Then again, they knew who they were hiring: A man who, as Gaunabee's Cindy Casares notes, has never been one to subsume his own professional impulses, masturbatory or not, to those of his colleagues. Gaunabee recorded copious footage from the event, some of which is excerpted above.

Although repeated in a number of colorful permutations, Stone's point was fairly straightforward: most consumers are tasteless boors; the internet allows these morons to upload video; therefore internet video is shit and will never be "Fine Art." That an overwhelming number of these vulgarians failed to go and see Stone's last movie, making it a surprise box office failure despite such memorable lines as "don't get cute Turdblossom," only further establishes Stone's credibility as an arbiter of good taste and Fine Art.

Good thing someone is! The first film's director, Oliver Stone, has signed a deal with Fox to do a sequel to his 1987 horror movie about the "greed is good" ethos that swallowed up so many New Yorkers in the 80's. Michael Douglas will reprise his role as Gordon Gecko—he won an Oscar on the first go around—but Charlie Sheen (and, presumably, Daryl Hannah) has been replaced. Who's pissy and annoying now, just like Sheen was back then? Shia LaBeouf! He'll play a young upstart, and the current economic clusterbungle will be factored into the story. Allan Loeb, who wrote the sorta-similar cocky young guy movie 21, will pen the script. Stone hasn't really been crankin' out the hits of late, so we are a bit skeptical, though there's some cautious optimism lurking around, because the first one was just so good.

It should be out by the time no one has any money left to buy movie tickets.

This morning on The View, Elisabeth Hasselbeck was all bent out of shape about Phelps' bong hit, giving the tired spiel about how he's a role model and he's setting a bad example, blah blah blah. She went on to claim that since he's willing to use illegal drugs to have a good time, maybe he's open to using illegal drugs to advance his career, as though weed is a gateway drug to steroids or something. Whoopi shot her down pretty quickly, and admitted to enjoying pot.

Elisabeth's argument hinged on the fact that Phelps accepts money to endorse products. One of those is Rosetta Stone, the language-learning software, which is just about one of the most sedentary activities a stoner could enjoy, aside from watching The Wizard of Oz on mute while playing The Dark Side of the Moon. (I should know, since I've been using the program to learn Spanish.) His other sponsors, like Omega and Speedo, totally don't give a shit.

And they shouldn't, because it's silly — in my opinion, anyway — to pass judgment on those who take part in something as innocuous as pot smoking, which many believe is lot less harmful for one's body than alcohol. Besides, despite the fact that it's technically illegal, so many people smoke weed recreationally that it's not all that taboo. Here's a list of celebrities who have either been caught smoking marijuana, or admit willingly to doing so.

Woody Harrelson



Woody is an activist for the legalization of marijuana and hemp.

Willie Nelson



So is Willie Nelson.

Frances McDormand



Frances McDormand was on the cover of High Times in May 2003, in which she said, "I'm a recreational pot-smoker. There has never been enough of a distinction between marijuana and other drugs. It's a human rights issue, a censorship issue, and a choice issue."

Seth Rogen & James Franco



The pair stared in Pineapple Express together, and shared this maybe real/maybe fake joint on stage while presenting an award during the MTV Movie Awards last summer.

Cameron Diaz & Drew Barrymore



Also friends who share.

Justin Timberlake



Timberlake, who used to date Diaz, has been very open about how he smokes weed, sometimes even with is mother. He also admitted that he was stoned out of his mind when he was Punk'd by Ashton Kutcher.

Kimora Lee Simmons



Kimora Lee Simmons took one of the stoniest mugshots after she was arrested in 2004 for possession.

Nicole Richie



Nicole admitted to having smoked pot, as well as taking a Vicodin, when she was arrested for a DUI charge in 2007.

Paris Hilton



Nicole's buddy Paris' reefer madness has been well documented.

Michelle Phillips



Former singer from The Mamas & The Papas said as recently as 2001 that, "Marijuana should definitely be legalized. I think we should let everyone smoke it without fear of being thrown in jail. It's the greatest drug in the world!"

Snoop Dogg



Duh.

