Oliver Stone appears to have finished his screenplay for his upcoming biopic about George W. Bush. ABC News has a summary. Evidently, it focuses on the Iraq War as motivated primarily by his complicated relationship with his father, which sounds about right to me.
Barbra Streisand's stepson Josh Brolin is set to play Bush. Brolin was wonderful as the ornery hero in "No Country for Old Men," so he'll likely make Bush fairly sympathetic.
I suspect the movie won't be all that good because
A. Stone is past his prime;
B. He may rush to get it out before the election. He rushed to get "Alexander" out before competing Alexander the Great projects by Martin Scorsese, Mel Gibson, and Baz Lurhman could get off the ground, and it was a dud.
Overall, my impression is that although Stone made some amazing movies in his 1986-1995 prime, he isn't that great a filmmaker himself. He's more of an alpha male who can persuade terrific talent to work for him. Thus, he used pretty much the same below-the-line crew on his best films, but he didn't get them back for "Alexander," so five minutes into the movie you could tell it was no good.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
42 comments:
Josh Brolin's daddy played Reagan in that atrocious mini-series a few years back. Why would Josh want to venture into these treacherous waters? Mother-in-law dearest may have influenced him. Even the most deranged Bush haters might find this one cringe-worthy.
Stone is the worst kind of liberal to make a movie about Bush, because he won't focus on Bush's main weakness which is laziness.
The Iraq War was a bipartisan effort. Clinton (recall the Iraq Regime Change Act) supported it, as well as Hillary. So too did most Dems. Even Obama did for a while. After 9/11 no one was prepared to take Saddam's word for anything. So when he kicked the inspectors out it was decided by both Parties to get rid of him once and for all.
If anything, the conduct of the Iraq War shows Bush's main flaw, laziness, which the Lunatic Left never sees. It's always Bushitler, Halliburton, AmeriKKKa, "blood for oil," and the rest of the similarly lazy, utopian, naive, and foolish claptrap that echoes that of Bush.
I doubt Iraq was about his Father. I recall Bush's debates with Gore where he came down on the side of neo-isolationism. And before 9/11 the only initiative Bush pressed was Open Borders with Mexico. You can thank Osama I guess that we don't have them.
One way after another, 9/11 forced us to choose in the Gulf about Saddam. Either surrender the Gulf to him, or remove him. Either would cost us, neither would be cheap and easy, because life fundamentally never is. Sanctions were falling apart, the No-Fly zone had been gradually eroded, and Saddam was re-arming with newer, more potent anti-aircraft systems paid by his Oil-for-Bribes kickbacks that would have degraded it further. The whole bit with a "truce" that Saddam violated at every term was a joke that made us a laughingstock in the ME and didn't "fix" the problem of Saddam's constant ambitions to push us out of the Gulf and control it himself.
[A cutting film would cover Bush's failure to choose between his goal of "reforming" the military to be a super-sized Special Forces and winning in Iraq which required a lot more guys and less cool new systems, fewer tax breaks, not firing Casy, Abazaid, Rumsfeld when they couldn't get it done in Iraq, shades of "Doing Heck of a Job Brownie." His cronyism. Refusal to push for his policies in the Media. Fear of combating the hostile and mostly stupid and uninformed to outright treasonous press. Refusal to make Dems pay for allying themselves with lunatic left idiots like ANSWER and Code Pink and Moveon. Refusal to lay out reasonable expectations of what Iraq would cost in money, blood, and time after "the miracle" of Afghanistan. And more. But that would contradict Stone's idolization of caudillos like Castro and cause him to look at his own laziness which is never easy.]
"One way after another, 9/11 forced us to choose in the Gulf about Saddam"
Saddam didn't have anything to do with 9/11
Bin Laden and Saddam hated each other. Saddam was Sunni, the Iranians are Shia. Saddam was the best thing to have in place in Iraq. Without him, this unnatural amalgamation of peoples is destined to fight it out and Iran can tip the balance. Iraq was a mistake. We could have contained him easily and won support from the Kuwaiti's and Saudi's and Jordanian's and even the Iranian's for having done so. First rule: do no harm.
"Deranged Bush haters?" You'd have to be deranged not to hate Bush. He's one of the worst presidents ever.
