When the Hollywood actor Josh Brolin was asked to play President George
W. Bush in the biopic of his life, he flinched. “Why me?” he thought, after
the director Oliver Stone handed him the script. “Why would I want to do
this movie?” And more importantly, “Why would I want to do this to my
career?” The 40-year-old actor had only just emerged onto the A list, after
nearly two decades in the doldrums, with a knockout leading role in the
Oscar-winner No Country for Old Men, as well as dazzling support in
movies such as Grind-house and American Gangster.
Brolin, the son of the actor James Brolin, was now basking in major
blockbuster offers (he flirted with Terminator 4) and the
solicitations of big-name directors such as Ridley Scott and Gus Van Sant.
So, the question remained, why would he want to work with the contentious
and politically volatile Stone (remember JFK? Natural Born Killers?)
on a movie about a living president that might, at best, be a rabid
“left-wing hammering of the Bush Administration”, or, at worst, be a
cardboard pantomime that would ruin his hard-won credibility as an actor for
ever?
The answer, Brolin says, was in the script. “I read the script and I knew I
was wrong about it,” he says, describing how the film, written by Stanley
Weiser and simply called W., steers clear of cheap partisanship and
instead mines the story of Bush’s rise to power for mythic and tragic
resonance. “It’s a story about a guy who had no real direction in his life
for the longest time,” he says. “He was trying on all these different suits,
and then he became President of the United States! Which is amazing!”
Although the movie’s prepresidential depictions of Bush feature drinking,
gambling and debauchery (as witnessed in the leaked trailer), Brolin is
quick to assure prospective viewers that it’s all about context. “Oliver has
been extremely compassionate and fair here,” he says. “He is tirelessly
interested in the question: what made Bush Bush? And despite whatever
negative opinions I may have had about the Bush Administration before I
began the movie, my mission became not to find out why Bush was so bad, but
why people had voted for him.”
The mission began with research. “I watched hundreds of hours of video, read
lots of books, and had lots of meetings with people who had worked in his
Administration.” Brolin, an avowed Democrat and an Obama supporter, says
that he was even offered a chance to meet the President, at the White House
Correspondents’ dinner, in April. He says that he has always tried to
separate the man from his Administration, and that although he had
ambivalent feelings about Bush to begin with, through his research he learnt
to appreciate some of Bush’s strengths. “It takes a strong will to make some
of the personal decisions he made,” he says.
Nonetheless, Brolin vetoed any chance of a face-to-face meeting, fearing that
his performance would become an impersonation of the public figure rather
than an insight into the man. “How was 15 minutes with Bush supposed to help
me in portraying his whole life?” he says. “Getting to meet him would have
been a diversion.”
He adds that, despite his own political affiliations, portraying Bush as a
comical villain and a simpleton was never an option. For one thing, the
script called only for humanity, not satire. And for another: “It’s a
mistake to see Bush that way. The minute we start perceiving Bush as an
idiot we’re being irresponsible, because we’re writing him off. He is the
President of the United States, and he’s still in power.”
In the meantime, stepping on set with Richard Dreyfuss disguised as Dick
Cheney, Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld and Thandie Newton as Condoleezza
Rice was a surreal experience. “You look at Thandie Newton and you think:
‘There’s no way she could be Condoleezza Rice!’ ” he says. “But then you see
the character she’s created, and the transformation she’s undergone, and
it’s mind-blowing.”
His own transformation was less cocksure, he says. “The first time I came on
set to, basically, do the modern Bush, I was so nervous,” he explains. “I
did it, with the voice and the gestures, and we all laughed about it
afterwards, but I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t f***ed up the whole movie!”
Stone, of course, says that Brolin is being modest, and that he was a natural
choice for Bush. Furthermore, he notes mysteriously, the reasons for this
choice run deep, and that Bush and Brolin are more connected than we think.
“Josh grew up with a strong father in the limelight, as did Bush,” Stone
explains. “Josh has had quite a volatile life and shared no doubt many of
the crises that George W. Bush found himself up against.”
Stone adds that Brolin grew up in rural Californian ranch country, around the
Central Coast, much like Bush’s beloved Crawford, in Texas. And that Brolin
was 40 when shooting the movie, which was the same totemic age that Bush
reached when he decided to turn his life around. So, is it true? Are Brolin
and Bush strangely entwined? Are they kindred spirits of volatility, ache
and oedipal resentments?