Redman



We'll be here all day if we start listing rappers.

Lil Wayne



But we'll mention Wayne for good measure.

Mariah Carey



Mariah is such a goody-two-shoes that she'd never publicly admit to marijuana use, but on her most recent album, she made plenty of weed references.

Charlize Theron



Academy Award winners like their weed, too.

AARP



In the summer of 2005, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) hosted a smoke-in to promote the legalization of marijuana. Celebrities that participated: Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson (obvs), Bette Midler, Santana, Chicago, David Crosby and Graham Nash, Rod Stewart, The New Jefferson Starship, Tony Orlando, Ringo Starr, Tommy Chong, Snoop Dogg, and Robert Downey Jr.

Matthew McConaughey



When McConaughey gets loose, he does so with bongos.

Dionne Warwick



Her work with Burt Bacharach was way too mellow to not be under the influence.

Whitney Houston & Bobby Brown



They've got "Something in Common."

Sarah Silverman



Sarah speaks favorably about weed in her act, and smoked with Doug Benson in his movie Super High Me.

Doug Benson



Comedian Doug Benson has centered much of his career around pot.

Oliver Stone



He has the perfect name for someone who's been busted for pot on numerous occasions.

Dawn Wells



Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island was arrested last year for possession.

Dave Chappelle

The Pointer Sisters



Oliver Hudson tells a story about his first concert-going experience, during which the Pointer Sisters were getting blazed.

Paul Dinello



It's hard to watch this Strangers With Candy clip about smoking pot without thinking that writer/actor Paul Dinello believes what he is saying.

Barbra Streisand



In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Babs said, "I'd take out a joint and light it. First, just faking it. Then I started lighting live joints, passing them around to the band, you know. I was great, it relieved all my tensions. And I ended up with the greatest supply of grass ever. Other acts up and down the Strip heard about what I was doing - Little Anthony and the Imperials, people like that - and started sending me the best dope in the world. I never ran out."

Phelps Backed by Sponsors After Marijuana Photo [TCPalm]
Elisabeth Hasselbeck disses Michael Phelps; Whoopi Goldberg: 'I have smoked weed' [EW]

The full interview is after the jump!

DEFAMER: We’d just like to start with the question on most of our readers’ minds: Why didn’t you burn the tapes?

ROB CORDDRY: Uhhh…I’m one of your readers, and that’s not a question on my mind.

Sorry. We just saw Frost/Nixon over the weekend, and it kind of rubbed off on us. So there were no tapes?

You’re a little Frost/Nixon obsessed right now?

Yeah.

This is exactly what Frost wanted. Don’t give in to it.

Guess we’ll throw out the Cambodia questions, too. Alright. Well. So…Your show! Children’s Hospital. It’s really funny.

Hey—thank you! I really appreciate that!

In the first ten seconds a character says, “We have to slice off your son’s cock.”

Uhhh—yes. That’s an appetizer, if you will.

Then you introduce a crippled Megan Mullally, and another character says he’d like to “bang her in her clumsy vagina.”

Um. Yeah. That’s Ed Helms. He wouldn’t say “fuck.”

Then there’s an AIDS joke, and a running gag about 9/11.

Um…yes. What was the—oh, yes. I believe there was an AIDS joke. We also refer to retarded children even before that. And I’d just like to say to your readers, “You’re welcome.”

We guess our question here is, “What happened to your balls on the way to the internet, Corddry?”

[Laughs] Well, they’re alive and well. I’ve been building up a lot of anger at sick kids that I felt like I had to get out.

Where did that start?

C’mon, don’t you think the sick kids had it coming?

They do tend to get more attention than they really deserve.

THANK you. They take themselves so fucking seriously.

With the bald heads, and the Making the Wishes…

Oh my God. “I hurt…Give me more medicine.” Please. This show was born of my love for St. Elsewhere and hatred for Grey’s Anatomy. Not hatred, so much as a deep—I have a respect for that show. I shouldn’t say I hate it. I really don’t. I watch it with my wife. She’s a huge fan. And I will half watch it while I’m working on the computer, and I’ll look up, and Katherine Heigl is banging a ghost. Or there’s a kid encased in cement for the love of a girl. There’s not enough sharks for these people to jump. It’s insane what they get away with. And I love how the backstage on that show is even crazier than the show itself.

