Years after the filming of To Kill a Mockingbird, several of the makers of it as well as those who played in it were interviewed. It was agreed that there were two truly magical moments in the film. The first is at the very beginning. The title sequences with the little girl humming and singing to herself, the use of the cigar box with its contents like the rolling marble, together with the little girl drawing, and then tearing, the crayon picture of the mockingbird accompanied by her little girl's lyrically musical, giggling laughter. The whole scene draws you into the magical world of a happy child, the happiest of all worlds imaginable.

The second magical moment occurred early in the film. It is bedtime; Scout is in bed and Atticus is listening to her read. As she is getting ready to be tucked in to go to sleep, she asks to see Atticus' watch.

The whole scene, the mystical, magical bonding between an innocent little girl and her father, little Scout's stretching and yawning, the way she holds her father's watch in her small hands and reads the inscription, cuddling her teddy bear while being tucked in and the sleepy questions to Jem about their mother is not only magical, it is the most touching scene of the film. It is the reason Mary Badham was nominated for an Oscar for virtually no one with a good conscience and a genuine love of children can help being touched by the captivating and precious tenderness of such a thing. It appeals to the very best in all of us as human beings.

But as Mary said years later, she wasn't acting; she was just being a little girl. And that is always magic. But it isn't the kind of magic to which the world awards its plaudits of recognition and praise. We adults don't reward the natural gift of the art and wisdom of childhood; we reward the adult that has to work hard at even pretending they still have this magical and natural art and wisdom of childhood.

The producers of the film in this interview, which occurred so many years after the making of it, were right. There has never been another film like To Kill a Mockingbird. There is no other film like it. And while all the superlatives have been used in attempting to describe it, I especially like what director Robert Mulligan said of it in eloquently classic and elegant understatement: “It is a very particular film.”

But most of the major film studios wouldn't touch the book regardless of it being a Pulitzer Prize winner and so popular with the reading public because they couldn't see any real story in it that would appeal to moviegoers. The consensus of the studios quoting one executive, “There's no story; there's no action, no romance, no obvious sex or violence.”

This, of course, was an early indication To Kill a Mockingbird was a book of far greater depth than anyone really knew, notwithstanding its Pulitzer status. But it would take time for this to be discovered.

In its film form, it took the genius of people like Horton Foote (who won the best screenplay Oscar for his work), Elmer Bernstein, Robert Mulligan, and Alan Pakula to make the story. And it took the talented genius of those like the children, Gregory Peck, and the superb artistic qualities of others to make it come alive on-screen.

It took real artistic genius for the makers of the film to accomplish so very successfully the transporting of an audience back to the time during which the events of the film take place, wonderfully enhanced by Bernstein's hauntingly beautiful musical score of genius simplicity, much like that of the novel itself, and the exquisitely distinctive and natural Southern charm of Kim Stanley's voice as narrator.

But while Gregory Peck was an undisputed natural for the role of Atticus, the most difficult task confronting the producers was to find the right children for the roles of Scout and Jem. Hundreds of children all through the South were tried before Mary Badham and Phillip Alford were selected, only to discover they lived within four blocks of each other in Birmingham but had never met.

If miracles ever occur in film making, this was one. The two children were not only perfectly suited for the roles of Scout and Jem, even having the necessary family resemblance and characteristics, anyone watching the film cannot fail to appreciate how naturally the two children interact as though they are, in fact, brother and sister.

Another miracle, as one might be excused for so construing it, was in the totally innocent and naturally unaffected talent of little Mary Badham, this really setting the film apart from all others and making it what it is: A truly great film.

I certainly agree with those who say that there has never been a film like To Kill a Mockingbird. It stands uniquely alone, and has a peculiar and distinctive place all by itself in the whole of the history of filmmaking. The film and its history are a worthy study in and of themselves.

However, if there is a single most important aspect to the film, it is this: While Peck was given an Oscar; one should have gone to Mary Badham. It wasn't Peck who made the film what it is; it was Mary! What makes this so very significant is the fact that adults still lack the wisdom of childhood. And adults made the film claiming to try to capture things through the eyes of children. They didn't. And the Oscar went to Peck.

But as I mentioned previously, the film while a work of art in its own right and deserving of the praise and plaudits it received and still receives couldn't tell the real story of the novel, the real story Harper Lee captures so vividly through the eyes of the children, especially little Scout. The film comes close during those two magical scenes of the title sequences and in that early scene of little Scout and Atticus. And it shows, but without telling why, little Scout is walking Boo to his house with her hand in his arm rather than leading him by the hand. But as I have said, it would have taken a film of epic length to explain things like this; and the filmmakers knew the film would only succeed on the basis of adult issues and behaviors, not those of children.

