Friday from the Archives: “Paul Green and the Movies” by Laurence G. Avery from NCLR 2012
On October 19th the Paul Green Foundation and EbzB Productions will be hosting a one-day film festival on the ECU campus to celebrate North Carolina playwright Paul Green. In preparation for this event, NCLR is revisiting the 2012 issue on North Carolina Literature Into Film and Laurence G. Avery’s essay on Green’s cinematic career.
As Avery states, “While his frustrations with Hollywood studios and producers is clear enough, Green retained a lifelong fascination with films and a belief in their potential as art” and produced several powerful films that dealt with Green’s “personal social concerns.” Along with Green’s career Avery also discusses Green’s friendships with the actors Will Rogers and George Arliss, who work with him on his films, and his more contentious relationship with “Green’s old nemesis Winfeild Sheehan” who Green found to be “stubbornly uninterested in the social problems of the day” Green was so interested in depicting.
Despite Green’s contentious relationship with the movie industry, which Green felt was plagued by “a common denominator of illiteracy and bad taste [that] systematically prohibited artistic experimentation,” his efforts as a screenwriter were ultimately successful. As Avery explains, Green concluded his “screenwriting career with a picture thematically close to his heart and over which he didn’t have to fight for artistic control”: his adaptation of John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, which helped to cement “Green’s image in the public mind as both an accomplished writer and a strong Southern voice for justice for African Americans.”
Read the whole essay here to learn more about Paul Green’s cinematic career or buy your own copy of NCLR 2012 from our website! And join us at ECU’s Blackbox Theatre on Saturday, October 19th for a double-feature on Paul Green. Find event details and a link to save your seat here.
