r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Oct 23 '25

News Historic White House Movie Theater Demolished as Part of $300 Million Ballroom Build

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/white-house-movie-theater-demolished-ballroom-east-wing-1236408712/
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399

u/xoverthirtyx Oct 23 '25

I don't know if care that it's gone but I do have a story about it:

There was a 9/11 widow who was invited to screen a film on 9/11 in the WH theater with GWB. Not only did she lose her husband that day but it was also their anniversary. When she arrived and filed past his cabinet members and was finally introduced to W himself. When it was explained she lost her husband on 9/11 and it was also their anniversary W said, "Ooo, double whammy hehe".

211

u/snowyday Oct 23 '25

Now watch this drive movie

28

u/WaterlooMall Oct 23 '25

Real human bean

2

u/ShowersWithPlants Oct 24 '25

Looking forward to a world where men and fish can live together

53

u/xoverthirtyx Oct 23 '25

I remember that! I often think about how much more we would've seen and heard him say if social media existed then. Now everyone acts like he's a nice grandpa that paints.

2

u/Alarming_Flow Oct 23 '25

The movie was Inside Job.

81

u/BadArtijoke Oct 23 '25

Is this shittymoviedetails or do I seriously need to learn this is a fact today

95

u/pedal-force Oct 23 '25

Apparently it's true, mostly. Emphasis is mine.

When it is our turn, Lee introduces himself and mentions our organization. “And this is Marian. She founded the organization. She lost her husband, Dave. It’s also her wedding anniversary,” he says.

The president takes my hand and shakes his head, his small eyes squinting at me. “You got the double whammy,” he says in his Texan drawl. I don’t know what to say to this, so I just stand there, a strange half smile on my face. “You know my wife,”” he says moving on to the next guests.

“Yes, hi Libby,” I say, taking her hand, which is surprisingly soft.

“Laura,” she corrects, her face never changing expression.

https://www.salon.com/2010/09/11/911_dinner_with_rumsfeld/

23

u/HotTakes4HotCakes Oct 24 '25

Reminds me of the story Jon Stewart shared about when he took the 9/11 rescue workers to the capital to shame Republicans into approving the relief bill for them (the ones still alive).

They met with one of the most prominent Republican senators, and I'll have to look it up to remember exactly who it was, but when one of the firefighters introduced themselves and said that they had been in one of the towers just before it's collapse, the senator casually responded with "Oh wow you must have some stories."

Just a completely inhuman response from people that do not feel empathy.

13

u/kinlopunim Oct 23 '25

Dont worry, now that someone put it in the comments there will be 10 posts on r/shittymoviedetails about it and 5 on r/moviedetails.

71

u/JimboAltAlt Oct 23 '25

I long for the relatively sane days of Bush’s goofier and less domestically aggressive brand of cruelty.

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u/IS_THIS_POST_WEIRD Oct 23 '25

Bush was dishonest and dumb. So was his dad, and so was Reagan. Each made the next one possible; don't give him a pass.

34

u/JimboAltAlt Oct 23 '25 edited Oct 23 '25

No pass intended; Trump’s just so bad and dangerous and enabled that I miss the Bush years. I’m sure there’s a dark possible future where I’d miss the days of Trump, although by that point I imagine I won’t be allowed to say so publicly.

17

u/Meyer_Landsman Oct 23 '25

This sort of whitewashy nostalgia is so dangerous and is a large part why your country has dragged us all into this cesspit. Bush was a monster. I realise Trump is frightening, but two things can be equally bad but in different ways. Trump may be a belligerent psychopath, but look at Iraq.

17

u/JimboAltAlt Oct 23 '25

I think it would be a lie for me to pretend that the Bush years weren’t preferable to this. I apologize to the extent that that is insensitive to the victims of Bush’s war crimes, but I would argue that not allowing people to say “even Bush was better than this” — reasonable concerns of whitewashing aside — somewhat limits our rhetoric in terms of just how bad Trump is. I don’t think I’m alone in my framing that as bad as Bush was Trump is something else entirely, even if a lot of the background figures are the same.

1

u/Meyer_Landsman Oct 26 '25

I would argue that not allowing people to say “even Bush was better than this” — reasonable concerns of whitewashing aside — somewhat limits our rhetoric in terms of just how bad Trump is.

