In a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Alabama, the estate argued that Mr. Sorkin’s adaptation deviates too much from the novel, and violates a contract, between Ms. Lee and the producers, which stipulates that the characters and plot must remain faithful to the spirit of the book.It seems as though the question is whether they want a saccharine presentation that draws sentimentalists and children or something modestly challenging that draws a somewhat sophisticated crowd. Apparently the estate wants to preserve what is most memorable about the revered young-adult novel: a wise, beloved father figure. That's the golden goose of "Mockingbird." Kill it, and you've got nothing. But the Sorkin people think they've got something more contemporary than a white male hero. They'll inflate the role of the black maid... have Calpurnia catalyzing a transformation in crusty old racist Atticus.
A chief dispute in the complaint is the assertion that Mr. Sorkin’s portrayal of the much beloved Atticus Finch, the crusading lawyer who represents a black man unjustly accused of rape, presents him as a man who begins the drama as a naïve apologist for the racial status quo, a depiction at odds with his purely heroic image in the novel....
“I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics: It wouldn’t be of interest,” [said the producer of the play, Scott Rudin]. “The world has changed since then.”...
Mr. Rudin said he was surprised by the estate’s criticism of Mr. Sorkin’s depiction of Atticus because [Tonja B. Carter, the lawyer Ms. Lee appointed to run her estate] had been instrumental in the 2015 publication of “Go Set a Watchman,” an early draft of “Mockingbird” that depicted an aged Atticus as a racist and segregationist....
The dispute erupted last fall when Ms. Carter saw a draft of the script, and was alarmed by what she viewed as liberties taken with the source material. The suit cites an interview Mr. Sorkin did last fall where he described how Atticus evolves over the course of the play, in part through his interactions with the Finch family’s black maid, Calpurnia, who has a much larger role in the drama....
In the interview Mr. Sorkin gave New York Magazine about his adaptation, he described his reinterpretation of Atticus’s moral evolution. “As far as Atticus and his virtue goes, this is a different take on ‘Mockingbird’ than Harper Lee’s or Horton Foote’s,” he said. “He becomes Atticus Finch by the end of the play.”
How is that not even creakier than the original story?
Carter says Sorkin has turned Atticus into someone who is “rude and selfish,” “more confrontational and far less dignified,” and "more like an edgy sitcom dad in the 21st Century than the iconic Atticus of the novel.” Meanwhile, Rudin's lawyer has as his hero, not Atticus Finch, but Aaron Sorkin:
“Aaron Sorkin is one of the leading writers in America. He would hardly be needed to write the play if the intent was to merely do a transcription of the novel on the stage. Presumably Ms. Lee was well aware that Mr. Sorkin would be bringing his perspective and talent to the play, and that the play would not be identical in all respects to the novel.”Why the hell did we hire Aaron Sorkin if were were going to follow the terms of the contract ("the Play shall not derogate or depart in any manner from the spirit of the Novel nor alter its characters"? Harper Lee must have known the meaning of the great Aaron Sorkin and intended him to imbue her Atticus Finch with present-day angst!
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To my mind, if the director had that kind of problem, he should have written his own play. The story is what it is.
“As far as Atticus and his virtue goes, this is a different take on ‘Mockingbird’ than Harper Lee’s or Horton Foote’s,” he said. “He becomes Atticus Finch by the end of the play.”
-- That defeats the *point* of Atticus, which is that he is teaching Jem and Scout to become better people. He's a flat character. Changing him is just stupid, but that's Sorkin's writing for the most part.
“Aaron Sorkin is one of the leading writers in America. He would hardly be needed to write the play if the intent was to merely do a transcription of the novel on the stage. Presumably Ms. Lee was well aware that Mr. Sorkin would be bringing his perspective and talent to the play, and that the play would not be identical in all respects to the novel.”
-- I never understood Sorkin's writing as being famous. He's part of the quippy=intelligent bad writing that is everywhere. He's serviceable and good at giving the audience what they want. But, Of Mice and Men was pretty much transcribed from novel to stage and is excellent.
Shorter version: Yankees can write their own fantasy version of smalltown southern life, but can't re-write Harper Lee'seye witness version
There was no chance this could become a modern play without offending modern sensibilities.
