The drama surrounding Oliver Stone’s latest film project in Shreveport is starting to resemble, well, an Oliver Stone movie. Having set up shop in North Louisiana for the past three months to film Stone's new biopic of President Bush, actors Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, along with five film crew members, were arrested last weekend after a brawl broke out at the StrayCat bar. A dozen police officers descended on the scene to book the Hollywood visitors on charges of public intoxication, resisting arrest and entering and remaining. Now, new details are surfacing that Shreveport police used tasers and pepper spray in apprehending the crew, as well as allegedly firing off a racial slur at African American actor Wright.
Shreveport station KTBS reports that a taser was used on Wright and that both he and Brolin were pepper sprayed. An anonymous witness tells the station that a cell phone video – now in the hands of the actors’ California attorney – captured part of the incident. A trial is tentatively set for December. Police Chief Henry Whitehorn isn’t talking, other than to say he is reviewing the new allegations regarding his officers’ conduct. International press, including The Gaurdian, is picking up on the story, as well as multiple celebrity news sites. Hollywood gossip webzine TMZ.com cites its own inside sources to report that actor Brolin “was observed by witnesses attempting to make peace and standing still as he was repeatedly sprayed in the eyes by cops."