The movie rights to U.S. v. Bush, Elizabeth de la Vega’s pseudo-nonfictional legal thriller about a hypothetical criminal case against George W. Bush, have just been sold. In the book, a U.S. attorney lays out the case against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Co., accusing them of having defrauded the nation by leading us to war through “deceit, craft, trickery, dishonest means, and fraudulent representations, including lies, half-truths, material omissions, and statements made with reckless indifference to their truth or falsity.” Just imagine that line coming from the mouth of a rumpled, crusading federal prosecutor driven by the lonely belief that we’re a nation of laws, not men, dammit! Only Hollywood can bring this to life, becasuse as we know, real U.S. attorneys like this get replaced with Karl Rove’s former intern.
The book has been optioned by Robert Boris, director of the Rob Lowe classic Oxford Blues, and the writer of 1973’s Electra Glide in Blue (tagline: “He’s A Good Cop. On A Big Bike. On A Bad Road.”) I only hope that he takes some liberties with the source material, which is set entirely in a grand jury room, and writes in a scene where Dick Cheney takes the stand and delivers the equivalent of Jack Nicholson’s “you can’t handle the truth” speech from A Few Good Men. Especially the part where Cheney, his temper rising, lectures the smart-ass prosecutor that “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it.” Then he threatens to rip the prosecutor’s eyes out. I’d watch that.
Read our recent interview with de la Vega here.