Further, it can be argued that in 1962 no filmmaker would dare touch the real issues of the book in the way Harper Lee does in the novel itself. I would argue it isn't even possible now. And I am certain Harper Lee had to hold herself in check at times, which is clearly evidenced by some of her hints and allusions of things and issues that people even today don't want to recognize or speak of.

However, I give the film’s makers and those who played in it a lot of credit, and most especially little Mary Badham, for creating a work of art that despite a few rough spots stands alone among films in its artistic greatness.

But to repeat, it didn't, nor do I believe it could, tell the real story of Harper Lee's novel. And it is that real story, or rather, I believe, the story behind the story, told the way Harper Lee tells it, that makes her book stand alone as a work of genius which I compare with the best of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky; and even exceeding these in the very genius of the simplicity of its greatness. But, then, I maintain greatness is a simple thing, almost ingenuous if you will.

For example, the real test of greatness is time. The novel came out in 1960. I have had all these years of reading it and am still learning things from it. The story, the way Harper Lee wrote it, is a treasure hunt; one I can compare with Thoreau's Walden. You may go over the same ground many times and miss a gem. Then, at some point in your life, simply due to the experiences of life, while you are going over such familiar ground your eye suddenly catches the glint of some exquisite jewel you missed so many times before.

I have only to look at the notations, which I have made over the years in my copy of the book, the pages now fragile and yellowed by time just like my copy of Walden, to realize this. And, as with my copy of Walden, I am still making new notations every time I read it.

The thrill and excitement of discovery is often enhanced by the realization that in some cases Thoreau and Harper Lee missed the import of these things in their entirety as well, that they wrote better than they knew. But as I have learned, one of the characteristics of genius is to often be unaware of its own genius.

This is why I believe Harper Lee, especially, wrote better than she knew. As she has Dill say (probably due to the influence of her childhood friend, Truman Capote, who was a kind of model for Dill) after the trial and having wept over the outcome “I think I'll be a clown when I get grown...There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh.”

Little Dill is already beginning to learn the wisdom of adulthood and lose the wisdom of a child, and much more quickly than Mr. Raymond had prophesied. Adult wisdom is already beginning its dirty work of destroying the child's wisdom of fairness and justice, and replacing it with the adult “wisdom” of the cynicism: There's nothing you can really do about overcoming evil. And so it is that the history of humankind has been one of unremitting hatreds, prejudices, and warfare by forsaking the wisdom of childhood.

Adult wisdom amounts to this: There's no use being a child unless you know the world is going to eventually break your heart! To which I reply: What's wrong with this picture? But even as I say the words I know it takes wisdom to figure this out, wisdom the world has yet to attain.

I find it passing strange that I am the kind of man who loves books and films like Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolias, and still be the kind of tough-minded, hard-edged man I am in so many other ways. I believe it was my children who saved me from becoming callous, cynical, and bitter. And though I failed them in innumerable ways it was my children who brought out the best part of me as a man, even as his children brought out the best in Atticus.

After little Scout's miraculously ingenuous dispersal of the lynch mob, Atticus makes this observation to Jem and Scout: So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it? That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Maybe we need a police force of children....

An intriguing thought isn't it, a police force of children.

What will not be done for the sake of civilized and sane conscience, the law must do. Just laws are for the protection of the civilized and intended to punish evildoers, the lawless that act without conscience, not the law-abiding that have no fear of just laws. On the contrary, the law-abiding, the good and civilized people of good, sane, and sensible conscience applaud and support such laws; which made it all the more impossible for Scout, Jem, and Dill to understand how that jury could have found Tom Robinson guilty. Such a verdict was so very obviously and totally unfair, unjust, without conscience, and in fact, insane to the children!

But a mob is often made up of one's friends and neighbors as Atticus points out to the children. Whenever I confront friends and good people with their own sin of hypocrisy by their agreeing that children must be the closest thing to the heart of God Himself and then living as though there is anything of greater importance, I am seldom thanked for the service I do them.

If I point out that the world itself behaves as a lynch mob because the greatest minds throughout history have lacked the wisdom to cherish children, that the greatest civilizations have warred and met destruction repeatedly because the greatest leaders of history have lacked such wisdom, that the particular cases of Boo Radley and Tom Robinson are evidence of things having never changed for the better for children I don't meet with much applause.