The latest is that T.R. Knight wasn’t showing up to work because he hated the scripts, and he’s leaving the show.

[Laughs] I love it. I LOVE it! Like—I don’t really enjoy the show, but I really enjoy the show within the show.

Far more entertaining option, as far as we’re concerned.

Homophobes, and may I say horrible cunts?

You just did!

But I’m not going to say who.

You don’t need to—we all know you’re talking about Patrick Dempsey. Come to think of it—you say “cunts” in Children’s Hospital, too. And you explore the backstage drama on that set.

Yes, and how it may exist in another dimension entirely.

Do we want to give away what that dimension is?

We should say that if you really need to know right now, skip to Episode 6. [Massive Spoiler: The entire CH universe exists in a Puerto Rican midget's farts.]

Were you at the SAG town hall meeting last night?

No—what happened?

It’s not looking good.

Oh man. Well, I just sold a show to HBO, and I’m looking forward to my affiliation with AFTRA. It’s a typical case of the asylum being run by the inmates. Neither union is exactly the pipefitters, you know what I mean? AFTRA made a deal in panic, and SAG—I don’t even know what they’re doing. They’re not negotiating their way into a horrible situation for everybody—studios and actors and the public included. I hope AFTRA can handle this. I don’t know who’s running their office, but I think they still have TRS-80s.

What was your experience like working with Oliver Stone on W, in which you played White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer?

He was pretty wild. You know, everybody’s heard the stories, and he lives up to them in a certain respect. But also, he’s a consummate professional and an—can I use the word “icon?”

Go right ahead.

Alright, I just did it. I dropped the I-bomb.

If you can use “cunt,” you can use “icon.”

You know what’s funny is the last day of shooting, when you wrap, the first AD says, “That’s a wrap on Richard Dreyfuss,” and everybody claps. And I just happened to wrap on the same day that almost everybody did—Scott Glenn, Dreyfuss, Toby Jones. There was just raucous applause for everybody, and Oliver Stone was walking around hugging us. And he got to me and gave me a big hug, and a kiss on the cheek, and he whispered something in my ear. But the applause for everyone was so loud, I couldn’t hear it. So it’s like my Lost in Translation moment, and I will never know. And in that moment you can’t go, like, “I’m sorry Oliver Stone, director of Platoon. Come again?”

In your ultimate fantasy, what do you think he said?

My fantasies are usually pretty dark. I imagine he said something like, “You’re not fooling anybody.”

Going back to your HBO show for a second: It’s loosely based on the Robert Redford movie The Candidate, we hear?

Paul Redford is writing the pilot—he was a writer/producer at The West Wing. It’s a half-hour comedy, if HBO has us. They bought the pilot. It’s only loosely based on The Candidate. It’s presumptuous of me to call it that. It’s just about the most unlikely candidate to run for public office of all time. It’s about what the most unlikely person has to do when he actually hears the call to greatness. Will he heed it, or will he still bang prostitutes?

How much did the election inform it?

It completely changed it. At first it was a really cynical story about how we’re told growing up how anybody can become president. And the last eight years that’s been proven to pretty much be more terrifying than it is inspiring. So that was sort of our tagline before we even had a show: “Anybody can become President. Anyone.” But now we are burdened—burdened!—by hope and optimism. So the character has changed into one who feels the weight of other people’s hope, and is just a little too hungover to deal with it on most occasions.

Is he dumb, like in The Candidate?

No, not at all. If anything he’s a little too smart for his own good. You know that line in Broadcast News where Holly Hunter is always asked, “It must be great to always be the smartest person in the room.” And she says, totally deadpan, “No. It’s awful.”

Does it have a title yet?

The show is called, The Untitled Rob Corddry Project. We’re borrowing from Greek tragedy.

Evocative. Where were you on election night?

