W. - Josh Brolin interview

JOSH Brolin talks about accepting the role of George W Bush in Oliver Stone’s provocative new biopic, how he went about portraying him and what his own family thought of his casting. He was speaking at a UK press conference held during the London Film Festival...

Q. Do you think Bush will ever watch the movie and offer you a critique?

Josh Brolin: Nope. I’ve said that I can imagine at some point after the lights go down and everyone else has gone to sleep on the ranch in Crawford that he’ll pop in the DVD and go [adopts Bush voice]: “I really liked your performance”. Maybe while eating a bowl of pretzel’s… and hopefully choking. But no, I don’t think he will. I know some people in the White House have made some comments about it, but they hadn’t seen the movie yet so their comments were pretty hollow.

Q. What was your reaction to being offered the part? Is it true you were mortally offended?

Josh Brolin: It’s getting so exaggerated that I was mortally offended. Like: “Are you f**king kidding me?” I was more confused than anything. We had a dinner a while back and another great director was with me and he said to me, don’t ever forget that Oliver means it as a compliment, and I get that now. I’d bought into the whole media-created mythology surrounding Oliver, that he was a controversial figure, a left-wing hammer, but if you look at the films he’s done, he’s been more than fair. I think he’s the one filmmaker who has, first and foremost, been interested in social issues.

In most of his movies he’s tried to step back and ask us, how can we learn from this? How can we make better decisions that will help us in the future? But for him coming to me, I didn’t understand why. I thought he’d focus on the last seven and a half years, which he didn’t do. So, after my first cosmetic reaction, I’d stayed away from this until I read the script and I realised it offered one of the most terrifying prospects for being an actor, which was to follow someone from 21-years-old to 58-years-old. It’s not easy. Usually in a biopic you cover something like 10 years of a person’s life. You don’t do nearly 40. So, then I went into massive fear and did as much research as I could do. Even though it was an incredibly collaborative effort, you want to do the best you can do to serve Oliver, because it’s his film.

Q. How did you reign in your performance so it wasn’t just a jokey performance?

Josh Brolin: Did I reign it in? To me, all I can see is a cartoon. Not truthfully, but almost truthfully. Actually, one night Oliver showed me this clip on YouTube of this American impressionist called Frank Caliendo who does this genius impression of Bush. Total transformation. There are comedic aspects to this person that you can’t deny, that I got really sick of doing after a while. You want those comedic aspects to be there, but you can’t sustain them for two hours. You watch Frank Caliendo and he’s great for about 15 seconds and then you’re looking forward to the next impression. It’s really just looking for the human aspect. That’s all it is, the human aspect of everything. And between Elizabeth and I we talked about how much they adored each other and that’s how we got that through-line.

Q. Can you talk about the parallels that exist between you, both having grown up with famous and successful fathers?

Josh Brolin: I see the parallel and it’s an easy one to make. I think for me, more than anything in trying to find a connection with the character, it was with his mother, even though we don’t really deal with that story. There’s a lot written about the relationship between him and his mother. The fact that he had a sister who died when he was seven-years-old, his reaction to that, the ambience that created for a couple of years and how that really began moulding who he became later, with that Tasmanian Devil, ADD-quality that he has.

But as for the famous fathers thing, no. I mean, If I had to do exactly the same movies that my father did, then that would be more of a similarity. This guy has to end up in exactly the same chair as his father. I can’t imagine the weight of that. Especially when you have the convictions that he has and the emotional reaction he has to his father not dealing with Sadam head on. But it’s conjecture and you can only learn what you can learn and then you do your rendition of his life song. This is our rendition.

Q. What was the reaction of your stepmother [Barbra Streisand], given she’s such a high profile supporter of the Democrats?

Josh Brolin: “How much are you getting paid?” I said: “Nothing.” “Then why are you doing it?” [Laughs] No, there was no reaction. There was something written in one of the rag magazines that she’d thrown a fit and wasn’t talking to me. I kind of liked that reaction… I think she was more reactive recently when Sarah Palin went on Saturday Night Live. I heard that she reacted almost violently. But no, I think she was very pleased that I was doing something with such weight.