Bush version
Any ideas on a good George W. Bush version of Secret Honor. In other words, a film about Bush talking about his past all alone.
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MovieChat Forums > Secret Honor (1986) Discussion > Bush version
It seems to me that Bush was a psychopath playing a buffoon playing president, a Bush version couldn't be the same, I doubt such a man has the degree of introspection necessary. There could be no pathetic grandeur like with Nixon, the presidential post by Bush's time had become even more of a media prop. More show business.
I think for W you'd need several Bushes, each one representing a cracked shard of his/America's broken psyche -Bush the cowboy, Bush the joker, Bush the child- all arguing with each other, all performing stand-up for the audience, telling jokes & stories, arguing with each other and generally evading any sort of conclusive analysis. It would only work as comedy with a real psychotic tone like the sitcom scene from NATURAL BORN KILLERS, maybe. A drugged out Tarantino vibe, nothing dry like SECRET HONOR, MTV-style incoherence only.
I can't be bothered with party politics, and I never felt anything either way about George W Bush when he was in office except that he had one shot at greatness and threw it away.
At the same time I never had a sense that there was anybody there. He reminded me of Tony Blair in that respect; their life consisted of politics and nothing else. They were always-on political people with no real personalities. Except that whereas Tony Blair came across as a small, venal man, George W Bush just seemed like a blank slate.
And so a Bush version of Secret Honour wouldn't work. I suspect that he is very rarely alone, and when he *is* alone he's probably rehearsing the next day's speeches and engagements.
His *dad*, on the other hand, struck me as someone with an internal life. Even Reagan, who was a consummate professional politician, seemed to have something going on behind the suit, at least while he was still compos mentis. Even Jeb Bush seemed to have opinions on some things.
George W Bush remains a mystery. He didn't seem to stand for anything, he came across as a passive tool for others, a fundamentally powerless man who, paradoxically, found himself transformed into a warlord.