HBO's Game of Thrones has found itself in a bit of hot water. Or, as Arrested Development might call it, a case of 'light treason.' To be honest, it's pretty shocking that this news didn't break sooner. Not that the inclusion of a fake George W. Bush head on a spike is particularly shocking (amusing might be a better word for it) but the fact that it has taken this long for people to realize and upload to the internet. Come on!
Game of Thrones Season 1 has been on sale (and setting HBO DVD records) since the middle of March and only now are we finding out about this little dragon egg. i09 has an actual clip from the first season finale that shows the severed and spiked head while co-creators D.B. Weiss and David Benoiff provide this commentary.
'The last head on the left is George Bush.''George Bush's head appears in a couple of beheading scenes.''It's not a choice, it's not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around.'
Joffrey must be pissed they didn't find any WMDs. Not because the accusation led the United States into the war with Iraq but because the little shit probably really, really wanted to get his hands on some WMDs. Wildfire will have to sate the King for now, unless Tyrion and Bronn used up all of the Pyromancer's stores during the "Battle of Blackwater Bay." They better not have or two more heads might be joining the 43rd President.
When the news hit the internet, obviously, this little oversight (mentioning it in the commentary, using it in the first place is a much larger oversight) was met with some backlash and quickly sent the co-creators and then the network back peddling. EW just ran a story with statements from both Weiss and Benioff as well as HBO. Here's what the co-creators had to say,
We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush. In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.
I like the idea that there's a storage room on a Hollywood backlot somewhere that is full of fake George W. Bush heads just ready and waiting to be used as props. I wonder if there are any other celebrity mock-ups that made their way onto spikes? If so, you probably won't be hearing it from the creators mouths next time since HBO was less than impressed with their show letting that tidbit slip. The network also chimed in, adding this to Weiss and Benioff's statement,
We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production.
There you have it folks, there will be no more decapitated former Presidents in the upcoming seasons of Game of Thrones and the future Season 1 DVDs will have it stricken from the record. I guess that means that anyone who already bought the set has a bit of a collector's item. Well, except those aforementioned record sales means it's not exactly hard to find.
Game of Thrones will return with its third season April, 2013 on HBO. It stars Kit Harrington, Emelia Clarke, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. The series was created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, based on the “Song of Ice and Fire” saga by George R.R. Martin.
