Fans of Boo Radley, crusading lawyers and middle school book report fodder unite!
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was published 50 years ago, and the Regency South Coast Village Theatre in Santa Ana is celebrating with a screening of Robert Mulligan's much-beloved movie version, which came out two years after the much-beloved book, in 1962.
]
Regency, the Orange County Screenwriters Association and the Southern California Writers Association present the screening of the Southern Gothic classic, and afterward the book and movie are discussed some more with producer Robert Kline (Heaven N Earth).
Lee's book, which is based on her experiences around family and friends growing up in Alabama, has been called the most-read Pulitzer Prize winner of all time. The story about a white Southern lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white woman during the Great Depression is told through the eyes of the defense attorney's 6-year-old daughter, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, the same character who serves as the movie's narrator.
The Academy Award nominated actress who played Scout, Mary Badham, attended a gala 2002 Newport Beach Film Festival screening of the film in honor of the composer of the movie's Oscar-nominated score, Elmer Bernstein, who has since passed away. Also in attendance was Phillip Alford, who played Scout's brother Jem.
Dinners, studio tours and other prizes will be doled out at the celebration, which begins at 7:30 tonight at Regency South Coast Village Theatre, 1561 W. Sunflower Ave., Santa Ana, across Sunflower from South Coast Plaza. Tickets are $10. Visit regencymovies.com or call 714.580.5072 for more information.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.