"Path to War" showing on HBO now. LBJ and Vietnam

[madfloridian]

http://www.hbo.com/films/pathtowar/

I just tuned in to hear LBJ character saying "I'll be called president what's his name, sandwiched in between the two" (guess he meant Kennedys.)

This is from 2002, but I don't remember it at all.

[madfloridian]

1. Donald Sutherland, Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon

http://www.hbo.com/films/pathtowar/cast_crew.shtml
HBO Films Presents
an Avenue Pictures/Edgar J. Scherick Associates, Inc. Production
A John Frankenheimer Film
PATH TO WAR
Michael Gambon Donald Sutherland Bruce McGill James Frain
Felicity Huffman and Alec Baldwin
Music Supervisor Evyen Klean
Music by Gary Chang
Editor Richard Francis-Bruce, A.C.E.
Production Designer Waldemar Kalinowski
Director of Photography Stephen Goldblatt A.S.C., B.S.C.
Producer Guy Riedel
Executive Producers Cary Brokaw Edgar J. Scherick Howard Dratch John Frankenheimer
Written by Daniel Giat
Directed by John Frankenheimer

[Momof1]

2. Thanks HBO Signature channel n/t

[madfloridian]

3. Watch this movie. "made a desert and called it peace."

Alec Baldwin as McNamara quotes Tacitus:
"They have made a desert and called it peace."

Long time since I heard that.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Tacitus? My God, somebody besides me has read Tacitus.

I hope you enjoyed him as much as I have.

[madfloridian]

7. Briefly in college, but I am interested again.

I remember a little from my years at Stetson, but now I am interested again. I think I will look up some on him. It falls under the category of things I learned and appreciated and then forgot. There are a hell of a lot of those topics now.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Read him again. He's great fun besides being a great historian.

Full of "inside" info and gossip. And, he's not in the least "objective" which takes the life out of histories. Another, very interesting one, but much more difficult, is Josephus. He gives a very vibrant picture of the time of Christ - though the parts about the Christians were almost certainly written by later Christian editors.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. "Let's nail that coonskin to the wall." - LBJ

He also talked about "yellow dwarves with switchblades".

Overall, a sad story about how a president was led by public opinion, anti-communism, the military, and the same kind of empire builders we have now.

[DerekG]

6. Johnson is one of the tragic characters of history

The rise and fall of Lyndon Johnson should be studied by every aspiring populist politician--liberals are not exempt from the last century of mass murder.

A shame. He was the last of our visionary presidents.