Horton Foote

A great American playwright died this week at the age of 92. As I remarked to Drischord, one of the most inspiring things about Horton Foote was that he didn't do his best work until he was in his 60s and 70s, and he was still putting up new plays as late as last year. He won his first Oscar in the 1960s for writing the screenplay for To Kill A Mockingbird, and below is a clip from another Oscar winning movie he wrote in 1983, Tender Mercies. The clip starts out with a couple of pretty great country songs, which in the movie Robert Duvall's character wrote for his ex-wife...and the clip closes with the kind of quiet, subtle, heartbreaking scene that nobody else could write better. Horton Foote will be missed!