5. ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘W.’ | Mission Accomplished

Summary

The Big Picture — Episode 5: ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘W.’ | Mission Accomplished

Podcast Date: August 26, 2025
Host: Brian Raftery (The Ringer)
Featured Guests: Oliver Stone, Josh Brolin, Gene Jones, Barry Corbin

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Big Picture dives deep into two 2000s films that confronted the American mood at the end of the Bush era: the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007) and Oliver Stone's biopic W. (2008). Through interviews with director Oliver Stone and actors Josh Brolin, Gene Jones, and Barry Corbin, host Brian Raftery explores how these films responded to the tumultuous, violent, and often confusing times of the early 21st century, examining how American cinema grappled with the Bush presidency, themes of inevitability, violence, and legacy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Oliver Stone’s Perspective on Bush and History

• Stone's Early Impressions

  • Felt uneasy about George W. Bush's ascendance as president, remarking:
    • "It was very scary to me that I thought something was fucked up, frankly." (Oliver Stone, 00:19)
  • After meeting Bush pre-presidency, Stone sensed he was being controlled:
    • "There was a sense of a brainwashed president. I'd say everything was very programmed, like a Manchurian candidate." (Oliver Stone, 00:44)

• Dissolution of Goodwill Post-9/11 and Wars

  • Stone notes his hope faded due to the administration’s response:
    • "They declared the enemy before they even knew who they were. And they started to impose all kinds of emergency measures. They created a state of emergency in the country." (Oliver Stone, 01:18)

• Stone on the Bush Years as a Historical Low Point

  • "I could say from the beginning of the 21st century on, it was downhill." (Oliver Stone, 02:19)

• Making ‘W.’ – Motivation and Approach

  • Stone wanted to examine who Bush really was:
    • "I wanted to bring focus on who this man Bush was." (Oliver Stone, 02:36)
  • Unlike his earlier, angrier movies, W. intentionally restrained its critique, opting instead for a subtle, even empathetic study.

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No Country for Old Men: American Violence and Inevitability

• Context of its Release

  • Released during a year of grim, unflinching movies (There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton, Atonement), No Country stood out for its violence and bleak worldview.
  • The film won Best Picture at the Oscars, with Raftery noting its resonance:
    • "This is a movie that sticks with you for days... it constantly reminds you of your own powerlessness, that your life can be altered or even ended in just a single moment in ways that you never saw coming and for reasons you'll never understand." (Brian Raftery, 10:50)

• Iconic Scenes & Character Analysis

  • The Coin Toss Scene:

    • Gene Jones (gas station owner) shares how the tension is gradual and nearly imperceptible:
      • "There's no point where you think, oh, my God, something awful is about to happen. But there is kind of a boiling point..." (Gene Jones, 13:21)
    • Subtle terror is achieved through performance, not flashy direction.
    • Memorable Quote:
      • "You've been putting [your life] up your whole life. You just didn't know it." (Anton Chigurh/Gene Jones, 12:31)

  • The Conversation With Ellis:

    • Barry Corbin’s character delivers the film’s philosophical heart—violence is not new, it’s simply part of America’s fabric:
      • "What you got ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waitin on you. That's vanity." (Ellis/Barry Corbin, 19:55)
    • Corbin reflects on the truth in Ellis' words after a friend of his died suddenly:
      • "So that you never do know what's coming, do you? We're never in control... You don't own anything. You get here naked and you leave naked, and that's the way it go." (Barry Corbin, 21:04)

• Reflection on American Mood

  • The movie echoed a sense of national powerlessness post-9/11, Katrina, Iraq, and the 2008 financial crisis.

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The Making and Impact of W. (2008)

• Stone and the Difficulty of Political Cinema in the 2000s

  • After success with World Trade Center (a relatively apolitical 9/11 film), Stone couldn't get studio support for W. due to audience fatigue with politics.
    • "No studio would touch it." (Oliver Stone, 29:40)

• Financing & Production Challenges

  • Stone assembled international backers, working outside the American system to raise $27 million (29:58–30:18).

• Casting Josh Brolin – Initial Resistance and Empathy

  • Brolin wasn't interested at first and was “horrified” at being connected with Bush. He came to appreciate Bush’s resolve even if he disagreed with him:
    • "I liked him. I liked his conviction, I liked his steel will. I liked his ability to reassess his life. And then I thought it was very interesting that he didn't carry that ability into politics." (Josh Brolin, 34:51)

• Portrayal of Bush: Satire and Sympathy

  • Stone on Bush’s simpleness:
    • "Nixon had many, many issues, but he was a three-dimensional man, whereas George Bush was a very simple man." (Oliver Stone, 32:43)
  • The film avoids making Bush a villain, instead suggesting he was manipulated by those around him—especially Dick Cheney (portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss).

• Key Scene: Bush’s Failure to Acknowledge Mistakes

  • Bush is unable to answer what mistakes he made as president:
    • "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of the press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hasn't yet." (Josh Brolin as Bush, 40:36)

• Mixed Reception & Cultural Timing

  • The film received a divided response—too gentle for Bush’s critics, of no interest for his supporters.
  • Stone reflects that the film may have needed historical distance to be appreciated:
    • "I believe in retrospect, you need a little time away from Bush." (Oliver Stone, 44:26)

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Parallels, Reflections, and Legacy

• Bush and Llewelyn Moss: Two American Protagonists

  • Both played by Brolin, both act on impulse and get in over their heads.
  • But, as Raftery notes, Moss at least recognizes when he’s outmatched; Bush, in Stone’s reading, never does (40:14–40:43).