I went to my brother’s house (Studio 60’s Nate Corddry) for a party, and then my wife and I had a couple slices of pizza and went home and watched it from home, and went to bed. And woke up in the morning—and I don’t know what your experience was—but it must have been a horrible time to work at Defamer, because everyone was just so HAPPY. My waitress was just in the best mood. And people were hugging—and not just hugging because it had been a long time since they’d seen each other. They were hugging because they were happy! Which was so strange.

That was here in LA?

That was here in LA .

That is unusual.

I live in Silver Lake.

So do we!

Which was like, hipsters smiling. Hipsters smiling is like, you know, odd.

Yeah, you'd just assume they were having a brain aneurysm or something. Were you happy?

Very happy. It’s been a long eight years. Very, very happy.

You came on to The Daily Show shortly after 9/11 , right?

Yeah, actually. February 2002.

And you were living in New York at the time.

That's right.

So you basically came along at probably the darkest time in recent U.S. history. And you were tasked with making people laugh throughout a surreally awful reality.

Yeah...

That sort of occurred to us as we watched you in Children’s Hospital. You play a clown doctor who’s unsuccessful at healing people with laughter, but that’s all he knows.

That’s interesting. Wow. That’s not a connection I made, but, uh—very astute. People will be writing papers about that at junior colleges all over the country.

Now’s a pretty bleak time too.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what are your thought on the true healing power of laughter, if we can be sincere for a moment?

What?

To get sincere.

I’m sorry—missed that last word?

Sincere! We’re being sincere!

Oh—right. Sincere. Well, after 9/11 everyone said irony and satire and sarcasm were dead, but it turned out to be a bellwether time. It ushered in a new age of irony and satire and sarcasm. For us on The Daily Show, the war was very good to us. And George Bush has been very good for my career. Now I believe we’re in a time where it could go either way. There’s been a lot of ink spilled about how it’s going to be hard to make fun of Obama, but I think The Daily Show exists more to make fun of the media and their portrayal of people like Obama. I think SNL did a great job during the debates, in that great sketch about how the media was going so easy on Obama and hard on Clinton. There’s never a lack of hypocrisy in the media, and so I think The Daily Show will be OK in that respect.

Then again, the ‘90s were a great time for America, and yet kind of a bleak time for comedy, or at least satire. SNL had some good players on it, but mostly it was like Opera Guy, and Chris Farley with his shirt off. Which is really funny, but it isn’t satire. Ace Ventura was huge in the ‘90s. They didn’t do a lot of political stuff. So I think we could be in for another eight years of that. I think Liberals do satire very well, and Conservatives do sarcasm very well. It remains to be seen what age we are entering.

Where does Children’s Hospital fit into that spectrum?

Absolutely nowhere. It’s safely at the shortstop of comedy—the second base of comedy. It’s just feeling boobs.

• Children's Hospital [TheWB.com]

• The View [ABC]

Boomp3.com

At the London Film Festival, W. star Josh Brolin was so excited to be in London that he wanted to shout it from the rooftops. However, Brolin opted to shout next to his co-stars Elizabeth Banks and Thandie Netwon. A raspy Brolin said, “Whooooaaaa! I love London and I love this movie!”

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

Or, officially, W. — The Official Film Guide, an obsessive, somewhat addictive gathering of footnotes for amateur scholars ("14. Cheney - Unitary Executive Theory") and culture mavens ("80. W. loved Cats) alike, crammed with supporting details and citations behind some of W.'s more out-there moments. Like "W. on Non-Alcoholic Beer":

“I’ve won," said George W. Bush, one week before Election Day. A couple of reporters on the plane appeared unconvinced. But Bush was supremely confident, leaning against the bulkhead with a Buckler near-beer in his hand… [James Moore, Wayne Slater. Bush's Brain]

Or, our favorite, "W. as Paul Bunyan":

On most of the 365 days he has enjoyed at his secluded ranch [in Crawford], President Bush's idea of paradise is to hop in his white Ford pickup truck in jeans and work boots, drive to a stand of cedars, and whack the trees to the ground. [...] Sometimes this activity is the only official news to come out of what aides call the Western White House. For five straight days since Monday, when Bush retreated to the ranch for his Christmas sojourn, a spokesman has announced that the president, in between intelligence briefings, calls to advisers and bicycling, has spent much of his day clearing brush. [Lisa Rein, The Washington Post

]

And all this time we thought the president spent those long, languid days kicking back with a book. Who knew?

