianed again.� Bush complains that his father asked him to help in his 1988 presidential campaign �only �cause Jeb wasn�t available.� President Bush plots to paint an American recon plane in U.N. colors to see if Saddam will fire on it and thereby �justify retaliation.� Bush tells British Prime Minister Tony Blair that sectarian violence following an American invasion of Iraq is �just not in the cards,� adding that �Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, you know, in the end they�ll stick together, they�re all Muslims anyway.� Bush tells a televangelist in 1999: �I believe God wants me to run for president.� The movie ends in 2004 amid the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq. Bush, one-time co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, retreats alone to his White House den to watch a Rangers game. Bush imagines himself standing in centerfield in an empty Texas Rangers Stadium. Following the crack of a bat, �a ball, in slow motion, spirals upward through the air. He turns, raising his hands, searching for the ball, ready to catch it� �But the ball never comes down.� According to The Hollywood Reporter, it�s uncertain if Oliver Stone�s movie will be released before the November elections. © 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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