• American Cinema After Bush: Moving On

  • By the end of 2008, Americans had emotionally and culturally moved past the Bush years—W. arrived just as Barack Obama represented hope for change.
    • "Technically speaking, the 2000s weren't over, but emotionally speaking, well, the decade felt kind of done." (Brian Raftery, 46:40)

• Changing Tastes in Film

  • Studios now shy away from the angry, political films Stone was known for; audiences are reluctant to re-experience recent national pain.

• A New Cinematic Hero Emerges

  • As the country enters a new era, Iron Man’s Tony Stark (another weapons manufacturer with a conscience) emerges as a different kind of leading man:
    • "His name? Tony Stark. His job? Weapons manufacturer, albeit with a conscience." (Brian Raftery, 47:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On American Amnesia:

  • "We never learn anything from history. That's the American way. It laid out out in front of us. We know and we go blundering in."
    — Oliver Stone, 04:28

• On the Feeling of the 2000s:

  • "It was enough to make anyone feel powerless and anxious, like there was always some rattlesnake under the floor."
    — Brian Raftery, 21:22

• On the Inevitability of Violence:

  • "You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waitin on you. That's vanity."
    — Ellis (Barry Corbin), 19:55

• On Living in Unprecedented Times:

  • "What you got ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people."
    — Ellis (Barry Corbin), 19:55

• On the Difficulty of Facing History:

  • "It's very hard to acknowledge your own past."
    — Oliver Stone, 44:42

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Stone’s Initial Reaction to Bush & Post-9/11 America: 00:19–01:35
• How Stone Made “W.” & Its Reception: 02:36–04:28, 24:26–32:43, 34:14–41:12
• ‘No Country for Old Men’ Analysis & Coin Toss Scene: 09:05–16:31
• Barry Corbin on Violence and the Conversation with Ellis: 17:37–21:22
• Parallels Between Bush and Llewelyn: 40:14–40:43
• Wider Themes – American Amnesia and Cinema Culture Shift: 04:28–05:05, 44:42
• Obama’s Election – End of the Era: 45:05–46:40
• Rise of Tony Stark/Iron Man: 47:22

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Final Reflections

The episode draws a line from the violence and confusion of the Bush years, as reflected in the American cinema of the era, to a national mood shift ushered in by the Obama presidency and a turn to new cinematic icons like Iron Man. Both No Country for Old Men and W. serve as time capsules and cautionary tales, with Stone and the Coens offering different but equally potent meditations on power, violence, history, and our inability (or refusal) to learn from it.

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For listeners seeking a deep dive into American culture, politics, and film at the end of the Bush era, this episode weaves together sharp commentary, revealing interviews, and scene analysis in a way that feels as timely as it does essential.

Transcript

[Brian Raftery]

On the night of November 7, 2000, Oliver Stone sat down to watch the results of the presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. As the results started coming in and it looked like Bush might win, Stone told me he was feeling worried.

[Oliver Stone]

It was very scary to me that I thought something was fucked up, frankly.

[Brian Raftery]

He'd actually met Bush a year before the election during an event for graduates of Yale University.

[Oliver Stone]

He was a very cheery man and gentlemanly, but certainly there was a hint that there was something behind him.

[Brian Raftery]

Stone got the feeling that Bush was being controlled by others, that they dictated the way he talked and the way he thought.

[Oliver Stone]

There was a sense of a brainwashed president. I'd say everything was very programmed, like a Manchurian candidate.

[Brian Raftery]

In early 2001, after Bush had been sworn in, Stone tried to remain optimistic.

[Oliver Stone]

I didn't know where the country was going, and I was kind of hoping that, you know, you always wish a new president well, no matter what, even if you don't like him.

[Brian Raftery]

But after the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Stone's goodwill toward the new president disappeared. He believed that the Bush administration had rushed into battle without thinking.

[Oliver Stone]

They declared the enemy before they even knew who they were. And they started to impose all kinds of emergency measures. They created a state of emergency in the country. Like this was the worst thing that had ever happened in the United states.

[Brian Raftery]

From the 1980s through the 2000s, Stone was one of the most influential writer directors in the world. A filmmaker whose big ideas about American history, some of which were very controversial, shifted how many Americans felt about the country's darker moments. As a Vietnam War vet, he looked at the violence of that conflict and its aftermath in movies like Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. He dove into the mysteries surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the Oscar winning drama JFK. And he examined the greed and corruption of the 1980s in Wall Street. When it comes to trying times, Stone is kind of an expert, and he sees the early 2000s as our lowest point yet.

[Oliver Stone]

Well, you could. I could say from the beginning of the 21st century on, it was downhill.

[Brian Raftery]

As the decade went on, Stone became even more frustrated. And before Bush left office, the director began working on a movie that would look at the man Stone believed had veered the country off course.

[Oliver Stone]

I wanted to bring focus on who this man Bush was.

[Brian Raftery]

The result was W, a biopic starring Josh Burle and his Bush. Unlike many of Stone's earlier films, W was kind of restrained. The movie follows the President from his college frat house, to his Texas ranch, and all the way up to the White House. Throughout, Bush comes off as sincere but kind of a lightweight, a guy who maybe should have paid a little more attention to all those ideas being fed into his head and to the words coming out of his mouth.

[Josh Brolin]

And I'm just so bone tired of this Saddam. He's always misunderstimated me.

[Brian Raftery]

Released in 2008, W was Stone's attempt to understand how one man's actions had led to so much destruction. That kind of domino effect was explored in a very different movie from the year before. This film was also about a Texas tough guy who gets in way over his head. His name is Llewelyn Moss, and he's a Vietnam vet who stumbles upon a bunch of bodies in the desert right near a suitcase carrying $2 million. He decides to take the money and run, an act of greed that sets off a disastrous chain of events, one that will lead to even more dead bodies, including his own.