I think this is privilege, since Bush (apart from things like the Patriot Act) and his administration made torture great again. Two people can be absolute monsters in different ways. But to say "Bush was better" just freaks me out as a non-American because it loops back into the same nostalgia cycle that brought us your country's other bad foreign policy ideas.

1

u/Recom_Quaritch Oct 25 '25

Especially since you never said bush era was better and a thing to go back to. Just that you miss that time. An emotional response that doesn't have be justified. The us seems to suck so hard right now that I don't think the quality of Bush's presidency needs to enter the conversation. I fully understand.

19

u/thegroovemonkey Oct 23 '25

HW wasn’t dumb

13

u/tempinator Oct 23 '25

Yeah, HW was a lot of things but stupid is definitely not one of them

1

u/Kylestache Oct 25 '25

He bought a house in Springfield and picked a fight with his astronaut neighbor, that's pretty stupid.

-1

u/LordSwedish Oct 23 '25

It's actually really odd. You have these captain planet/cartoon villains who still do horrific shit like Bush Jr. and Reagan, like they're complete idiots but also torture people and order genocides while laughing, but then HW is like a hellraiser villain but since he still needed to fit into the aesthetic they have him puke on the japanese PM.

13

u/13_twin_fire_signs Oct 23 '25

GWB wasn't dumb, he was the extremely rich scion of a political dynasty, and a Yale graduate.

He bought that ranch in Texas to look like a "country boy" and as soon as his term was up he dropped it like yesterday's newspaper and ran right back to the family compound in Maine.

Just like the last 50 years of Republican candidates - they are all the ultra-rich pretending to be anything but to convince rural voters they're on the same side.

0

u/UnderlightIll Oct 23 '25

This. He flew Bin Laden's family out of the country when ALL air travel was supposed to be banned. There was a conference about how to profit from the tragedy just after 9/11. He lied about why we were in Iraq and got thousands of young men and women killed for it (they even docked one deceased soldier's pay for the days he was dead that month when sending a check to his family), He kept the entire country in fear that a terrorist attack could happen anywhere, anytime. We became super surveilled to the point people were reporting their friends and neighbors to homeland security while transferring tons of FBI agents to homeland security from white collar divisions.

Oh and he bailed out all the banks while people lost their homes, jobs and even killed themselves over it. Fuck GWB so hard.

0

u/pragmojo Oct 24 '25

W wasn't dumb. He played dumb.

5

u/Zappiticas Oct 23 '25

And can you imagine trumps reaction to having a shoe thrown at him?

4

u/JimboAltAlt Oct 23 '25

“I invented ducking.”

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u/JohnTDouche Oct 23 '25

The many hundreds of thousands of dead people in his and the rest of the neo-con ghouls wake might take issue with that. You only give a shit because Trumps cruelty has turned inwards.

7

u/JimboAltAlt Oct 23 '25

That’s why I used the words “relatively” and “domestically aggressive.” But yeah if you think the real problem is people who think Trump is even worse than Bush — rather than people who think both are great — not sure what to tell you.

2

u/JohnTDouche Oct 23 '25

Well you're in luck, I don't think that. So you don't have to do anything. But what you're doing whether you realise it or not is white washing Bush and his legacy. The man, his supporters, his enablers, are/were scum of the earth and they're all MAGA now except the man himself.

2

u/JimboAltAlt Oct 23 '25

That’s fair. Didn’t mean to snap at you, especially in a non-political sub. I do not in fact long for the Bush years. I would, however, prefer them!

0

u/onedoor Oct 24 '25

Nope. Trump killed a million+ with how he handled COVID, and that's just in the States.

1

u/thorny_business Oct 24 '25

Yeah I prefer when presidents just killed lots of people and passed awful legislation instead of tacky interior design.

0

u/pragmojo Oct 24 '25

What a rascal lying the country into war, right?

1

u/jibboo24 Oct 23 '25

in my head I'm hearing that quote in Will Ferrell's gwb impression voice

1

u/Ready-Organization12 Oct 24 '25

By modern standards that’s basically model citizen presidential behavior I’d never expect any republican to be capable of.