LUCID FORGE

Even though W. doesn’t even open until this Friday, actor Josh Brolin is already getting name-dropped as Best Actor material at next year’s Academy Awards, which is the first time that an actor’s been talked about for awards consideration for playing George W. Bush. Pretty much since the 43rd President of the United States took office he’s been the subject of spoof and satire; a not uncommon position for a President to find himself in, but Dubya’s been another matter altogether.


Even though W. doesn’t even open until this Friday, actor Josh Brolin is already getting name-dropped as Best Actor material at next year’s Academy Awards, which is the first time that an actor’s been talked about for awards consideration for playing George W. Bush. Pretty much since the 43rd President of the United States took office he’s been the subject of spoof and satire; a not uncommon position for a President to find himself in, but Dubya’s been another matter altogether.

Naturally, anyone that decides to run for the highest offices of the land find themselves lampooned to an extent. They become the punchline of jokes on late night talk shows and comedians play them in sketches on variety shows. On a more serious note, presidential portrays or mentions are often meant to give a series or film an added sense of reality: the prominent portraits of Bill Clinton and Attorney-General Janet Reno in ADA Skinner’s office on The X-Files, for example, or archival footage of Clinton used in the film Contact. But how many Presidents can say that they had a sitcom made about them while they were in office? Well, George W. Bush can. As the 2000 Presidential Election was being contested, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone plotted a sitcom to be built around the winner, which at the time they presumed to be Vice-President Al Gore. When Bush won, Everybody Loves Al was scraped, and was replaced by That’s My Bush. It was basically a workplace drama, only that work place was the White House. Timothy Bottoms played Dubya, a role he’d repeat again on a more serious note in the TV movie DC 9/11: Time of Crisis and another in the not so serious big screen version of The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course.

But That’s My Bush, despite a degree of critical acclaim, was cancelled after one season in the summer of 2001. The network, Comedy Central, deemed it to expensive to produce in relation to the ratings in earned. Stone and Parker were offered the chance to produce a big screen version of the show, but any plans were cancelled following the attacks of 9/11. Regardless, Bush became a fixture on the duo’s flagship show, South Park, where he and members of administration are often foils to the main characters, including “Mystery of the Urinal Deuce,” where Bush admits to Stan and Kyle that 9/11 was an inside job. Live-action portrayals of Bush have since been more or less relegated to cameos or comedy show routines. But the world of small-budgeted indie films have repeatedly found ways of using Dubya in new, interesting, and frequently subversive ways. There have been shorts like Dick Fiction, Don’t Go Nuclear and The War Against Terror: The Musical, as wellas feature length efforts like George Bush Goes to Heaven and Karl Rove, I Love You. Meanwhile, in the U.K., a Channel 4 satirical telefilm about Tony Blair called Blaired Vision still found room to poke fun at Bush. But naturally all these projects plumb the President for comedic opportunities, of which there are many.

By far the most substantial role for the Bush “character” in a mainstream film, presumably until W., is his appearance in Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. Bush, as played by James Adomian, is a surprisingly profound character that offers some salient wisdom to the titular stoners as they get high in Bush’s Crawford Ranch. He also has Daddy issues; he tells Harold and Kumar that he can’t legalize pot because his father will be mad at him. Adomian as Bush was even made a central focus of the advertising campaign, which is coup for a man that’s built a substantial career spoofing the President; from Mad TV to The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Adomian’s been the Bush to beat, as it were.



But as we hear more about Oliver Stone’s W. it seems to be that we’re about to get the first, real even handed look at a man that’s been a source of a lot of division during his eight years as President of the United States. Even fake pundit Stephen Colbert seemed impressed by Stone’s reserve, a lot of people were expecting nothing less than a polemic. And in this fair and balanced treatment of Bush, it’s Josh Brolin that gets the lion’s share of the credit. Mike Goodridge offered this in his review on Screen Daily.com:

“If the film itself fails to figure in the year-end awards shortlists, Brolin must surely be considered a likely best actor nominee. Wholly immersing himself in the part, he doesn't imitate the president so much as breathe human complexity into him. Rudderless and restless as a young man, Brolin nonetheless plays him as a likeable enough fellow, a harmless jock, attractive to women and tortured by his father's expectations. As a president, Brolin plays him as a man of some intelligence, even if his arrogance and machismo are on full ugly display.”



In the end though, I think we can expect that W. will be the first in a long line of films to take a critical (or perhaps a not-so-critical) look at George W. Bush and his presidency. No matter his politics or his standing, Bush governed the United States through some of the most tumultuous times in American history. His judgments and his decisions have already been the subject of several books and he hasn’t even left office yet. This scrutiny will eventually leak to film, and what that will look like for Mr. Bush in the future, is something, I think, will be interesting to see. Will the image of Bush the Buffoon endure for years to come? Time will tell.