[Josh Brolin]

Fixin'll do something dumber now, but I'm going anyways.

[Brian Raftery]

I'm sure you recognize that voice. It's Josh Brolin again, and you definitely recognize the movie no country for Old Men. Though it was set in the early 1980s, no country for Old Men felt like it was taking the Bush years head on. The movie was a reminder that greed, violence, and sheer hubris had long been part of America's legacy. No country for Old Men and W arrived just as the Bush era was winding down, and both movies prompted audiences to take stock of the 21st century. So far, how had we gotten here? And was our present really so different from our past?

[Oliver Stone]

We never learn anything from history. That's the American way. It laid out out in front of us. We know and we go blundering in.

[Brian Raftery]

Again from Spotify and the Ringer podcast network. I'm Brian Rafter, and this is Mission Accomplished Episode five, no country for Old Men and W.

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[Brian Raftery]

Early 2008, Jon Stewart, who was a very underrated Oscars host, in my opinion, kicked off the annual awards ceremony with a question for the thousands of Hollywood filmmakers and executives in attendance. Does this town need a hug? What? What? What happened? Stewart was joking. Kind of. He was referring to some of that year's contenders, all of which had been released in 2007. The nominees included There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day Lewis as a sociopathic oil man who beats his longtime foe to death with a bowling pin. But before that, he delivers what's probably the most quotable farewell fuck you of all time.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

I drink your milkshake. I drink it up.

[Brian Raftery]

There Will Be Blood was one of the night's very downbeat but very satisfying nominees, along with Michael Clayton, Atonement, the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward, Robert Ford, the Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I mean, none of that year's contenders went down easy. Even Juno was pretty tough at times. Then there was the bleakest film of them all, a movie that wound up winning four awards that night, including Best Picture and the Oscar goes to Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. But no country for Old Men.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

No country for Old Men, and the.

[Barry Corbin]

Oscar goes to.

[Brian Raftery]

No country for Old Men. The Best Picture award had gone to some pretty heavy movies in the 2000s Million Dollar Baby, the Departed, Crash, but none were as violent nor as relentless as no country for Old Men, based on a 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy. No country for Old Men was written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the filmmaking brothers behind such classic crime dramas as Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing and Fargo. To be honest, I hate the word classic, but I don't know how else you'd describe those movies. As Joel Cohen told Charlie Rose, the filmmakers knew they could have made a very safe, very Hollywood version of McCarthy's novel. But that would have betrayed an idea that runs throughout the book. An idea that in America, carnage isn't just possible, it's inevitable. You can tell the Cohens were determined not to water down McCarthy's book. You know, it's about a character confronting a very arbitrary, violent, brutal world. And you have to see that. No country for Old Men stars Tommy Lee Jones as Ed Tom Bell, an aging sheriff in a remote West Texas town. As the film opens in 1980, Sheriff Bell is lamenting the bloodshed he's witnessed in his lifetime, bloodshed that he can no longer comprehend.

[Josh Brolin]

The crime you see now, it's hard.

[Brian Raftery]

To even take its measure. Sheriff Bell eventually finds himself at a gruesome crime scene in the desert where several men have been shot dead, their bodies left baking in the sun. They'd been killed over a briefcase stuffed with cash, more than $2 million. The case had been stolen by Llewellyn Moss, a local hunter who goes on the run with the money, played by Brolin. Llewellyn is tough, quick thinking and thoroughly unflappable, not unlike those big screen all American optimists Hollywood was celebrating when the decade began. At one point in the movie, Llewellyn's wife, played by Kelly McDonald, expresses her concerns about the stolen cash. In her voice you can hear a mix of exasperation and fear. I got a bad feeling, Llewellyn.

[Josh Brolin]

Well, I got a good one, so that ought to even out.

[Brian Raftery]

But her premonition turns out to be spot on. Llewellyn is being pursued by a psychopathic hitman named Anton Chigurh, who's played by Javier Bardem. Anton travels through Texas armed with this massive bolt pistol, the kind of device you use to shoot cattle in the head. He also possesses one of the worst haircuts of all time. I'm not even sure how to describe it, except to say that it always kind of reminds me of Slinky Dog from Toy Story. Anton is so lethal that another violent loner, a bounty hunter played by Woody Harrelson, is sent to track him down. This is a classic Woody performance, by the way. He has this low key menace that gives him a kind of relaxed edginess. Anyway, his character warns Llewellyn not to mess with the dreaded Anton Chigurh. You've seen him and you're not dead.

[Josh Brolin]

What's this guy supposed to be, the ultimate badass?

[Brian Raftery]

He is. And as Anton pursues Llewelyn and his briefcase full of money, the body count rises. No country for Old Men is a lot of things. A Neo Western, a chase movie, a killer on the loose flick. And it does all of those things perfectly. But I don't think that's why this movie felt so monumental when it opened in the fall of 2007, or why it got such enthusiastic reviews. This is a movie that sticks with you for days, in fact, kind of nags at you. It's a movie that constantly reminds you of your own powerlessness, that your life can be altered or even ended in just a single moment in ways that you never saw coming and for reasons you'll never understand. Back then, that was something that audiences understood all too well. And it's a point that's hammered home in the film's most famous scene. It takes place early on in the movie at a remote gas station where Anton, who's already killed two people, is making what was supposed to be a quick pit stop.

[Gene Jones]

How much?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

69.

