EXCLUSIVE: Selma Glosses Over LBJ's Sexual Prowess

Controversy is afoot in Oscar race, and the target is Ava DuVernay's much-acclaimed account of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s  quest for voting equality, Selma.  The film has won praise since it premiered last month at the Los Angeles-based AFI Fest, where DuVernay surprised attendees with a screening of them film.  Originally, only a brief look at the film followed by a Q&A was scheduled.

Historical films and biopics are often major players in the awards race, which starts in December each year and never ends, really, because people can't shut up about it ever.  Movies based on fact offer staid swells of empty inspiration, easily digestible themes, and gross simplifications of impossibly complex people and events.  More importantly, they provide actors the chance to put on silly wigs and bad accents while pretending to be other people, rather than going to the bother of creating new characters.  Parrots gotta eat.

Could've been an amazing threesome.

But as these films hurtle toward Oscar glory amid the snores of sneaky teenagers trying to score a double feature off of the single ticket they bought for Night at the Museum 3 (they're seeing it ironically), fact-checkers rightfully crawl out of the woodwork and declaim them for all of the tiny inaccuracies.  (Mary Todd Lincoln's dress was a slightly lighter shade of green; if that hack Spielberg knew anything, he would've gotten that right and Lincoln would've won Best Picture.)  This is noble work, and important work, because movies are not works of fiction to be enjoyed and chewed on and thought about as art and/or entertainment.  No, movies are historical texts that must be completely accurate, because textbooks are boring and no one wants to read them, and Wikipedia can be edited by anybody, so movies are the only place any of us are learning anything anymore.  So get it right, Hollywood!

So, it was only a matter of time until someone called Selma out on its bullshit, and sure enough, this week, one of President Lyndon B. Johnson's old friends or something announced that the portrayal of the late leader of the free world was not quite right.  Despite his checkered voting record before taking the presidency, by the time he got into office, he was a good guy, and wanted to help, and Selma doesn't show that.  It bends facts to make for a more engaging film experience that still pretty accurately represents Johnson's journey from bigot to good guy, just in microcosm.  DuVernay should be jailed.

I'm glad that Selma is being taken to task for misleading the public and kinda smearing the legacy (?) of a president most of us never really think about.  Because movies must be true!  That's our collective mantra going forward as healthy, thinking movie-goers.  Get used to it.  Tattoo it somewhere visible.

But there's an even more glaring aspect of Lyndon B. Johnson's character that Selma doesn't even minimize or hint at, which is riling up the avid historian inside me.  (To be fair, some idiot keeps deleting the edits I make to LBJ's Wikipedia page, so I guess that's why screenwriter Paul Webb didn't know to include it, maybe.  Hopefully a future Director's Cut will fix this error and this post will become obsolete, and I'll be given story credit or something.  WGA, here I come!)  Lyndon B. Johnson was - more than anything else - known for what a tiger he was in the sack.

The sexual tension is REAL.

While Johnson eventually came around and helped make historic changes in the Civil Rights Act, his generosity, power, and focus were most prominently displayed in his sexual conquests.  He fucked with abandon, never caring what race or ethnicity his partner was, though he occasionally ventured into vaguely racist banter, such as when he asked a Hispanic maid for "el BJ" while she was dusting the Oval Office.  (She, of course, obliged, because who wouldn't want to slob on that knob?  But we didn't see that scene in Selma.)  Johnson was a pioneer, the first man to make a Fuck-It List, featuring over 200 to-dos, all of which he crossed off while in office, sometimes while on the phone with MLK (also not in Selma).

Why DuVernay would choose to tackle this story and not go into gross, intimate detail of LBJ's love life is beyond this film connoisseur.  She seems an able filmmaker, and has assembled such a stunning cast and crew for this film, including the sex-oozing Tom Wilkinson to play President Loves Ball Jiggling (an affectionate nickname given to him by Annie Scott Cooper, played by Oprah Winfrey in DuVernay's hole-filled mess (not the right kind of holes)).  Any film that draws inspiration from actual events and then translates to the screen needs to adhere strictly to what actually happened.  Such a glaring oversight as this casts into doubt every moment of Selma.  Some of the lines might be completely made up!  It's fiction!  Fiction, I say!

Selma's oversight of LBJ's history of sexual mastery is perhaps most tragic because those scenes would've been sexy as hell with Bradford Young as DP.  Especially the scenes featuring Lady Bird Johnson's DP.  I've been reaching out to Young to lens my fantasy porn epic but haven't heard back.  Maybe he's too distracted by guilt at not encouraging DuVernay to do the right thing and tell history the way it actually happened.