HBO’s ‘All the Way’ portrays LBJ in all his complex glory

Nearly 50 years after he left the White House, Lyndon B. Johnson continues to be a source of fascination, admiration and scorn. The Texas Democrat, who championed a liberal domestic agenda while escalating the war in Vietnam, left a seemingly contradictory legacy that has inspired dozens of major biographies, documentaries and pop-culture portrayals.

“If you could separate Vietnam from his political record, he’d be on Mt. Rushmore,” said Robert Schenkkan, writer of “All the Way.”

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For the record

11:01 a.m., May 13: In an earlier version of this post, “All the Way” writer Robert Schenkkan was identified as Bill Schenkkan.

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Premiering Saturday on HBO, the film stars Bryan Cranston as the notoriously hard-charging “Master of the Senate” turned commander in chief and is adapted from Schenkkan’s Tony-winning play of the same name. “Bill Moyers famously said, ‘The 11 most interesting people I ever met was Lyndon Johnson.’” Schenkkan observed. “I think a lot of people felt that way.”

Cranston was 7 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, propelling then-Vice President Johnson into the White House under the most tragic circumstances imaginable.

“Johnson was really the first president that I paid attention to,” said the actor recently via telephone, recalling his parents’ “anxiety and despair” in the months following Kennedy’s death. “As children we are self-centered. That was the first time I realized that there was something outside of me that was important.”

Directed by Jay Roach, “All the Way” begins in the traumatic wake of Kennedy’s assassination and covers the turbulent first year of Johnson’s administration, culminating in his resounding victory over Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign. The film suggests that Johnson was animated by a desire not to be seen as an “accidental president” who inherited the office thanks to tragedy.

To that end, he focuses on passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which pits Johnson and his Senate ally Hubert Humphrey (Bradley Whitford) against segregationist Dixiecrats, such as Sen. Richard Russell Jr. (Frank Langella) of Georgia, as well as movement leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. (Anthony Mackie), who were disappointed in the bill’s lack of protection for voting rights.

Despite the ever-present threat of violence — realized in the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi — the bill was signed into law, but the triumph came at a price: the splintering of the civil-rights movement and the Democratic party’s loss of the South for the foreseeable future.

In an election year marked by racist rhetoric and debates about ideological purity within both parties, “All the Way” is a reminder that political progress rarely comes without messy compromise or sharp-elbowed maneuvering. And as distant as the Jim Crow era might seem, its depiction of filibustering politicians arguing that the Bible “does not say that we cannot build a wall betwixt ourselves and our neighbor” will sound familiar to the modern-day viewer.

“It feels really contemporary,” Schenkkan observed. “The cycle of politics that we entered into in 1964, we are possibly, hopefully, just now emerging from.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter (“The Quiet American”) grew up in Texas, where it was “hard to escape the presence of LBJ.” He spent close to five years researching and writing the play and its follow-up, “The Great Society,” which follows Johnson’s later years in office. Originally commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, “All the Way” premiered on Broadway in 2014 with Cranston in the lead role. Fresh off the triumph of “Breaking Bad,” Cranston was honored with a Tony Award for the performance.

Executive producer Steven Spielberg, who had already collaborated with Schenkkan on the HBO World War II miniseries “The Pacific” and explored similar themes in his 2012 film “Lincoln,” quickly scooped up the rights through his Amblin Television banner.

Spielberg suggested Roach, who’d ascended to the A-list with such broad comedies as “Austin Powers” and “Meet the Parents” but carved out a secondary niche with fact-based political dramas on HBO like “Game Change” and “Recount.” In a bonus twist, Roach was already working with Cranston on “Trumbo,” last year’s biopic about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.

The director, who studied economics at Stanford and contemplated law school before trying his hand at filmmaking, said he was inspired by a story about a politician who not only believed in the transformative power of government but, critically, had the legislative skills to effect real change.

“It’s become such a go-to political attitude these days that government is not going to help us,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s been a more capable president in terms of working the Legislature and actually getting helpful legislation passed.”

That’s not to say that “All the Way” glosses over Johnson’s rougher edges or his willingness to employ brutal tactics in the name of the greater good. In Cranston’s rendering, the president is as crude and calculating as he is compassionate. Though he speaks earnestly of the Mexican children he taught in impoverished, small-town Texas, he is also ruthless enough to call an emergency press conference so as not to be upstaged by the televised testimony of civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who was trying to integrate Mississippi’s delegation at the Democratic Convention.

The issues raised by “All the Way” remind Whitford of the long-running White House TV drama “The West Wing,” where he had a featured role. “The question on that show was always how dirty do your feet have to get without disappearing in the mud?”

The film “goes to very interesting contemporary political arguments,” he added. “Simply standing on principle is easy. Moving the progressive ball down the field, down by down, is hard. And you’re gonna get a dirty uniform.”

“All the Way” also foreshadows the quagmire of Vietnam. Johnson is told about the Gulf of Tonkin incident just after learning that the bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had been discovered in Mississippi — events that in fact happened within days of each other.

“Sometimes history throws you a softball,” said Schenkkan, who saw in the timing an “extraordinary metaphor of one crime being committed, while another crime is being excavated.”

A highly collaborative director, a trait he attributes to his background in comedy, Roach worked closely with Schenkkan to make the tale more cinematic. Story lines involving First Lady Lady Bird Johnson (Melissa Leo) and longtime aide Walter Jenkins (Todd Weeks) were beefed up, while Cranston, accustomed to playing to the 1,400-seat Neil Simon Theater, modulated his performance for the confines of the small screen.

Cranston may have taken it down a notch, but he wasn’t always willing to turn it off. He often stayed in character as the crass, colorful Johnson between takes — not out of some Daniel Day-Lewis-esque commitment to craft, but mostly because it was fun.

“He’d call women ‘gals,’ ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey.’ ‘Oh sweetie, look at you. Come over here and let me take a look at that dress. Boy oh boy, that’s very flattering and it shows off your curves and I like it a lot,” Cranston said, sliding into Johnson’s raspy Texas drawl. “I certainly didn’t do that with Walter White.”

The film also delves into the sometimes contentious relationship between Johnson and King. Facing internal pressure from the likes of Stokely Carmichael, the civil-rights hero was “in a position where the entire movement was about to fall apart,” said Mackie.

The actor, who says he previously turned down multiple offers to play King, was drawn to “All the Way’s” portrait of a less saintly, more assertive figure, someone who could go toe-to-toe with the famously combative Johnson. “It was the first time that I saw King written as I perceived him. He wasn’t passive, in no way, shape or form. He was the aggressor. He wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer.”

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‘All the Way’
Where: HBO
When: 8 p.m. Saturday