Brolin pauses before he answers. You wonder if he’s thinking about the moment
when, at 7, he faced a group of local ruffians in his rural Templeton
neighbourhood with the admonition: ‘Do you know who my father is?’ only to
be beaten to pulp. Or perhaps he’s thinking about his wild teenage years,
when he had regular run-ins with the law. Or maybe it’s his early acting
career which, despite an impressive start in The Goonies, mostly
floundered in supporting roles. Or maybe he’s even thinking about July 12
this year, when he and Jeffrey Wright (who plays Colin Powell in W.)
and five others were arrested in a Louisiana bar for brawling. “I was
actually arrested for interfering with an arrest,” he says. “I wish I could
talk about it, man. But all I’ll say is that it wasn’t political. I wasn’t
in character.”
Nonetheless, he says that Stone is overegging the Bush-Brolin pudding – that
his own past doesn’t seem particularly volatile, and that he isn’t some
spiritual twin to George W. And yet. “I can’t deny the fact that there are
similarities with Bush. I see the similarities, but I don’t want to.” He
pauses again, trying desperately to wriggle out of it: “But I think we were
able to follow the vicissitudes of Bush’s life and do it in, er, a way, er,
that was, um, organic.” He stops and suddenly bursts out laughing. “Jesus
Christ!” he whoops, gagging on his own pretensions, and on the hint of
Bushian nonlogic in his answer.
For the moment, though, he says that he’s had enough of Bush and is trying
valiantly to get on with the rest of his life without him (“Every time I
tell a joke I end up sounding like Bush! He’s been in my head for so
long!”). He says that he has no idea why, after 20 years of actorly odd-jobs
in films such as Mimic and The Mod Squad, he has suddenly
become the toast of the town.
Sean Penn, his friend and co-star in the forthcoming biopic Milk (about
the gay rights activist Harvey Milk), says that it’s because he’s no longer
the smooth-featured pretty boy of old. “He said to me: ‘Dude, you look so
much better these days because your face is all f***ed up! It’s exactly what
you need!’ ” He says that his family bonds are tighter than ever, and that
he has just spent the morning with his father (who married Barbra Streisand
in 1998), his son Trevor, and his wife, the actress Diane Lane (Unfaithful).
His relationship with Lane, which hit the tabloids in 2004, when police were
called to a domestic dispute, is defiantly sturdy, he says, despite
everything. “It shouldn’t be this good, given that we’re both actors,” he
says. “It’s hard to be in the same profession and both fairly successful and
working a lot. But when we’re not working, we just want to be home
together.”
He confesses that he is still something of an adrenalin junkie and is a
regular surfer and racing driver – he turned professional, in 2000, after
winning a celebrity race and beating famous contestants, including George
Lucas (“I guess that means no gigs in Star Wars for me!”).
He says, finally, that he hopes W. will remind American audiences that
they are the ones who should have the power over the President, and not the
other way round. And no, he says, he’s not arrogant enough to think that his
portrayal of Bush might affect the outcome of the US election.
In the meantime what are his hopes for Bush, his spiritual twin, when he
leaves office? “I hope that he takes a vacation, that he relaxes and
reassesses his life,” Brolin says. He stops and corrects himself. “No,” he
says, starting over again. “What I really hope is that he sees the movie.”
W., the Times Gala film, shows at the OLS, Oct 23, 7.30pm and OWE2,
Oct 24, 1pm. It goes on general release on Nov 7 2008
I think it's easy to believe that once a president is out of office, they're "just not interesting anymore." But, that's not true. For example, during President Clinton's last days he signed a bill that helped lead to our current financial crisis. I wouldn't call that "uninteresting".
John Colson, Detroit, MI,
I say it bombs. I mean, who cares? He's out of office in a few months and he's just not interesting anymore.
Rex, New York, USA
The idea that liberating Iraq was a mistake is the entire basis of all the hatred that has been heaped on President Bush. The UN passed 17 resolutions and Saddam's Iraq violated all of them. Liberating Iraq was the right and moral thing to do. It took President Bush, a man of principal, to do it.
Mike Jones, Jacksonville, Florida, USA