Sad news. The New York Times has reported that noted screenwriter and playwright Horton Foote has died. He was 92 years old:
In screenplays for such movies as “Tender Mercies,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Trip to Bountiful,” and in plays like “The Young Man From Atlanta” and his nine-play cycle “Orphans’ Home,” Mr. Foote depicted the way ordinary people shoulder the ordinary burdens of life, finding drama in the resilience by which they carry on in the face of change, economic hardship, disappointment, loss and death. His work earned him a Pulitzer Prize and two Academy Awards.
Tender Mercies. The Trip to Bountiful. And especially To Kill a Mockingbird. What beautiful movies. What great stories. Here is a quote from Foote from a 1986 interview:
“I believe very deeply in the human spirit and I have a sense of awe about it because I don’t know how people carry on. What makes the difference in people? What is it? I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don’t ask quarters.”
To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite movie of all time. Perhaps it was because my family moved to the South (Montgomery, Alabama) when I not much older than Scout (from the movie). Experiencing segregation in such a visceral way for the first time, when I saw Mockingbird, I became immersed in that movie world through Scout’s character. The film has so many unforgettable moments: Atticus Finch shooting the rabid dog; his closing argument at the trial for Tom Robinson; Atticus standing down the vigilante’s outside the city jail. Then counterposed against that story, the fleeting relationship of Scout and Boo Radley, and how Boo saves Scout from an almost certain assault. God, what a movie. And the book by author Harper Lee was adapted by Horton Foote. If he never wrote another word, that would have been enough for most writers. But fortunately for us, Foote wrote many other words.
I’ll be adding obituaries and essays in the next few days, but if you have any memories of any of Foote’s movies, please feel free to post them here.
Here is Atticus Finch, an incredibly powerful performance by Gregory Peck, with his summation at the trial of Tom Robinson.
Godspeed, Horton Foote.
UPDATE: Some remembrances in print today.
My previous acting teacher
http://www.aldersonstudio.com/
was close friends with Horton
and directed/acted in many of
his plays in NY.
He always had good things to say
about him.
If your in LA drop by his studio
I’m sure he’ll tell you a few stories.