Oliver Stone's upcoming movie about the life of President George W. Bush, W., paints the awful man as a sniveling Daddy's Boy who was so brow-beaten and dismissed by his old man that his entire adult life has been dedicated to disproving the elder Bush's low opinion of him. However, Stone thinks this faithful accuracy will actually appeal to the Bush Clan and the handful of wing-nuts who still support them. "Stone, [the film's star Josh] Brolin and the filmmaking team believe they are crafting a biography so honest that loyal Republicans and the Bushes themselves might see it. Given Stone's filmmaking history, coupled with a sneak peek at an early 'W.' screenplay draft, that prediction looks like wishful thinking."

"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.

"I't'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 Weiser's 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.' [...]

"'I love Michael Moore, but I didn't want to make that kind of movie,' Stone said of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' 'W.,' he said, '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.' [...]

"While noting Bush's low approval ratings (23% in a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released this week), 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?'" [LAT]