1. A lying rape accuser
2. "Heroic" depiction of the leading white male character
3. One-dimensional treatment of black characters
What a risky undertaking. Expect someone to snark that the current dispute over how to tell this racially charged story involves a bunch of rich white people.
"3. One-dimensional treatment of black characters"
-- Eh, Calpurnia has depth, she's just not a lead. Even Robinson has some depth, but doesn't get a lot of screen time (for example, his feeling sorry for Mayella).
What I wonder is why Sorkin thought making Calpurnia a more central character was a good idea? By keeping her somewhat on the periphery during the early/mid novel, how Scout views her and grows into understanding her is a key part of Scout's growth as a person.
the crusading lawyer who represents a black man unjustly accused of rape, presents him as a man who begins the drama as a naïve apologist for the racial status quo, a depiction at odds with his purely heroic image in the novel....
I don’t know about the rest of it, since I haven’t read the play, but that’s how I read the book. But I suppose they could have exaggerated that aspect by putting words in his mouth that Lee didn’t write for him. But the estate should have respected Lee’s wishes and not cashed in with Go Set a Watchman if they cared this much about the Finch “plaster saint.”
Eh, Calpurnia has depth, she's just not a lead.
Figured I'd get called out on that. I needed a #3.
Today's version can't have any white male exhibiting core principles back then. Seems it goes against the popular narrative today that rewrites history reducing us all to a class of those exploited and the white males doing the exploiting with the support of their dutiful wives and women who can't think for themselves. Sorkin is a shill for the rewrite of inconvenient history.
What I wonder is why Sorkin thought making Calpurnia a more central character was a good idea?
Easy, female, black.
And the novel falls afoul of the “white savior” trope. Even though a “white savior” is a pretty much ideal way to model behaviors you want white people to emulate, as a matter of rhetoric. Of course, the new identity politics demands that the baby be discarded with the bathwater.
“I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics: It wouldn’t be of interest,”
I read Ron Chernow's recent biography of General Grant and have wanted to post about my objection to his writing about Grant's actions re emancipation, "civil rights," etc., in today's terms rather than those of Grant's life and times. The facts are there and should have been written about before, but if so, I have missed it though having read a lot about the Civil War and its aftermath. So it is good that Chernow finally devoted this much attention to it, but he does not explain why Grant did what he did in the framework of the times that he did it.
Shorter version: Yankees can write their own fantasy version of smalltown southern life, but can't re-write Harper Lee'seye witness version
It couldn't have been more rewritten-by-Yankees than the original book.
Or is that what you meant?
Hey, we're already in the age of 'revisionist history', why not 'revisionist literature'?! I said, sarcastically.
Apparently the estate was well aware of the danger and wrote a contract to protect against it. I hope they have the strength of the original Atticus in defending that contract.
So they are making 'To Kill a Mockingbird' into 'Driving Miss Daisy'.
I was going to use a 'Driving Mr. Finch' line, but the intended connection doesn't seem obvious enough.
You could go with 'Driving Miss Atticus', which sounds closer, but implies Atticus is a woman.
Or: a transgendered woman.
Which gives it a more modern air.
Because if there are 37+ genders now, there obviously were 37+ genders then, people just didn't know it at the time.
Which means there is a thesis available for scouring the text in finding hints that Atticus is a transgendered woman.
Ten years ago it would probably have been enough to write that thesis on whether Atticus was just gay.
I am going to check Google.
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Google: was Atticus Finch gay?
No; it seems that Scout was a lesbian, though.
"Scout returns as the grown-up twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise in Go Set a Watchman. And while no one else can see that she’s still a lesbian, I can. As she prepares to get off the train she has ridden from New York City to Maycomb, Alabama (I’ve ridden that Southern Crescent; it’s an amazing ride), she dons clothes like the Scout we know: “When she dressed, she put on her Maycomb clothes: gray slacks, a black sleeveless blouse, white socks, and loafers. Although it was four hours away, she could hear her aunt’s sniff of disapproval.” She dresses like every lesbian in an Ann Bannon novel. Scout could have come home from New York as Beebo Brinker. But she doesn’t."