[Brian Raftery]

See, the store's owner, played by Gene Jones, then asks his customer a seemingly innocuous question about the weather, a question that clearly enrages Anton, whose mood turns menacing. I know I'm simplifying things here when it comes to describing this scene, but. But I can't get into every detail. I mean, it's almost five minutes long. Anton interrogates the store owner before slapping a quarter down on the counter. Then he tells this very confused man to call it heads or tails.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Well, we need to know what we're calling it for here.

[Gene Jones]

You need to call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.

[Brian Raftery]

I didn't put nothing up.

[Gene Jones]

Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life. You just didn't know it.

[Brian Raftery]

At this point, it's clear to the gas station owner and the audience that there's a lot weighing on the outcome of this coin toss. That's the whole setup. Two guys in a gas station talking at the counter about a coin toss. No flashy camera work and barely any music. And yet this scene, it's terrifying.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The Cohens never told us this, but we both knew that the tension should escalate in such a gradual manner that you were not aware of tension escalating.

[Brian Raftery]

That's actor Gene Jones, who played the gas station owner.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

There's no point where you think, oh, my God, something awful is about to happen. But there is kind of a boiling point that you get to, and you keep boiling and keep boiling very slowly. Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy.

[Brian Raftery]

Jones hadn't read Cormac McCarthy's novel when he took the Part in no country for Old Men. In fact, he was never offered a chance to look at the full script and he didn't care.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

My scene is the Bible and that's all I need.

[Brian Raftery]

Still, Jones was surprised when he got to the set in New Mexico and realized the directors didn't have many notes for him.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

They didn't tell me much of anything, which made me uneasy. It was, I think, the first major role I ever had in film. So I wanted some direction and they weren't of a mind to give it.

[Brian Raftery]

Over the course of filming the scene, which Jones says took just a little more than two hours to complete, the Coen brothers tried to stay out of view.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Neither Joel nor Ethan watched it while we shot it. Joel kind of folded up in a corner behind the counter and listened. Ethan walked outside and put his ear to the window so he could listen. And they listened, listened, listened, and they never really watched it.

[Brian Raftery]

This is dorky even for me. But I listened to the scene with the screen turned off and somehow it's even more unsettling. Without being able to see the actors reactions, you get the sense that the conversation has no rules, no rhythms. It's as if things could take a dark turn at any moment. And you can hear how much control Anton has over the cashier. It's like the guy's being read his last rites and he doesn't even realize it. Whatever the Coens were listening for, they found it. The scene keeps boiling, boiling, boiling, until finally Anton tosses the quarter.

[Gene Jones]

You know what date is on this coin?

[Barry Corbin]

No.

[Gene Jones]

1958. It's been traveling 22 years to get here. And now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to say, call it.

[Brian Raftery]

The gas station cashier chooses heads and wins. There are a lot of elements that make this scene so memorable. There's Anton's casual evil, which is so terrifying. And there's the cashier's confusion, which is so relatable. Still, the real reason this sequence is so affecting is that while the coin fell in the guy's favor this time around, eventually the odds are going to catch up with him. He's just realized that the isolated, comfortable and unexamined life he's been living can end at any time. In fact, it will end. It all comes down to the flip of a coin. What's so terrifying about this scene for me is that, you know, this whole movie is kind of about inevitability. And in this scene, everything's about to spiral. And you think you can control Things, but that's not the way life works. In life, it all catches up with you at some point.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Yes, yes, the appointment in Samarra. The old Middle east story about death. Won't catch me today because I'm going to Samarra, you know, and of course, that's where death is going the next day, too.

[Brian Raftery]

There's another key scene from no country for Old Men that gets at this idea of just how little, say, we have over our own fates. It happens later on in the film when Tommy Lee Jones character Ed Tom Bell visits an older relative named Ellis. From the minute they start talking, it's clear the two men have a distant relationship. How you been, Ellis?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You're looking at it.

[Brian Raftery]

Ellis, a retired lawman, sits in the kitchen of a beaten down house in the middle of nowhere. He's in a wheelchair and lives by himself, surrounded by feral cats. Ellis is played by Barry Corbin, whom you've seen in all sorts of movies and TV shows over the years. War games, Northern Exposure, Tulsa King. Trust me, you know him. I spoke to Corbin from his home in Texas. He was born and raised in the state not far from where no country for Old Men is set.

[Barry Corbin]

You know, it's in my bones. I grew up in that part of the country. I know what that country's like. It is not easy. You know, anything grows gonna stick you. Anything that's wild and walking around is gonna bite you or eat you.

[Brian Raftery]

His scene with Tommy Lee Jones was shot way out in the desert of Marfa, Texas, in a house that held its own real life dangers.

[Barry Corbin]

You could stomp your foot and you'd hear rattlesnakes under the floor. I said, make sure you keep account of those cats because if one of them gets out, you'll never see him again. And if you watch the movie again, you see when Tommy Lee comes in the front door, a cat runs out and it's gone. Never saw it again.

[Brian Raftery]

The conversation between Ellis and the sheriff is just a few minutes long, and on the surface it seems pretty straightforward. Just two people talking in a room. The only noise is the wind whooshing outside the house. But as with the coin toss scene, there's a lot more going on under the surface. Ellis was shot years earlier and is now disabled, but he tells Sheriff Ed Tom Bell that he's not angry about it.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Well, all the time you spend trying to get back what's been took from you, more is going out the door. After a while, you just have to try to get a tourniquet on it.

