5-11-CKS-HEYBOO

Mary McDonagh Murphy is an independent documentary director, writer and television producer. Her most recent work, Hey Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird, is one of the best documentaries I've seen in some time.

This film explores the history and the impact of the novel while looking at the life of Harper Lee herself. What is so amazing is, after its publication fifty years ago, this novel still sells nearly a million copies a year.

Harper Lee, at the time was a young woman from the South and this was her first and only novel. Today it is required reading in most American classrooms (as well it should be). Murphy is the author of an accompanying book, Scout, Atticus & Boo: Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird, a New York Times best seller published in June, 2010.

A movie was made of the novel in 1962, written for the screen by Horton Foote, who won an Academy Award for Best Writing of a screenplay based on material from another medium. It was probably one of Gregory Peck's most auspicious movie roles that also won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. And the film also won for Best Art Direction-Set Direction, Black and White.
Harper Lee stopped speaking to the press in 1964. But Hey, Boo was able to interview her sister Alice, her New York friends, as well as Tom Brokaw, Rosanne Cash, Oprah Winfrey and civil rights leader Andrew Young, just to name a few of the interesting interviews seen in the film. To add to the interest of the documentary, scenes from the movie are interspersed throughout.
Hey Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill A Mockingbird will open in Los Angeles Theatres May 13. In color, it runs for 82 minutes. Recommended.