Too many directors have worshipped at the shrine of 'Citizen Kane' (factual errors and all). I kind of wish they worshipped at the shrine of 'The Great Dictator'. The facts would not be any more accurate but at least we'd get some laughs out of amateur psychologising.
I think I'll go back to watching 'The Tudors'. Like the shape of the women in those dresses.
Josh's father James Brolin is also a 9/11 Truther, which means he understands a whole lot more about the real motivations behind the war in Iraq than 99% of U.S. commentators, who live in a world of shadow reality, then throw around words like "nutjob" when that fake reality is threatening.
Paradigm shift coming. The reasons for the Iraq War were monetary.
So to be paleo you have to be all snarky about the Iraq war and basically see eye-to-eye (somehow) on this issue with various batshit crazy lefties. Otherwise you're just a neo. And that's bad. Cue: Bring in Pat Buchanan and the pitch fork. That's the only way I can explain Steve Sailer readily agreeing with loon Stone on the Iraq war being a father complex. Maybe that works with Obama. The military doesn't go to war because a president has a father complex.
One way after another, 9/11 forced us to choose in the Gulf about Saddam. Either surrender the Gulf to him, or remove him.
No, Saddam was contained.
Either would cost us, neither would be cheap and easy, because life fundamentally never is.
All purpose rhetoric.
...No-Fly zone had been gradually eroded
No, it wasn't.
... and Saddam was re-arming with newer, more potent anti-aircraft systems ...
No he wasn't.
I can't think of any decent films Oliver Stone has ever made, including his overrated Oscar winner "Platoon", which was complete trash based on bad liberal stereotypes of America sending over mostly drug addicted black thugs and a small number of even worse psychotic killer white guys who shot at each other more than they did at the enemy.
His Bush movie will be a lame hatchet job.
A sizable amount of his "below the line" crew got themselves off their coke habits, and as any ex-user knows, if you're trying to stay off coke, you don't go back to hang out with someone still nose-deep in it.
I don't think people should readily dismiss a political film by Stone at this point because he's a liberal.
I think they should readily dismiss it because he's literally fried his brain via years of intense coke abuse.
Ask anyone who's ever take a meeting with him these days. He's not all there.
If a studio green lit him, it's because of the subject matter, and they're buying his name. They most likely stipulated having strong people around him to carry it through.
A blogger above said:
"After 9/11 no one was prepared to take Saddam's word for anything. So when he kicked the inspectors out it was decided by both Parties to get rid of him once and for all."
I thought this was the blog of cold hard facts and not partisan bullshit? Saddam didn't kick the inspectors out in 2003. Bush told them to leave because he was about to begin "shock and awe".
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-03-17-inspectors-iraq_x.htm
The reason an Oliver Stone Bush movie won't be any good, is that aren't any reasonable conspiracy theories, to explain the last eight years, only endless, grinding stupidity.
How exciting can that be for two hours on the big screen. Maybe they can put in a lot of nudity. Liz Banks is playing Laura and she's pretty hot. They can do a Marion the Librarian kind of thing, make the movie, really, about her sordid past.
Oliver Stone, in making his preposterous "JFK", disqualified himself from ever being thought of as other than a fourth rate, lying hack. He invented whole scenes, dialogue by the bushel, and for a long time polluted the whole assassination historiography with that sanctification of the lunatic Jim Garrison. The best thing that the late Peter Jennings ever did was his 2003 two-hour exigesis and debunking of much of Stone's lies in his ABC Special on the assassination. There should be a law against Stone ever picking up a camera again.
anonymous #2: why isn't pulverize Iraq into the ground and leave Saddam in power an option? Neocons present Western options as an either-or falacy involving nation building or surrender, which is ridiculous.
(and if you say that will allow Saddam to rebuild, so what? Attack him again. Far cheaper than this never-ending Iraq shit which has bankrupted our country, and I think he would learn his lesson after bombing Iraq into the ground a couple of times).
It's far too early to make a reasonable movie about Bush. Passions are still inflamed, especially with an election coming up.
Besides, Stone isn't the right person to make such a movie. His JFK fantasy was awful.