[Brian Raftery]

By this Point in the movie, Sheriff Bell has seen Anton's handiwork, and he tells Ellis that it's made him feel, quote, overmatched, that he feels powerless in the face of all this violence. Violence, the sheriff believes is unprecedented. But Ellis sets him straight. He tells Sheriff Bell a story about the murder of another family member more than 70 years earlier. That man was killed in front of his wife and buried the next day in the hard ground. What Ellis is really saying is that all that bloodshed the sheriff's been seeing isn't some new invention. It's always been there and it's not going away. And only a fool would believe that violence could somehow be contained or avoided altogether. Ellis then offers a closing thought that, for me at least, makes this the single best scene of any film from the 2000s.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

What you got ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waitin on you. That's vanity.

[Brian Raftery]

You can't stop what's coming. It's a simple enough idea, but it's one that's rarely presented as starkly as it is in no country for Old Men. I asked Barry Corbin about that line, about why it resonates so strongly with moviegoers.

[Barry Corbin]

Well, it's actually very true. You know, I don't want to go into this too deep, but last night.

[Brian Raftery]

Corbin then told me a story. The night before our interview, a friend of his, a guy he's known for more than 25 years, came over to the actor's house. The two of them tried to get together every once in a while to watch a movie and drink some beers. And that night after the movie, the friend collapsed and died in front of him.

[Barry Corbin]

So that you never do know what's coming, do you? We're never in control. It's like owning things. You don't own anything. You know, you get here naked and you leave naked, and that's the way it go.

[Brian Raftery]

There are a lot of hard truths in no country for Old Men. It's a movie about how we have no control over our lives, no matter what we tell ourselves. And it's about how we'll never get back what we've lost. Those sentiments felt especially spot on when no country for Old Men was released in late 2007. For the last several years, it had felt as though the nation was spinning out of control. Nine, 11, Katrina, Iraq, the economy. It was enough to make anyone feel powerless and anxious, like there was always some rattlesnake under the floor. But it was those truths that made no country for Old Men feel almost comforting when it came out. I realize that's a weird way to describe a movie where people get shot in the head with a bolt pistol, but when I saw no country for Old men back in 2007, I thought, oh man, thank God somebody else realizes just how fast fucked up everything's always been. Still, while it felt good to watch a movie that seemed to be calling out the destruction of the last few years, no country for Old Men doesn't go down easy. At the end of the film, Anton Chigurh is still on the loose after killing Llewelyn's widow. Anton is struck by a car. He's badly injured, so he bribes a couple of kids for a new shirt and for their silence. Then Anton wanders down the street as police sirens roar in the distance. Does Anton eventually get caught, or does he simply keep moving on? No country for Old Men has a catchy tagline on the poster. There are no clean getaways. But in the 2000s, it had become clear that that notion wasn't entirely true. During the Bush years, we learn that evil plays by its own rules, just like it does today.

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[Brian Raftery]

Oliver Stone didn't set out to spend so much of the 2000s making movies about the 2000s.

[Oliver Stone]

I never chased the news because you can't. By the time you make the movie, it comes out, it's his. You Know, it's just things have moved on and it would be a mistake.

[Brian Raftery]

But halfway through the decade, Stone read a script about an event that was still on everyone's minds. The attacks of September 11th. The screenplay, written by Andrea Berloff, was about two police officers injured during the attack on the World Trade Center. To no one's surprise, when news broke that Stone's next film would be about 9 11, some people were outraged. He had a reputation for blending fact and myth in ways that could be unsettling. In the movie jfk, Stone had unleashed multiple conspiracy theories about the President's assassination. And in the film the Doors, he'd managed to make the drugged up rock scene of the 1960s seem even more outrageous. Stone always filtered major historical moments through his own viewpoints, a habit that tends to piss off historians and experts. And there were concerns that the filmmaker would use 9 11, which was still very much a raw wound, to make a political statement. When Stone's World Trade center movie was announced, columnist Mickey Kaust noted Stone will probably have some wacky conspiratorial left wing theory to add into the script. Is Hollywood so out of touch?

[Oliver Stone]

There were so many groups that came to us to say, you know, you can't do this movie this way and you can't do it in New York and you can't, you can't show, you know, we knew it was a very sensitive issue.

[Brian Raftery]

The filmmakers did their research, meeting with those who witnessed the attacks.

[Oliver Stone]

I mean, we dealt with all the rescuers, many of them are in the movie. And it was quite something to see all the those people and to talk to the survivors and get a sense we relived that day.

[Brian Raftery]

The result was the movie World Trade center starring Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena. And despite fears that Stone's movie would be a big screen diatribe, World Trade center was a somber, often hopeful story of brave Americans overcoming incredible odds. And it featured one of Cage's most dialed back performances of the 2000s.

[Oliver Stone]

Prepared for everything.

[Brian Raftery]

Not this. World Trade center was a surprise box office hit. One of Stone's most successful films in years. In fact, the movie was so straight faced and so proudly apolitical that some of Stone's fans began wondering if he'd lost his touch.

[Oliver Stone]

You know, they were saying all kinds of nonsense that I had gone patriotic and that I was no longer anti American. And I was never anti American, I was always American. I was always concerned about telling the truth.

[Brian Raftery]

Stone had planned on following up on the success of World Trade center with a movie called Pinkville. It was the story of the My Lai massacre, an incident in which U.S. troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians during the war. Pinkville was the sort of unflinching drama that Stone had been making for years. But getting financing for non franchise films, especially downbeat non franchise films, had become much tougher in the 2000s. And right before filming was set to begin on Pinkville in early 2008, Stone got some bad news.

[Oliver Stone]

We had everything kind of ready to go about two, three weeks from shooting. And of course, it was a preliminary to the 2008 meltdown of the stock market. The money got pulled by a stock firm called Merrill Lynch. At that time, they didn't have the money. So anyway, the film fell apart and that was a big hole in my life.

