My farewell to Netflix DVDs

Yes, the time has come to say so long. Cue Carol Burnett.

I made the plunge the other day. I cut back my Netflix account to streaming only. I can't justify the extra cost. Plus, I'm going to be busy getting married during the month of September.

I remember when my first batch of movies arrived in the mail back in 2005. I was recovering from surgery to remove a kidney stone. The upstairs air conditioning unit at my grandparents' house was low on Freon. My first discs were the first batch of "Upstairs Downstairs" episodes and "Eight Men Out." I can't for the life of me remember what the third disc was.

Somewhere along the way I dropped back to the one-out-at-a-time unlimited plan. I finally got the streaming option as part of that plan but I didn't use it much until earlier this year when Jennifer brought over the Wii she'd never taken out of the box. I didn't like watching movies on my laptop. I do like being able to stream them onto the TV set.

Tonight I watched what is probably my Netflix DVD swan song -- the documentary "Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill A Mockingbird.'" Great flick. Everybody from Tom Brokaw to Oprah Winfrey to Mary "Scout" Badham reads portions of the novel. Writers, actors, TV stars and even Harper Lee's 90-year-old sister take turns talking about the book and the film and what it all means. The director even unearthed an audio recording of the last interview Harper Lee gave, to a radio station, in 1964.

It's long been suggested that Lee isn't Scout. She's Boo Radley. And why not? If I had the cash and had produced such a fine work of art, I'd tell the world to leave me alone, too.

It also makes me wonder what's in the water down in Monroeville, Alabama. Harper Lee and Truman Capote grew up next door to one another. The guy who wrote "Crazy in Alabama" is from there, too.

It's funny. Browsing my Netflix queue, I see films I put on the list back in '05. Never got around to them. Yeah, I'll probably miss the occasional episodes of "Perry Mason." No, I don't think my life will be any poorer because I didn't make it down to "Danger Man."

I'm not happy about the price increase. But it's obvious that streaming video is the wave of the future. Netflix is pumping more money into it. They don't have to worry about the skyrocketing cost of postage. Plus, the streaming video feeds our modern desire for instant gratification.

I like old movies and documentaries. Streaming Netflix offers a plethora of both. Life goes on.

Still, I'll miss seeing those red envelopes in the mailbox. It was always nice to get something in the post besides a bill.

Finch is still a hero

MARYVILLE, Tenn. -- Here it was, the perfect film ("To Kill A Mockingbird"), shown the perfect way (on the big screen), in a perfect venue (the historic Palace Theater). Perfect, right?

Well, almost.

I walked into the theater about 6:40 last night and started looking for the projection room. My heart fell a bit when I realized the film was going to be shown via digital projection. Movies on the big screen should ALWAYS be shown via a 35 millimeter print.

Prior to the picture, organizers felt the need to have a law professor from UT deliver a bit-too-long essay on the film and its themes. The movie was being shown as part of Blount County's Martin Luther King Jr. Week festivities.

Her talk ended up OK, but she brought up an infamous 2009 New Yorker article by UK-born Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell that attacks the notion that the beloved Atticus Finch of the novel and film is a Civil Rights pioneer.

I read the piece when it was published and did so again this morning. What the writer does is one of the biggest sins of the politically-correct era -- he uses modern-day values to judge an earlier time. He also has no sense of historical perspective. He's also just plain wrong.

Gladwell says that Finch isn't a Civil Rights hero because he doesn't do enough to shake things up in Maycomb during and after Tom Robinson's trial. (For those unfamiliar with the novel and film, Robinson is falsely accused of raping a white woman; Finch is his lawyer.)

Well, let's think about it. The novel is set in 1932 Alabama. A prominent white lawyer vigorously defending a black man of such a crime at that time in that place would have been nothing short of bold and revolutionary. Period.

The writer also claims that Finch asks the jury to exchange one prejudice (about a black man) for another (about a poor white family). Wrong. What he does is ask the jury to believe the word of an honest man over the word of a liar.

Gladwell also unconvincingly compares Finch with populist Alabama Gov. James "Big Jim" Folsom. The problem with the comparison is that Finch as a character hails from the Depression-era South. Folsom was governor of Alabama following World War II.

After my blood pressure shot up thinking about this article, I calmed down and enjoyed the only movie I've ever seen that is just as good (if not better) than the fine novel on which it's based. Screenwriter Horton Foote deservedly won an Oscar for his excellent adaptation.

It's all here -- Gregory Peck's Academy Award-winning turn as Atticus, Elmer Bernstein's haunting musical score, Robert Duvall's screen debut as Boo Radley, Mary Badham's scene-stealing turn as the spunky Scout. It's a perfect picture, pure and simple.

"To Kill A Mockingbird," both Harper Lee's novel and the Robert Mulligan film, has done much to win over the hearts and minds of at least three generations of Americans -- and it's still doing so. Sheri Webber, one of my beloved high school English teachers, told me in 2007 that the novel continues to cause a vigorous debate in her 9th grade classroom over race relations and prejudice. And, yes, she says, the racism is still very much alive.

I don't know whether the New Yorker staff writer was trying to be cute, condescending or just plain controversial. Whatever the case, his thesis stinks, his piece smacks of shameless revisionism at best and regional prejudice at worst.

As for "To Kill A Mockingbird," it stands as an appeal to the better angels of our nature, a heartwarming tribute to the human spirit, a nod to the power of a young girl's honest innocence, a sober reminder of the danger of ignorance.

And, yes, my friends, Atticus Finch still stands too, as tall and heroic as he ever was.

The South as a character...

It's hot.

No, really. It's hot.

Standing outside the newly-built St. Mary's Hospital North for the hospital's dedication this afternoon, I felt like I'd stepped back into some old black and white movie, maybe "To Kill A Mockingbird," always set in the South, and always hot.

The heat was oppressive. Hot. Smothering. I've never been more thankful for air conditioning in my life.

Told somebody the other day I think I may write a novel sometime about the South as a character. Throw in its faults and its charms, its quirks and its eccentricities, its uniqueness and its uniformity, and use that heat as part of the plot.

Aah, Faulkner's done it already. Williams. Even Harper Lee in her one beautiful book. But it's a thought.

Tonight I want to park myself in front of the fan and refuse to move. It's getting worse later this week. I dread those afternoons in my toaster oven office.

Tried to watch "Key Largo" tonight. Fell asleep. Couldn't bring myself to screen "Mr. Smith" again. Swallow too much Capracorn and you turn into syrup.

I may tackle more McCarthy before bed. A friend says reading prose like that takes time. Indeed. You don't curl up with Cormac, that's for sure.

Why not just turn on the radio? Something calm and cool. I'm thinking Ellington, or pre-fusion Miles ("Kind of Blue"). Maybe even a little Buffett.

Whatever it is, that will be me, the guy staying cool by the fan.