"He won a huge amount of people to his side after making a huge amount of blunders and really lying to people," the director said. What further fascinates Stone is Bush's religious and personal conversion: a hard-drinking C student who was able to become not only Texas governor but also the leader of the Free World.
"We are trying to walk in the footsteps of W and try to feel like he does, to try to get inside his head. But it's never meant to demean him," Stone said.
The movie has hired a former Bush colleague as an advisor, and labored to get the smallest details right. For all the historical accuracy, though, "W." is clearly a work of fiction.
"We are playing with our own opinions and our own preconceptions of him," Stone said. "This is his diary -- his attempt to explain himself."
A project gains priority
This wasn't the movie Stone was supposed to be making. Instead of "W.," the film was going to be "Pinkville," a look at the Army's investigation into 1968's My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
Only days before filming was set to begin, with many sets already built and department heads in place, "Pinkville" star Bruce Willis pulled out of the film last fall, unhappy with a script that couldn't be rewritten because of the writers strike. Stone flirted with casting Nicolas Cage in the lead role, but enthusiasm from United Artists -- whose war movie "Lions for Lambs" had just flopped -- had waned on fears that "Pinkville" was too violent.
At the same time, Stone had been working on the "W." script with screenwriter Weiser, the author of Stone's 1987 hit "Wall Street." Stone was at first worried the topic was almost too timely -- "When I made 'Nixon,' " the director said, "he had died."
Said "W." producer Moritz Borman: "He wasn't sure. He worried, 'Is there enough material about Bush? Or will there be more once he's out of office?' But then a slew of books came out."
Soon after "Pinkville" imploded, Stone returned to "W.," and by early 2008 he was convinced it was not only the right time to make the movie but also imperative the movie hit theaters before the next presidential election, because its impact would be greatest then, when everybody was obsessing over our next president. But that early release date created a post-production timetable that would be half of Stone's most hurried editing schedule. Before he could set up his cameras, Stone and his team first had to answer a key question: Who in the world was going to pay for it?