[Brian Raftery]

Unable to get Pinkville going, he jumped into his George W. Bush movie, which Stone had had on the back burner for a while. Only a decade earlier, a movie like W. Would have been an easy green light for Stone. After all, he directed or written some of the most critically and commercially successful dramas of the last two decades. But in the 2000s, audiences had mostly been staying away from any film touching on politics. During Bush's second term, a couple of high profile movies had taken aim at his administration and missed. Movies like American Dreams, a 2006 satire starring Dennis Quaid as a US president whose low drawl and even lower IQ seemed pretty familiar. I'm kind of busy here. Doing what?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Reading the papers.

[Brian Raftery]

What for? We got people to do that for you. Then there was Rendition, a 2007 drama about a US resident who's mistaken for a terrorist, taken away from his family and shipped overseas where he's tortured for information. You have my husband. Just tell me he's okay. That screen belongs to Reese Witherspoon, just one of several major stars in Rendition alongside Meryl Streep and Jake Gyllenhaal. Yet even with that a list cast rendition came and went. Americans had spent the last few years being inundated with round the clock coverage of wars and terrorism. People were going to movie theaters to avoid the news, not to relive it. Which explains in part why Stone had so much trouble finding support for his George W. Bush film.

[Oliver Stone]

No studio would touch it. You know, I'd done well with World Trade center and so forth. I was surprised.

[Brian Raftery]

Instead, W will be financed with money raised overseas from investors in Europe, Australia and Asia. Stone even got one of Jackie Chan's producing partners to chip in.

[Oliver Stone]

He was a gambler. He'd go off to Macau and We gambled. And he was quite a fun guy, a crazy guy.

[Brian Raftery]

Those were the kinds of backers Stone needed to make his Bush biopic. They were risk takers, many of them from outside Hollywood. And with their help, Stone was ultimately able to raise about $27 million for.

[Oliver Stone]

W. We bricked it together. You know, it was not easy, not easy to make those movies because, as I said, he was just such a controversial figure.

[Brian Raftery]

So was Stone, of course. And when word got out in early 2008 that his bush movie was a go, many people assumed it was going to be a brutal takedown, which is understandable. Stone's last movie about a U.S. leader was Nixon, an acclaimed 1995 biopic about the 37th president. Though that film was relatively even handed, it didn't shy away from Richard Nixon's darker side. His drinking, his paranoia, his overall chilliness. So there was good reason to assume that Stone's film about Bush would be just as tough. After all, the director had criticized many of Bush's policies, especially his handling of the war in Iraq. Stone was one of several Vietnam veterans to speak out against America's latest wars. In 2007, he directed a commercial featuring an army veteran named John Brunes who'd been in Iraq on day one of the invasion. Bruunes spoke movingly about the realities on the ground there, about the fighting between the U.S. troops and the very same Iraqis they were supposedly there to protect. The whole time I was in Iraq, it seemed as if we were just trying to keep a lid on the violence. By that point, the Iraq war was entering its fourth year. For Stone, watching America become engaged in another long running, expensive and seemingly endless war was painful and infuriating.

[Oliver Stone]

It was the same thing as in Vietnam. We were the thousand pound elephant chasing a mouse around the jungle there just doesn't work.

[Brian Raftery]

Stone believed it was time to bring the troops home. And he wasn't alone. By the late 2000s, many Americans were unhappy with the country's involvement in Iraq. The drawn out war had a devastating effect on Bush's approval ratings. During his second term, Bush's numbers hit historic lows. It wasn't just the war that had turned so many people against the president. His handling of Hurricane Katrina as well as the trouble with the economy had also played a sizable role. But for many, the Iraq war had become Bush's single biggest liability. Still, even though Bush was a ripe target, Stone didn't want his film to be a takedown of the president. For one thing, Stone didn't think there was even that much there to take down.

[Oliver Stone]

Nixon had many, many issues, but he was a three dimensional man, whereas George Bush was a very simple man.

[Brian Raftery]

Stone said he thought of Bush as a character out of a Frank Capra movie. A regular guy who, in Stone's words, went from, quote, an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world. He didn't see Bush as a malicious figure. To Stone, he was simply a man with a, quote, limited imagination. A guy who could only see things in black and white. And after 9 11, Bush had embraced the idea that bad people are out.

[Oliver Stone]

There, the good guys are in here. You know, it's very juvenile. And as I said, that's an American problem.

[Brian Raftery]

To play the lead in his Bush film, Stone needed a star who could capture the President's blank face, certainty and likability. Christian Bale was originally cast in the part and spent months studying Bush's mannerisms and speech. But he dropped out after it became clear that no amount of makeup would transform him into W. Stone then turned to Josh Brolin, who'd just come off no country for Old Men. The director offered Brolin what at that point would have been his most prominent leading role to date. But at first the actor wasn't even interested. Brolin wasn't a fan of the President, to say the least. In 2008, Brolin and Stone made an appearance on Charlie Rose's show, which was a crucial stop for anyone trying to sell a highbrow movie in the 2000s. As the actor told Rose, he didn't even think that a Bush film was a good idea.

[Josh Brolin]

Why would we want to make a movie on him when we could just watch cnn?

[Brian Raftery]

According to Stone, that wasn't the only reason. Brolin was so skeptical about the role.

[Oliver Stone]

He didn't want to do the movie. He was horrified that I thought of him as George Bush. And I said, josh, I see it, you know, I understand, I feel it. You can do it.

