» Josh Brolin interview
Josh Brolin talks to Latest 7 about his role as President Bush in Oliver Stone’s new film W
It’s been a rather impressive few years for you, hasn’t it?
Right, but once you confine it to the year, where do you go from there?
But it’s enabled you to take the step up to play the lead in W., doesn’t it?
That was what I hoped, to respect the moment. I had a lot of opportunities and a lot of money came my way, so thank God for my friend Brett Markinson, who taught me most of what I know about trading stocks. That gave me an objectivity to it all. His whole thing is ‘the minute you start to feel greed, sell, and the minute you start to feel fear look and see if it’s something you want to acquire because it’s probably a pretty good time to buy in.’ I think it helps to have the ability to step back and go ‘am I going to feel comfortable looking back on this or am I going to feel like I took the first buck because I was so happy to be making a buck as opposed to six cents?’
You ran the script for W. by your oldest son, which suggests you trust his judgement a great deal.
Very much so. It doesn’t end with him, I would never put that kind of pressure on him but I’ve shown him a few scripts that I was thinking about doing and I think he has a good point of view. It’s an off-beat point of view, but I like his insight into characters and story.
Your father, James Brolin, is a successful actor, was that easy to come to terms with when you started out?
I decided to get into that business early on after I took an acting class in school which I liked very much. Once I decided to do it, I did a bunch of things I’m sure my kids would never do. I made up a résumé, I lied, there were a lot of obstacles for me. People didn’t want there to be any nepotism, so they sometimes wouldn’t see me based on that fact.
Do you think W. offers a more sympathetic portrait of George Bush the man, than people will expect?
For sure. Sympathetic is a tough word to use because of what that administration has done, it’s hard to use the word ‘sympathetic’. Am I more sympathetic towards the man? I don’t know, I just feel like I have more information now. There were moments where, the best thing for me just as a citizen, was to be able to study the Republican point of view. To be able to study the evangelical point of view, and then ultimately to study the Bush administration, and Bush himself. And read as many books as I could on it.
How did you feel about
him before embarking on
this movie?
I judged this guy as cosmetically as a lot of other people, that he’s just a stammering, stuttering idiot. You can’t be the president and just be an idiot, so I think that was very irresponsible of me, and lazy of me, to write him off as that. I’ve learned that’s not the case at all.
