This version excises ++ any sense of death, and death is absolutely at the heart of this story. The worst sin, though, is what they left out. So, hey, NTC let's just pad it out, and we'll be able sell another hour of ads. The 1966 version, produced and directed by Frank Perry - whose first film, 'David and Lisa,' is another small masterpiece about love - runs only about 45 minutes. So, why did they make all this stupid stuff up? To fill two hours and sell more ads. Buddy's supposed to be lonely - his loneliness is crucial to the tone of the story. Screenwriter and executive producer Duane Pool also created another character out of whole cloth, a girl (Julia McIlvane) for Buddy to be friends with so he won't be so lonely: more cliche-ridden, Southern claptrap with Buddy and the girl in a treehouse sharing secrets. She stops just short of saying, 'Lord, the trouble I've seen.'Īnd, just in case there are one or two black viewers who don't have problems with the depiction, the big joke about her is that she constantly tries to convince people she's a Native-American, not an African-American. And what a stereotype she is: large, motherly, superstitious and world-weary.

Next Week: War Room, Pawn Sacrifice, Pan, The Intern, Hotel Transylvania 2, Dragon Blade, The Giant King, Blackout, Street Fighter II the Animated Movie, and The Brain That Wouldn't Die.Further obliterating any sense of the Depression and lower social class, the household now has an African-American washwoman (Ester Scott).

New on DVD this week: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Ted 2, Roger Waters The Wall Special Edition, He Named Me Malala, Triumph of the Will (Blu-ray), Wolf Totem, Valley Inn, Stalingrad, Ghost Story and Dragon Blade. Just make sure it's the ABC Stage 67 production. Gloriously, the original can also be found, full length, on YouTube, so gather the family around the computer monitor with glasses of eggnog and enjoy. The time is the '30s, and the place is the rural South (roughly the time and place of To Kill a Mockingbird, written by his friend Harper Lee.) Though they're hard to find, videos exist from the two made-for-TV versions, the 1966 original (with Geraldine Page's Emmy-winning portrayal and narration by Truman Capote himself) and an inferior 1997 Hallmark version. This is a quaint, warm, funny and affecting tale of the friendship between a poor elderly woman and a young boy who is her distant cousin. Instead, I opted to recommend something not as well-known but equally good - the TV film made from Truman Capote's short story, A Christmas Memory. Scott Christmas Carol (both are super) or Jean Shepherd's hilarious A Christmas Story. As an alternative, critic Jack Garner recommends:Ī CHRISTMAS MEMORY: In my effort to recommend an appropriate Christmas movie for the season I, of course, considered either the Alistair Sim or George C.

A christmas memory 1966