Why I am Walking for Story . . .

Among these women, I believe is another To Kill a Mockingbird or Ordinary People

Harper Lee, a United Airlines stewardess, changed my life. in 1962, I read her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, in 6th grade. My perception of race and injustice was transformed forever by her. In that same class, I had my first transmedia experience. My entire grade got on a bus, traveled to a movie theater and, together, in a matinee screening, watched To Kill a Mockingbird, the beloved classic starring Gregory Peck. A book, then a movie! Wow! And, so, so moving, because, previously, as a kid, I had read Harper Lee’s masterpiece.

When I was 25 and a lowly reader at Paramount Pictures, I dropped to my knees (literally), begging my boss to option a 623 page manuscript, Ordinary People, written by a Minnesota homemaker, Judy Guest. I had never read a novel that spoke to the emotional repression of my own youth. I knew it would speak to millions of others but I was a mere kid at the studio.

The opposition to the manuscript was fierce. It was an “art movie.” Two years later, I sat on the Paramount lot with Judy Guest who had never been to Hollywood, and the Sundance Kid, Robert Redford, who was hired to direct…