[Brian Raftery]

Brolin agreed to think it over and began studying up on Bush's life. He read about the President's early struggles with alcoholism and his later in life discovery of his faith. This President Bush, the one who tried to do the right thing, he impressed Brolin. The actor later made a surprising confession to Charlie Rose about the President.

[Josh Brolin]

I liked him. I liked his conviction, I liked his steel will. I liked his ability to reassess his life. And then I thought it was very interesting that he didn't carry that ability into politics.

[Brian Raftery]

After signing on, Brolin and the rest of the W cast, including Elizabeth Banks as first Lady Laura Bush, Geoffrey Wright as Secretary of State Colin Powell, and James Cromwell as George H.W. bush assembled in Shreveport, Louisiana in May 2008. By that point, an early draft of the film's script, written by Stanley Wiser, had already leaked on the Internet. W was being made under heavy scrutiny, and Stone hoped that by holing up in Louisiana, he and the cast and crew could keep a low profile.

[Oliver Stone]

First of all, we made the film very under wraps. We made it. We didn't want to get into trouble.

[Brian Raftery]

They'd also need to work fast. Lionsgate, the studio distributing the film, wanted W to be ready for release by the November 2008 elections, giving Stone just five months to complete the entire movie. It was a tough deadline, one that required a lot of late nights and long hours.

[Oliver Stone]

We shot intensely, intensely working, you know, all the time.

[Brian Raftery]

As they filmed around Louisiana, Stone and the rest of the crew ran into resistance from some of the locals. Keep in mind, throughout the 2000s, some Americans had come to see Hollywood and entertainers in general as unpatriotic. Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, the Dixie Chicks, they'd all come under attack. Stone saw that animosity up close. While shooting in Louisiana, Bush had won the state in 2000 and 2004. I mean, the results hadn't even been close. So the President still had lots of supporters in the state, and some of them refused to rent out locations for the movie, especially after they found out that Stone was directing it.

[Oliver Stone]

They assumed that as Hollywood people, we were going to eat them up alive. We never had that intention. If you read the script, it's an interesting script because it's more satiric than it is attacking.

[Brian Raftery]

The script was satiric, but it was also surprisingly empathetic. W the movie takes pains to point out that even though he was born rich, W. The man had to overcome numerous odds early in the film. He's berated by his father, who despises W's lack of ambition and self control. In one scene, the elder Bush delivers a harsh insult, and you can really hear the disgust in Cromwell's voice. Partying, chasing tail, driving drunk.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Who do you think you are, a Kennedy? You're a Bush.

[Brian Raftery]

Act like one. The movie also portrays Bush's struggles with alcohol as well as his choice to seek higher office. A decision Bush makes not as some power grab, but has a divine calling. He says God wants him to run for President.

[Josh Brolin]

I can't explain it, but I think that something's going to happen, and at that time, my country is going to need me, and I Think it's part of the divine plan.

[Brian Raftery]

In many ways, Brolin's version of Bush is a lot like the guy Stone met at that Yale event. Cheery and gentlemanly, a nice enough cowboy type who felt the obligation and the pressure to live up to his famous family name. And with the love of his wife and the strength of his faith, Bush just kind of falls into the White House. That's where he's manipulated by the film's real villain, Dick Cheney, played with nasally menace by Richard Dreyfus. In one scene set at the White House dining room, Cheney forcefully sweet talks Bush into taking military action against Saddam Hussein. The VP lays out the case for the use of American force, a case that many conservatives had articulated in the early 2000s, albeit in slightly less dumbed down terms. If there was a 1% chance of.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You dying, sir, would you eat the.

[Brian Raftery]

Lettuce in that sandwich? I should probably point out here that at this point in the film, the two have been talking about a potential e. Coli outbreak. 1%?

[Josh Brolin]

No, probably not.

[Oliver Stone]

Most people wouldn't serve.

[Brian Raftery]

And that's the dark side. The 1% chance of a nuclear attack or an anthrax epidemic or, God help us, a smallpox outbreak. We'd have 200 million Americans dead on our hands. In Stone's movie, Bush is easily influenced by, let's just say, dark forces. But the film doesn't shy away from assigning the President blame. It ends with Bush realizing that the WMDs he claimed would be in Iraq were in fact non existent. A monumental error, one that will end up costing thousands of lives. At the end of the movie, during a press conference, Bush is asked, what mistakes did you make and what did you learn from them? Bush struggles to come up with an answer.

[Josh Brolin]

John, I'm sure historians will say, gosh, I wish he could have done better this way or that way.

[Brian Raftery]

Bush struggles for more than a minute and still can't think of any lessons learned. In some ways, the wannabe cowboy Brolin plays in W isn't entirely different from the actual cowboy he plays in no country for Old Men. Though the two men have very different dispositions. They're both guys who act on impulse and who get in way over their heads. Still, at least Llewellyn Moss has a moment or two where he realizes he's in trouble. That doesn't happen for George W. Bush, at least not in Stone's movie. He depicts Bush as a guy who's powerful enough to convince a country to go to war, but totally unable to understand the consequences of that war.

[Josh Brolin]

I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of the press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hasn't yet.

[Brian Raftery]

Stone managed to get W to theaters in October 2008. Reviews were divided. Some critics were surprised that Stone's film wasn't more abrasive. They felt W went too easy on Bush. And when you look at the film, next to a movie like Nixon, which was frenzied and impassioned and sometimes inflammatory, W. Does seem like an outlier. You can't help but wonder why Stone didn't go harder on Bush. After all, he'd spent the past several years angry at him.

[Oliver Stone]

I said at the time to the news, I said, he's the worst president we've ever had in American history.