Also: one of the top ten responses was an article about whether the author was gay:
"For years, there has been speculation in the LGBT press and elsewhere that Harper Lee, the To Kill a Mockingbird author, was gay. She never answered the question, at least not publicly, and may not have been directly asked – except once. In a never-before published one-sentence response, the 89-year-old author who was buried last weekend, told me in 2009 she is "not even remotely gay."...
Lee dated her response, September 21, 2009, less than a week after I wrote to her to ask whether she was openly gay in connection with a LGBT travel article I was writing. Lee's response, "Dear Mr. Walsh: I am not even remotely gay. Harper Lee."...
Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors. So there are more genders than flavors of ice cream. But Harper Lee wanted to keep Atticus as just plain Vanilla.
Google: does Baskin Robbins have a Rainbow Flavor?
Ah. Rainbow Sherbet.
The Germans have a word for this.
"How is that not even creakier than the original story?"
Because the revised hero/protagonist is a black maid, you silly. It's just the right tone of creak.
Seems to me that those attempting to produce this play entered into a contract they never intended to honor.
"something modestly challenging that draws a somewhat sophisticated crowd True. Good white hero is neither sophisticated nor challenging.
On second thought, judging by the comments of the people involved, nothing is more challenging to the sophisticates than a white hero represented as unquestionably good.
Althouse is right, a more PC version of this would be even more trite than the original. And there is a perfectly good Oscar-winning movie anyway, from when Oscars had some significance.
A radical take, and still au courant, would be to make the accused, Tom Robinson, actually guilty (and thus an opportunity to create a truly complex character), and thereby also turning Atticus into a dupe, whose ideals (and self-regard) lead him away from reality.
And Mayella into an even more tragic figure, as she, even in a moment of courage (#metoo!) is still unable to obtain justice in fact, as the powers that be eventually turn the town against her.
And Bob Ewell is yet another victim, a proletarian everyman humiliated over and over by the towns elite (Atticus et al), and driven to desperation.
I was going to use a 'Driving Mr. Finch’ line, but the intended connection doesn't seem obvious enough.
That’s why you will always be a better writer than me. I’m like “fuck ‘em if they don’t get it.”
How is Atticus a white savior? He *fails*. That's the whole point. He can't save them until society as a whole changes (which is a key difference to the Atticus of Go Set a Watchman, who SUCCEEDS and thus thinks society doesn't need to be shaken up, since justice won out in the end.)
Oh, and Boo Radley is a child-molester, which is why he is a recluse.
buwaya lays out the “Bonfire of the Vanities” treatment of the story.
A lawsuit I hope succeeds
To Kill A Mockingbird was loosely based on events that occurred when Harper Lee was ten years old. It's therefor completely appropriate that she portrayed her father as a hero, because that's how ten year old children view their fathers if it doesn't conflict too much with reality.
But what really happened is more complicated. The real person on which Atticus Finch is based had many negative feelings about black people, which Harper Lee disclosed later in her life. Despite those feelings and those politics, Atticus Finch defended a black man that was unjustly accused by a young white woman in a context where simply defending the man was a considerable act of bravery.
Taken in context, and in reality, Harper Lee's father acted heroically. But if you were to take that real person and honestly portray his beliefs today, he would be greatly maligned. (And note that the people doing the maligning are unlikely to ever do anything heroic in their lives, even though there is just as much injustice today, although in different areas.)
Ah. Rainbow Sherbet
The Italians have a few words for this: Spumoni, Cassata, and the ever-popular Tutti Frutti.
Today's version can't have any white male exhibiting core principles back then.
Of course.
Plus Atticus will use an AR 15 to shoot the rabid dog.
Hmm.
Even more radical. The setting is modern Britain, and Tom Robinson is Pakistani, a married taxi driver who as a sideline grooms young girls (Mayella) into prostitution.
And etc., the story remains the same, other than the parts that write themselves.
What pathetic contempt this director, Scott Rudin, is displaying. SAD!
I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics: It wouldn’t be of interest
"Different from us" and "uninteresting" are pretty much two ways of saying the same thing, aren't they?
Taken as snapshot in time in 1936, an eyewitness to that culture tells a story. And as another writer says, “the play’s the thing.”
When will Sorkin re write Shakespeare’ s Hamlet to splain modern Denmark.
T
"This story is an important cultural icon", he said in his best Scooby-Doo voice, "that's why we want to change it."