• Debating 'W.': Getting Bush Right [Slate]

• 'W.' — The Official Film Guide [Lionsgate via MCN]

Look at it this way: Hollywood hasn't sold a domestic crisis to moviegoers in years. At least not as a drama, anyway; Michael Moore exceeded documentary standards with Fahrenheit 9/11, but the War on Terror, Hurricane Katrina and other recent, rattling history are nowhere at the box office. Vietnam hit and (mostly) missed between 1975 and 1990, with exceptions including The Deer Hunter, Coming Home Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. Since then, it's all about the distractions; 24 works because Jack Bauer is your kind of torturer. He's as much of an escapist as you are.

The financial meltdown offers few such release valves. The familiar, curious comforts of Wall Street and Boiler Room are flying off rental shelves, according to The New York Times, but the next crop of business-themed productions — from Lifetime's Candace Bushnell adaptation Trading Up to the Gekko follow-up Money Never Sleeps — are as stillborn as Stop-Loss and Body of Lies before them. Maybe they need dancing chihuahuas, as Paul Haggis hints to the NYT, or, as an NBC programming boss told Bloomberg today, at least "exemplify the foolishness of the human condition in the world of finance'':

Time Warner Inc. has slated Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy for 2009. The movie follows a reporter who uncovers corporate criminals by befriending the man who polishes their wingtips. [...] The New York-based media company will release The Wolf of Wall Street in 2010, based on the autobiography of a stockbroker involved in a 1990s securities fraud. [...]

The rush to exploit the crisis may lead to films lacking nuance and depth of character, said Stanley Weiser, who co-wrote the original Wall Street and wrote W., the film about George W. Bush that opened on Oct. 17.

"They'll make cartoonish villains out of these people,'' said Weiser, who said he wrote a script summary for the Wall Street sequel, then stopped work when the original's co-writer and director, Oliver Stone, dropped out.

Better cartoonish than otherwise, these days, though, with the summer shaping up the way it did and BHC giving up its box-office supremacy last weekend to the video-game adaptation Max Payne. Or maybe skip the money drama altogether for now: We're already worried enough about the industry surviving itself, let alone a prolonged recession (or worse). Anyway, if ever the climate looks troublesome in the near-term, just remember what our old friend Arthur the Haitian Weatherman always says about the extended forecast: "Pretty much everywhere, it's going to be hot."

• In Hollywood, the Wall St. Plots Will Thicken [NYT]

• Hollywood Casts Wall Street as Villain to Tap Anger at Crisis [Bloomberg via DHD]

WHAT'S NEW: No one would argue that Mark Wahlberg's video-game adaptation Max Payne won't win the weekend, but with Beverly Hills Chihuahua still barking in theaters (it actually expands by 32 screens this week), the sour-cop actioner might see a tiny bite out of its margin of victory. Still, $20.8 million is a reliable bet, with Disney's purse dog settling settling with around $11.5 million.

The X factor is W., the Bush biopic which some forecasters see sneaking into second place with as much as $12 million. But to project any more than $10 million, maybe $11 million max is to overestimate it as anything more than a curio, an election-year stunt that wields neither the bite nor the influence that even we thought it would when the fall movie season began. Josh Brolin drawls and squints in fitful, fascinating bursts, and certain imagined powwows leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion make for riveting ensemble drama. On the whole, though, W. connotes the rush job it was — undisciplined, tonally dissonant (Stone's professed empathy for Bush repeatedly knocks its head on low-hanging satirical fruit) and way, way too long. The American people deserve better, and at least until Nov. 4, they'll vote with their dollars. There will be no stealing this election.

Also opening: Seth Green's R-rated romp Sex Drive; Roy Disney's boat-race vanity project Morning Light; critic Godfrey Cheshire's acclaimed doc filmmaking bow Moving Midway; the indie tolerance drama Tru Loved; and for those of you in New York (and the rest of you on VOD), Madonna's directorial debut Filth and Wisdom. (L.A. will get its theatrical engagement Oct. 31.)