[Brian Raftery]

But when he dug into the president's origin story, Stone found Bush hard to hate.

[Oliver Stone]

My feelings about Bush, that's true, but we didn't put that in the script. We played him sympathetic.

[Brian Raftery]

Looking back now, that may be why W struggled at the box office, making a little more than $25 million in the United States. People who still loved the president, and there still were a few of them, had no interest in seeing what they assumed would be a hit job. And those who hated Bush no doubt wanted something a little more savage. But the biggest challenge for W, Stone says, is that by the time it came out, the president had been in office for nearly eight years, and people were just sick of him.

[Oliver Stone]

There was no way that people were even tolerating any interest in Bush at that point.

[Brian Raftery]

The release of W was also overshadowed by the 2008 presidential race, which was heating up in its final weeks. It had come down to John McCain, a longtime Republican senator who'd run against Bush in 2000, and Democrat Barack Obama, a junior senator from Illinois. Now, every election year is chaotic, but the 2008 election was bananas. It had a gazillion competing storylines. There was the rise of Sarah Palin, the fall of Rudy Giuliani. Well, the first of many falls, I guess. And there was the growing power of social media, which could amplify every boneheaded campaign comment. And there were lots of those on both sides. For example, remember when Obama got caught on videos saying that angry working class people cling to guns or religion? That was disastrous. Almost as bad as when McCain assured Americans that their money was safe, even as the housing crisis was causing bankruptcies across the country. Our economy, I think, still the fundamentals of our economy are strong. My point Here is that in the fall of 2008, people didn't really need a movie like W. They'd already moved on to the sequel, and it was playing on cable TV and the Internet. 24 7. As for Bush himself, he never publicly commented on Stone's movie, though some of his aides did. Karl Rove, who served as Bush's deputy chief of staff, attacked the film's suspect. Chinese investors. And a White House press secretary called the movie ridiculous before it was even released and noted that Bush was simply too busy fixing the economy to worry about the movie. But apparently Bush did find time to watch W. Not long after the film's release, a copy of the movie was given to Bush by Bill Clinton, who was a friend of Stone's. Later, Bush. Clinton shared Bush's review of W with the director.

[Oliver Stone]

He implied that he wasn't angry about the film. He just said that he thought that Josh had done a good job. That's all that I heard from Bill Clinton.

[Brian Raftery]

Nowadays, Stone looks back at W fondly, though he wishes it had performed better. He told me the movie might have been more successful if he'd waited a few years to make it, so that he would have a greater understanding of the long term effects of the Bush years and that audiences would be ready to confront them.

[Oliver Stone]

I believe in retrospect, you need a little time away from Bush.

[Brian Raftery]

But Stone also knows that the kinds of movies he made for decades, wild, energetic, sometimes angry stories, wrestling with America's darkest hours have become tough for studio executives to sell to American audiences.

[Oliver Stone]

It's very hard to acknowledge your own past.

[Brian Raftery]

That was especially true when W came out in 2008. The immediate past had been pretty terrible, so why re experience it? Especially when for once, the future was looking to be a slight improvement.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Welcome to world news tonight. McCain and Obama, their final appeals.

[Brian Raftery]

That's ABC anchor Charlie Gibson on November 4, 2008, election night. Now, in my mind, I remember this race being extremely close, but when you look back at the polling from that time, it's pretty clear who was going to win. Barack Obama may have been relatively inexperienced, and a lot of people simply didn't know much about him. But John McCain's party had just overseen two catastrophic administrations. And compared to Obama, who was only in his late 40s, McCain, for all his feistiness, sometimes just kind of came off as an old man. And this was no country for, well, you know. All of which is to say that unlike the 2000 battle between Bush and Gore, which dragged on for days, then weeks, then an entire month. The race between McCain and Obama didn't take long to decide. One of the key states that year was Pennsylvania. If McCain took the state, he could win it all. But if it didn't go his way, his advisors knew that McCain was finished. And by 8pm it was clear the night was over.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Pennsylvania tonight will go to Barack Obama, a key battleground for both campaigns.

[Brian Raftery]

In the end, it was a blowout, with obama getting nearly 10 million more votes than McCain. At his victory speech that night in Chicago, Obama talked about the troubled economy he'd inherited from Bush, as well as the ongoing war in Iraq. And Obama made it clear that he intended to do things differently. It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This day, in this election, at this.

[Brian Raftery]

Defining moment, change has come to America. Technically speaking, the 2000s weren't over, but emotionally speaking, well, the decade felt kind of done. Americans were ready to move away from the Bush years, and they wanted to do so as quickly as possible. It was time for new ideas, new leaders. Not to mention time for a bold new big screen hero. A guy who looks at all the warfare and destruction before him and says no more. His name? Tony Stark. His job? Weapons manufacturer, albeit with a conscience.

[Josh Brolin]

I came to realize that I have.

[Brian Raftery]

More to offer this world than just.

[Josh Brolin]

Making things to blow up.

[Brian Raftery]

Tony Stark would soon become known to tens of millions of moviegoers, though many of them called Tony by his other name, Iron Man. This podcast is reported, written and hosted by me, Brian Raftery. The executive producers of this podcast are Juliet Lippman and Sean Fenestey. Story editing by Amanda Dobbins. The show was produced by me, Devin Beraldi and Vikram Patel. Fact checking by Casey Gallagher. Copy editing by Craig Gaines. Talent booking by Cat Spillane. Sound design by Devin Beraldi. Mixing and mastering by Scott Somerville. The music you hear in this series is from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Art direction and illustration by David Shoemaker. Thanks for listening.