M. David

First of all, this was an unfilmable book. There is no narrative plot to speak of; the book is part travelogue and part character profile. I'm sure the author John Berendt was flattered that Clint Eastwood wanted to buy the rights, but the resulting disaster was no one's fault BUT the author's for not being more discerning. Remember "A Chorus Line"? "Chorus" was also unfilmable. THEN, Sir Richard Attenborough got the directing job based on the fact that his last picture ("Ghandi") was a hit. Attenborough had no talent whatsoever with this kind of material, and several directors who at least had a HISTORY had already passed on the project. Can anybody take a hint? At about the same time that "Midnight" was being filmed in Savannah, Georgia, "The Gingerbread Man" was also being filmed there. "Gingerbread Man" was being directed by Robert Altman. What if the two directors had just switched projects? We can only imagine that the resulting movies would probably have been a lot better. ("The Gingerbread Man" was a flop.) The point is, material has to be matched with temperament and sensibility. As to some of the performances in the picture, the actor who played Sonny Seiler (Jim Williams' attorney) is an embarrassment, but the role was embarrassingly written. (The real Sonny Seiler, who plays a judge in the picture, is a quadruple embarrassment.) John Cusack LOOKS embarrassed throughout the picture. Aside from that, if you want to recreate the rest of Cusack's performance, look in the mirror and let your jaw go slack and let your eyes go vacant, like someone just smacked you on the head. There, you've got it.

When "Bloodline" was released in 1979, a major magazine review pointed out that in the course of the story, ostensibly for failure to pay a gambling debt, a character's knees are nailed to the floor. The critic then went on to say, `This is what Paramount Pictures is going to have to do to get audiences to sit through this picture.' There aren't enough negative things to say about this abomination of a movie. The meandering, incoherent story is hampered at every turn by ludicrously bad production values. The direction, the inept blocking of the scenes, the lighting, the sets – in every case conspires to make the results look cheap and hollow. The movie is really a miracle of dreadfulness. The following is one of thousand small crimes against cinema throughout the picture: There is an explosion in the street. This is conveyed by a flash of light on the actors in the scene and a sound effect. The next shot, meant to be the view of the street from the window, is a still photograph beneath which someone is apparently waving a lit piece of paper. Just before the cut from this scene, the photograph actually starts to buckle from the heat of the flame. And the filmmakers left this in the film! The real crime against cinema is the fact that the name of Audrey Hepburn is associated with this repugnant film, a monstrosity so putrid, one wishes every single copy of it would magically disappear.

It is difficult to tell if any member of the production company responsible for this appalling movie, ever read Truman Capote's original short story. The short story had at its center a delightfully willful heroine whose good deeds were only incidental to her self-centeredness. In more skillful hands, this wicked piece of literature could have reached the screen as a spare little piece of Southern Gothic. What the filmmakers chose instead to do was to turn Miss Lily Jane Bobbit into Pollyanna, the classic little do-gooder. It is not as if I am unaware of the eternal conflict between people's images and recollections of the printed word and what Hollywood ends up putting on the screen. Truman Capote himself called "Breakfast at Tiffany's", his most popular screen adaptation, a "mawkish valentine to Audrey Hepburn". (He later recanted that opinion, by the way.) Probably the best example of the expression "the movie captured the spirit of the book" occurred with "To Kill a Mockingbird", a production which recognized that source material needs to be treated with honesty and respect. Disappointments are inevitable, but a good adaptation requires just that -- honesty and respect. This production of "Children on Their Birthdays" not only lacks those qualities, but it also lacks good taste, while at every turn is busy making everything politically correct. My only solace in all this is that this picture will never receive a wide theatrical release, and will only be seen on video. It is too much to hope that this thing would just be shelved.