President Lyndon Baines Johnson (America’s 36th Commander-in-Chief, fact fans!) has had a run of portrayals on film in recent years, popping up in the likes of Selma, Get On Up, Parkland and The Butler, but usually as a character in someone else’s story. Now he’s getting a new spotlight in LBJ thanks to director Rob Reiner and star Woody Harrelson{
Originally developed by producers Tim and Trevor White and with a script from Joey Hartstone, this represents a subject that Reiner has been trying to bring to cinemas for years, ever since announcing back in 1997 that he was going to adapt a biography of the man.
The current version is not directly taken from any one book, but follows LBJ’s rise from the South to the White House, and the political turmoil he faced when the assassination of John F. Kennedy suddenly catapulted then Vice President Johnson in to the Oval Office’s big chair. Facing battles on either side of the spectrum, he attempted to heal the nation and secure his legacy by finally passing his predecessor’s Civil Rights Act.
“During the '60s, I was a hippy, and Lyndon Johnson was my president,” says Reiner. “At the time LBJ was the target of most of my generation’s anti-Vietnam War anger. But as time has passed and my understanding of political realities has grown, I’ve come to see LBJ in a very different light. He was a complex man, a combination of brilliant political instinct, raw strength, ambition and deep insecurities.
"The strength and power of persuasion that he showed to his colleagues existed alongside of a soft, almost childlike quality that perhaps only (First Lady) Lady Bird got to see. His life's path was nothing short of Shakespearean. From the poor hill country of West Texas to the corridors of power in Washington, he used his brilliant political acumen to pass the most groundbreaking civil rights legislation of the 20th century. And had it not been for the Vietnam War, I believe he would have gone down as one of America’s greatest Presidents.”
The cameras should be rolling in September in New Orleans, though the project will face some competition from HBO’s TV Movie All The Way, which finds Bryan Cranston bringing his Tony-winning take on LBJ to the screen.