Episode 29: All The Way, with Bryan Cranston as President Lyndon Johnson

Presidential biopic month continues with the 2016 television movie All the Way, about the blockbuster year of 1964 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s first (and only) year of presidential campaigning and his efforts to try to do nice things for all Americans by spearheading the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Act.

We know how Americans love it when leaders try to do things to make America a better place for everyone, so everything goes great for Lyndon, Martin Luther King and SNCC as they work to destroy institutional inequality. Americans grew emotionally and intellectually over the one-hundred years since the Civil War, so it’s not like anyone would want to vote against decency and their own self-interest.

Aside from that, we discuss LBJ’s propensity for being a pathological liar, the positives and negatives of prosthetic ears, when we first saw Eyes on the Prize, and if Anthony Mackie is too hot to play anyone except Anthony Mackie.

All the Way stars Bryan Cranston as President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Anthony Mackie as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Melissa Leo as First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, Frank Langella as Senator Richard Russell, Stephen Root as J. Edgar Hoover, Ray Wise as Senator Everett Dirkson, Bradley Whitford as Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Todd Weeks as Walter Jenkins, Bo Foxworth Robert McNamara, Aisha Hines as Fannie Lou Hamer, and Joe Morton as Roy Wilkins. 

Sources used in the episode include…

Volumes 1, 2, and 4 of Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson bio.

 

Spoiler Warning: We spoil everything. And we enjoy it.

 

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