Look, it’s a quiet day. The nearest thing to news that’s happened recently is some Venezuelan bloke going to see a film.

So let’s try to pad that out into a story. Of course, it helps that the Venezuelan bloke was Hugo Chavez. And the film he went to see was a movie about himself. And it was directed by Oliver Stone. And he went to see it a red carpet premiere at the Venice Film Festival. And his presence alone gave everyone who’s ever worked for Fox News a debilitating aneurism.

But let’s pad that out into a story.

Some have said that, thanks to his movies like JFK and Nixon and W, that Oliver Stone is a political director. This is nonsense, of course. Oliver Stone just likes good stories, whether they’re boggle-eyed political conspiracy theories or, in the case of Alexander, three-and-a-half-hour-long entries in the imaginary Longest, Dullest, Least Essential Movies That You’ll Eventually Blame For Stealing An Unnecessarily Large Percentage Of Your Life When You’re On Your Deathbed competition.

But at the moment Oliver Stone is back in political mode, as demonstrated by his new documentary South Of The Border. South Of The Border is, it’s reported, a rebuttal of the general American viewpoint that South America is led by a gang of crackpot cartoon dictators. Or something. It doesn’t really matter what South Of The Border is about, for two reasons. First, you’ve already seen the words ‘Oliver Stone’, ‘political documentary’ and ‘Venezuela’ and have come to a deeply entrenched decision about whether you’re going to like it or not.

And second, it doesn’t matter what South Of The Border is about, because Oliver Stone managed to get Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez – who much of the movie is centred around – to attend the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival and generally lark about on the red carpet like a kitten in a meadow with predictably hilarious consequences, which included this write-up by Fox News. It’s much better if you read the next paragraph aloud while making a noise like you’re trying to stop yourself vomit, by the way:

Hundreds of admirers, some chanting “president, president,” gathered outside of the for the leader’s arrival. A few held up Venezuelan flags and a banner in Spanish that read “Welcome, president.” Chavez threw a flower into the crowd and touched his heart, and at one point took a photographer’s camera to snap a picture himself.

Still, whether you plan to see South Of The Border or not, you have to admit that it’s got a fairly genius marketing strategy. Getting Oliver Stone (who conservatives hate) to fanny around gleefully on a red carpet with Hugo Chavez (who conservatives hate) at a film festival on mainland Europe (which conservatives hate) probably won’t be bettered any time soon. Unless of course Michael Moore decides to promote his new movie up the Eiffel Tower alongside Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf and an industrial-sized keg of Sauerkraut.

Which he’s actually doing, we heard.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Folded:

• Online teaser for Oliver Stone’s George Bush biopic W (mock the man)
• The Bowen Identity (even piss poor Photoshop skills can make you funny)
• Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (seen it, and it’s pretty good)
• David McCallum (if you’ve played GTA IV and heard the track The Edge, you’ll know why Dre immortalised it and why McCallum is such a fusion legend. Yes, he also done some acting too)
• WALL-E (look at his little face, how could you not love Wall-E?)

Creased:

• Topman gift cards (they might look all black and trendy, but you can’t see how much you have left to spend! Bring back paper vouchers)
• Sasha: Beauty Queen at Eleven (this girl’s mum should be chopped up and fed to hungry pitbulls. The dad too for letting this spectacle happen right under his nose)
• The hard-to-penetrate world of Metal Gear Solid 4 (don’t misunderstand us, this is a great game: great graphics, sound, presentation – it’s just completely incomprehensible unless you know the Metal Gear mythology inside out)
• More fake tan woes (Jesus, girls, take it off! You smell like Digestives in this heat)
• Playing GRID online (and the barrage of insults from French people that comes with it)

But let's concentrate on the president bit for the time being, because Oliver Stone says that he's got a script written about George Bush, and he's itching to get it turned into a movie before Bush stops being president.

Stone's film is thought to hinge on some of the most difficult decisions George Bush ever had to make, primarily the seminal three-day deliberation on whether pretzels go down your food hole or your air hole. History has already taught us his findings on that matter.

If you're a president of America, there are certain things that you can look forward to. All-consuming power, for one, plus a school will probably end up naming a library after you when you're almost dead or something. But best of all, Oliver Stone will probably end up making a film about your life.

So far, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon have both got the Oliver Stone treatment, with eagerly-anticipated William H. Harrison and Calvin Coolidge biopics on their way as soon as Oliver Stone has run out of any better ideas. And since Oliver Stone's 'better ideas' include both Alexander and World Trade Center, you probably shouldn't hold your breath.

And another one of Oliver Stone's brilliant ideas is to make a film about President George W Bush. And make it now, damnit! Speaking to Daily Variety, Oliver Stone laid out his plans for the George Bush movie:

Stone, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, told the trade publication he's not looking to make an anti-Bush polemic. He said he wants "a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?" … Stone told Daily Variety that "Bush" is "a behind-the-scenes approach, similar to 'Nixon,' to give a sense of what it's like to be in his skin." It will "contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors," he said.

Now, as good an idea as it might seem to make a movie about an outgoing president – especially one as spectacularly unpopular as George Bush – it's worth remembering that both JFK and Nixon were made decades after the events they depicted, allowing Oliver Stone some perspective on the people the movies focused on. But Oliver Stone wants Bush to be released when George Bush is still president and all pushed up in everyone's face like a safari park monkey that won't let go of your windscreen even though you've got the wipers turned on full blast. 

The point being that without a bit of room between Bush's presidency and the movie's release, Bush might end up as a bad daytime TV biopic or, worse, a Michael Moore film with actors instead of an annoyingly patronising fat bloke shouting at a building.

Still, we'll get to see what Bush is like just as soon as Oliver Stone gets the finance to put it together. And if it's a tenth as good as Alexander… well, if it's a tenth as good as Alexander it'd probably kill everyone who watches it stone dead. Seriously, have you seen Alexander?

Read more: 

Oliver Stone Looks to Direct 'Bush' - AP