There are similarities between Stone and Bush. Both were born into wealth and educated at boarding school. Both were Gold­water Republicans and were classmates at Yale for a short time.

That’s when things diverged. Bush dodged Vietnam, boozed it up, got lost, found God, won the White House, and marched the country into a pair of poorly planned wars. He could well leave office as the least popular president on record.

Stone, for his part, enlisted in Vietnam, killed men, won medals for bravery, returned to school in New York, and went on to make deep films about the dark, uncertain corners of life. He married three times, did copious drugs (he still smokes pot), drank barrels of wine, and, after a streak of remarkable success in the ’80s and ’90s, watched as his box office receipts took a precipitous slide.

“The movie’s not a smear job,” he says, referring to W. “I wouldn’t want to spend a year of my life making something that is demeaning to somebody, being malicious. That’s the wrong approach to art.

“It’s not a political film, but a Shakespearean one. It’s a film about George W. rebelling against his father, doing better than his father, believing that he’s stronger than his father, and outdoing his father…and it’s about the colossal mistakes he made and the lies he told. In a way it’s Oedipal. One can say he did kill the father because he did destroy the legacy, the name. It’s a big thing with the Bushes.”

Based upon ideas and information culled from a slew of books about the Bush family, Stone and writer Stanley Weiser stylized scenes and invented dialogue for the most important moments in the younger Bush’s life. This happens in the war room, the frat house, everywhere in between.

“Sure, it’s a political film,” actor James Cromwell says. “It would be horseshit to say it’s not. If this is not a political film, then I’m sorry. I’m completely lost. If it’s fiction, it doesn’t lessen the impact on the cost of war, the waste, the horror. If anyone has the cOjones to pull that off, it’s Oliver Stone.”

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Josh Brolin, who portrays W. in the film, says he was initially skeptical about the project as well as playing the role: “I was like everybody else—thinking that W. was going to be a heavy-handed, leftist view of our current administration. But what I read in the script was a fair and compelling life story of a man who eventually became president of the United States.”

Brolin became that man, he says, while researching the role. “I was able to find very redeeming and valuable traits about Bush that I was unable and unwilling to see prior,” he says. “Once I saw a fuller picture of him, I was able to see a sustainable character.”

The Bush camp has its own take on it. “Oliver Stone is known for being about as accurate a historian as Gilligan was a navigator,” says Dana Perino, press secretary to the White House.

If it is an Oedipal film, I ask Stone, then knowing what he knows about Bush’s policy decisions, what can he surmise about the president’s penis?

“What?” Stone asks.

“What exactly do you make of Bush’s penis?” I repeat.

“No, I don’t really care to judge that,” Stone answers.

“Then the film can’t be that controversial,” I say.

Later, after the interview’s over, I ask my mother the same question. “Obviously, Bush’s penis leans to the right,” she says.

* * * *
For the rest of our time together, Stone, courtly and generous, pours wine while ruminating on globalization, NATO expansion, the military industrial complex, blood lust, Likud Party politics, paper ballots versus electronic voting, postmodern imperialism, the nuclear bomb, good wine. And sex.

“How can I describe myself?” he says. “As an adventurer who has traveled the world and indulged and enjoyed many narratives.”

“How do you live? What have you been up to?”

“I basically live in an intense level of work—and I play intense. I’m not the type to take off on a motorcycle or plane or helicopter. I don’t like endangering myself recklessly. I enjoy people. I party to relax. And sometimes I like to party too hard. But it’s fun. Sex is perhaps the best single relief from this intensity, if you want to know the truth. I’m a married man with a very active wife.”

This is the guy who once offered Viagra to Fidel Castro.

I ask, “How old is your wife?”

“It’s not about that. It’s about how active her body is…but she’s 54,” he says, giving a mischievous smile. “She’s a hot Korean babe. The readers of Maxim might like to hear that.”

“They just might,” I say. “Thank you, Oliver. I hope this has been weird for you.”

“Indeed,” he says.