President Bush went to the movies Tuesday night, and not just anybody was in the audience with him. Mel Gibson, who plays the real-life Lt. Col. Hal Moore in the new John-Wayne-esque Vietnam war movie, "We Were Soldiers" (which opens to the public Friday), showed the film to the chief executive, as well as to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told Reuters. The screening was held in the movie theater inside the executive mansion, though it was not reported if popcorn and pretzels were served. The film, based on a true incident that occurred in November of 1965, concerns a 34-day battle in the remote Ia Drang Valley in the central highlands of South Vietnam. It marked the first major confrontation between North Vietnamese and American forces, and 2,000 North Vietnamese outnumbered the 400 troops of Lt. Col. Moore. Moore, now a retired lieutenant general, also attended the White House preview, as did Joseph Galloway, the reporter who witnessed the battle and who collaborated with Moore on the book "We Were Soldiers Once and Young," which inspired the movie. Reuters reports that Gibson, 46, referring to Moore and Galloway, told reporters on his way to the screening, "I was certainly allowed to have a very, very personal look at war, at battle, at the human spirit, at courage, and they were generous enough to do it through their eyes."