Stone: Why did I make the movie? Well, I frankly think he's one of the greatest stories of the last 30 years, maybe 40 years. I mean, bigger than Reagan, bigger than Nixon and his impact on this country. You have to go back a long way to find a president with this impact. I think he's got a story that's improbable, that's stranger than fiction: At 40, a failure, then president of the United States. Frank Capra and Preston Sturges would pick up on this material, it's amazing. And what's happened to the country is amazing. It overshadows the election, in my opinion. Why now? Because he's leaving office, and because it's time we assessed as a movie, on a broad level, on a broad popular level, what he meant to the country, what he standed for, how he got elected and basically where we're going now.

Q: I'm interested in the device you used in which you used Bush quotes, for want of a better phrase, out of context -- things he actually said, but you transposed them and used them at events other than where they actually happened. What was the purpose there?

Stone: Well, the purpose is dramatization. As you know, these quotes are strung over years, speeches are strung over years, meetings -- there's numerous meetings. As a dramatist, we have to simplify and condense. And I don't think we crossed the line, the spirit of what happened in that administration. The Bush administration speaks for itself. They've said these things, their policies are clear. By way of example, I'm just looking at an article in the Dallas Morning News written by Wayne Slater. Wayne Slater covered Bush, Bush's two campaigns for governor, his administration in Austin and both runs for the presidency, and he co-authored two books on Karl Rove. Anyway, Wayne -- I don't know the man at all, never met him -- he came out Friday and he said -- this is an example -- "It happened, just not exactly as the director portrays. Mr. Bush delivered the words, 'Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there,' during a campaign stop in early 2000, not the White House three years later." Yes, but the same sentiment prevailed in Bush's mind.

Q: So to you, that makes it fair game to use it that way, because they are the words of the president?

Stone: I'm not writing a biography. I'm not a journalist, never claimed to be. Nor am I a documentarian. We are shaping a pattern that we see repeating in this man's presidency. You could almost describe these eight years as a loop in the sense that the body language, the understanding, the dialogue remains very much the same. The stimulus is different, whether it's the economic debacle or the Iraq war, it doesn't seem to matter on the way he responds to these situations. His speeches are remarkably similar, his delivery of them. So, yes, as a dramatist, we have to make our patterns, and we're only dealing with the first three years of the presidency, as you know, and the march to Iraq. That is the climax, act three.

Q: How do you think the state of Texas and his upbringing in Texas had an impact shaping what George Bush became?

Stone: Most definitely, most definitely. I think we see it in the first act and certainly during his run for the Congress against Kent Hance when he was taught a lesson, so to speak, as a carpetbagger from out of state. You know, the man did grow up in the Texas, and he emphasized those roots and his down-home evangelicalism, his profession of faith. All this seems to come from -- and the cowboy image, the John Wayne image that he projected of strength. By that I mean not backing down, ever, even if you're wrong, in the John Wayne sense to stick to your guns. That's very Texas. It reminds me, in fact, of Lyndon Johnson, who I grew up with, and who stuck to his guns as long as he could in Vietnam. And was larger than life.

Q: On the timing of your movie, was it important to you from a business standpoint to have this movie come out before the election, because if it came out after the election there might be a diminished interest in President Bush?

Stone: You could argue that. I cannot answer that question. My contract allowed me to finish the movie by December; it would have been there in time for the inauguration. It was a very tight schedule. The movie fell into place, we were happy with the result, we didn't reshoot anything. We were able to, so to speak, cut on our feet. We didn't shoot as much as I normally shoot. The story was tight, the actors were rehearsed. But you know, frankly, I think it's a bigger issue than this election. I really think in my heart that this guy's policies are going to be around for a long time, and my grandchildren are going to be talking about his guy Bush like the way they talk about Teddy Roosevelt, the way they talk about Lincoln, the way they talk about Washington. I think he's had monumental impact on the future of this country.

Q: You said that you believe this overshadows the election -- could you expound on that a little bit? How would you react to people who say that this almost looks gratuitous now in the sense that this guy is leaving office and people have gotten beyond President Bush and are looking for something beyond him?

Stone: Gratuitous, absolutely not. This is a very serious matter because unless you learn from the past, you're going to repeat it, whether it's this year or in 10 years. You can look at Bush as the grandson of Nixon and the son of Reagan if you're looking at a dramatic pattern. This is a very serious moment and we have to understand, I think, that we chose the path of empathy. We tried to walk in his shoes. We tried to understand the mindset of George Bush, the way he thinks, and the way Cheney thinks and the way Powell and Rumsfeld think. I think we got inside them. A lot of people have said we did, who knew them. We've gotten some verification of this from documents.

But the fact is this whole concept that -- you know, it's very American to think that one person is going to shift the country. I am, as you know, personally rooting for Obama. But if he were elected tomorrow, his job would be huge, to clean up this mess. When I say "overshadow," I mean, honestly, we are in three wars, one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and the third war is the biggest of all, what he calls the global war on terror. We seem to have in place a Bush doctrine, which is basically Cheney's doctrine of preemption, of not allowing the emergence of any global or military rival. We have an economic debacle. We owe a national deficit we've never had before. We have, above all, the largest Pentagon budget ever. I mean, how do you dig out from underneath this? I mean, if Obama were to come in and change the country in a slight way, it would be first off from his image abroad, which would be of more like a Kennedy image. But then he would have the hard work of trying to go up against these corporate giants, lobbies, special interest groups that determine where the military spending goes and how much.

Besides which, how does Obama or McCain get us out of these involvements that are so costly all around the world? We have bases in 120 countries. Can America afford this economic sacrifice at a time when it should be building its own infrastructure? I ask that question with the hope that we can return to some form of sanity in our foreign policy.

Q: What sort of reaction have you had from George Bush and his administration on the movie? And to those who think it's disrespectful that you made it while he's still in office, what do you have to say to that?

Stone: I just don't think the Bush family believes in looking inside themselves, especially George W., talks about psychobabble, so does the father. We've heard Jeb say that it was all hooey. But, you know, you're talking about a family that doesn't have any sense of introspection. I mean, neither Freud nor Darwin seem to apply. So I'm not surprised. But listen, if they would like to screen the film with me, or one of them would, I would be most glad and gracious to do it. I'd go; I'd travel somewhere to show it to them. But it's very hard, I know, to see a movie about yourself.