To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those stories that has eluded me for years. It was taught at my high school but I had taken certain English classes with certain teachers in a particular arrangement that skirted around having to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I didn't avoid it, it was avoiding me. I had never seen the movie either. I was grateful for an opportunity to read the book and watch the movie on the big screen.

Since I had read the book very recently, I had it fresh in my mind and because I hadn't seen the movie before I came to it not knowing what to expect.

The movie stays true to the book but it is very different. There are lots of characters missing and lots of scenes that were left behind. In the book, Atticus is very much a secondary character. The main focus is Scout and her brother Jem. It's really their world and point of view that we are experiencing.

When you read a book, the characters come to you with a blank state. The author builds the characters the way he or she wants and we as the reader visualize them in our mind. It's a very different experience with a movie. We are provided with visuals and with actors playing the parts that we would have otherwise created in our minds. Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch when we watch the movie but when we read the book Atticus Finch is our visualization of Atticus Finch.

Having read the book so recently, I was waiting for certain scenes and characters to appear and felt a bit worried when they didn't. But I realized that the book could provide me with more information while the movie only had a couple of hours to deliver the story. While the book focuses mostly on the child characters, the movie HAS to focus on Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch because Peck is the star. He's the draw, the anchor to the story and what keeps the plot going. In the book it's very much about Scout and Jem. Not to say that the two unknowns who played the children didn't get their screen time or were neglected in the film. I thought the film beautifully portrayed the importance of both Scout and Jem's roles in the story. There are two very touching scenes that effectively portray the innocence of children and the injustice adults sometimes do to each other. One is when Atticus is in front of the jail protecting his client and local men come to kill the accused. Scout, Jem and Dill, particular Scout, confront the local men and they ashamedly walk away. In another scene, Scout shows affection to Boo Radley (played by a very young very blonde Robert Duvall in his first role) who is incredibly shy and mostly ignored by the other townsfolk but came out of his shell to help Scout and Jem. While the film really focuses more on Atticus than the book does, I felt like the movie honored the importance of the children as well!

While I liked the book better than the movie, I think the film is quite a masterpiece. Gregory Peck did an amazing job portraying Atticus Finch. It's really a marvelous performance and I'm sure a lot of folks with knowledge of Peck's career will say it's one of his best roles.

Did you watch To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) on the big screen last Thursday? What did you think?

Thank you to Harper Perennial and Fathom Events for the book and a chance to see the movie! Much appreciated.

Catching Up with Quelle (8)

Anna Karenina (2012) -  While I love classic movies, what you may not know about me is that I also have a deep love for period films, especially adaptations of classic novels. Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books and I was excited to see that a new adaptation was being released into theaters. For some reason I became absolutely determined to win advance screening tickets to this film and I entered every online contest I could. I ended up winning a couple tickets from a local Whole Foods for an advance screening last Wednesday.  (They ended up being two tickets for four instead of two tickets for two, oops!). I got a gorgeous pass and when we left the movie they handed out these great tri-fold double-sided posters (see above).

It was a really good film despite Keira Knightley being in it. One of the reasons I don't watch as many period films as I used to is that she seems to be in a lot of them. If Zooey Deschanel ever decides to do Period Films I will have to give up the genre entirely.

It's good to note that Anna Karenina (2012) is partly choreographed and a lot of the sets are on stages that change and open up into other sets. If you don't know this up front or if you are not okay with this, the movie might not be as enjoyable. This reminded me of an adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like it from 2006 in which you got glimpses of a real contemporary audience which reminded you that this is a performance. I loved the blending of reality with fantasy. With Anna Karenina, the stages remind you that this is a production and it also gave the filmmakers more liberty to be visually expressive with history and fantasy.

It's a beautiful film and I thought it was well-executed. I don't understand why they didn't just put Jude Law in the role of Vronsky instead of an unknown. Besides Keira Knightley, Jude Law and I'll make the case also for Emma Watson because I love her, everyone else in the film are minor actors or up-and-coming ones. I think the two major roles should have gone to the two major actors. Downton Abbey fans will recognize the familiar faces of Michelle Dockery (who looks just like my friend Haze who went to the movie with me!) and Thomas Howes who have minor roles in the movie.