The mob that wanted to lynch Tom Robinson was composed of friends and neighbors of Atticus, many of them calling themselves, and undoubtedly even believing themselves God-fearing people, Jesus-and-Bible-believing and loving people. And had not the children intervened, these good friends and neighbors, these God-fearing, Jesus-and-Bible-believing and loving people would have hurt Atticus to get to Tom Robinson and lynch him! And these very same people comprised the jury that found Tom Robinson guilty!

The most difficult part of the message of the children is that it confronts good people, good people that as a mob or unjust jury will condemn the innocent. But if good people will allow little Scout to confront them individually, the wisdom of a sane, good, and pure conscience will prevail.

It is on an individual basis that good people prove their ability to respond to the need to protect that wise innocence of children which is the single most precious thing that is the responsibility of adults to protect! Once that lynch mob was confronted by this fact in little Scout, they came to their senses. The challenge is to direct these good individuals to come together in concert for the good of children, all children.

But not in the name of their peculiar institutions or religious beliefs, not in the name of Democrats or Republicans or any other but simply because it is their duty and responsibility as adult human beings, simply because it is the right and wise thing to do! This is one of the things that militate against people supporting this concept; they cannot hang any of their bigotries, religious or political prejudices on it. It carries no baggage being simply the right and wise thing for people, all people, to do.

However, the lynch mob, the unjust jury, the comfortable congregation, is led of a pack mentality, a pack mentality that includes the insanity of groupthink. Or, in such cases, the group insanity led of the prejudices that make good people so utterly lacking in wisdom agree together to commit evil in the hypocritical corruption of the very names of God, justice, and fairness!

Scout points out how Atticus needed her, how he couldn't get along a day without her helping and advising him. Atticus had done a marvelous job as a father raising his little girl to think in such a way. He had made her feel important and needed.

Of course Scout couldn't know as a child of the things that really made her so important and needed to her father, the things he responded to in his little girl that led her to believe he relied on her help and advice. She couldn't know how important and needed it was to Atticus for her to climb up on his lap and hug him, how important and needed it was to her father for him to be able to tuck her into bed and kiss her good night, and how important and needed she was in making her father a real man, a fair and just man, a real gentleman who didn't dare betray his little one's love and trust!

We men need our boys. We want to be able to teach our boys to be men. But we need the cherishing of our little girls to make us men soft in the right places so that the melding of the hard and soft results in the right alloy of toughness to both be able to love as well as be able to confront, fight, and overcome evil.

There is absolutely no greater influence for good in the life of any man than to have his child climb onto his lap seeking the warmth and strength of his love and protection. No king on any throne can possibly possess such wealth and power as a man with his arms about that trusting little one he is holding. And no man with such memories can straightaway forsake these and go about doing evil. I believe God meant children to be this influence for good in men's lives, to bring out the best in the best of men.

And knowing this how is it possible that the world has never attained to the wisdom of such a thing? How is it possible that humankind still behaves too many times as a lynch mob? How is it possible that humankind still looks to God or some messiah to deliver it from its own seeming helplessness and inability to confront evil and for the good to be victorious?

But it is a self-imposed tyranny of evil through blind, ignorant, and hateful prejudices that makes good people seemingly impotent in the face of evil, that has prevented enough good men and women coming together in common cause for the common good of all humankind. Through this allowed and self-imposed tyranny of evil, good people have failed to make that common good of all humankind, Children, their priority.

Then, rather than accept personal responsibility for ridding themselves of this tyranny of evil, good people will turn to blaming others, institutions, and even God for the evil! And then good people will tell themselves that had they sat on Tom Robinson's jury they would not have been party to such a perversion in the name of justice, that they would have stood up and been counted. And these same good people will say their prayers at night and go to sleep with an easy conscience while the children continue to be molested, brutalized and murdered without hope of either protection or justice!

After the trial, Jem and Scout are asking their father how such a blatant injustice as that committed against Tom Robinson was possible in the face of his obvious innocence? In the course of trying to explain Atticus tells the children, “It's all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in you children's time.”

Jem and Scout retire to Jem's room to discuss some of the things their father has told them. Jem is trying to be the big brother and keep the peace between Scout and their aunt. For example, Jem tells Scout to try to get along with Aunt Alexandra; that she is only trying to help Scout become a lady, something Scout heartily resents. In fact, when Jem says to Scout, “Can't you take up sewin' or somethin'?” Scout's immediate and direct reply is, “H--- no.”

Scout is only eight and has no real command or understanding of invective. She innocently uses the profanity because she thinks this is how she has to react to a big brother who is trying to push her around, insisting she become a lady, a traumatic change from Jem accusing her of acting like a girl such a short time ago. This is the only device besides her fists she knows to stick up for herself without mother or sister, or even a close girl playmate in her male-dominated environment.

