"How did George W Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?” Oliver Stone’s answer pulls no punches, targeting “Jesus” and “a daddy complex”. He provides a detailed examination in his latest film, W, a satire on Bush’s life that will have created an inferno at the Oval Office when it was released in October, just weeks before the US elections on November 4. A White House spokesperson has said that Bush has “no plans” to see the film, and that “Stone is an accurate historian like Gilligan is an accurate navigator” — a bad one, if you haven’t seen the 1960s TV show Gilligan’s Island.

Stone is not amused. “I think it’s a shame,” he starts. “I think Bush might actually enjoy the film. Josh Brolin [who plays George W] has injected a John-Wayne-likability into the role, and made him look better than he probably is. We’re going to get acid tongues from that whole group. But you know what? It sure feels like George Bush to me.”

Initial expectations are that W will be a hatchet job — Stone has never made any secret of the fact he can’t stand Bush. Although they were born within three months of each other, in 1946, both went to posh schools outside New York and were in the same year at Yale (“We never knew each other”), their lives have taken radically different paths: Stone dropped out of Yale, volunteered to fight in Vietnam, then became notoriously anti-Establishment; while Bush famously dodged combat duty and became the 43rd US president. Stone is also a Buddhist anti-war liberal, while Bush is a militaristic evangelical Christian Republican.

So is W a hatchet job? “It walks in the path of the man,” says Stone. “You follow the drama, and put aside your political leanings for a time.” (Stone leans towards Barack Obama, who he calls “the right choice for America”.) Did he sympathise with Bush while making W?

“I empathised,” he says carefully. “We researched everything and did nothing out of the spirit of the truth. We didn’t set out to do a malice job on the guy; frankly, he’s buried himself by what he’s said. I believe it will be a fair portrait of the man.”

If anyone can make a film about George W Bush that people want to see, it’s Oliver Stone. The posters in his reception area remind you of that: Natural Born Killers, Scarface, Wall Street, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, Nixon, JFK, World Trade Center. As a director he is always prodding, poking, pushing boundaries. “Perhaps my life is based on that,” he nods. “My dad always wore a suit and tie. He’d say a man shouldn’t stand out. He’d always be counselling me. ‘Don’t ever speak the truth, it will only get you into trouble.’ I had to be very careful what I said to him. And then I realised it’s the line you cross. I crossed it with JFK and I couldn’t go back.”

Stone hasn’t worn a suit and tie since he was at boarding school in Connecticut. They make him cringe and think of the Establishment. And he can’t stand the Establishment. It’s why he made Wall Street, a tirade against avarice and greed — though he didn’t expect the villain, Gordon Gekko, to become so popular. If he’s not careful, the same thing might happen to George W Bush.

The early reviews for W have been mixed, see-sawing between “disappointing” and “a bold and hilarious romp”. It’s certainly not a dry, serious biopic; it’s a satire verging on Texan melodrama. It cuts backwards and forwards in time — between Bush’s drunken skirt-chasing years, his religious transformation and rise to power, and his time in the White House. We see him struggling to cope with his father’s lofty expectations. For good reason, the working title was Misunderstood.

Incredibly, Brolin makes Bush seem almost likable. But a presidency marked by war and the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression is a serious subject. Why satirise it? “Because he’s funny. Bush is not a complex or dark man. He’s awkward, goofy, not the brightest guy on the block. So let’s have some fun with it. What are they going to do? Discredit me again?” They will certainly try. The film is chock-full of inflammatory scenes: after being accepted to Harvard, Bush downs a pint of bourbon, drives onto the lawn of his parents’ home and challenges his father to a fight. “My advice to you: go to an AA meeting,” says George Sr. “Thank you, Mr Perfect,” screams Bush. “Mr War Hero. Mr F***ing God Almighty.” Later, when a female reporter asks an adviser what makes Saddam different from other dictators, Bush loses it: “Did you tell her I don’t like motherf***ers who gas their own people? Did you tell her I don’t like arseholes who try to kill my father? Did you tell her I’m going to kick his motherf***ing arse all over the Mideast?”

Bush’s religious conversion is treated more sensitively. “He hadn’t achieved anything until he was 40. For a man like that to become president is extraordinary. You have to take born-again seriously in America. There’s a lot of second-chance stuff. But it’s always through Jesus, not God, because Jesus died and suffered.”

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William Oliver Stone grew up in New York, the only child of an American-Jewish stockbroker father and French Roman Catholic mother who met in Paris during the second world war. “My childhood ended at 14 when my parents separated and I went to boarding school,” says Stone, so matter-of-factly that you know he’s hiding a lot of pain. “My family life effectively ended. All three of us split up. My mother disappeared into a lifestyle I couldn’t recognise: drugs, the gay scene. I was lonely. She wasn’t there for me… I’ve had many demons, to be honest. I had psychiatry years later to stop feeling sorry for myself.”

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