A friend recently asked me my opinion on filmmaker Oliver Stone. I told them that I thought he is a great filmmaker, as long as he manages to separate his politics and his craft. Instead, it seems Stone goes out of his way to combine the two. So far he’s tackled two presidents (Nixon and Kennedy) and now the filmmaker is targeting the life of a third for an upcoming project: President George W. Bush.
That’s right, Stone is going to tell the story of Dubya, reports The Hollywood Reporter, and he’s attached Josh Brolin to the project to play our current president. Stone is working to secure financing and a script to begin production on the film, currently simply titled Bush, in the spring, with hopes of a release in theaters in the fall, prior to the election.
I can’t imagine Stone’s film will be anywhere near “fair and balanced.” Although the filmmaker claims to want to tell a story about the man’s life, the truth is Stone himself has been very vocal about his distaste for the current President. Of course, the filmmaker may have problems raising funding for a project like this, especially in an election year (which is part of why he’s rushing the project), when a lot of the candidates are trying to separate themselves from the current administration.
Meanwhile, Stone’s previously planned project, Pinkville remains on hold and in need of rewrites. From the sounds of it, Stone isn’t heading back to Pinkville immediately at the end of the writer’s strike, leading some critics to think there were more than script problems with the politically-charged project.
