W. and other thoughts

So I had heard that they (the all-powerful and all-vague They) were making a movie about GW Bush, and I might have even heard that it was going to be controversial for being the first presidential biopic to come out while the president is still in office, but I just got the details of this shindig, and hoo-boy.
Directed by Oliver Stone, starring Josh Brolin (after No Country for Old Men, I'm definitely a fan) as Bush, Richard Dreyfus as a startlingly similar-looking Cheney, and (I have to throw this in because I love her) Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush. I don't know if it's going to be any good, but my curiosity is definitely piqued. Check out these pictures.

http://movies.yahoo.com/photos/movie-stills/gallery/921/w-stills#photo0

Anyway. In addition, now that I'm a film student I get to take all of the random ideas and theories floating around up top and (maybe) actually write papers on them. Here's a potential paper topic for my Film History/Historiography class. Here are some thoughts:

Some of this class' readings made me start thinking about historical fiction, and how it's always been such a popular medium both for novels and cinema, and yet there is always such an inevitable backlash from people claiming the writer/filmmaker was in a certain sense trying to pull a fast one on us, trying to convince us of a history that is entirely inaccurate. I don't think that most novelists or filmmakers that set out to create "historical fiction" are really trying to give us a history lesson (that's why it's called fiction), at least not in the way that such critics claim, but that whole idea of the "spirit of the truth," or at least the framework of the truth used for the purposes of entertainment, is really interesting to me.

Obviously I would have to narrow it down quite a bit or else risk a "I'm interested in historical fiction" "well good for you I'm interested in stamp collecting, what's your point?" sort of issue. Maybe I could choose one particular historical event that has frequently been used in cinematic and literary adaptations (the life of Anne Boleyn, for the sake of argument) and compare both the historical evidence of the event itself to various "adaptations" of it (perhaps the present tv show "The Tudors" and Lubitsch's film "Anna Boleyn") and examine both the changes/liberties that the director has taken with historical fact, as well as audience reactions. Have people ever really taken such things as bona fide history lessons? For that matter, could works like this, at least in some way, be constructively used as such? Or are questions like that far too subjective?

So yeah. that's what I got so far.