One thing I have to say is that there is a gory scene in the beginning of the film which I thought they could have done away with. When I left the film, it's the one scene that stuck in my head. And that should not have been the case.

Will you see Anna Karenina (2012)?

Period Films - Do you like period films? If so, which ones? I have to say that I do not enjoy historical classic films as I do contemporary ones. I feel like todays film makers have a lot more pressure on them to be historically accurate whereas using Victorian style clothing in Pride & Prejudice (1940) (it's Regency not Victorian!). Also because of Hays Code and heavy-handed movie studios, film makers often had to change major plot points or characters in order to please the big bosses. Personally, I would like to know more about the decision behind making Lady Catherine de Bourgh a nice character at the end of the P&P 1940 adaptation (sorry for the spoiler!).

Advance Screenings - I have only been to one other advance screening and that was in 2004. A lot has changed since that time and I noticed while watching Anna Karenina that there were several guards at the theater waving some sort of laser thing over the audience. Also, they checked our bags for recording devices. Someone told me that at some advance screenings they'll take your cell phone and only give it back when the movie is over!

2013 Turner Classic Movies Festival - For those of you who have gone to this festival in the past, what advice do you have for those of us who are going or who are contemplating going in 2013? Cinematically Insane has a nice post detailing the differences between passes from 2012 and 2013 and offers some advice on what to invest your money in and Laura from Laura's Miscellaneous Musings gave me a good tip about standby lines for evening shows ($20 to get in if there are open spots). Any other advice?

Have a good week!

Interview with Margaret Talbot, author of The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century

I have had the privilege of interviewing Margaret Talbot, author of the book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century and daughter of classic film actor Lyle Talbot. Check out the interview below and if you haven't heard about this amazing book yet make sure you read my review.

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Raquel: Why did you decide to write The Entertainer?

Margaret: I’d grown up listening to my Dad’s stories about his show biz career, and like most kids listening to their Dads holding forth at the dinner table or wherever, I tuned in and out of them. But as the years went by, and especially after my father died, in 1996, I thought about those stories more and more—it helped me to feel close to both my parents again, and I missed them a lot. And I realized that when you strung my Dad’s stories together, they told a bigger story about the rise of entertainment in the 20th century. I’ve always loved history, and I thought this would be a way to convey cultural history through an intimate, personal lens.

Raquel: What do you think your dad, actor Lyle Talbot, would think of the book?

Margaret: I think, and my siblings agree with me, that he would be thrilled. He wasn’t a writer at all, but he was a reader and a great story-teller, and would have been pleased as punch to see his story in book form.

Raquel:  What’s the one thing you’d like people to get out of reading your book?

Margaret: That it’s possible to make a deeply satisfying working life in a creative profession where there is a star system--and you are not a star-- so long as you have the attitude my Dad had, which was: I am lucky to be able to do the work I love. 

Raquel: What was the hardest part of the writing or research process?

Margaret: Honestly? Having to stop researching and writing it. So long as I was working on the book, I was still in communion with, having an on-going conversation with, my parents. When I finished the manuscript I felt like I was saying good-bye to my Dad for a second time.  

Raquel: The age gap between you and your dad was pretty big. I am in the same situation with my dad being 53 years older than me. How did that affect your relationship with him?

Margaret: I’m very interested to hear that, because it’s not that common—though it may become more so, as both men and women postpone having kids till they are older. In general, I thought it was a boon. My Dad was kind of gallant and old-world; I liked the connection to the past he gave me, and especially to old Hollywood glamour, but in a kinder, gentler version. And because he was a worldly person with an active mind, who kept acting and doing public appearances and interviews into his 90s, he didn’t seem all that elderly, even when he was. Possibly all that memorization you have to do as an actor, especially in the theater, which he did a lot of in his later years, helped keep his mind sharp.  

