Change Your Image
edmundws
Reviews
The Lady Bird Diaries (2023)
Manipulated recordings to give a false impression
I was intrigued and impressed by the movie's coverage of a conversion between Lady Bird and LBJ regarding Walter Jenkins -- particularly her strong defense of the aide and push back against LBJ. But after listening to the actual full conversation elsewhere, I was shocked to discover the documentary producers sliced, diced and blatantly manipulated the conversation. It's one thing to edit for length and clarity, but they rearranged comments, put them out of order and altered their meaning. It's inexcusable for a doc to play with historic recordings like that, and made me question what else they twisted in a documentary I otherwise would have loved. If you want to take that kind of liberty with historic tape recordings or transcripts -- even in the name of celebrating your subject or trying to capture her spirit -- hire actors and make it a biographical "inspired-by-actual-events" movie.