Photo credit: Janet Donovan & Daniel Swartz
New release date of Woody Harrelson’s ‘LBJ’ Biopic scheduled for November 3rd. We sat down with Harrelson in November of 2016. Here is that interview and coverage of the event:
LBJ was ‘in the house’ at the Washington, DC private screening of Rob Reiner’s “LBJ” at The National Archives – a venue steeped in history and most befitting a former President. Actor Woody Harrelson, who plays the 36th President of The United States, seemed elated to be in the midst of countless real former Presidential assistants as he mixed and mingled with Lynda Bird Johnson and her family as well as many of LBJ’s former staff and colleagues including his Chief of Protocol Ambassador Lloyd Hand. “I thought it was fantastic,” Hand told us. “I saw the play in New York and I saw the HBO movie. I take nothing away from Bryan Cranston – a great director – but this captured more of LBJ than any portrayal I’ve seen.”
Ambassador Lloyd Hand, Ann Hand, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, Governor Chuck Robb
Photo by Janet Donovan
“I just told Woody that I was honored and privileged to work for LBJ when he was majority leader, Vice President and President. It must have been a very, very challenging role for him; but he portrayed more of him, more of his personality. It’s all true: LBJ was very tough and all of that, but he also had a soft side and they brought that out,” added Hand. “You could see how concerned President Johnson was about not being liked and all of that. I saw moments like that, but he had it in him – the power and the ability – to acquire and use the power he got. The other key thing about the President was his timing. He knew when the time was right to push something and he took it. Robert Caro said that in one of his books (Means of Ascent). It was Johnson who pulled open the curtains of the voting booth. Johnson changed the course of history. Whether you like him, or you don’t like him, he did. Johnson passed many pieces of legislation and all of them were very important: The Civil Rights Act, The Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, The Housing Act, Conservation, The National Endowment of the Arts and more. Those are the more popular ones, but he did more things than people ever realize.”
Gov. Chuck Robb and Amb. Lloyd Hand Photo by Janet Donovan
Johnson’s legacy is best known as the Great Society: “legislation upholding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his ‘War on Poverty.’ Assisted in part by a growing economy, the War on Poverty helped millions of Americans rise above the poverty line during Johnson’s presidency. Civil rights bills signed by Johnson banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace, and housing; and the Voting Rights Act banned certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the country’s immigration system was reformed and all racial origin quotas were removed (replaced by national origin quotas).” Wikipedia
Photo by Janet Donovan
“I lived through those years,” director Rob Reiner told Hollywood on the Potomac. Reiner was wired….really wired about the election. He worried about the reversal of everything President Johnson stood for. “It is a long way back, but what I think so frightening for most people is that we have been unaware of how much racism was under the surface that Donald Trump gave voice to and made legitimate. That’s a very scary, scary thing. We just have to keep vigilant and keep going. Everybody’s stunned. There’s only been two times in the history of America where upon the election of the President, the people en masse took to the streets. One was Abraham Lincoln, and the other was Donald Trump, and for obviously 180-degree different reasons, but both based on race.”
Photo credit: Daniel Swartz
“Now, the way I look at it,” he added, “if you try to take a big overview and holistic approach, we’re fighting the last big, major battle of the Civil War. The Civil War has been going on in this country for a long time after it finished in 1865, and when Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, he said, ‘We’re going to lose the South. The Democrats will lose the South for a generation.’ It turned out it was more. It was two generations. That has happened when you look at the country, the red States and the blue States. That is the political upshot of the Civil War that’s still going on, and we thought we had come beyond that by electing an African-American President, but what happened was it infuriated people. People were furious that a black man could be the leader of America, and they stated point blank when they took office, ‘We will do everything to stop Barack Obama’ to the point where they went against their own legislation, things that they proposed like the infrastructure bill. He proposed it and went forward with it, and they said no. All you can deduce from that is racism. If you’re not moving your own agenda forward and there’s no reason for it except for the fact that you have a black President, that’s it. I know people don’t like to hear that, but that is the truth. People have to face that.”
Ben Barnes, Chris Dodd and Governor Robb Photo credit: Daniel Swartz
Governor Robb was more optimistic. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he told Hollywood on the Potomac, suggesting that otherwise it would be too depressing. “If you go to the [LBJ] library and look at all of those things he accomplished lined up in a row – row on row – you have to think all of this was in one Presidency. We continue to live parts of his legacy.” Having been around when Tip O’Neill was Speaker of the House, a conciliatory presence, we asked him how hard it is to legislate between the two parties and what the new administration faced. “It’s extremely complicated. In all honesty, being a legislator was never my ultimate desire in life. I loved being Governor. As a Governor you’re in charge, you’re responsible, you can initiate, you can carry through. If things don’t work you’re definitely going to have to answer for it. You’re going to have to answer what’s in the morning papers. As a legislator, particularly in the Senate, you’re like bow thruster on an ocean liner. In [Congress], with everyone else, you’re doing something important but you’re not really leading. I say that as someone with great respect for all of the people I served with in the legislative body. That’s the reason I’m in awe of the legislative bodies because the job is so much tougher. There’s a difference between being in control, calling the shots, being responsible, knowing you’re responsible, than being in a body where frankly, every good legislative intention we’re talking about is: Well, that’s the way it was yesterday, not tomorrow.”
Photo by Janet Donovan
Reiner also referred to Robert Caro’s Means of Ascent. “My company Castle Rock had auctioned that book, and we tried to make a film out of it. We never quite got a screen play that we were happy with. I read a number of Caro’s books, and they were great,” he told us. “They give you a real breadth of everything that went on in Lyndon Johnson’s life. But what I discovered was that the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin was more instructive in a way for me because having worked for him and then having spent time with him on a ranch and writing the biography, there were a couple of things that gave you an insight into the kind of man he was outside of what we see and know about him legislatively, politically, and all of his accomplishments. He was a very complicated man. He was very powerful, but he was also tremendously insecure at times. There were a number of things that I was able to take out of that book that gave me, like I say, an insight that I think we include in the film which is to give him a more three-dimensional look so that he was not just this strong-willed, arm-twisting legislator. I went to the African-American History Museum. It’s almost impossible to get your mind around the idea that we had the first African-American President. Lyndon Johnson worked with Martin Luther King to be able to move the ball forward, to ultimately lead to an African-American President. Then, in the blink of an eye [that has changed]. It’s a very strange, surreal thing that’s happened but as we know, sometimes you go a couple of steps forward and sometimes you take a step back in order to go forward again.”
Woody Harrelson with the Robbs Photo by Janet Donovan
Harrelson was grinning the whole night. The usually press shy actor could not have been happier about both his performance and to be in the midst of the Johnson family. He was relieved when Reiner asked Lynda Robb if the movie was OK. “Yes,” she said, “It was OK.” Robb also announced the birth of another grandchild who was born in the middle of the night and that she was suffering from a bit of sleep deprivation. “Family is important to the Johnsons. As you’ll see in this movie, he relished our friends, and we have quite a few people in this auditorium who worked with Lyndon Johnson. His feeling was if you ever worked for him or with him, you worked for him till the end of your life, not just till the end of his. So many people here are people who are carrying on the Lyndon Johnson programs that he loved and worked so hard for. We’re just delighted that some of y’all are still alive. I brought my husband too. He had a little time in government, although not in Texas. Anyway, thank you so much. We looked forward to tonight, and I’m going to go right home and call and tell Jennifer all about the movie.”
Lynda Robb Photo credits: Daniel Swartz
Slider photo credits: Daniel Swartz
