To Kill An Empty Blog post page

  

At the risk of sounding like an old grumpypants who pines for the past, I'll say it again, "they don't make movies like they used to anymore."

I know this is a common trope used by men, and women, of my age. But it's true. Things were better before. 

Gardeners used rakes instead of noisy leaf blowers. 

Cars had batteries under the hood and not hidden like Anne Frank under the spare tire. 

And movies (and plays) had characters not cartoon heroes in spandex, throwing fireballs and trashcan lids at equally ridiculous villains.

I bring all this up because we went to the Pantages Theater to sink our teeth into Aaron Sorkin's version of To Kill A Mockingbird. Ms. Muse remembered the original black and white film starring the inimitable Gregory Peck. My memory, like my ball and sockets joints, was not so on point. 

In fact, in my hazy, sometimes boozy mind, I thought Boo Radley was played by the guy who starred as Lurch on the Adams Family. It wasn't. It was a very young and imposing Robert Duvall, still one of my favorite and underrated actors.

The show? Perhaps a little long in the tooth but captivating nonetheless. Maybe because in Sorkin's updated theatrical version, the script was modified to reflect some of the prickly prejudicial and political situations of today.

In one particularly reflective monologue, we are told how the Alabama State officials voted 66-3 to reject a common sense law that would require juries of a diverse nature. A thinly-veiled reference to our current Upper Chamber who obediently and blindly march behind an ignorant white supremacist. 

As well as a shot across the bow to those unnamed ad fools who still don't see the value and necessity of DEI.

In another moving scene we see the rape victim's father accuse Atticus Finch of bearing some "Hebraic Seasonings." A phrase that will stay with me for a while. Though in retrospect seemed a little high falutin' and deliciously subtle coming out of the mouth of a lowlife Alabama drunkard would-be Red Hat.

All in all, the show is worth seeing. 

Cautionary tale, if you go to a Saturday showing be aware that they also have an afternoon matinee. So double check your purchase, and the correct time, otherwise you'll be denied entrance for the evening show and forced to accept tickets in the nosebleed section, next to the guy in charge of the long high overhead spotlight while sucking on a can of oxygen.

With apologies to Siskel & Ebert, I give To Kill a Mockingbird Two Aquiline Noses Up.