Yes, the black maid has to be the wisest person in the 2018 version. In spite of the fact that Octavia Spencer is the obviously choice for the lead, let's go with Oprah to kick start the campaign.
Plus Atticus will use an AR 15 to shoot the rabid dog
And it won’t be rabid, it will be a family pet that barked at him when he was taking his sheet to the cleaners.
When will Sorkin re write Shakespeare’ s Hamlet to splain modern Denmark.
Nobody will change a word of Shakespeare yet, that will be a landmark event, but they will add in long silent scenes that serve to “fill out” a character’s motivations to more properly fit a modern sensibility.
I write a blog about the movie Dirty Dancing. This movie -- like the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird -- is so well known that it transcends copyright considerations.
In such a case, the copyright owner should forget about the idea that society should "remain faithful to the spirit" of the original work.
Harper Lee and her estate have earned an extraordinary amount of money from To Kill a Mockingbird because several generations of students were required to read the book during their educations. The book has become embedded into our culture to a rare extent.
At some point, society takes over the story itself, no matter what the copyright restrictions are. Because the story is so well known, society will re-tell, develop and elaborate it.
That's a consequence for the people who became rich from the story and who want society to "remain faithful to the spirit" of their story. At some point, those people lose social control of the story.
The movie Dirty Dancing is being adapted. The story was retold in an ABC remake last year, and the story is retold in a stage musical that is being performed all over the world.
* Characters have been added to the movie story.
* Characters have been removed from the movie story.
* Characters have become more important or less important -- or more positive or more negative.
Similar changes have happened with the dialogue, plot, conflicts, relationships, music, dances and settings.
The people who own the copyright should just let it go and allow this social enrichment of the story to develop freely.
------
In my blog, I consoled the many people who were upset that the 2017 ABC remake was not faithful to the spirit of the 1987 movie.
http://dirty-dancing-analysis.blogspot.com/2017/07/my-praise-for-abcs-dirty-dancing-part-1.html
In this regard, my motto is Let a Thousand "Dirty Dancings" Bloom!
------
Here is a selection of five excellent "home-made" video adaptions of the Dirty Dancing story.
http://dirty-dancing-analysis.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-two-best-home-made-dirty-dancing.html
Althouse wrote: They'll inflate the role of the black maid... have Calpurnia catalyzing a transformation in crusty old racist Atticus.
This sounds about right to me. In 2018, you can't simply have an unbigoted white man. White men are naturally bigoted. That is the myth of "white supremacy," white men are not allowed to self-define as unbigoted. So you have to have a bigoted white man who becomes unbigoted with the help of a Person of Color.
This is a first world, Manhattan problem.
Plus Althouse sung a different tune regarding such contracts when a Milwaukee theater trope (sic) tried to gender bend a Mamet play.
Interesting.
mandrewa,
"Taken in context, and in reality, Harper Lee's father acted heroically. But if you were to take that real person and honestly portray his beliefs today, he would be greatly maligned."
You've reminded me of the fight over Judge Charles Pickering's nomination to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003. Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy and others imputed racism. Dianne Feinstein read a letter from the NAACP referring to the judge's "affection for segregationist policies."
And Lindsey Graham let 'em all have it:
"Do you know what it must have been like in 1967 to get on the stand and testify against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi? Do you have any idea what courage that took? Shame on you."
Seems Aaron Sorkin wanted to write a play but thought it would get more attention if he named it after a best-selling book and re-invented its well-known characters.
Time and place is a fundamental aspect of 'Mockingbird. Perhaps future writers should anticipate how their work will be interpreted by people not yet born.
Can literature be compared to the US Constitution? Does it mean what it says or is it a living, breathing thing that should reflect the opinions and sensibilities of generations that follow?
Are we to expect next the rewrite of the War of Revolution with Benedict Arnold the white hat fighting for King and country and the evil
George Washington as the black hat dividing a once peaceful
Empire that only wanted to make peace with the Indian tribes hated by the Virginia racists?
This is the kind of problem you have when the author is no longer alive to defend the legacy of her work. See also "A Wrinkle In Time."
"3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake"
https://www.vox.com/2015/7/2/8884885/american-revolution-mistake
From Vox, of course.
But don't you dare question their patriotism!