Steve, for a very good film critic your "past his prime" dismissal of Stone was unbecoming. Directors are like architects-- they can have long fallow periods, then a late life burst of creativity. Look at John Huston, for example. So yeah, Stone hasn't done anything first rate since the mid 1990s, but I wouldn't count him out, either.
And he's also working in the realm of impressionable young men with daddy issues-- right up the middle for the Stone of Platoon and Wall Street.
A movie about Bush? I reckon you could even get Bush to play himself he's that stupid, he thinks he's done a good job so he'll think the movie is a tribute to him or something :O
Stone had some highlights. I'm a staunch, ideological hater of biopics, but I respect his Morrison biopic. "How many of you people here really know you're alive?!" A good question, regardless of everything and anything.
I liked JFK until I realized it was lies. Nobody factors in the truth into anything. Being that wrong, factually, messes you up, regardless of whether you consciously admit it. JFK is his best film, and it's 100% wrong. That's a little worse than having no new worlds to conquer.
Second anon -- no Bin Laden and Saddam were indicted in 1998 by Bill Clinton for cooperating on terror against Americans. Saddam's ISI according to sworn testimony in the 9/11 Commission was observed (Saddam's ISI CoS in Kuala Lumpur) escorting 9/11 plotters/hijackers through Malaysian Customs and attending a 9/11 planning meeting. The CIA later lost the 9/11 hijackers after they left the Malaysian Safehouse. Richard Clarke, that rabid neocon, worried about Saddam offering Osama sanctuary.
The ME is rife with "enemies" cooperating and "friends" trying to kill each other. You're applying a Western template to a tribal people. Saddam was turning to Islamism anyway to bolster his regime. He had a Koran "written" in his "own blood" (probably some poor political prisoner's).
At any rate the appetite for keeping Saddam around as a general menace to the US, when he wasn't doing his "job" as a check on the Iranians was pretty much zero. Bill Clinton, Albright, Holbrooke, Clarke, all those guys who moan and complain about GWB were right there with him on the idea of getting rid of Saddam once and for all. After 9/11 the **uncertainty** caused by Saddam was simply not acceptable. Was or wasn't he playing footsie with Osama? [He probably knew the general thrust of 9/11, but not the details. Alone in the Arab world he had it celebrated as State policy.] Did he or not have WMDs and could he be trusted?
The general answer both Parties came up with after 9/11 was that no deal with Saddam could be struck and ***kept***
M -- "pulverizing" did not work. Clinton tried it in 1998 after Saddam kicked out the inspectors the SECOND time (IIRC he kicked them out three times and let them back in with "restrictions").
That is why Clinton despite his spin now supported getting rid of Saddam and until the Dems went totally Truther loony insane supported GWB. Because both had the same problem: Saddam would not "stick" to any deal and would renege.
Which gets to the idiocy and denial of Truthers. They want an omnipotent/incompetent (at the same time) government that can fake 9/11 (and leave them alive to spread "the truth") instead of facing up to the facts: in a globalized, connected world even poor countries and people can kill thousands of Americans in our most important city. With impunity I might add.
Stone like the Truthers desperately wants to avoid the complexity and ugliness of the world, where there are no good options, real hard guys want to kill lots of us (cause it serves their own interests) and instead run off to worship the Caudillo in Cuba (Castro, Stone's big buddy).
If Al Gore had been President he likely would have made the same call and Republicans would be doing what McCain did on Clinton in 1993 in Mogadishu -- pressing for a pullout in Iraq. Even if Gore hadn't made the call on getting rid of Saddam, it's likely things could get even worse. Saddam able to brush off the US (any time he survives it's a victory) and ally himself with AQ or whoever else, Iran even, or other Sunni Jihadists (he already had lots of terrorists including jihadis on the pad) would have been a fricking nightmare.
Opportunity cost. Not getting rid of Saddam would have had one. It's kind of silly to think that cost would be just a few cupcakes.
But like I said -- the worst thing about Bush is his laziness. Iraq could have cost a **lot** less lives had it been managed better. As we've seen, Bush's management like Barack Obama's or Hillary's is not a strong suit.
more Evil Neocon rantings:
"Either surrender the Gulf to him, or remove him. "
How was Saddam going to control the Gulf when, what was left of his former army, could barely control Baghdad? Just by rattling off a stream of seemingly self-secure statements you are not going to make a convincing argument!
