Watching Movies With Sissy Spacek: In the Arms of Memory

February 1, 2002

By RICK LYMAN (published in the New York Times)


This article is part of a series of discussions with noted
directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers and
others in the film industry. In each article, a filmmaker
selects and discusses a movie that has personal meaning.

SISSY SPACEK remembers wandering down to the drug store in
Quitman, the small East Texas town where she grew up, and
picking out an empty cigar box that she could use to hide
her treasures. "I think I had a couple of school pictures
of secret boyfriends, stuff like that," Ms. Spacek said. "I
took it out in the back yard and buried it, but I used my
feet to measure where I did it. I even made a map. But when
I went back to dig it up, my feet had grown and I never
could find it again. It's still out there, I guess."

Ms. Spacek, 52, was sitting in the middle row of a small
screening room in a glass tower on Park Avenue, the light
from the opening moments of "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962)
playing across her familiar freckled face. Behind the
film's credits, the camera moved across the worn, dirty
contents of a child's cigar box. There were some marbles, a
couple of carved figurines, a broken watch, a pocket knife.
Elmer Bernstein's score began as a series of single notes,
as if pecked out on the piano by a child using one finger.

"That whole idea of these kids with their little secret
box and all the trinkets in it, it really spoke to me," Ms.
Spacek said. "I couldn't help but think about my own cigar
box. And I remember the way the whole movie plays through
the eyes of the children. I just remember seeing their
dirty little fingernails and their dirty faces and the way
they're running around, playing in the courthouse. I used
to go down and play in the courthouse, too, and it looked a
lot like the one in this movie. I'm sure the county records
have never been the same since."

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee -
her only published book - "To Kill a Mockingbird" is the
story of Atticus Finch, a humble and impeccably decent
lawyer in a small Southern town at the height of the
Depression. A middle-age widower (played by Gregory Peck in
his only Oscar- winning role), Atticus is seen primarily
through the eyes of his two children, a son named Jem
(Philip Alford), making his first tentative steps toward
maturity, and the story's narrator, a daughter named Jean
Louise (Mary Badham), or Scout.

"I think they captured so well how children are drawn to
what is mysterious and scary, the way they concoct stories
to test and frighten themselves," Ms. Spacek said. "I'm
sure I saw this for the first time in a movie theater,
probably the Gem Theater in Quitman, where they had a
separate entrance for the blacks, who had to sit upstairs
in the balcony. And downstairs in the courthouse, I
remember, they had separate bathrooms for `colored women'
and `white ladies.' I wandered into the `colored' bathroom
once, just because I wanted to see what it was like in
there, you know, and there was this big black woman who
looked at me and said, `What are you doing in here?' I ran
out as fast as I could."

After gaining her first national attention with a
supporting role in a 1972 Lee Marvin thriller called "Prime
Cut," Ms. Spacek very quickly became one of the top female
stars of the decade, widely regarded as one of the most
fertile periods in American filmmaking. She worked with
Terrence Malick in "Badlands" (1973), Brian De Palma in
"Carrie" (1976) and Robert Altman in "Three Women" (1977)
before winning an Oscar as the country singer Loretta Lynn
in "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1980), one of her five Academy
Award nominations.

In more recent years, she has largely played supporting
roles in films like Oliver Stone's "J. F. K." (1991), Paul
Schrader's "Affliction" (1997) and David Lynch's "Straight
Story" (1999). That history gives the flavor of a
full-fledged comeback to her current success in the small,
independent film "In the Bedroom," for which she has won a
Golden Globe Award and is widely expected to be an Oscar
nominee again.

Working on Two Levels

As a child, Ms. Spacek said, "To Kill a Mockingbird" spoke
to her because it evoked so many feelings and images from
her small town. "I thought it was a children's movie when I
first saw it," she said. "And I was overwhelmed with the
familiarity of the world that they lived in. Not until
later, when I saw it as an adult, did I understand the
deeper dimensions of it. It's so rare to have a film hold
up over so many years, and to have seen it from two such
different perspectives, yet to have it work for you on both
levels so deeply."

Not only the film's director, Robert Mulligan, but also its
screenwriter, Horton Foote, and its producer, the future
director Alan J. Pakula, came to the movies from the world
of 1950's live television, and "To Kill a Mockingbird" has
something of the feel of the urgent, naturalistic
black-and-white dramas of that period. But "To Kill a
Mockingbird," like many of the best films of the early
1960's, is also a bridge between the kitchen-sink
theatricality of live television and the emerging, rougher
style of acting and storytelling that took root later in
the 60's and then flourished in the 70's. It is also a
story about remembering, so it is no surprise that watching
it evokes a flood of memories for Ms. Spacek, who says the
words "I remember" more often than any others in the course
of the screening.

