Fancast: The Big Picture

Oliver Stone is making a biopic about George W. Bush, entitled simply W, starring Josh Brolin as the titular initial. Stone's track record with historical films has damaged his credibility as a biographer in any capacity, and despite his claim to want to make a true and fair portrait of the man, no one is really buying it. The Hollywood Reporter sought input from actual Bush biographers about the screenplay with the project due to start filming this month with the goal of being released in time for the election. Here is a sampling of their feedback.

"It leaves you with the impression that the White House is run as a fraternity house with no reverence for hierarchy, the office itself or for the implications of policy," said Robert Draper, author of "Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush." "Everybody calling everybody else nicknames and chatting about whether to go to war as if they were chatting about how to bet on a football game really misses the mark of how many White Houses, including this one, are run."

"The problem here is it goes to this notion of Bush as being the passive receiver of policy and the White House being run by (Dick) Cheney, (Donald) Rumsfeld, (Karl) Rove and others," Draper said. "Bush's adversaries have been ill-served by this belief that Bush is an observer to his own presidency. This notion that his schedule is driven by what's on ESPN is ludicrous."

All four Bush biographers cast doubt on one scene in which a wave crashes on a rocky promontory as Bush reveals: "There's this darkness that follows me ..."

"He doesn't think or talk like that," [Jacob] Weisberg said. "The darkness sounds like they've been listening to too much Springsteen. It doesn't ring psychologically true to me."

All four biographers confirmed the accuracy of one striking scene in which a young Bush challenges his father to a fistfight after coming home drunk. And while they recognized the nickname "Turdblossom" for Rove, they were less familiar with "Balloon Foot," which Stone's Bush uses for Colin Powell. And some felt that "Pooty Poot" for Vladimir Putin was taken from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, not Bush himself.

The filmmaker's responses:

Screenwriter Stanley Weiser, who wrote "W" and also co-wrote Stone's "Wall Street," said: "I have no comment other than the fact that I have read 17 books on Bush."

"We've done our homework," said Moritz Borman, one of the film's producers. " 'W' will not be a documentary. It will be a compelling account of the actions and motivations of this president, fully guided by facts that have been established and documented."

[Financier QED's Bill] Block, for one, said accuracy was vital to the filmmakers. "When you embark on something as important as this," he said, "the truth is extremely important, and Oliver is relentless about the truth and facts."

"It is not going to be simplistic at all. It is powerful and not trying to be skewed to the left, but to be real. The truth is surprising and, frankly, shocking enough."

What the director plans to do with this script, however, remains a complete unknown. Like a Brolin Stone!

Worst pun ever, thank you very much.