The only convincing argument for removing him was that he was killing his own people, i.e. gross Human Rights abuses. But if that argument sufficed for an invasion, the US army would have to invade a new country about every 2 months in order to clean up the world. Come on man, start to smell the coffee!
"The military doesn't go to war because a president has a father complex."
Right. The military goes to war cause the prez orders them to. It’s that simple. Remember Bill shooting really expensive missiles into goat arses in Afghanistan whilst doing Monica?
Just one more comment on Evil Neocon's rantings:
"and Saddam was re-arming with newer, more potent anti-aircraft systems "
Yea, those F16 pilots where scared shitless over Baghdad when the war started! I could not load enough rows into my databse tallying the downed fighters.
It seems pretty stupid to make a movie about Bush while the man is still in office. An example of our greedy, unreflective "instant" culture.
The ME is really far away from the US. Problem is, we want closed borders that are extremely long wilderness frontiers. If the US annexed the rest of Mexico and Canada at some point, we could actually close our borders. For now, Mexico would do.
Only real long term benefits of ME is not terrorist containment. Our involvement there probably neither helps nor hinders what is an unpredictable type of event. If we need oil, fine. If we need to season our troops and try out our weapons, fine. We should also be thinking about what China does or does not want happening there, and put ourselves in a position to use it for bargaining power.
Steve, any movie with the lovely Ms. Dawson naked is NOT a waste!
What does hating Bush and not supporting the war have to do with being Liberal or Left or any other contrived political label. If anyone is objective they can see that Bush is a terrible president and the war was a mistake. I did not support the war from the start and I do not support any of the so-called Liberals either. I suppose that the anonymous poster above will say that I am really a liberal and don't know it or that by not supporting the war I don't "support the troops" or any one of many other knee jerk responses.
Disagree strongly here Steve. Bush went to war bc. of his father? Give me a fn break. It was a mistake but the intentions were noble. You're better than that.
"I think they should readily dismiss it because he's literally fried his brain via years of intense coke abuse."
Bush or Stone?
"The military doesn't go to war because a president has a father complex."
Organizations do not have minds of their own. Events happen because of the decisions of individuals. The Iraq war was a conflation of various factors, one of which was W's many personal issues that colored his decision-making.
W has a bizarre, toadying respect for elders that is unbecoming in a man his age. One manifestation of this is his need to out-swagger the old man.
A trait both share is the inability to de-personalize policy. One would have thought Noriega had pissed on Poppy's foot and poisoned his dogs the way he went on about him. Also, read the accounts of Bush's lobbying for the expansion of Medicare. He is an immature, impolite and intellectually stunted man. And remember that video of him giving a quick neck-rub to an astonished Chancellor Merkel? Bush doesn't have the gravitas necessary to a Rotary Club chairman, much less president of the US.
If it weren't for his dad, Bush would be selling auto insurance in Houston. The guy has major issues.
Evil Neocon (anon #2 and testing99) is off his meds again.
Evil Neocon is a familiar and throughly discredited agent of misinformation around this blog, pay no mind.
Am I the only person who thinks Stone's Nixon, despite being a work of fiction, is vastly underrated?
Sanctions were falling apart, the No-Fly zone had been gradually eroded, and Saddam was re-arming with newer, more potent anti-aircraft systems paid by his Oil-for-Bribes kickbacks that would have degraded it further.
Like Davenport said - no it wasn't. Saddam's regime was clearly decaying even before we moved in. He was done as a real threat after 1991, no longer a real leader in the Arab world, and really a strong symbol to other Arabs of the mediocrity of their home grown leaders. In that sense his presence almost acted as a counterbalance to anti-Americanism in the Arab world, and it was certainly a strategic mistake, if perhaps the morally correct choice, to remove him.
