W due three weeks before election day.
A couple new items about Oliver Stone's George W. Bush biopic W surfaced today. The main one, of course, is the Entertainment Weekly cover story, which notes that the film starts shooting next week, no one has been cast as Dick Cheney yet, and the script has been rewritten at least twice since an earlier version was leaked to the press around April Fool's Day; for more on that, see the reactions to that version of the script that were posted last month by ABC News, Slate, the Hollywood Reporter and Jeffrey Wells. Meanwhile, Variety reports that Lionsgate has acquired distribution rights and plans to release the film October 17 -- three weeks before election day. Anyone want to guess what effect this movie will have at the polls, if any?
posted by Peter T Chattaway at 10:33 PM
4 Comments:
Well, clearly, the Democratic nominee-- almost surely Obama-- will be painting a McCain presidency as an extension of the Bush presidency, and another four or eight years of the very same policies. And it seems pretty evident that the film will not be casting anything about Bush in a positive light. But I can't see how the film will have very much power to change anyone's mind about Bush-- they like him or, in most cases, they don't, and trying to change that seems futile.
And really... how many Bush Republicans are even going to SEE this movie? It depends on how it's marketed, of course, but I can't imagine them targeting a film like this one to anyone but Blue State Dems.
I don't expect Bushies to see this film, but to the extent that it paints a portrait of Bush that Obama can use to tar McCain, it might have an effect on undecided voters. Or it might not, who knows.
Curiously, according to the EW story, McCain does not appear anywhere in the script -- which makes me wonder how the filmmakers are going to handle the 2000 primaries.
And if they did portray McCain's role in that part of Bush's life, who knows, it could either be a good thing for McCain (by reminding people that McCain was once an opponent of Bush's, just like Obama), or it could be a bad thing for McCain (by portraying McCain as someone different then from what he is now).
i think that if he can convince the american people that Bush simultaneously burned both the US flag and a NASCAR vehicle, while drinking the blood of babies and the old and somehow tie all that in to the Republican Party as a whole, then maybe Stone will make a difference.
with all honesty, though, if the hubris of Fahrenheit 9/11 didn't change the outcome of the last election, this, unfortunately, won't either. (not that i want the future of my country decided by a movie directed by Ollie Stone)
Fahrenheit 9/11 came out earlier in the year, though, which allowed time for people to mobilize against it. One could even plausibly argue that high-profile attacks against Bush such as Moore's film helped to energize support for Bush. The interesting thing about this film is that it is due to come out mere weeks before election day, which doesn't leave much time for a "response" to it.
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