'How Did Bush Go From Being an Alcoholic Bum to the Most Powerful Figure in the World?'

How different the world might look now if President Bush and his advisers had sat around his desk in the Oval Office and settled on the phrase: "Axis of Unbearably Odious" or "Axis of Hatred". But they rejected those and instead plumped for "Axis of Evil". And the rest is history.

So begins the script to Oliver Stone's upcoming film, W, which begins filming this month and will be produced at lightening speed. Stone, a director with a keen eye to publicity and no aversion to controversy, is thought to want to bring the movie's 2009 release date forward to push it into cinemas before the November presidential elections and certainly before Bush quits the White House on January 20.

Stone has gone on record to insist that the film will be an accurate and fair portrait of Bush the man, though the conundrum that he poses in the film carries, it must be said, a degree of top spin. In Stone's own words, the film will address the question: "How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"

The part of Bush will be played by Josh Brolin, no stranger to Texan roles having been in the Coen brothers' Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men.

Elizabeth Banks of Spider Man and The 40-Year-Old Virgin is expected to play the first lady.

A wealth of detail into the approach Stone will be taking in W (pronounced in true Texan style "dubya") has been revealed by ABC News which has read an early copy of the screenplay. The news outlet describes it as a "warts- and-all portrayal" of the president, though judging by its account of the script it might more accurately be called a "warts-and-yet-more-warts" portrait.

But then, judging by his previous presidential efforts, Nixon and JFK, historical objectivity has never been one of Stone's personal hang-ups. The writing team appears to have pored through a by now considerable library of books and magazine articles on Bush and plucked out all the tastiest rumors and juiciest morsels of gossip. There are plenty of Bushisms in the script, and scenes of him drinking vodka and orange cocktails.

His early relationship with the elder George Bush is depicted as problematic at best. When his father confronts him about his drinking after he crashes his car, the younger George Bush replies: "Mr Perfect. Mr War Hero. Mr Fucking God Almighty."

The father features heavily too in the latter half of the screenplay, by which time Dubya has put his drinking behind him and entered the world of politics.

Stone, a vocal critic of the Iraq war, applies cod psychology to the president's motivations for the invasion, according to ABC's account of the screenplay. After the elder Bush's defeat in 1992 at the hands of Bill Clinton, his son tells him he would still be in the White House if he'd gone on to topple Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War. When the current president is asked in 2002 what his focus on Saddam is all about, he replies: "You don't go after the Bushes and get to talk about it. Ya got me?"