I had MSNBC on for a while in the background while I was working yesterday, and they were giving what seemed like an inordinate amount of attention to the trailer, released over the weekend, for Oliver Stone’s W. Most of the talking heads were just mocking the trailer and Stone, but gossip reporter Courtney Hazlett had an interesting observation. Noting that Stone is pushing his crew through a (probably ill-advised) grueling seven month production and post-production schedule, Hazlett predicted that crowds might come out just to see a finished product produced under such duress. With a gleam in her eye, she said, “It could be a hot mess!”

Leaving the wildly off-base assumption that moviegoers actually care about the conditions under which a film is produced aside, it’s interesting to see W’s rush to release as a selling point, especialy since so many bloggers are, in the wake of the trailer release, saying the exact opposite.

At Salon, Alex Koppelman predicts that with Stone’s history of historical revision, the film is sure to become a hot punching bag on conservative talk radio in the weeks surrounding the release. So close to the election, he says, “it could prove unhelpful to Barack Obama and Democrats. I would be more excited to see the film on Nov. 17, with the election in the rearview mirror and the era of Bush retrospection unofficially and unapologetically under way.”

It’s a fair point, one Ryan Adams at Awards Daily takes up as well. “In the final days before the election we should be focused on the future, not poking ditto-heads to make them spew up the news cycle.”

Of course, since said conservative partisans have already begun their cries of “No fair!”, there is the possibility that they’ll exhaust themselves before the movie even comes out, no matter when that might be.

No, probably not.