It's fairly clear that all dictatorships degrade over time. They are most threatening in the early years when there are still idealists and strivers in the system - Hitler went to war within 6 years of taking power, the USSR peaked 25 years after the revolution and went steadily downhill thereafter, Saddam peaked about the mid 80s. In all these systems the leaders depend on their bureacracies to get things done, and over time the bureacuracies ossify and each little department head becomes far more concerned with enriching himself than building fancy weapons and going to war. Roads for advancement for younger more bellicose types are closed, and the system turns inward despite itself. It is very hard for an aging dictator to be a real threat. Stalin and Mao both understood this at some level - hence the purges in the USSR and in China which brought fresh blood in and gave a little jump start to those dictatorships. But Saddam was too stupid even for that. His country was a dysfunctional wreck by 2002 not a threat even to Kuwait, never mind the US.
A mediocre son of a famous family misuses American anger at the perpetrators of 9/11 to settle family business. Americans are shocked that the misuse of power is not checked by a supine congress and a clueless media. The film is four years to late.
The ME is really far away from the US. Problem is, we want closed borders that are extremely long wilderness frontiers. If the US annexed the rest of Mexico and Canada at some point, we could actually close our borders. For now, Mexico would do.
Lol. An Israeli-style barrier across the entire Mexican border would pay for itself in a year (two, tops). Please try a little 5th grade math before floating such nonsense past us.
(not that we'd need to fence the whole thing, since so much of the border region is so hostile)
What's that? Why hasn't it been built? Because our government is broken; special interests are the only game in town, and the public welfare is not incentivized.
Yes W has a "father" complex,but its not confined to his earthly Father! Bush was strung out on coke and booze,and only finding Jesus turned him around. I dont know how serious he is about the Big Guy,but there is a whole movement of fanatic Christians who believe Jesus is coming back,will become King of the World and start a war to destroy the bad. He will sit on his throne in the new temple in...anyone? In Jerusalem! Which is in...anyone? Its in Israel. These Christians are grotesquely devoted to Israel,ironic because they believe in the one thing that will most make Jews seethe with rage:conversion. Pod the Greater laid out his neo-Con lunatic Armegeddon plan in Commentary magazine,involving a multi-generational war in the ME. Fought by..anyone? Fought by us! Point? I think Stone who is 1/2 Jewish and prob like Murdoch and Maher(and Obama) all the more devoted to his "pipple" because he is only a halfie,would never lay out the facts that the pro-Israel neo-cons,and the AIPAC bunch, started this war and are gearing up for more.
One way after another, 9/11 forced us to choose in the Gulf about Saddam. Either surrender the Gulf to him, or remove him.
Hi, EvilNeocon!
Opportunity cost. Not getting rid of Saddam would have had one. It's kind of silly to think that cost would be just a few cupcakes.
Hi again! And how about the opportunity cost of the 2 trillion wasted on this war?
Evil Neocon or whoever is right that the sanctions regime was decaying, not because of Saddam's machinations but because it had become an international political disaster, seen as causing enormous suffering (unclear) while accomplishing nothing (true). Of course the war that replaced it was a much, much bigger political disaster.
I always thought the realpolitik reason for the war (along with the lunatic transformational goal) was the idea that a permanent US military presence in the ME could be more comfortably and securely housed in a pro-Western Iraq than in Saudi Arabia -- precisely because Iraq was a relatively secular society, thanks to the Baathists. But the neocons were no better at realpolitik than at anything else.
Funny that the conventional wisdom is that Bush is a failure. When Islam dropped two skyscrapers in NYC and killed people in the Pentagon, and demonstrated that they could kill citizens of GB at will, the West had to respond.
One option would be open war with Islam, which would lead to millions of deaths. Bush took the Wilsonian idealistic track, reform the ME
(as we reformed Germany and Japan). Maybe he would fail, maybe it was impossible, but the conventional wisdom that Bush is stupid and isolationism would solve all is - well stupid.
"Right. The military goes to war cause the prez orders them to. It's that simple. Remember Bill shooting really expensive missiles into goat arses in Afghanistan whilst doing Monica?"
It's not that simple. Shooting missiles at goat arses in Afghanistant does not a war make. A diversion it makes. A few million dollars is irrelevant. It's also a good way, as far as the military is concerned, to test out weaponry.
There are enormous vested interests in the military and hundreds of people who advise Bush and those around him on issues as important as, well, full-out war, invasion, and occupation. And, of course, the President needs congressional approval to go to war(which he got). It seems that that is easily forgotten.
