15 - Horton Foote

Summary

Every year the Telluride Film Festival pays special tribute to three people who have made vital contributions to the cinema. In 1997, one of the people honored was Horton Foote, who had been chosen for his work as a screenwriter. My job was to write the note for the festival program and the handout for the tribute, but thanks to a revised printer's deadline, I had to do them in one day. It was the day my father, Morris Kawin, died suddenly in a hospital a thousand miles away, and these pieces, which were very hard to write, are in his memory. They are also dedicated to my good friend Horton, who died in 2009 at the age of 92, still working.

Festival Program Note

People die for no good reason. Horton Foote doesn't know why, either. But he knows what to do: endure the pain that cannot go away—literally, live with it. Horton Foote's latest film, Alone (1997), was written after the death of his wife, Lillian Vallish Foote; its star, Hume Cronyn, also lost his wife, Jessica Tandy But this film is no dirge—it's an attempt to heal with art, to find a place where a writer and an actor and an audience can come together in a place of grief and find the continuing love that keeps us going.