Something funny happens in Oliver Stone’s “W.” – besides the scene where the commander-in-chief clumsily chokes on a pretzel while watching a football game. Despite the director’s well-known lefty leanings, Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser have managed to make George W. Bush, dare we say it, sympathetic.
The president portrayed in the film (by Josh Brolin) is not evil. He is a man struggling to do the right thing, who ultimately fails due to ignorance, laziness, egotism, bad advice and a misguided belief that he is doing the will of God. Weiser says he wanted to present a well-rounded take on the 43rd president.
“I wanted to leave my politics at the door,” he says. ” ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ has already been made, and it eviscerated Bush. After reading about him, I learned a lot and saw him in a different light than I did only seeing the parodies of him on television.”
Weiser’s script, which follows Bush from his hard-drinking youth up to the Iraq War, was initially rejected by studios for being too politically sensitive. When Stone went elsewhere to get financing, the script was again rejected – but for a different reason.
“Oliver went to a very wealthy liberal investor, and he claimed the script was too pro-Bush for him,” Weiser says. “The same thing happened with German investors. They said, ‘You made him a human being.’ “
The filmmakers also strove for accuracy. Weiser and a research assistant pored over some 20 books and created file folders for scenes and themes. (For example, “God and Bush” and “Mission Accomplished.”) Is what they cooked up factual?
To find out, The Post ran a truthiness check on some of the more surprising moments from “W.”
DADDY’S BOY
Scene: After driving home drunk from a Christmas party in 1972, Dubya nearly gets into a fistfight with his father.
Truthiness: High
As recounted in “First Son” by Bill Minutaglio and other biographies, Bush struck and dragged a neighbor’s trash can noisily down the street before turning into the family’s driveway. His father, known in the family as Poppy, asked to see him, and a belligerent Dubya yelled, “I hear you’re looking for me. You wanna go mano a mano right here?” Both men were screaming in each other’s faces until Barbara intervened. In another account, it is brother Jeb who defuses the situation by revealing the news that the academically dodgy Dubya has been accepted to Harvard Business School. “Oh, I’m not going,” Bush tells his father. “I just wanted to let you know I could get into it.” A few months later, he did enroll.
“[The confrontation] happened,” Weiser says. “No one has ever denied it. I think the father downplayed it, saying, ‘Well, it was just a family argument.’ But to challenge your father to a fistfight, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never done that.”
THE APES OF WAR
Scene: During a planning meeting about the invasion of Iraq, Bush learns from Condoleezza Rice (played by Thandie Newton) that the “coalition of the willing” will, in part, consist of monkeys.
Truthiness: Low
In 2003, a dubious report surfaced in Moroccan weekly al-Usbu’ al-Siyassi that the government had offered to help America’s cause by donating 2,000 trained simians that could be used to detonate land mines in Iraq. The publication quoted a source that said the use of chimps is a “well-known military tactic.” An official at the Moroccan embassy could not confirm the offer, and no monkeys have been spotted in Iraq.
SADDAMN HU-*#@-SSEIN!
Scene: While walking on the White House lawn with Dubya, press secretary Ari Fleischer (played by Rob Corddry) recounts an exchange he had earlier with veteran journalist Helen Thomas, who aggressively questioned the rationale for going to war. Bush responds angrily, “Did you tell her I don’t like motherf— ers who gas their own people? Did you tell her I don’t like a — – holes who try to kill my father? Did you tell her I’m going to kick his sorry motherf — -ing a– – all over the Mideast?” Fleischer replies dryly, “I told her half of that.”
Truthiness: Moderate
Two of the three lines from Bush’s diatribe are recounted directly in “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War” by journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The line about Saddam trying to kill Bush’s father was inserted by the screenwriter based on comments the president made at a 2002 Houston fund-raiser. “After all,” Bush said of the Iraqi dictator, “this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time.” Says Weiser of the president’s foul mouth, “This is the side of him that he used to be before he got religion.”
ON A MISSION FROM GOD
Scene: Bush, then governor of Texas, summons his minister, Earle Hudd, to his office and tells him, “I believe God wants me to run for president.”