THE BIG LOSER: The Barry Levinson-directed/Robert De Niro-starring Hollywood satire What Just Happened is one of the year's finest case-studies in meta: A troubled, pedigreed film about troubled, pedigreed filmmaking, following in the flatlining tradition of every industry saga that preceded it. It false-started out of Sundance last January but finally found a taker at Cannes, and to its credit, Magnolia Pictures has aggressively pushed the film everywhere from baseball playoffs to presidential debates. Still, one half of that audience hates Hollywood, and the other half is off to see W. As recipes for disaster go — even in limited release — this one is ready to serve.

THE UNDERDOG: Is it too reductive of us to foresee good things for The Secret Life of Bees — a film featuring an Oscar-winner (Jennifer Hudson), a Grammy winner (Alicia Keys), two Oscar nominees (Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo) and America's favorite teen diva Dakota Fanning, presented in a nicely bundled chick-flick wrapper by the money-printers at Fox Searchlight? Like $7.3 million worth of good things?

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include last summer's rapey adventure Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Errol Morris's dense, harrowing Abu Ghraib documentary Standard Operating Procedure; the Stephen Rea-in-Mena Suvari's-windshield thriller Stuck; and the much-awaited Nash Bridges: The First Season.

So is it time for Payne? Or is today brought to you by the letter W.? Or is this the weekend you clean up after Papi and Co.? Whatever you decide, don't leave Dakota Fanning out; her curfew is later these days, and she'll hunt you down without thinking twice. Choose wisely!

[N]one of us were drunk, we had just finished shooting three or four hours before. We were out...in the beginning, it was like [smacks hand] okay! It was time! We did it! We were so proud, what an accomplishment!...and then this fucking happens.

To me it was ridiculous. I have never seen...I have never ever, ever, ever, ever seen an escalation of paranoia and abuse like that...ever. And I know a lot of cops. Everybody knows I have a checkered past and I've been in situations that are kind of tough. I've never ever been treated like that by cops. Ever. [...]

I don't know the specifics between Jeffrey [Wright] and the bartender, but he was asked to leave, and I know that was why the cops came, to say okay, it's time to escort you out. Not because [Jeffrey] was yelling or screaming. He was just saying look, I'm here with my friends, I'm celebrating the end of our movie, and then they escorted him out, [and] we wanted to know why, and they didn't want to tell us. They immediately resorted to violence. Which is what the police are there to try and stop and prevent. That didn't happen. They were the violent ones.

Brolin also confirmed the existence of a cell-phone video of the incident: "It was us going ... you can see it on the tape ... us going 'whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.' There was no fight-back at all."

The fight-back apparently starts now, though, with Brolin retrenching in the press with references to other alleged police brutality in Shreveport — particularly with Tasers, which he claimed recently killed a 21-year-old detainee (although that incident actually occurred in Winnfield, La., about 60 miles southeast of Shreveport) and are ritually abused across the country. "I'm done being nice," he told Wells. "What's the worst, they're gonna put me in jail a couple of months because I spoke out about [their] abuse?" Only if they do it the week of the Oscars, hot shot.

• What Happened Was [Hollywood Elsewhere]

"The damn movie leaves you feeling sorry for this fucker at the finale, and that ain't hay." — Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere

"It's a gutsy movie but not necessarily a good one. Its greatest strength is that it wants to talk about what's on our minds right now and not wait for historians. ... The film gets off to an awkward start with a presidential bull session with speechwriters and top advisers that produced his 'Axis of Evil' speech about Iran, Iraq and North Korea. It borders perilously close to a Saturday Night Live sketch." — Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter

"At its best, it holds up as a dramatized character study of the father and son presidents which will be watched keenly in years to come. At its worst, it is submerged by an over-populated cast of characters and a tone which shifts awkwardly between dramatic storytelling and smartass political comedy. ... [T]he film is not a biopic by any means." — Mike Goodridge, Screen Daily

