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Atticus? You've Heard About Tom Robinson?

More Favorite Moments from Foote/Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird," Act I:

-"Boo Radley? His parents keep him chained to his bed, and he only comes out at night. By his tracks, you'd say he's six-and-a-half feet tall. He eats squirrels, and there's a big scar on his face. His eyes are popped, he drools all the time, and his teeth are rotten and yellow." (I know Lee says that this novel is the opposite of Southern Gothic; you're not going to find a deranged Bette Davis shooting her gun at strangers here. But I do like the Gothic elements of Jem's imagination. I would read a novel Jem wrote on his understanding of Boo Radley, if Jem were real and such a novel existed. I'm also immediately transported to my childhood when Jem speaks--to a house that was said to be haunted, and an old bachelor neighbor who handed out candy and seemed, at least according to many, to be "touched in the head." Act I is partly about a child's capacity to create wonder--to invent momentous occasions in a town where there is "nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to but it with. The days were 24 hours but seemed longer. Somehow, it was hotter then; men's collars wilted by noon; women showered at 9 and again at 3, and by nightfall were like frosted teacakes, coated in sweat and talcum powder." That teacake line was my childhood introduction to figurative language, I think. You sense Scout--a budding novelist--taking on a fascination in language. What does it mean when FDR says she has "nothing to fear but fear itself"--? The adult Scout mythologizes her hometown--were the days really hotter then? Adult Scout uses a child's eyes to make Maycomb--poor, dusty Maycomb--magical. The men's collars almost seem to come to life; their wilting is like an enchanted daily ritual, like the raising of a flag. When Scout/Lee encounters Dill/Truman Capote, she's rubbing up against a very different kind of writer. The watchful and perceptive Scout is attracted to and repelled by Dill/Capote, who can sell a song till the cows come home. "Mom entered me in the Beautiful Child Contest." As if we know what that is. "I'm little but I'm old." "With my earnings, I saw twenty movies." As any little gay male novelist-in-training would opt to do. "I'm Charles Harris; folks call me Dill." Can't you see, here, the world-class celebrity and liar Truman Capote would grow up to become? We first see Dill half-submerged in a cabbage patch; he emerges like Botticelli's Venus, up out of some foam. This seems to me an appropriately fabulous first encounter between Truman Capote and Harper Lee.)

-Alice Ghostley, Dill's aunt, seems no more adult than the children around her. (I knew Ms. Ghostley mainly from "Designing Women" in childhood--but that's a story for another day.) As Ghostley assaults Dill, anxiously rubbing his face, Dill recoils. We know this character immediately. Her anxiety is infectious; she is miserable and must make her company miserable. It's like scratching an itch. Ms. Ghostley gives a long speech about Boo Radley--the scissors, the aggrieved mother--and its message is clear: "Be afraid for the entirety of your life. Trust no one. Try, at all times, to minimize your engagement with the outside world." This scene moves so quickly, without underlining. That's part of Horton Foote's subversive greatness.

-"Atticus? You've heard about Tom Robinson? I want you to take the case. Now, I know you have children to raise...." Watch how still the two men are here. Watch how much they do with silence and with their eyes. The scene is pregnant with subtext; both seem to know that this is an unusually ugly affair, and it will drag the town of Maycomb through hell. Neither makes this admission--and so the facts become all the more potent. Another screenwriter might not have included the banal chit chat about the weather and about the Judge's wife--but Foote is like an anthropologist, like a friendly alien. He wants to show us what human animals do as they prepare for a stressful encounter. Stated line: "How's your wife?" Subtextual meaning: "I know why you're here, and I know what you're going to ask, and I'd like very much to crawl into a cave." Atticus accepts the case without fanfare, and because of the fineness of his performance, Gregory Peck lets us see a memorable shard of Atticus's secretly Divided Self. This is a goosebumps-inducing scene.

-The movie opens with a close-up of a children's toy box. (It actually seems to be a battered cigar box. "Atticus? Are we poor?") We are asked to pay very close attention to a whistle, a marble, a crayon, a watch, a set of figurines. There's a mother in that set; the opening seconds of the movie announce that the Missing Mother will loom large here in Maycomb. A child's humming becomes an orchestral theme; E. Bernstein takes over, and the violins swoop in. The opening says: "We are here to de-familiarize. We are going to re-enchant your bland adult world. You'll get to see things as a six-year-old sees things, now, for two hours, because Horton Foote is a genius. And you can thank us later."

-"Hey!" "Hey yourself."

-"Don't you HEY me, you ugly little girl. You come back. You listen when an adult is speaking to you."

-"I really don't think the flowers are as pretty as last year...." (Atticus has found a tiny sliver of beauty in the crotchety, drug-addled Mrs. Dubose--and so, needy as an urchin, Mrs. Dubose goes fishing for compliments. This reminds me of my early days of therapy, when I was beyond the pail, even bitchier than now and sometimes nearly wordless. The friendly man opposite me would smile for forty minutes, and then he would find a way to compliment my socks.)

-There's nothing to make purchases with, but a weird kind of economy still exists in Maycomb. An economy of collard greens and chickory nuts. Atticus may be unable to play football for the Methodists, and may insist on touch football, no tackling, with his son--but he at least can "make a will so airtight it's a work of art." Shrill harridans can plant pretty flowers. A kid can soothe his lonely little sister and make it possible for her to go to sleep. We all contribute--in our limited, complicated ways.

-All of this happens in Act One; the scene with the Judge very clearly plunges us into Act Two, into the perilous Other World of Tom and the courtroom. So grateful that this writing exists. Happy Saturday!


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