Tasers, pepper spray, and handcuffs: the Oliver Stone movie best remembered for a bar fight
History will always remember Oliver Stone as one of his era’s defining auteurs, but the inevitable downside that comes with one of the hottest streaks cinema has ever seen is that once it ends, it’s almost impossible to recapture those former glories.
Stone was on fire between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, which might be underselling it. In the space of 13 years, he won three Academy Awards from ten nominations across four different categories, lending his name to a string of modern classics, box office smash hits, and cult favourites.
It was an era that gifted audiences with Midnight Express, Conan the Barbarian, Scarface, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, underrated action gem Blue Steel, The Doors, and JFK, among others, but it’s been a long time since Stone has even come close to replicating those levels of greatness.
It’s been almost a decade since he helmed a narrative feature, and the underwhelming likes of Snowden, Savages, and the infamous Alexander were hardly comparable to his finest work. His biopic of then-president George W Bush was a self-indulgent political potshot that barely made a splash on a critical, commercial, or cultural front, and it speaks volumes to how forgettable the movie was that the most entertaining thing about the entire production was a barroom brawl.
Unwinding with a few drinks after a day’s shooting, the cast and crew of 2008’s W decided to unwind by knocking back the bevvy at a bar in Shreveport, Louisiana. They may have overdone it after the police were called to the scene, which resulted in five arrests, including stars Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, who played Bush and Colin Powell, respectively.
Bar fights happen all the time, but as Brolin shared with The Guardian, he ended up fearing for his life with a face full of pepper spray. “When it started escalating, I thought, ‘Is this the night when I get tasered and have a heart attack?” he wondered. “But I was more confused than scared. Confused and befuddled. I was looking around in total shock. Or I was trying to; I had mace in my eyes at the time.”
When W landed in cinemas in October 2008, it sank without a trace, received lukewarm reactions from all corners, and didn’t land any major awards season recognition whatsoever. While the film was forgotten in an instant, Brolin and Wright’s alcohol-fuelled escapades generated more headlines than the political dramedy ever could, driven in part by the modern world’s ongoing fascination with celebrities doing silly things.
Does anyone remember anything that happened during the course of W‘s 129 minutes? It’s debatable. More people are likely to remember it as the movie that ended up with Brolin being handcuffed, tasered, pepper sprayed, and then tossed into the drunk tank, which speaks volumes as to how far Stone’s stock had fallen by the late 2000s.
