June 13, 2012

"The last head on the left is George Bush. George Bush's head appears in a couple of beheading scenes."

"It's not a choice, it's not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around."

48 comments:

Synova said...

I'll buy that it's not a political statement, but I won't buy that it wasn't someone being funny.

Had to use the heads they had? If I bought that, I'd probably have responded to all the UK lotteries I've won or helped out that poor widow from the Congo get her dea husband's money out of the country.

ndspinelli said...

BBBBBuulllshit. Sorry, my Tourettes has been out of control..snofabitch, cocksuckers.

One lie begets another.

Scott M said...

Absolutely hysterical.

Hagar said...

Should not that have a "civility bullshit" tag?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Too bad. I WAS going to watch it. Not now.

I've read the books anyway.

Chip S. said...

Set design by Al Armendariz?

Synova said...

They'll have to find a Clinton head, or Carter head, to go with the next beheading, heads on a pike scene.

Just to be fair.

I'd say Obama, but he's a sitting president. His head will have to wait until next year.

Wince said...

George W. Bush may have given head, but according to Jennifer Flowers Bill Clinton was the president who "ate pussy like a champ".

Jaske said...

Matt Groening is the king of decapitated heads.

http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Heads_in_Jars

Thorley Winston said...

So basically Joffrey Lannister is a Democrat? Figures. ;)

Unknown said...

I've read some of George R. R. Martin's political rants, and know he was intimately involved with the HBO series. I don't buy the claim that it was unintentional.

Thorley Winston said...

Agree: Re: George RR Martin’s politics. He’s pretty much a lefty and given the political bent of most of HBO’s programming, I doubt that they “had” to do it (like there wouldn’t be plenty of prosthetic heads from “True Blood” that they could have used). That being said, the Starks are pretty much the de facto “good guys” in AGOT/ASOIAF and likening Bush 43 to the leader of pretty much the only decent faction in the series may not have sent the message that the creators had hoped. ;)

edutcher said...

This is why I don't watch shows like that.

Besides the fact that they really aren't that good, anyway.

EDH said...

George W. Bush may have given head, but according to Jennifer Flowers Bill Clinton was the president who "ate pussy like a champ"

his only real skill, apparently.

Amartel said...

i read somewhere that the heads really are expensive. George Martin (the author of the books) wanted the producers to put a copy of his head on a spike but it was too expensive so they couldn't do it. It does make me laugh, though, that OF COURSE there just happens coincidentally to be a George Bush decapitated head lying around Hollywood. View it as a compliment because fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, right?

Loved the Game of Thrones books and I've been watching the show on DVD. It's really good. George Martin is a big ole librul, how predictable, but bleesedly doesn't seem to feel much of a need to comment on real world politics.

Fen said...

Libtard Civility tag

Fen said...

Too bad. I WAS going to watch it. Not now.

Same. When are all these "smart" producers going to realize that pissing off half your audience is stupid.

If I wanted to be proselytized, I would spend my entertainment dollars at a Mosque.

Icepick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Icepick said...

Wow, any number of fans would have LOVED to have mock-ups of their heads on the spikes! In the last book in the series published, Dance with Dragons, one character gets ripped apart by a giant. The character in question was named for a fan that won a contest, and was dressed in the colors of the hated Dallas Cowboys. (Martin is a huge fan of the New York Football Giants and Jets, and thus hates the Cowboys. Of course, all right thinking people hate the Cowboys.) It was considered quite the honor by the fan in question and the fanboys and -girls generally.

Dave D said...

The comments section of that link is HILARIOUS!

Michael K said...

Elmore Leonard has raffles to allow people to pay for him to use their names as villains in his novels.

gadfly said...

"Game of Thrones" is filmed by HBO using a production company called Northern Ireland Screen. Scenes were shot in Croatia, Iceland and Northern Ireland.

Not political, please? After the "Game Change" hatchet job on Sarah Palin by HBO?

Alex said...

Well I was enjoying season 1, now I know I'm done with it.

The Drill SGT said...

Having your head up on the wall in Kings Landing makes you one of the good guys.

Sansa Stark is looking hard left. That could mean the Bush head is Eddard Strak, one of the few honorable men in the whole series...

Dr Weevil said...

I don't doubt that this instance was intentional, but such things sometimes just happen. In Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part III, Richard Duke of York is tortured on stage, decapitated, and his head later displayed on a pike. When the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton did the play a year and a half ago, the bloody plastic head naturally looked a lot like the actor, a bald bearded Englishman named Jeremy West. Here is a still from the scene where the live duke is being physically and verbally tortured by Queen Margaret.

To get to my point, I wish I had a picture of the bloody plastic head, because it looked exactly like Andrew Sullivan, whom the apolitical actor had never heard of (I asked him). Not that I wish such a fate on AS, but the resemblance was amazing, and hilarious.

Methadras said...

And clearly Joffrey is Obama. lulz.

chuck said...

I've read the books anyway.

The first chapter was good, the first two books bearable, it was sharply downhill after that.

I could never figure out how the economy worked anyway. Few roads, no manufacture, little agriculture, Talk about fantasy.

Methadras said...

chuck said...

I've read the books anyway.

The first chapter was good, the first two books bearable, it was sharply downhill after that.

