Josh Brolin Channels the President in 'W.'
Brolin on Bush: 'I Really Like the Guy'
Christian Bale Turned Down 'W' Role
Brolin was not Stone's first pick. Christian Bale was lined up to star but changed his mind.
"He got nervous," Brolin acknowledged. "I haven't talked to Christian about this, but I'm glad he decided it wasn't for him."
But Brolin wasn't easy to convince, either.
When Stone first approached him for the part, Brolin, puzzled, asked why him? Because there is "a great bucolic meanness to you," Stone responded. Brolin turned him down without reading the script. It was his son, Trevor Mansur, who read the script and convinced him to do it.
Brolin also spoke with his father, actor James Brolin, who did nothing to calm his nerves by saying, "It's amazing you're the first guy to play an incumbent president -- are you nervous?" He wasn't -- at least not until two weeks before they started filming, he said.
"W." is a story about the relationship between a father and his son. Brolin, putting himself in Bush's shoes, reflected "it would be like me redoing all my father's movies ... I couldn't imagine doing that ... it must have landed like a ton of bricks," he said.
What About 'Goonies II?'
Next up for Brolin is Gus Van Sant's "Milk," which will be out next month. He plays Dan White, who fatally shot San Francisco councilman Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn), the first openly gay man elected to public office, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone in 1978.
Brolin said he cried when he read the script and also when he watched the Oscar-winning documentary, "The Times of Harvey Milk," with his daughter Eden.
He met with White's son, who he called "a wonderful young man," and talked to him about his father. White, said Brolin, "is human, too ... we can despise what he did, but he's still human. Everybody is capable of anything."
Penn, according to Brolin, is "one of the greatest, if not the greatest, actor I have ever worked with ... [he's] a tough guy."
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