GAME OF THRONES Puts George W. Bush’s Head On Stake, Catches Shit; Go Figure!
If you didn’t catch it, don’t worry. I didn’t either. Last season, Game of Thrones stuck George W. Bush’s skull atop a stake, and the creators couldn’t help themselves in revealing the tidbit. Then everyone went and got all incensed. Go figure!
I Heart Chaos:
In the tenth episode of the current season of Game of Thrones, some eagle-eyed viewers noticed that one of the heads on stakes appears to be former president George W. Bush. That would be W up there, on the left. It’s not just a coincidence… the prop makers did in fact use a model of the former president’s head when creating the scene, but they say it’s not political.
The show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss state that George W. Bush’s was used as physical inspiration to create a head for a scene in which King Joffrey shows Sansa Stark her deceased father’s head on a stick.
“It’s not a choice, not a political statement!” one of the writers insisted during the DVD commentary. “We just had to use what heads we had around.” HBO did not respond to our request for comment, but as outrage mounted Wednesday, they released a statement saying they were “deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste.” HBO also said the scene would be removed from future DVD pressings.
The producers also did an about face, kind of, releasing their own statement.
“We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk,” the statement read. “After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush. In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.”
Totally not political. Ouch. Just hurt myself from winking. Wicked hard. Hahd. Hahd.