As soon as the movie opened, it provoked an intense controversy about its portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson. Although most of the movie centers on civil rights activists who organized the marches for voting rights in March 1965, some critics have argued that the depiction of LBJ, played by Tom Wilkinson, was misleading on two fronts. The critics argue that the movie depicts the President as indifferent or even hostile to voting rights until King really forces his hand. The movie, in their minds, understates how much he wanted the voting legislation to pass from the very time of his reelection in November 1964.
Former presidential adviser Joe Califano (who went so far as to credit on LBJ for giving King the idea of Selma), LBJ Library Director Mark Updegrove and others also claim that the movie depicts LBJ as responsible for the FBI wiretaps into the private life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., culminating with Coretta King receiving tapes of the leader sleeping with another woman, when in fact that happened under President John Kennedy, his brother Robert who was the attorney general, and J. Edgar Hoover. (Full disclosure: I am one of the people who has raised concerns about some of these issues).
For some people, however, this criticism quickly rolled over into questions about whether the movie deserved to be nominated for the Oscars and if the movie as a whole was any good. One columnist, who admitted being moved to tears upon watching it, wrote that if “Selma” wins the academy award, “truth loses.”
Those on the other side of the debate have raised many objections as well — to the critics rather than the movie. They have insisted that the movie really was about the impact of grass-roots activists, not about Lyndon Johnson. They have been particularly frustrated with Califano’s suggestion that the idea for Selma came from LBJ.
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