You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?

Maybe it's the Talking Heads on the soundtrack, but this isn't looking to me like a movie about him or about us or about the war or politics.  It's a movie about that nightmare.  The one in which everybody finds out who and what you really are.

Maybe I'm projecting.  Maybe you don't have that nightmare.  I have it all the time.  I've mentioned here before that that's why I find it hard to hate George W. Bush or at least hard not to feel sorry for him while I'm hating him.  I look at his life and I see my nightmare come to life and writ large.  There but for the grace of God, I can't help thinking, go I if I'd listened to the well-meaning adults who thought I could have Pop Mannion's life and tried to talk me into trying to have it even though I clearly didn't have Pop's brains or talents or skills or energy or capabilities or even his particular interests and ambitions.  Teachers, friends and colleagues of Pop's, people around town who knew Pop because of what he'd done for them and the town---a lot of them assumed that just because I was his son I naturally ought to have been able to do what he did.  What if I'd believed them?  Assuming I didn't just fall flat on my face at the outset, how long before I'd have made a total mess of everything I touched that someone more truly like him should have been handling?

To Pop Mannion's credit, he himself never expected me to be a mini-him.  All he wanted was for me to buckle down and do my homework and stop daydreaming and walking into metaphorical open manholes and learn that one dollar didn't magically turn into two just because I needed it to.

From what I've read, that's all Poppy Bush wanted for W. too.  Oh, and for the drinking and drugs to end.  It was Barbara who convinced her eldest son he could be his father just by wishing it.

Dick Cheney and Karl Rove played a part in it too.

But that's probably why when I'm looking at Josh Brolin in the trailers and seeing him do a spookily close doubling of W., I'm also thinking I'm looking at somebody I know.

Brolin's performance looks brilliant.  But Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney?

Absolutely frightening.

From Vanity Fair.

Comments

[Ken Muldrew]

"But Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney?"

Just think of the formative Dick Cheney as Duddy Kravitz being cleaned out by the gentile gambling op at St. Agathe; the rest is just revenge.

[Lance]

Ken,

Thanks for reminding me of Duddy Kravitz. A good movie. I'm adding it to the list for my Richard Dreyfuss film fest: American Graffiti, Jaws, The Big Fix, The Goodbye Girl, Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Now Duddy. I think I need one more and W. might be it.

Did you watch the trailer? That little snippet where Cheney/Dreyfuss is explaining "enhanced interrogation" to W.? First time I watched it I thought, How did Oliver Stone get a camera inside Dick Cheney's White House for that meeting?

[actor212]

Wow, Duddy Kravitz...I hadn't thought about that movie in ages.

When I heard Stone was making a movie about "W", I was of mixed feelings. Obviously, we have a clear idea what Stone feels about war in general (Platoon), Presidents and conspiracies (JFK), and charismatic figures in over their heads (The Doors).

When he announced one day that it wouldn't be a hatchet job, I tried to imagine what it actually might look like, and from what I've seen in trailers and what I read here, it took a swerve: it might actually be sympathetic to Bush's plight, but not the man.

Sort of like the movie "Nixon" ;-)

[Linkmeister]

There's always "Stakeout," which gets my vote for "Best Legs on a Movie Poster."

[velvet goldmine]

I cannot BELIEVE Robert Culp isn't playing Rumsfeld. I've probably said this here before, but it's spooky how Culpian Rumsfeld's looks and mannerisms are. I've always assumed everyone else associated the two men, and that when a Big Cinema Treatment of the Bush administration happened, Culp would play DR.

[Bill Altreuter]

Funny, I was just thinking about what Thanksgiving must be like for the Bush family. The old man was no prize- he was a hatchet man for the Republican Party who became President in the classic Republican fashion: it was His Turn. Even though he was out of his depth he took the job seriously, and he managed to get some things right. The Americans With Disabilities Act was a terrific piece of civil rights legislation, and his Iraq War turned out okay. He was a real veteran, too. It must break his heart every day to contemplate what a complete and utter fuckup his son is. Bad enough when he was a shirker and a deserter. A drunk, with no sense of noblese oblige. Say what you will about old George, he loves his country, and now his kid has wrecked it. It is very nearly enough to make me feel sorry for him, but I got troubles of my own.

[elbrucce]

Feel sorry for W? Fuck that! Just like Palin, he decided he wanted the prize without actually having to work for it and earn it. W's contempt for this country and the 98% of the population that is not his base completely nullifies any conceivable grounds for sympathy for this pampered dolt. He has had every opportunity to succeed, had he only bothered to do his homework. Instead, the craven coward always took the easy way out while his family covered up for him and bought him ever-higher access. And just as McCain has shown his true colors with his choice of Palin, so too was Poppy & Barb's "love of country" demonstrated by pretending their idiot son was fit to be president.

[SweetSue]

Richard Dreyfuss has already played Dick Cheney and brilliantly, too, in "The American President."
He just thought that he was playing Robert Dole.