"It was definitely the first movie that came into my mind
when I thought about what movie to watch," Ms. Spacek said.
"It's my favorite film of all time. No. 1, absolutely. I
did think a little bit about that scary movie `Night of the
Hunter,' which I also love and which had a big impact on
me. I remember we had this Reader's Digest condensed book
of the novel on which it was based, and I would sneak looks
inside, where there were these creepy drawings, like one of
a dead woman sitting in this Model T at the bottom of a
lake. But in the end I thought, no, I should stick with my
first favorite."

A Tarzan Entrance

In the film's opening narration, the voice of the adult
Jean Louise remembers her childhood as the camera sweeps
across her dusty neighborhood, and her younger self, Scout,
as she is called, makes her entrance on the end of a
swinging rope, like Tarzan. It was hot back then, she tells
us, and everyone was poor, and the days lasted 24 hours but
seemed longer.

"I remember back when there seemed to be more than 24 hours
in the day," Ms. Spacek said, laughing delightedly at such
small details as a tree fort, a rope swing and the long
line of sun-scorched clapboard houses in the Finches'
neighborhood. "Look at how Mary Badham plays these scenes,"
Ms. Spacek said. "She's always holding onto something or
sliding down something or twisting on something. It's so
evocative, so childlike. And she is just the cutest thing.
We all wanted to be her back then. She was just such a
little tomboy who always spoke her mind and wasn't afraid."


The first scenes introduce Atticus, a gentle presence
greeting one of his impoverished law clients and reading
the morning paper while the children scamper around him.
Jem refuses to come down from his tree fort unless Atticus
"agrees to play football for the Methodists," and he
complains about not having a gun of his own. Scout twists
and stretches and swings and looks on.

"The crazy thing is that most boys his age did have guns
back then," Ms. Spacek said. "I can remember feeling very
left out because I didn't have a gun and all my brothers
had one."

Instead of ordering Jem out of the tree, Atticus simply
says, "Suit yourself," and turns his back. In a scene a
short while later, Atticus goes into Scout's bedroom to
kiss her good night, and they talk about how someday Jem
will get Atticus's watch ("It is customary for the boy to
have his father's watch") but Scout will inherit her dead
mother's earrings and pearl necklace.

"He's such a wonderful father," Ms. Spacek said. "I knew
that even when I saw the movie as a child. I think every
little kid wanted to have a relationship with their parents
like this. You know, he didn't insist that they always fall
into perfect step. They got to be little individuals. Jem
could stay up in the tree if he wanted to. Scout was this
scrappy little kid, and he let her be herself. He didn't
try to break their spirit."

The Subtlety of Details

The staging of the bedside scene between Atticus and Scout,
Ms. Spacek said, is indicative of the subtle but calculated
way that Mulligan leads audiences through the film and
builds to the movie's many emotional high points. The scene
begins with the camera peering into Scout's bedroom through
an open window with lace curtains hanging down. Why begin
by forcing us to look through the gaps in the lace? It's
very pretty, for one thing, Ms. Spacek said, but it also
subtly makes the point, which becomes important later, that
the window is open.

After Atticus has kissed Scout good night and left the
room, the camera again takes up its position looking
through the lace. We eavesdrop as Scout and Jem in the next
room have a quiet conversation about their mother, what she
was like, whether they miss her, whether they even remember
her. Except now the camera gently glides to the right and
we see that Atticus is sitting there, silently, on a porch
swing, listening to them through the open window. For an
actor the temptation must have been great to react somehow,
Ms. Spacek said, to milk the moment. But Mr. Peck resisted,
and his face remains contemplative, impassive.

"Isn't that great?" Ms. Spacek said. "As far as acting
goes, this film really is a study of less is more. Because
it's so powerful this way. It conveys so much. Dignity.
Character. Integrity. Atticus Finch is such a heroic man."

Like a Haunted House

The movie slowly eases into its
story, first giving us a look into children's world of
play. The arrival in the neighborhood of a new boy, Dill -
an orphan spending the summer with his Aunt Stephanie, who
lives next door to the Finches - inspired Jem to regale the
newcomer with the neighborhood's creepiest legend, that of
the ghostly, perhaps murderous Boo Radley. He lives unseen
in the biggest, scariest house on the block, a captive of
his dour parents, who have kept him locked up since an
incident many years earlier when he was said to have
stabbed his father with a pair of scissors.