"For the most part, Stone and his actors meet the basic requirements of pulling off this quick-draw portrait of still-evolving history. ... Dominating are borderline distorted closeups, especially of Brolin, along with shadowy lighting and generally lackluster lensing. Some of the song choices are downright sophomoric in their too-obvious irony." — Todd McCarthy, Variety

"Brolin should be nominated for the Oscar. We'll see whether the crowd around Best Actor is too big for him to crack, but it is a letter-perfect performance that looks much, much easier than most critics and audiences, I think, will understand. ... The question of the film is, 'Why?' " — David Poland, The Hot Blog

Why, indeed? We're digging for the critics' bunker as we write this, determined to have an answer one way or another by the time W. opens next week. Send help if you don't hear from us.

Have you ever experimented with a woman?
Yes, I had my rite of passage. I was 16, and I wasn’t really in control of the situation, if you know what I mean. It was much more about a male fantasy of seeing two women together. But I loved the girl a lot; she was one of my closest friends. I think falling in love is actually more about falling in love with an individual. We’re all potentially bisexual; it all depends on your circle, your upbringing, and all kinds of things. Or maybe I’m just talking about myself. I could’ve easily fallen in love with a woman over a man. My husband Ol’s kind of a man-woman. Look, I once loved Tim Curry, so there you go.

Upon reading Newton's interview, Oliver Stone immediately scheduled reshoots for an elaborate lesbian dream sequence to accompany George W. Bush's 2002 preztel-choking incident. "Laura, Condi, why don't you root out each other's infidels. No, I'm just gonna hang back. I'm the Decider."

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Big Gay Following [The Advocate]

[W]e were turned down by everybody for money, including your Aunt Gertrude. It was humiliating. I make no bones about it. I think this is a great subject. I don’t think I have a bad track record. I needed a star, though, and Josh Brolin was not a star. Originally I went for Christian Bale. We did some rigorous prosthetic tests and spent a lot of dough—thousands and thousands of dollars—and then Christian said, “I just don’t feel like I can do it.” I met Josh and liked him. He was more rural Americana. But man, he was scared shitless. ...

[Bush] is a different man; he’s not as dark or deep as someone like Nixon. The style is a time trip through three different eras, to give you a sense of young, middle, and old. It’s light. [...] [I]t has to be done with an ebullience and a certain fun, because the guy is goofy. He’s a goofball! And I think he endeared himself to people because he couldn’t get anything right. Kubrick was an idol of mine. I grew up on Strangelove and movies like Network, and they made a big impact on me. So yeah, W. is a satire.

Yeah, whatever — again, we knew that. But what "rigorous prosthetic tests" must Bale have gone through to try out for President Bush? And how lucky is Stone to have went with the guy who got locked up for sassing the police and not for allegedly assaulting Momzo the Clown? Maybe this whole thing is meant to be after all.

• Bush Gets Stoned [GQ]

• Bush Gets Stoned [GQ]

If Brolin comes off as a good ol’ boy, he’s actually a Hollywood scion, the vigorous sprout of a six-foot-four tree named James Brolin. “My dad is probably one of the handsomest guys ever,” says Brolin. “I was making a joke and I said, ‘If I was a chick, I’d f—- you.’ He was like, ‘You can’t say that! Shut your mouth!’”

While we admire the younger Brolin's candor, we hope he left his paternal fixation at the palatial Streisand residence instead of bringing it onto the set of W. The audience appetite for two more hours of George W. Bush may be further diluted by a scene in which W., high on peyote and aroused by a marathon session of brush-clearing at his Crawford ranch, places a late-night, naughty call to his father, whispering, "How'd you like to make a preemptive strike against my Fruit of the Looms, Poppy?"

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Josh Brolin [W]

1. Brad Pitt will win an Academy Award. We know the post-Toronto establishment has all but engraved Mickey Rourke's name on this year's Best Actor Oscar (hell, even Rourke has engraved his name on this year's Best Actor Oscar), but taking both The Wrestler (release date TBD) and Pitt's epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (12/25) sight unseen, we'll take the aging-backward-on-other-people's-bodies gimmick over the gritty indie comeback 10 times out of 10. Not that it won't be close: Brad Grey will spend more on his old pal's campaign than Fox Searchlight is probably ready to drop on Rourke's, but Rourke will be the more accessible nominee to the media. Look for dark horse Sean Penn (Milk) to split the field late; Focus Features won't settle for another 0-fer in '08.