There are checks and balances, both formal and informal, all throughout the American power structure, even -- or rather especially -- at the highest level. Bush is not an idiot, and he did not go to war because of his daddy. That idea is so stupid as to boggle the mind that anyone, especially someone as smart as Steve Sailer, but surely not some of the people who write on this board, should be able to recognize.
"An Israeli-style barrier across the entire Mexican border would pay for itself in a year (two, tops)."
Sure. And when we kick de white man out of Africa, we will all go back to living as black kings and queens and pharaohs. Come on, our pyramids are waiting.
Seriously. If instead of Mexican laborers these were wild Comanches destroying and stealing property, you might have a point. But that is not the situation.
But feel free to hold out hope that America will go back to those halcyon days where it was only whiter people coast to coast. Everyone was sipping Frappucinos in their cubicles from sea to shining sea, with nary a vegetable picker or janitor in sight. You're right. Domestic labor is such a drain on our tax base. We should buy all of our manufactured goods from China. That's the wight thing to do.
Did anyone think that maybe the reason why illegal labor is efficient is that these people don't waste 12 years in free public school getting bad habits and bad attitudes learning things they will never use? They want to work, so they come here and work.
This fight is the same as it has been since the Irish first got here in the 1800's. Instead of the Anglo-Saxon ethnic that looked down on wage work, the unwashed masses of Europe came here with their own collective extortion schemes. They succeeded in getting perks for their low brow labor by threatening property destruction and physically threatening or killing any Mexicans, blacks, or Chinese coolies who might do the same thing at a better price.
Now they have upgraded from ditch diggers to cubicle dwellers, but they have kept the same sense of white entitlement to good wages or salaries. They have completely changed this country from a nation of mostly entrepreneurs to a nation of mostly salary and wage workers in the past century. And now they are angry that the lowest level of wage labor is subject to Mexican competition.
This is not Conservatism or even classical Liberalism. This is white distributionist Populism. And if you listen objectively, it is very similar in tone and substance to Rev. Wright's black populism. The same sense that you don't make things for yourself; you get The Man to make jobs for you. You don't raise yourself up by the bootstraps, the Government does that for you. It is a fundamental failure of personal agency and a betrayal of the ideals this country was founded upon.
Did anyone think that maybe the reason why illegal labor is efficient is that these people don't waste 12 years in free public school getting bad habits and bad attitudes learning things they will never use?
So why isn't Mexico more efficient?
If instead of Mexican laborers these were wild Comanches destroying and stealing property, you might have a point. But that is not the situation.
Armed robbery is only necessary when theft is resisted. And that you think the Mexican invasion doesn't involve destruction and theft is telling.
Theft is taking property without permission, which is what immigrants ("illegal" or not) are doing.
But feel free to hold out hope that America will go back to those halcyon days where it was only whiter people coast to coast. Everyone was sipping Frappucinos in their cubicles from sea to shining sea, with nary a vegetable picker or janitor in sight.
You feel better now that you've vented your spleen?
You're right. Domestic labor is such a drain on our tax base. We should buy all of our manufactured goods from China. That's the wight thing to do.
Oh, I see the light now! The Mexican invasion is restoring America's manufacturing capability! How could I have missed that?
And yes, the Mexican invasion is a (well-documented) strain on taxpayers.
Did anyone think that maybe the reason why illegal labor is efficient is that these people don't waste 12 years in free public school getting bad habits and bad attitudes learning things they will never use?
I bet slaveholders thought slavery was efficient, too (no this is not a smear, it's an appropriate analogy). They pulled off the ultimate socialization of costs when they got to turn the alien people they imported from Africa loose in America.
They want to work, so they come here and work.
Gee, that's profound. Does this mean I get your spare bedroom if I take a job near your home?
This fight is the same as it has been since the Irish first got here in the 1800's.
Indeed, and America would be better off if the Irish and everyone else had been turned away.
This is not Conservatism or even classical Liberalism. This is white distributionist Populism.
No, it's nationalism (or capitalism - property controlled by its owners), which makes globalists (like you) nervous. The funny thing is you're almost certainly a useful idiot for globalism, not a beneficiary.
Post a Comment