‘Flix Flick: Hey, Boo—Harper Lee & To Kill A Mockingbird

As I was watching the fascinating and incredibly touching documentary entitled, Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill A Mockingbird, I realized that to some degree the author Nelle Harper Lee could be considered, with the utmost respect and admiration, a “one-hit wonder” with her novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. Unfortunately, the phrase associated mostly with pop music, tends to carry along a negative, often glib connotation. People often think that certain artists for whatever reason could never duplicate their popular success again, because those singers or musicians weren’t really that good to begin with or what have you. When in fact, there are so many different reasons and circumstances as to why an artist does not capture lightning in a bottle for a second time or a third time and so forth. Just to have one single hit or bestseller is difficult enough.

I had always known that after To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee never published another book. Yet if one is going to have only one book published, let it be on the groundbreaking scale of To Kill A Mockingbird—a visionary book that has had, and still has, a profound historical and sociological influence on the subject of race in the U.S.

The film profiles Lee, raised in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama, and how she took a chance on the big lonely city of New York to become a writer. Drawing from certain family members and neighbors in Monroeville, Lee wrote a manuscript, Atticus, and after several edits and rewrites, eventually became To Kill A Mockingbird. There are several interviews in the film with writers and journalists and many others who detail the story behind the story, and the story behind the subsequent film, starring the Academy Award-winner Gregory Peck, who played the father, defense lawyer and the epitome of the honest, just man, Atticus Finch. (Peck’s performance is arguably one of the best performances by a male actor in the history of filmmaking.)

Interviewees also read passages from the book, allowing one to truly appreciate the gift Lee had to create beautifully vivid sentences and paragraphs. Hearing the journalist Tom Brokow speak in that amazing voice of his is worth the rental. In addition, TV icon and actress Oprah, with tears in her eyes, reads the passage that features the classic line, “Your father is passing.” (God, I love Oprah!)

The film also devotes a section to Lee’s childhood friend, Truman Capote. To think that two of the most important and gifted American writers of the 20^th century didn’t just come from the same town or city or state, but were literally next-door neighbors. What odds! Lee even based the To Kill A Mockingbird character, Dill on her childhood friend. The film also chronicles the relationship between the two as adults, with emphasis mostly on how Capote handled—or didn’t handle—Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning success.

Hey, Boo captures how an independent woman with a true talent can contribute something so big and so important that it’s referred to as the “national novel” of the United States. However, it also explores the mystery, the possible fear, the disillusionment, the double-edge sword that comes with having the blessing and the curse known as the “one-hit wonder.” BSo