Here at Empire, we have connections to the most powerful people on the planet. No it’s true, in our new issue we actually spent time talking to the President of The USA.
Okay, we didn’t really but Josh Brolin is the next best thing. As the lead in Oliver Stone’s upcoming George Bush biopic, W, he’s gotten closer than most to the not-so great leader and we were given the chance to grill him for information about the man behind the myth.
“Before, I wasn’t a fan, not in the least,” says Brolin. “I’ll be honest about that. And, like a lot of people, I had a very myopic perception of him. Now, I don’t. My opinion of the administration didn’t change, and neither did my thoughts on Republicanism. My opinion of him changed, though, because when you humanise someone and you really start to do a lot of research, you see the bigger picture.”
Stone’s movie, which chronicles Bush’s rise to power, isn’t his first stab at immortalising a US president on celluloid – that would have been the rather scathing Nixon – so how do the two movies compare?
“Obviously, in making the film, we discovered dimensions of humanity, and that was important,” says Stone of Dubya. “There was empathy, like Nixon. But, unlike Nixon, he’s more of a circular character; even now he harkens back to who he was in 2000. His speeches are the same. There doesn’t seem to be a growth. There’s a fundamental inability in the man, a King Lear kind of hubris, where he can’t admit to any fault, whereas Nixon seems to have been genuinely haunted by doubt and uncertainty.
"As a result, this is a very different type of movie. While Nixon was a very rich meal, this is more of a soufflé. And with a soufflé, you never quite know until it bakes.”
We’ve also got our hands on some exclusive images from W, click below for a closer look.
For the full interview, check out the October 2008 issue of Empire in shops from August 28.
W is released in the UK on November 7.