Raquel: Why did you decide to write The Entertainer not as a straight biography of your dad but as a story of your dad alongside the story of the twentieth century he lived in?

Margaret: He wasn’t enough of a star to sustain a straight biography. But that was actually an advantage in doing the kind of book I wanted to do. I didn’t have to cover every movie he made—and he made some really lousy ones!—or try and be comprehensive as you would if you were writing a biography of Katharine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart. Also, as I say in the book, he had this Zelig-like life, where he turns up in all these facets of entertainment history: from traveling carnivals and magic shows in the Midwest in the teens, to tent theater and stock companies in cities like Memphis and Dallas in the 20s, to Hollywood, pre-Code movies and the studio system in the 30s, including helping to found the Screen Actors Guild, to the dawn of family sitcoms, with Ozzie and Harriet, the Bob Cummings show, and Leave it to Beaver (actually my brother Steve was the regular on Beaver, but my Dad did guest spots.) So his life really lent itself, I thought, to providing a narrative thread for a larger history.  

Raquel: What’s your favorite of your dad’s movies?

Margaret: I’d have to say “Three on a Match,” the ultimate pre-Code potboiler in my opinion, with a great cast: Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Warren William, and in a memorable small role, as a really vicious young hood, Humphrey Bogart.  

Raquel: Which of your dad’s stories is your favorite?

Probably the story of his screen test, which I tell in an excerpt from the book that ran in The New Yorker (but in more detail in the book!) I’m also partial to my parents’ love story.  

Raquel: My friend Bob from the blog Allure asks, “What I found interesting about Lyle Talbot, he seemed at ease as a good guy or a bady guy. Did he have a preference?"

Good point. He genuinely liked playing both. But I think as he got older, and a lot of the good-guy parts were police chiefs and commissioners (much staring with grim intensity into the camera while gripping a desk and vowing to get the perp, as in the pretty good nuclear noir “City of Fear” from 1959), he liked the bad—or at least flawed—characters better.  

Raquel: Could you tell us a bit more about yourself?

Margaret: I live in Washington, D.C. with my husband, writer Arthur Allen, and our teenagers, Ike and Lucy, who lucky for me, have always had a taste for black-and-white movies. They started with the Marx Brothers, moved on to Hitchcock, and are now watching silent movies even I haven’t seen yet (like the 1921 Swedish horror move “The Phantom Carriage.” It’s apparently really good!) We’re also lucky to live near the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Md., a fantastic art and revival movie theater, where we go often. (The theater is screening a Lyle Talbot series in December, starting with “Three on a Match,” and showing a number of other films you don’t get to see that often, like William Wellman’s punchy and amusing “College Coach.”)

 Staff writer, The New Yorker author, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century (November, 2012; Riverhead)

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Thank you so much to Margaret Talbot for taking the time out to answer my questions and thank you to Lydia of Riverhead Books for arranging the interview.

Catching Up with Quelle (7)

Oh Wedding Day - Many thanks to J.P. from the blog Comet over Hollywood for sending me this lovely picture of actress Susan Peters on her wedding day with director Richard Quine. I had never seen it before!

 How well do you know my favorites? - Play my IMDB Quiz! Make sure you play the Genius version for even more fun. 

Old Favorites versus New-to-me Classics - I have been going through a difficult time lately. I feel trapped with no way out. Every time I find a glimmer of hope it seems like there is always someone that comes along to block it out. Whenever I feel blue, I can't be bothered to watch new movies. I know a lot of you watch movies by the boatload but I just can't handle that. Watching a film that is new to me can be an emotional ordeal. There is a lot to take in and to think about. When I'm feeling blue, I find that old favorites are comforting. Movies that I know well, that I know I will enjoy and that have no mystery. What kind of movies do you like to watch when you are blue?

Maybe a viewing of one of my all-time favorites Nancy Drew - Detective (1938) will cheer me up.