Just days before what would have been his 93rd birthday, playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote, one of America's most elegant and humane writers, has passed away.
He will probably remain best known for his screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird -- and justly so, it's a masterpiece and a go-to example of how you turn a book into a film script making it even better -- but in his long career (Mr. Foote was blessed with a very productive, beautiful old age) as a playwright he told us simple stories of common people that gave us extraordinary insights in his characters inner lives -- Opera Chic can only think of Chekhov, and she doesn't think you can praise a man of the theater more than comparing him to the great Anton Pavlovich.
"I've spent my life listening", Mr. Foote used to say. He spent almost a century telling us what he heard. May he be blessed for that