Jeb Bush calls ‘W’ movie ‘Hooey’

Oliver Stone has proclaimed that his new feature film “W.” aims to be an “empathetic” psychological portrait of President Bush.

The president’s younger brother has a different impression.

At the heart of “W.,” opening nationally in theaters Friday, is a psychological portrait of George W. Bush as living perpetually in the shadow of his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and driven to invade Iraq at least in part by a desire to prove he is as tough as the elder statesman.

“The Oedipal rivalry is high-grade, unadulterated hooey,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told The Washington Times.

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Exploring such a complicated family dynamic might have benefited from direct conversations with, say, the president’s younger brother who, in the telling of Mr. Stone and his “W.” screenwriter, Stanley Weiser, was regarded by his parents as the more promising sibling.

“I didn’t receive a call,” Jeb Bush said.

Likewise, many of the other central characters in the film say that neither Mr. Stone nor Mr. Weiser made any effort to contact them, check facts or get their input on events they witnessed firsthand.

The collaborators, who did not return calls seeking comment from The Times to the agency that is spearheading publicity for the film in the Washington, D.C., area, appear to have relied heavily on secondary sources such as Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” and Stephen Mansfield’s “The Faith of George W. Bush.”

Mr. Weiser told Reuters news agency earlier this year that he read 17 books about the president while researching the film. Yet the movie lacks any eyewitness verification - even for incendiary charges that the Bush administration, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, exploited the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and exaggerated the threat of Iraqi nuclear capability to establish hegemony over the Middle East and Eurasia, regions rich in the oil that would fuel a 21st-century American empire and deter emerging rivals like China.

Keith Urbahn, spokesman for former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said: “No one from the film gave us a call. Donald Rumsfeld has neither the intention nor interest in seeing ‘W.’ Judging from what I’ve seen from the trailer, it doesn’t seem like veracity and the historical record were high on Stone’s priority list.”

“W.” is what the publishing world would call an “unauthorized biography.” It purports to be not necessarily a literal historical re-enactment but, rather, a vehicle for informed speculation and the revelation of psychological and symbolic truth.

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