Stay away from the Radley house, Dill is warned, especially
at night when Boo is said to sneak out sometimes and prey
on whatever crosses his path. So, of course, the children
spend their days and nights working up the courage to do
things like stand on the Radley porch or race up and touch
its front door. "We had a haunted house in our
neighborhood, too," Ms. Spacek said. "There was this woman
who lived there and it was always dark, and I remember my
mother bringing me there one time."

Up on the screen, Jem is leading Scout and Dill on a
late-night excursion to sneak into the Radleys' yard and
peer through their windows.

"Kids always know all of the secret passages and short cuts
in a neighborhood," Ms. Spacek said. "I can remember when
me, my girlfriend and her dog, Queenie, used to go out at
night in our pajamas and walk through the nearby graveyard.
Oh, I would have gotten into trouble if I got caught. And
we almost did get caught one night because the night
watchman, whose name was Shorty, saw Queenie running
around. That was pretty scary and exciting. In a way, it's
a lot like what these kids are doing in the movie. You
know, you have fun by putting yourself in harm's way
because you know, in your heart, that you're really safe.
Just like we all knew it wasn't really a haunted house."

Seeing the children on the screen in these scenes - sitting
in the gloom behind a shed, lighted only by a distant
streetlight, the chirp of insects filling the summer air -
has always had the power to evoke memories of her own
summer nights, Ms. Spacek said.

"That was the best time of the day, the very best time,"
she said. "It was dark, or just getting dark, and you were
always having the most fun just when you knew you were
going to be called inside at any moment. You didn't want it
to end. When you were called in, you'd say, oh, we'll pick
it up again tomorrow. But you never could. It was never the
same the next day. So it became this magic hour, when it
was just getting dark and you had to speed up your play
because you knew it was about to end and it would be gone
forever."

The Heart of the Plot

The opening sequences of "To Kill a Mockingbird," from
Dill's arrival to the late-night raid on the Radley house,
are actually a bit of a feint (or so it appears until the
last 10 minutes). The meat of the story involves Atticus's
agreeing to defend a black farmer, Tom Robinson, charged
with the rape of a dirt-poor white girl, Mayella Violet
Ewell.

The shift is heralded by the almost simultaneous arrival in
the story of Bob Ewell, Mayella's racist and abusive father
and the chief villain. He and Atticus have several
confrontations, usually with Ewell blustering and Atticus
refusing to lose his temper. At one point, Ewell goes so
far as to spit in Atticus's face.

"There's an awful lot of spit in this movie," Ms. Spacek
said. "Back earlier, when they were sneaking into the
Radley yard, they spit on the gate hinges to stop them from
squeaking. Then Dill's aunt spits on her handkerchief to
clean off his face. And now I guess, in those days, spit
solved a lot of things."

Of course, it is not childhood but prejudice that is the
subject of "To Kill a Mockingbird," particularly racial
bigotry. And it is presented through two interrelated
themes, both enunciated by Atticus to his children: do not
prejudge others and do not use your power to harm the
innocent.

Repeatedly during the movie (and actually, many more times
in the book) Atticus must gently remind Jem and Scout that
they should not be too quick to judge anyone else until
they've had a chance to "walk around in his shoes for a
while." Time and again either Jem or Scout makes the
mistake of jumping to a conclusion about someone around
them, whether it's a poor client trying to pay off his bill
to Atticus, a country boy smothering his lunch with maple
syrup or ghostly Boo sitting in the dark just down the
street.

The Title's Mockingbird

And then another time, when talking with Jem yet again
about getting a gun, Atticus makes the point that it is a
sin to use a gun or any power to harm an innocent creature.
He uses the metaphor of shooting a mockingbird.

When a rabid dog wanders into the neighborhood, the
Finches' housekeeper, Calpurnia, calls Atticus and he
rushes home with the sheriff. It's the payoff scene for all
the conversations about getting a gun. Jem is sure that his
father is skittish about guns, maybe even afraid of them.
So he is stunned when the sheriff hands Atticus the rifle
and asks him to shoot the mad dog. Atticus comically
fumbles with his eyeglasses. ("I wonder if that was in the
script," Ms. Spacek said, "or did Gregory Peck come up with
that?") Then Atticus raises the rifle and downs the animal
with one clean shot. The flabbergasted Jem realizes he has
misjudged his own father. "What's the matter, boy?" the
sheriff says. "Didn't you know your father was the best
shot in the county?"