Truthiness: High
Although the character of Earle Hudd is a composite of various evangelical figures in Bush’s life -including Billy Graham and Kirbyjon Caldwell, a pastor at a Houston megachurch – Bush has on several occasions expressed the sentiment that he’s been tapped by the Almighty to sit in the Oval Office. According to PBS, Dubya once told James Robison, host of a religious TV show called “Life Today,” “I feel that I’m supposed to run for president. I don’t wanna do that. I didn’t wanna be governor. But I believe I’m supposed to. I can’t explain it, but I believe my country’s gonna need me.” On another occasion, Bush and his mother were sitting in church listening to a sermon from Minister Mark Craig about how Moses was reluctantly chosen to lead his people to the promised land. As Bush writes in “A Charge to Keep,” his mother later said, “He was talking about you.”
SORE LOSER
Scene: After getting creamed in a 1978 debate by his challenger in a race for Congress, Bush smashes his car into his garage door in anger.
Truthiness: High
On his way home from a speech – Bush was running for a seat in Texas’ 19th district – Dubya asked Laura how his delivery was going over. As reported by USA Today, Laura replied, “Terrible.” Her husband then proceeded to slam his Pontiac Bonneville straight into the garage door.
BROADWAY ‘MEMORIES’
Scene: Laura tries to cheer up the distraught president by buying him tickets to his favorite musical, “Cats.”
Truthiness: Moderate
“I read that ‘Cats’ was his favorite play and that Chuck Norris was his favorite movie actor,” Weiser says. Both factoids were revealed in Frank Bruni’s Bush bio “Ambling Into History.” The Chuck Norris part is believable enough, but “Cats”? Surely the prez has more taste.
LAURA’S A LIBERAL!
Scene: Laura Bush resists dating Bush because she’s a Democrat.
Truthiness: High
Laura Welch grew up in a family of Texas Democrats. By most accounts, she stayed true to the party until she met her future husband at a friend’s barbecue in 1977. “She actually didn’t want to meet Bush, because she didn’t want to date someone in politics, and a Republican no less,” Weiser says. Bush was running for Congress at the time. Ever since, Laura has mostly kept her political views to herself. She once snapped at a reporter, “If I differ with my husband, I’m not going to tell you about it. Sorry.” She’s rumored to be more liberal than her husband, and said on “Today” that Roe vs. Wade shouldn’t be overturned.
PROVOKING IRAQ
Scene: In the ramp-up to the war, Bush tells Tony Blair that the US is considering painting one of its military planes with UN markings, in hopes that Saddam Hussein would shoot it down.
Truthiness: High
The Oval Office meeting between Bush and Blair (in “W.,” it’s been moved to the Crawford Ranch for dramatic effect) was documented in Philippe Sands’ “Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules.” In the conversation, the details of which are believed to have been leaked by the British government, Bush says, “The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach.” In August, the House Judiciary Committee announced plans to look into the plot as part of a larger investigation into the Bush administration’s selling of the war.
GEORGE THE ENFORCER
Scene: After being summoned to Washington to work on his father’s presidential campaign, Dubya plays for Poppy the infamous Willie Horton ad, which accused Michael Dukakis of granting furloughs to murderers.
Truthiness: Low
Weiser admits that the scene was a dramatization. “He may not have personally shown it to [his father] that way, but Bush’s role in the campaign was enforcer. He did dig up dirt and he worked on the Willie Horton campaign.” According to “Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President” by James Hatfield, Dubya had a major role in getting the ad made. The spot didn’t originate from the campaign, but was financed by the supposedly independent National Security Political Action Committee. Bush called the book “scurrilous” and “Fortunate Son” was recalled by its original publisher, due to controversy over its author, a convicted felon.
BLACK GOLD
* Was oil the administration’s main rationale for going to war in Iraq? “W.” highlights a formerly secret report submitted to Dick Cheney in April 2001 that recommended the use of “military intervention” to fix the US energy crisis.
FATHER FIGURE
* The film suggests that Dubya was miserable living in his father’s shadow. In “First Son” by Bill Minutaglio, Dubya even says his father’s defeat would have been good for him, because he’d have had an easier time establishing his own identity.
TOP DOG
* In “W.,” Bush barks at Cheney to back off and delcares himself “the decider.” In Ron Suskind’s book “The Way of the World,” Bush orders the vice-president to “step back” in meetings so that people will stop deferring to Cheney.
WHAT MISTAKE?
* The movie dramatizes a 2004 press conference in which the president is asked what his biggest mistake had been. Bush said he wished he’d known about the questions beforehand, and failed to come up with an answer.
DEEP (CENTER) THOUGHTS
* In 1989, Bush bought a stake in the Texas Rangers. He liked to stand in center field when the stadium was empty to clear his head: “That gave him the most peace of mind in the world,” says “W.” screenwriter Weiser.