The three reasons given are that slavery would have ended sooner, the Indians would have been treated better, and we would enjoy the benefits of a parliamentary form of government (no constitution).
Where does Vox find smart writers like this?
Rudin and his lawyer give excellent reasons why it was daft for them to agree that "the Play shall not derogate or depart in any manner from the spirit of the Novel nor alter its characters." But they did. Mr. Bigtime Producer thinks he can pick and choose which provisions of his contract he'll honor. No doubt, all the while lamenting how Trump undermines the rule of law.
Some day the copyright will expire and we can see lots of versions. Until then, the holder of the copyright gets to maximize the monetization of the creative work.
The problem with the constitution is that it places limits on the power of government to do good!
Lewis Wetzel, 9:35:
"the Indians would have been treated better,"
The ghost of Lord Jeffrey Amherst might like a word with Vox.
The novel has already been turned into a play. i saw it a few years ago. It was faithful to the book, and it worked well dramatically.
What I've never understood is why black people only become ennobled when they're subject to white oppression. Black people suffer from some hideously oppressive rulers in Africa, but such oppression never seems to inspire leaders like Nelson Mandela to spring up.
My sympathies are with Harper Lee. Screwing over authors is a venerable tradition in publishing and its offshoots. I speak from experience. Which is why in the I recently canceled two book publishing contracts and returned the [paltry] advances. From now on I'm self-publishing.
And, oh yeah, Sorkin is vastly overrated as a writer. He's a modern Paddy Chayefsky. And Paddy Chayefsky was vastly overrated. E.g., their characters speak in paragraphs. In real life people don't speak in paragraphs, except for leftist ideologues and polemicists.
To Kill a Mockingbird sucks. This play will suck even more.
Hopefully, it will turn people off the book and it can die a deserved death.
Aren't people like Althouse the target demographic for this?
The truly transgressive and therefore most artistic message is that bigoted is good. Whats all that about bringing discomfort to the powerful?
I taught “To Kill a Mockingbird” for twenty-some years. I re-read it every year. I almost memorized it. The book’s genius is its complexity. One year I’d decide the essential theme was “stepping inside someone’s skin and walking around in it.” Another year it would be the hypocrisies of Christianity. The matter of the central symbol, the mockingbird, was extremely complicated to me but one thing was clear: some people qualified as good because they “do nothing but make beautiful music” for others to hear while others, the jays, Well, shoot them if you can.
Lee was criticized early on for using an adult voice in a child narrator but it wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. The story is told through Scout’s eyes as an adult looking back. Like all memories, it has the softening effect of selective memory, of bending the remembered story to fit the adult-understood essential truth. Lee’s sophisticated word-play was always a delight to go through with my sophomores, who missed much of the humor on first pass.
One well-known scene — the shooting of the mad dog — i must comment on. The entire scene is an allegory for the book. The dog comes up the road towards the Radley house then turns towards Atticus and his kids. The sheriff hands Atticus the gun saying, “You’re a better shot than me.” Atticus’s glasses fall off and he crushes the lens in the ground ... and still manages to kill the dog. So what’s the allegory? The book’s story at first focuses on the children’s prejudices against Boo Radley. Now the prejudice inherent in humanity and in Maycomb, turns towards Atticus and this is the exact point in the novel that the Tom Robinson story comes into play. The law can’t shoot it down, only a morally transcendent person — like Lincoln, like Atticus — can. And even shot dead it was, like the dead rabid dog, still dangerous, as Atticus warns his children. Beautiful writing, imho.
There are some weak parts of the book near the end and in time I grew tired of teaching it. But as I wrote in a previous post the last time this came up, this isn’t a young adult work. It is complex and one of the greatest American novels of the last half of the 20th century.
it's not a perfect novel, but I'm pretty sure those kids aren't "nothing"
"He's a modern Paddy Chayefsky. And Paddy Chayefsky was vastly overrated."
You got that right. Paddy always took a paragraph of words to express a sentence of thought.
Get Smart had The Tequila Mockingbird, which I believe was two episodes in the 60s.
"How is that not even creakier than the original story?"
Well, that's a race to the bottom in many ways, But it pays (literally and figuratively) to know the audience you are aiming to attract. Not sure that Harper Lee did, but as it happens, it worked out for her. Sorkin definitely knows what he is doing in that regard.
