First Look At Oliver Stone's 'W'
''Where is George Bush's bedroom?''
Oliver Stone is flinging open French doors inside an enormous brick man¬sion in Shreveport, La., inspecting loca¬tions for his new film about the 43rd President of the United States. ''This one is too small,'' he says. ''This one looks like George Tenet's bedroom. Where did we decide to put Bush's bedroom? It's around here somewhere, isn't it?''
Shooting begins in less than two weeks on W (or dub-ya, as it's spelled out in the initial sketches for the poster), but not everything is exactly where it should be, and not only here in the house where the First Family's residence will be re-created. The 32,000-square-foot soundstage the production is rent¬ing across town stands empty, waiting for the Oval Office and Cabinet Room sets to get trucked in from Los Angeles. The screenplay still needs work too. It's gone through two rewrites since an earlier draft leaked to the press last month (some skeptics took it as an April Fools' joke), but Stone would still like one more pass at it (''It's evolving,'' he says). And while most of the cast has been assembled and outfitted with prosthetic noses and hairpieces -- Josh Brolin will play President George W. Bush and Elizabeth Banks will star as Laura -- there is one major character still in search of an actor: a heavy named Dick Cheney.
Entertainment Weekly | Benjamin Svetkey | May 8, 2008 08:52 AM