Patrick Stoner welcomes
your questions about movies and the people who make them. Send your
questions to
pstoner@whyy.org.
Patrick Stoner welcomes
your questions about movies and the people who make them. Send your
questions to
pstoner@whyy.org.
Here's the current question and answer...
Q: What makes you do this job?
A: Gregory Peck.
I suppose he won't be with us much longer (based on recent news reports), so I'm all the more glad I had the opportunity to tell him the one time I interviewed him [for OLD GRINGO]. Now I'll tell you.I first felt Gregory Peck's influence in 1962, when I was 15. My mother had died many years before. I always spent the middle of each week -- when my dad had to be at his plant -- with my aunt, in town. She lived across the street from a movie theater, and I saw every movie that played -- not once, but each of the three nights that films ran in those days.
One of the films that came to my little town of Woodstock, Va., that year was TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Nearly everyone has seen it: A white Southern lawyer (Gregory Peck) who is a single father defends a black man falsely accused of rape. He goes up against entrenched attitudes and loses, but he wins the respect of his young son, who is told by an elderly black man as Peck exits the court -- in words that still move me -- "Stand up, boy, your father's passing."
That Oscar-winning role and the message of dignity, fairness, and courage it conveyed back then were among the images I used as a role model for the kind of man I wanted to be. I fell short of that goal, but that's OK. It was and is still a model of manhood that's part of my life.
That kind of influence on our attitudes, images, and feelings is a part of every moviegoer's life. When a film moves you or teaches you something about human nature or even just gives you a sense of community and happiness, it becomes a part of your life -- not just as a child, but at any age.
So, now I'm a film critic, and I interview the people who make movies. About a hundred public television stations air my material each week. If anything I do results in even one other person feeling the same inspiration as Gregory Peck's heroic scenes have done for me, then all my efforts are worth it.