I'm trying to wrap my head around this: “As far as Atticus and his virtue goes, this is a different take on ‘Mockingbird’ than Harper Lee’s..."
If it's a different "take" than Harper Lee's, it's a different story about different characters and they need to deal with it on that basis. It is certainly no longer "To Kill a Mockingbird."
What is sad is that Sorokin must think he is improving on the book's moral condemnation of racism, when in fact he is undermining it. The novel presents Finch as both a moral paragon AND a fully embedded member of his flawed community. It is that contrast that exposes the evil in the community in such a way that the community itself can get the message. Sorokin doesn't want the community to get the message, apparently, he wants it to know how bad it all is, including its best.
This is another instance of the almost unlimited contempt of present-day "progressive" people for the past, necessitating depicting even the best as flawed - so as to make it easy for us all now to pat ourselves on the back for our so much greater enlightenment. It is such smug self-satisfied self-indulgence.
Next up: Sorkin's version of Othello in which Desdemona really is sleeping around.
There is no such thing as "literature".
There is only The People's Literature.
And The People's Literature must always bend to what The People need at that moment.
Jon Burack: "What is sad is that Sorokin must think he is improving on the book's moral condemnation of racism,...."
Nope.
What Sorkin is doing is what leftists do: He's perfecting the book.
The same way that Stalinist and Maoist reeducation "perfected" the thinking of the masses...
Someone find me a life long New Yorker who doesn't swear all Southerners are either apologists or torch carrying Klan members. They don't exist.
The thing is, Sorkin's proposed modifications bring the story up to 1990 progressive standards, at best. Today the woke consider "racist white man learns the error of his ways" to be a completely unacceptable storyline: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/10/16/kirkus_withdraws_starred_review_after_criticism.html
Someone find me a life long New Yorker who doesn't swear all Southerners are either apologists or torch carrying Klan members.
Try 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC.
Presentism is quite the affliction.
“I can’t and won’t present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics
You really should have thought of that before you signed the contract.
If this is successful, he can work his magic on David Copperfield. This time let's portray Uriah Heep as the hero he is. Back then English writers always used to portray red haired people as outsiders with untrustworthy characters. We now know that red haired people carry the genes of Celtic kings and that most of the noteworthy achievements of humanity have been accomplished by people of the red hair. but back in Dickens time hairism was prevalent. The prejudice in Uriah's case was compounded by his working class origins. We now know that working class people are the best people in England (not counting deplorables, of course), but back then the good people weren't quite comfortable with aspirational members of the working class. They were thought to be putting on airs.. This was particularly distressing if red haired, lower class drones ever entertained libidinal feelings towards women of the higher stations. According to Dickens Uriah was a three time loser: red haired, lower class, and ambitious with designs on Agnes, a woman of decent background........This story needs to be retold from Uriah's point of view. I see a young Michael Caine in the role. David is a privileged little snot with a monstrous sense of entitlement. They can get someone who looks like Donald Trump Jr to play the role. I'm thinking Uriah catches David exposing himself to Agnes Wickfield and soundly thrashes him. Uriah and Agnes go on to get married and live happily ever after.
Let me ask a question that may or may not be related. Whenever you hear or read the name 'Atticus Finch', do you not immediately conjure up a vision of Gregory Peck? In fact, are they not the same person (in your mind)? Let's play the word game. I say a word or words and you respond. "Gregory Peck".
It sounds like Sorkin wants to make "I'll Fly Away," which starred a Southern white lawyer reluctantly dealing with civil rights and a black nanny/maid who is taking night classes (she'll become a writer) and getting involved in civil rights.
Someone mentioned Harper Lee lived in NYC for 40 years. Yes, she lived in the north, but it was her childhood experiences in a real south that she was writing about. I understand this because my uncle did the same thing. He lived 65 years in NYC and also had close relationships within the same circle of southern expatriate writers that Lee did.(I.e., Capote and Williams) He wrote plays and viginettes about coming of age which were historically accurate about a crazy time and place during the Roaring Twenties and a great Depression.