2. W. (10/17) will tip the election to the GOP. Opening less than three weeks before Election Day, the film will be too muddled to move the Democrats yet irreverent enough to galvanize the Republican base against Hollywood one more time before voting. Oliver Stone will be recognized as the new Ralph Nader.

3. You're going to miss Don LaFontaine a lot more than you think. Otherwise execrable trailers like this one for The Haunting of Molly Hartley (10/31) acquired bittersweet relevance overnight:

4. The Weinstein Company will muscle its way back to prominence. Harvey had a relatively hemorrhage-free summer, closed out by his $16 million-grossing (and counting) Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Meanwhile, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (10/31) left Toronto with goodwill to spare, the LA immigrant saga Crossing Over (10/24) has Harrison Ford, Sean Penn and others channeling Crash, and the company bumped up The Reader for Kate Winslet Oscar consideration. (NB: The Rourke Factor also reportedly inspired Harvey to finally slot his long-shelved Killshot on Nov. 7.) The Weinsteins being the Weinsteins, of course, the operation could crash at any time, but at least the ensuing conflagration promises Hindenberg levels of spectacle. That's our Harvey.

5. Owen Wilson will emerge from, return to hiding after explaining the trailer to Marley & Me (12/25). That is all.

6. The Soloist (11/21) will be better than it sounds. But it sounds great, right? Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, directed by Pride and Prejudice/Atonement helmer Joe Wright? Alas, the logline: "A schizophrenic, homeless musician from Skid Row, Los Angeles dreams of playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall." Based on a true story, natch: Downey Jr. plays the real-life LAT reporter who befriends him, warning Foxx behind the scenes about the perils of going full-schizo. All things being equal, we like their chances.

7. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (10/24) will be this year's unlikeliest tearjerker. Not just for its devastating, beautiful final act, but also for the probability that Sony Classics will weep red ink when it makes about five cents at the box office.

8. Twilight (11/21) will only be the second-best vampire movie released this fall. You won't find Let the Right One In (10/24) on the cover of EW, but you'll find the Swedish export in a lot of festival juries' hearts since last spring. Half coming-of-age romance and half vengeful horror epic, it picks up the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy whose sweet new girlfriend next door ends up being several thousand years older than she looks — and behaves accordingly. Genre distributor Magnet Releasing might only get this on a hundred screens, but watch the word-of-mouth and top-10-list acclaim bump it into sleeper status by the end of the year.

9. Extreme Movie will open to a $0 gross after viewers confuse it with the other, less-illustrious Movie franchise. But you can be prepared: Extreme Movie is the teen sex comedy starring Michael Cera and Frankie Muniz; Disaster Movie et. al. are the ones whose auditoriums smell faintly of piss. Know the difference!

10. Daniel Craig will miss 2006. Casino Royale was a surprising, sporadically brilliant reboot, but the honeymoon is over: Quantum of Solace's trailer isn't dazzling anyone; the title is stillborn; Sony couldn't settle on a US release date (it finally chose 11/14); and unfairly or not, franchise obsessives want nothing to do with new director Marc Forster. And all this after the Bond curse cost Craig part of his finger. It's a cruel world, but not as cruel as it'll seem after Defiance (12/12), the WWII Jewish resistance drama in which he and screen bros Liev Schrieber and Jamie Bell fight off Nazis during the invasion of Poland. Among the last of Paramount Vantage's orphaned prestige titles, and opening opposite Doubt, an expanded Frost/Nixon and The Day the Earth Stood Still, it's bound to knock Craig back to stardom's second tier for a while to come.

11. Beverly Hills Chihuahua (10/3) will astonish and amaze. But you already knew that.

• Access Hollywood [via Hollywood Elsewhere]

• 'W. 'Gets Misunderestimated With New Posters in Denver [Film School Rejects]