To Kill To Kill a Mockingbird

Early on in Aaron Sorkin's saga of adapting Harper Lee's well-known novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Sorkin and the production company were sued by Lee's estate for planning on deviating too widely from the novel. The producer sued back, and the case was settled in 2018.

Sorkin had said that he was presenting characters in a different light than either Lee or original movie screenwriter Horton Foote. As someone who thinks Sorkin has never equaled his Sports Night TV show from 1998-2000, I had little interest in his revisionist take on Tom Robinson, Atticus, Scout, and Jem Finch or Boo Radley. So until I read this review at Mockingbird I had no idea what kind of screwing around Sorkin had done, and it seems clear that I was not the worse off for not knowing.

Most folks have probably seen a production of To Kill a Mockingbird, since a playwright named Christopher Sergel had written one some 50 years ago. In the leadup to the opening of the Sorkin version, producer Scott Rudin had the production company formed to produce it sue to make sure no performances of the Sergel adaptation would be staged within 25 miles of any city it deemed a major metropolitian area that might host a touring version of Sorkin's play -- even for companies that might have already purchased rights to perform the Sergel version.

The bullying move was called out by many, causing Rudin to offer permission to those companies to perform the revisionist Sorkin adaptation. He said the offer was intended to "ameliorate the hurt caused here," which makes it clear he does not know what "ameliorate" means.

Is It April Already?

Because I just can't believe this little item is serious.

A Dirty Harry musical? Leave aside that potential songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, with or without Egyptians, is weird to the zth degree ("Man With the Lightbulb Head," anybody?) Leave aside that we're talking about trying to translate gritty urban drama into a musical. Leave aside that we're talking about an actor being believable as a cop named Dirty Harry and singing. Leave aside that we're talking about Dirty frickin' Harry singing.

No, wait, you can't leave all that aside. If you can fit your head around a Dirty Harry musical, then you can fit your head around Saturn and any three of its moons.

Plus, whoever did the write-up for Broadway.com must not have seen the movie, as the piece claims Harry says "Do you feel lucky" in Magnum Force. Of course, that's the line from Dirty Harry. Magnum Force's catchphrase is, "A man's got to know his limitations."

One surely hopes that Broadway will not decide to try to get lucky and will know its limitations, and just go produce that big global warming musical Al Gore wants to see.