You can tell Sorkin writes while he is baked beyond Cheech and Chong levels. Watch any episode of any show and imagine the character to be stoned. It's more real that way
Whenever you hear or read the name 'Atticus Finch', do you not immediately conjure up a vision of Gregory Peck? In fact, are they not the same person (in your mind)?
They are in mine.
Willy Wonka? - Gene Wilder
Dr. Who? - Tom Baker
Genghis Khan - John Wayne
Considering how much the quest for power via victimhood and claiming offense on social media and elsewhere drives people today, I wonder how much the desire by Rudin and Sorkin to change the story is due to them wanting to put their own imprints on Lee's novel, and how much is a proactive fear that enough people in 2018 simply won't take the 55-year-old portrayals as the were originally, and will be 'personally offended' if they see them on stage? In that case, they're not going to blame Harper Lee as much as they would blame the people putting on "To Kill A Mockingbird" today, which would be Aaron Sorkin and Scott Rudin.
Fear of the PC Police may be driving them to proactively change the things in the story they think would get them personally in trouble with their peer group if it made it to the stage. Fear, instead of hubris, would be the driving force in that case, but even if it involved less ego on the part of the writer and director, it's not a great sign of moral courage.
Continuing Gahrie's list:
George S. Patton - George C. Scott
Ebenezer Scrooge - Alister Sim
Sherlock Holmes - Jeremy Brett
James Bond - Sean Connery
I'll give three to one odds that there's at least one walk-and-talk scene. Double or nothing there's a scene where Atticus Finch angrily insults gun owners while the rabid dog chews on some little kids.
I taught “To Kill a Mockingbird” for twenty-some years. I re-read it every year. I almost memorized it. The book’s genius is its complexity.
I'd also say that part of the genius is the choice of perspective. Scout is ten years old, and does not fully understand what she is experiencing. She sees her father as a paragon, so we see her father as a paragon.
The play apparently choosed to make Atticus morally flawed to begin with, only to become redeemed by an encounter with a Magical Negro. (I hate that phrase, but it how else can you interpret this quote? " The suit cites an interview Mr. Sorkin did last fall where he described how Atticus evolves over the course of the play, in part through his interactions with the Finch family’s black maid, Calpurnia, who has a much larger role in the drama.")
That's a perfectly valid dramatic arc (despite being a tired and borderline racist cliche). But it's not the way that ten year olds view their parents. The story isn't being told from Scout's perspective anymore! In the book's arc, the events of the plot cause Scout to become aware that her idyllic world isn't perfect. If Atticus starts out racist, then Scout has to already perceive the world as imperfect.
I frequently harp on the idea that writing is about more than sentences. This is a great example of that.
In contrast, having Scout start out as naive and accepting of her environment, only to change her opinion upon encountering some black people is *not* the Magical Negro trope. It's perfectly reasonable for a ten year old girl to be gaining awareness of the world around her, and it doesn't take a magical character to make that happen.
I may be a little older than Biotrekker.
Sherlock Holmes - Basil Rathbone
All this talk about TKAM made me go out and buy the 50th anniversary hardcover edition. I read it in school but never owned it. Not from the Althouse portal though — I doubt she wants to see anyone enrich the the Harper Lee estate.
Why is a straight, older white guy, like Sorkin, writing the script?
"Someone find me a life long New Yorker who doesn't swear all Southerners are either apologists or torch carrying Klan members."
I guess I no longer qualify as a "life long" New Yorker, since my life is not over yet and I have spent about half of it in the South; but I came down here with little or no such prejudice. I had grown up in a blue-collar section of Queens where racial slurs were quite common, so I had no delusions that any one geographical section had a monopoly of prejudice. I have noticed a tad more more freedom with the use of the n-word among Southerners.
The peculiarities of the South and Southerners I met had to do with privacy. In all the time I lived in NYC, no one ever cared what, if any, church I went to; but Southerners--especially old-timey, more countrified Southerners--were quite inquisitive on the subject. When I lived in the more rural south, people would sort of play "20 Questions" when introduced to me, which I found annoying. A young Southern woman who was familiar with that culture told me, "They're trying to find out if you're a Communist or a Christian." (And by "Christian" they meant "low-church Protestant.") When I moved into Atlanta, there was still a game of "20 Questions," but this time the aim was to find out my socioeconomic status and determine if I were affluent enough for them to want to associate with.
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