Late one night, when the sheriff is called out of town to
investigate reports of a lynch mob, Atticus must go down to
the jailhouse to stand guard on his client, Tom Robinson.
He sits outside on the stoop, reading by the light of a
standing lamp that he has brought from home. The children
follow after Atticus, a mirror image of their earlier late-
night excursion into the Radley yard, but this time it is
not child's play. A line of cars approaches the jail and
grim-faced men emerge from them, intent on a lynching.

"I love him sitting there with that lamp," Ms. Spacek said.
"I just love that there is the adult world, where these
real things are happening, and there is the children's
world, where they make up stories and scare themselves, and
neither one really understands the other."

When the children rush forward to protect Atticus, he
orders them home. But Jem, the only one who begins to
really understand what is at stake, refuses. And before the
matter can come to a climax, Scout inadvertently diffuses
the situation by talking to one of the mob's leaders about
his son, a schoolmate. "Don't you know me, Mr. Cunningham?
It's me. It's Jean Louise Finch. I know your boy, Walter.
He's a good boy. Tell him I said hey."

When the scene is over and the mob has withdrawn, Ms.
Spacek wondered about Scout's scene. "I think maybe that
speech went on too long," she said. "Did it go on too long
for you?" And then she laughed. "It's amazing they were
able to make this picture without us," she said.

And then she fell silent as the camera pulled back. The mob
had left. The children had gone back home. There was
Atticus, sitting on the jail stoop in the lamp light, a
lone figure in a gloomy world. From inside the jail came
the voice of Tom Robinson. "Are they gone?" he asked.
"They're gone," Atticus said. "They won't bother you
anymore." All the while, the camera stayed back, as if
watching the scene from several dozen yards away.

"Isn't that nice, the way they pulled back?" Ms. Spacek
said. "It's so much more powerful. You can see how alone
they really were, and him with that silly lamp."

Innocence Be Damned

The trial of Tom Robinson, which
takes up much of the middle section of the film, is the
longest sustained sequence in the movie, and it is
intensely frustrating to watch. Witness after witness makes
clear that Robinson is innocent of the crime; if anything,
he is a victim of having been too sympathetic to Mayella,
his accuser. But it is also abundantly clear that no amount
of evidence will be sufficient to protect him because it
would mean taking the word of a black man over the word of
two whites.

It ends, inevitably, with Robinson's conviction. But there
is a coda.

As Atticus, alone on the courtroom floor, gathers his
papers and prepares to leave, he is watched from above by
the black spectators - segregated in the courtroom balcony,
just as they were in the Gem Theater - and none of them
have left their seats. The two Finch children are up there,
too, having watched the trial as guests of the black
minister. Jem is devastated by the miscarriage of justice,
but Scout is still not fully aware of what has happened.
She looks around, a little puzzled. Slowly, one by one, the
black spectators rise to their feet as Atticus makes his
way out of the courtroom. "Stand up, Miss Jean Louise," the
minister says. "Your father is passing."

A half-choked sob escaped from Ms. Spacek. "Oh, that gets
me every time," she said. "Every single time." She paused
for a few moments, collecting herself. "What a great
character Atticus Finch is," she said. "Did you see? He
didn't even look up as he left the courtroom. He didn't
know they were standing up for him. That's not why he did
it, for the approval. To think that there might be people
in the world like him. A great film moment. A great, great
film moment."

When, in the movie's surprising closing scenes, Scout
understands that Boo Radley is yet another person whom she
wrongly prejudged, the two seemingly disparate story lines
come together with a satisfying, emotional snap. (The hint
comes earlier, when we learn that the objects in the
children's cigar box during the opening credits were
actually anonymous gifts that the children had discovered
in the knot-hole of a tree in the Radley yard.)

That, essentially, is what happens in "To Kill a
Mockingbird": the children's play world and the adult real
world crash into each other. The stories of Tom Robinson
and Boo Radley, a pair of mockingbirds, intersect through
the lives of children testing the waters of maturity.

"It's just poetry," Ms. Spacek said. "When I first saw it
as a child, I guess it was that first sequence, with the
cigar box, that just swept me away. Now, I guess really
it's still the simplicity that astounds me, and the depth
of it. It's so moving. `Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your
father is passing.' Everyone should have a dad like that.

"I love that it is in black and white. I love that it has a
kind of a theatrical quality yet remains very realistic.
And the acting, I think Gregory Peck is just great. He's
kind of the anchor."

The Best Water

She sat forward in her seat as the final swells of music
drifted away, Mr. Bernstein's simple score having grown
during the course of the movie into something lush and
rousing. She was thinking about the segregated seating in
the Gem Theater where she first saw the movie and also
about one of its scenes. Atticus is visiting the Robinson
shack on the wrong side of the tracks, and Jem, left behind
in the car, stares through the window at a black boy, about
the same age. They study each other silently.

