I am disturbed that anyone would have the desire to change a pair of the best characters that have ever been created in American literature.
Harper Lee's estate is suing the producers of a highly-anticipated Broadway adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird."
The suit the late author's attorney filed earlier this week accuses Aaron Sorkin's script of substantially altering the spirit of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel. A clause in the contract authorizing the adaptation requires the play not to alter any of the story's characters.
The suit argues the script alters several characters, including the central figures, attorney Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson, the black man Finch defends against an unjust rape charge in 1930s Alabama.
“As far as Atticus and his virtue goes,” Sorkin told New York magazine last fall, “is a different take on ‘Mockingbird’ than Harper Lee’s or Horton Foote’s [1962 screenplay].”
TKMB holds a special place in my heart; both the book and the Film. The messages of love of neighbor, of seeking to do good in an imperfect world, and basic right and wrong, are timeless. The story of Maycomb has stood as a testament of virtue and the complexity of morality for nearly six decades.
Why is Sorkin so proud that he thinks he can tell Herper Lee's Story, better than she could?