Southern Exposure
Last week’s turmoil over the Confederate flag triggered a firestorm of commentary, and while people are certainly entitled to their opinions, I was distressed by the amount of vitriol heaped on the South in general. As a native Southerner who grew up in the days of segregation, I’m all too aware of the region’s violent history, as I am aware of race riots, past and ongoing, in other parts of this country. I also know there’s more than enough guilt and blame to go around, and while it’s crucial to learn from the past, we should not be so consumed with evil deeds that we ignore the good ones. There were numerous white Southerners, myself included, who recognized the injustice of segregation and contributed to the civil rights movement. Yes, it’s time to relegate...
Read MoreOne-Man Show
Seventy-five years ago today, the film version of Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta. It remains one of the most beloved classics in American cinema and holds the number six spot on the American Film Institute (AFI) list of 100 Greatest American Films. Cast, crew and history concur that the daunting task of transforming book-to-film would have been impossible without the passion and drive of one man, producer David O. Selznick. Flying in the face of naysayers insisting costume epics were passé and that civil war movies always lost money, Selznick Studios paid $50,000 for the screen rights to Margaret Mitchell’s phenomenally successful bestseller only a month after publication. The book, not incidentally, was first entitled Tomorrow Is Another Day and had a...
Read MoreA Man for All Seasons
One of Truman Capote’s not-so-secret weapons was astonishing versatility. He seemed equally at home penning frothy novellas like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the seminal true-crime chiller, In Cold Blood. Capote was also adept at screenplays (Beat the Devil, The Innocents), books and lyrics for Broadway musicals (House of Flowers), countless magazine articles and several collections of short stories. Of all these remarkable works, one of his shortest – a mere 27 pages – remains my favorite. Published in Mademoiselle magazine in 1956, A Christmas Memory is the gossamer-thin reminiscence of a seven-year-old boy, Buddy, and his elderly cousin, Miss Sook, poor relations in Depression-era Alabama. A roman à clef culled from Capote’s childhood, it follows the unlikely...
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