Sean Penn poses for photos in Toronto, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006. Penn is attending the Toronto Film Festival and the screening of his film 'All The King's Men.' (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki)
Posted on 09/12/2006 10:01:19 AM PDT by MikeA
NEW YORK Sparks usually fly, from one quarter or another, when actor Sean Penn meets the press, and it happened again this week at a news conference for the Toronto International Film Festival. Chances were greater there as he was touting a long-expected political drama screened there, the re-make of "All the King's Men."
Among the highlights on Sunday, Penn asked photographers to stop snapping so he could hear questions, and he called President Bush "a Beelzebub -- and a dumb one."
Penn stars in the new movie as a Huey Long-type populist politician in Louisiana, with Jude Law playing a crucial role as his friend, an alcoholic reporter.
"One could make the argument that George Bush is a good politician," Penn said at one point, seemingly offering praise. Then he added: "I think the issue is how you define politician. Once upon a time, politics was the organization of things to benefit the people."
An early review this week by E&P's VNU sibling, The Hollywood Reporter, hailed Penn's "charismatic" performance, but added that the movie "doesn't seem to know how to contain it. Writer-director Steven Zaillian's questionable solution is to fit this rambunctious portrait of unruly Southern politics in a monumental frame where Southern Gothic meets Leni Riefenstahl." Variety panned it as "overstuffed."
At the press conference, a reporter returned to the notion of Bush as a good politician, and Penn said the definition has changed -- much as it has for "good actor" which now means, he said, "contest winner" (he is an Academy Award winner himself).
"So that's the level of politician I think he's good at," Penn said. "Out of context, he's Beelzebub -- and a dumb one."
Another query: Could he name a good politician? Penn said he wasn't about to "rattle off the cliches....It should be obvious, those people who sacrificed of their talents and their commitment to their country or their people . . . we know who they are and they're not currently in the White House."
Penn has written several freelance articles for the San Francisco Chronicle in recent years.
Will the MSM report what I think of Shawn Pen? Why him of POTUS?
Didn't he say he has an Ann Coulter doll that he burns with cigarettes?? What a useless ahole.
Politics has NEVER been for the people. Just ask Julius Caesar......
This is what EIDTOR and PUBLISHER amounts to:
A pr man for Sean Penn.
This coming from a guy who went to NOLA after Hurricane Katrina with a leaky boat to rescue people!
Waaaa, then we're going to fly off to Australia and jam with the Stooooones!!
People on Ludes should not opine...
I still laugh at that lifevest thing he is wearing. What the heck?!?!
It is too bad he is such a nitwit because he is good at pretending he is other people as an actor. As a rule, I never go to see his movies in the theater and prefer if someone else gets them on Netflix for viewing. My other multiplex trick is to pay for a different movie and then enter the film I wish to watch so outspoken actors like Sean Penn don't receive credit.
~ Blue Jays ~
One can only pat the little liberals on their heads and shoo them away.
Speaking of family, Penn's a "red diaper baby". His father was a commie and was "blacklisted " during the so called "Red Scare".
If the son is any indictation of the father, then he had it coming too. He's just a pissed off Daddy was shown for what he is.
Too bad HUAC isn't in business anymore.
PS. His dad did have REAL courage, He was a bombardier over Europe during WW2
Bush is stupid? I wonder what Ivy league school Mr. Penn graduate from? Harvard, Brown, Yale?
"EIDTOR"
Looks like you could use an editor.
LOL...that's the picture I like to see.
You owe me a new keyboard...
What's funniest of all is this guy's actually convinced people care about what he's got to say about anything !!!
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