I could never figure out how the economy worked anyway. Few roads, no manufacture, little agriculture, Talk about fantasy.


Most fantasy novels based on medieval themes like Game of Thrones don't deal with the constructs of what makes those societies tick. Rather the writer concentrates more on the intrigue that drives the story rather than the structure of how that fantasy world exists. Which is really to bad. Because there could be great literary content if Martin dug deeper into how his world ticked rather than popping up antagonists everywhere.

Alex said...

Methadras - the ordinary TV viewer would be turned off by real political content and I don't mean "The West Wing" crap. Fact is things didn't really move that fast back around 1450 or so, the pace of change was pretty glacial and doesn't fit the network TV format. Thus the need to gloss over all that and focus on battles and intrigue.

Known Unknown said...

Most fantasy novels based on medieval themes like Game of Thrones don't deal with the constructs of what makes those societies tick. Rather the writer concentrates more on the intrigue that drives the story rather than the structure of how that fantasy world exists. Which is really to bad. Because there could be great literary content if Martin dug deeper into how his world ticked rather than popping up antagonists everywhere.

Before you go down that road, please keep in mind what George Lucas did in the prequels with the trade federation. There's a reason they don't dwell on such boring subjects.

Alex said...

EMD - that's because George Lucas wouldn't know politics or economics if it hit on the head with a 2x4. He stuck to what he knew - F/X.

Mary Beth said...

I'll watch it anyway.

My son is in the army so I hooked up a Slingbox primarily for him to keep up with this show.

I'm also reading it but I'm only on the second book so NO MORE SPOILERS!

I apologize for yelling.

Big Mike said...

Does anyone besides Synova think that it wasn't political?

Sorry, ma'am.

(BTW, did you ever finish that short time-travel story?)

Matt Sablan said...

I have a bridge to sell.

Guildofcannonballs said...

The amount of waste in Hollywood is so minimal that therefore to not believe this no-other-faces-in-the-crowd-save-George-Walker-Bush-The-Fourty-Third-President-Of-The-United-States-Of-America narrative belies racism, and more, on your part, hater.

It's like folks thinking NBC editors can edit a sound or video clip to their desire, which they can.

So shut up.

Editors don't edit.

Hollywood is broke and therefore the art suffers, mightily: George Bush abounds.

Take their word for it.

Ya dummy.

William said...

There's no real political bias that I can see. The politics revolve around how the marginal--midgets, children, bastards, prostitutes, the handicapped--all plot to stay in the game and, sometimes, even win. I enjoy the show, and if it's true that its creator is a committed liberal, I enjoy it even more for keeping any analogy to current politics so circumspect.....I lost interest in Battlestar Gallatica because it kept hammering lberal talking points. I don't watch sci fi for the poli sci.

JorgXMcKie said...

I don't watch because I read all the way through Dances with Dragons and realized that Martin is yanking my chain and either has no place to go with the story or is deliberately trying to see how much he can antagonize his readers and still sell books.

I haven't been this unhappy with a series since Phillip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series, nor with an author since Samuel R. Delaney's Dhalgren.

My feeling is "screw with the readers, lose my patronage" and that's what Martin has done.

Icepick said...

I'm also reading it but I'm only on the second book so NO MORE SPOILERS!

If I told you some of the things that happen you wouldn't believe me! Still, I will provide no spoilers. The third book in the series is the best.

Kevin said...

Come on, we can fight back better than just whining. If GWB was beheaded by Geoffrey then GWB must be one of the good guys. And that also makes Geoffrey then more analagous to our own narcissistic boy king. Photoshoppers, get to work!

Bob R said...

The only interesting things are that they wanted to leak it and that they've tried to lie about it.

furious_a said...

That explains Al Gore getting co-writer credit for that episode.

Too far in, have the series committed to memory. Going to pretend I didn't see this story and prepare to enjoy Season 3.

GW is a big boy, already seen himself fragged in a Madonna video
and assassinated at the Toronto Film Festival. On-a-pike cameo small potatoes by comparison. If he's not complaining I won't.

madAsHell said...

"ate pussy like a champ".

Shit!! I could be president!!

Obama? He has two girls. Imagine my surprise. He's not that into delighting women.

He wants to have a war on women!!

the wolf said...

Calling Obama 'cool' is racist.

Henry said...

W looks good in the shaggy mane. I don't know anything about the book or the series, but just on principle I'm with Amartel, Icepick, The Drill Sgt, and Kevin. One of W's most sterling qualities was his forbearance. Another was his sense of humor. I bet he gets a kick out of this.

Anonymous said...

And lefties still try to claim they're the most civil.

Fuck every lefty, they deserve to be thrown in one of Castro's prisons and shot to death by his firing squad.

Remember, Althouse, these are the people you ally yourself with.

MadisonMan said...

My understanding is that no one knew about it 'til it was mentioned in the extras scenes on the DVD.

I don't pay for HBO.

Anonymous said...

You go to war with the severed heads you have, not the severed heads you wish you had.

AlanKH said...

For comparison: Profile pic of Dubya

Mitch H. said...

Not only have I seen it, I watched the DVD where the producer was snickering about the alleged Bush head. It didn't look like much of anything to me, frankly.

And if you can't take this sort of Hollywood-lib jiggery-pokery, go develop a thicker skin. This is seriously small-ball nonsense.