"I remember a moment when I was a girl, about their age,
and I went with my mom out to this black woman's house who
was doing some reupholstering work for us," Ms. Spacek
said. "Whenever we'd go out there, I'd play with her kids.
We'd stay outside. It was hot in the summer and dusty, and
we were always thirsty. And I remember how one time they
opened up the lip of this well that they had, and pulled up
this big bucket of water and they took out a dipper and
passed it around. We took turns drinking from it. It went
from kid to kid. I remember thinking it was the sweetest,
coolest, most wonderful drink of water I ever had. It was a
real important moment in my life. I didn't realize it then,
but it was."

She brushed back her hair and stood up.

"There are wonderful things about the South," Ms. Spacek
said. "Wonderful things and terrible things. And this movie
illuminates both of them." She grabbed her bag, slung it
over her shoulder and wrapped a scarf more tightly around
her neck. It was cold and dark out on Park Avenue.

"If more people were like Atticus Finch," she said, "the
world would be a better place."

A Variety of Roles in a Productive Career

Highlights of
Sissy Spacek's career, and information on "To Kill a
Mockingbird."

What They Watched

"TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD." Directed by Robert Mulligan;
produced by Alan J. Pakula; screenplay by Horton Foote,
based on the novel by Harper Lee; original music by Elmer
Bernstein; cinematography by Russell Harlan; edited by
Aaron Stell. Starring Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Philip
Alford, Brock Peters, Robert Duvall and James Anderson.
1962. Universal. 129 minutes. VHS and DVD, $14.98.

Spacek's Films

"IN THE BEDROOM." Directed by Todd Field.
With Tom Wilkinson. 2001. Miramax. In theaters now.

"THE STRAIGHT STORY." Directed by David Lynch. With Richard
Farnsworth. 1999. Disney. 112 minutes. VHS, $17.99; DVD,
$27.99.

"BLAST FROM THE PAST." Directed by Hugh Wilson. With
Brendan Fraser. 1999. New Line Studios. VHS, 106 minutes,
$9.94; DVD, 111 minutes, $12.99.

"AFFLICTION." Directed by Paul Schrader. With Nick Nolte.
1997. Universal. 115 minutes. VHS, $14.98; DVD, $26.98.

"THE GRASS HARP." Directed by Charles Matthau. With Piper
Laurie. 1995. New Line Studios. 107 minutes. VHS, $19.98.

"J. F. K." Directed by Oliver Stone. With Kevin Costner.
1991. Warner Studios. VHS, 206 minutes, $17.98; DVD, 223
minutes, $21.49.

"CRIMES OF THE HEART." Directed by Bruce Beresford. With
Diane Keaton. 1986. Anchor Bay Entertainment. 105 minutes.
VHS, $5.99.

" 'NIGHT MOTHER." Directed by Tom Moore. With Anne
Bancroft. 1986. Universal. 96 minutes. VHS, $14.98.

"MARIE." Directed by Roger Donaldson. With Jeff Daniels.
1985. Warner Home Video. 112 minutes. VHS, $79.99.

"THE RIVER." Directed by Mark Rydell. With Mel Gibson.
1984. Universal, 122 minutes. VHS, $9.98; DVD, $24.28.

"MISSING." Directed by Costa-Gavras. With Jack Lemmon.
1982. Universal. 122 minutes. VHS, $9.98.

"COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER." Directed by Michael Apted. With
Tommy Lee Jones. 1980. Universal. 125 minutes. VHS, $9.98.

"WELCOME TO L.A." Directed by Alan Rudolph. With Keith
Carradine. 1977. United Artists. Not available on video.

"THREE WOMEN." Directed by Robert Altman. With Shelley
Duvall and Janice Rule. 1977. Lions Gate. Not available on
video.

"CARRIE." Directed by Brian De Palma. With Amy Irving.
1976. MGM/UA Studios. 98 minutes. VHS, $9.94; DVD, $17.98.

"BADLANDS." Directed by Terrence Malick. With Martin
Sheen. 1973. Warner. VHS, 97 minutes, $14.95; DVD, 93
minutes, $17.98.

"PRIME CUT." Directed by Michael Ritchie. With Lee Marvin.
1972. 20th Century Fox. 88 minutes. VHS, $29.98.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/01/movies/01WATC.html?ex=1103649043&ei=1&en=fb73acad34dcd04f