On stage, this LBJ bio-play, covering the Civil Rights Act and his reelection bid in the year that followed the Kennedy assassination, must have made for a lusty pageant. Four-score once famous political names of the ‘60s, played by one score of actors. (Only Johnson, Sen. Richard Russell & Martin Luther King Jr not ‘doubling.’) Everyone barrels thru yards of political exposition & half remembered history at a safe distance, theatrical comfort food, as predigested as macaroni & (processed) cheese, and nearly as tasty. The HBO film version, snappily put together by play author Robert Schenkkan (Jay Roach megging), sorely misses its proscenium stylization, the weight of live presentation, with little to take its place since Schenkkan’s idea of depth rarely gets past twice-told family stories. And you can only marvel at physically apt casting & clever facial prosthetics for so long after a first entrance. (Bryan Cranston’s LBJ transformation got the lion’s share of approbation, but should share First Prize with Melissa Leo’s spot-on Lady Bird.) As potted history, it’s Junior High School stuff (in a good way, if too raw/scatological to screen without a parent’s note), at its best in showing just how many factions LBJ had to piss off, how ruthless he needed to be, how friendless he became, to get it all done. No small thing that; as play or man.
DOUBLE-BILL: A gay blackmail angle recalls a similar subplot in Otto Preminger’s superb Washington D.C. drama ADVISE & CONSENT/’62.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Rob Reiner & Woody Harrelson currently have the ill luck to be waiting out release of nearly the same story on the big screen in LBJ. Scheduled to hit theaters in November; also scheduled to leave in November.
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