But things settle down between them, and the children begin discussing what makes people different. Their aunt has told them they come from good people of good breeding; that some others like the Cunninghams are trash and fine people like themselves, the Finches, should not associate with them.

Scout particularly resents this; in fact it infuriates her, causing her to lose her temper. This helps to account for her using the word “h---;” she was angry with her aunt and she becomes angry with Jem when he seems to be trying to boss her. She likes little Walter Cunningham and would like to have him visit. But this brought on the comments by her aunt concerning what she considered suitable friends for the children and Scout's resulting, furious resentment.

Scout's resentment and anger is also born of another source, one she simply cannot understand. Her father would never call anyone “trash;” he treated everyone alike, often going out of his way to be polite to people whom his sister, aunt Alexandra, obviously thought and spoke of as “trash.” How could her aunt be so different from Atticus? It didn't make sense. And all this fuss about background and ancestors; why should such things make a difference between people, why should such things be so obviously important to aunt Alexandra and not to Atticus? Atticus and Aunt Alexandra were brother and sister. How could they be so close and think so differently? Scout and Jem sometimes wondered about stories of “changelings.”

As Scout and Jem calm down and begin reflecting on what their aunt has said and trying to work through the differences between people, Jem says in evaluating their aunt's remarks, “The thing about it is, our kind of folks don't like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don't like the Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folks.” Neither of the children can really understand why this is so. They just know it's the way things are. But they also know, as only children do, that there is something plainly wrong with this and are trying to make sense of it. Scout says she thinks folks are just folks and that's the way it ought to be.

Jem's face grows cloudy at Scout’s observation and he says to her, “That's what I thought too ... If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time ... it's because he wants to stay inside.”

What normal adult can't understand the confusion of Jem and Scout? But I can't get away from little Dill's cynical conclusion: “I think I'll be a clown when I get grown...There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh.”

Children should never have to become so cynical or have the wisdom of childhood destroyed by adults who have given up the fight and give countless and much practiced excuses for their hypocrisy, for their forsaking their own personal responsibility to confront and overcome evil!

I repeatedly hear of this or that person doing good for children. But when I pursue these stories, too many times I discover such people often don't even know the name of their State or U.S. Senator, they don't even know the name of their Representative in Congress, they have never written a letter to an editor of their local paper or their legislator; local, state or federal. Some who are eligible aren't even registered to vote! And many that are registered don't bother!

No matter what good people think they are doing to make things better for children, is it that such good people think they are really making a difference when they are not involved in the political process? And yet so many of these good people are among the first to complain against the suffering of children, complaining about so many unjust laws and corrupt legislators. This is hypocrisy which good people fail to recognize as such!

Such people may be good people, but they are not good citizens! And when you are too busy to be a good citizen, you will wake up one day only to discover you were too busy to be free!

No matter how many good works people think they are accomplishing by teaching in a public or Sunday school or working with children in any capacity, they are doing nothing of any lasting value unless they are also actively involved with the political process at all levels: local, state, and federal.

I grow weary of the stories of this or that one, of how much of an effect they are having for the good of children when such people haven't so much as written their local politicians or the editor of their local paper! Don't delude yourself that real change for the better for children can ever be accomplished without good people being politically active. It isn't going to happen. Wicked, evil people seem to know this even if good people don't!

But it is far easier for example to delude yourself that you are making a real difference by teaching a class of some kind, perhaps working in some social service capacity or other. There you are, actually working with children and thinking all the while you are making a substantial difference. If you are not active in the political process you are deceiving yourself.

There are many preaching from thousands of pulpits across America that delude themselves they are making a difference. I used to be one of these. But in fact most of these are men who will never accept women and children as of equal value to men and preach accordingly using the Bible, Torah, or Koran to “prove” women are inferior to men. And in doing so, put the lie to their profession of faith by denying the equal value of women and children to men, by denying that children are the closest thing to the heart of God Himself, and refusing to accept their share of the blame for contributing to the resulting misery of children and the denigrating of women!

Making a real difference is being a responsible part of the power of We the People, a good citizen regardless of your religion or politics, to change government so that you are a part of the solution for all the children, not just the few with whom you are working. I spent many years working with thousands of children and suffering the same delusion that I was making a real difference before I realized the truth of this. Go ahead and become an Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa, go ahead and build an orphanage, go ahead and become a teacher, be a foster parent, a Big Brother or Sister, a mentor, a Scout leader. These things are good, noble, and worthy works in the cause of children, for humankind. But they won't change anything! They never have and they never will!

As good and noble, as needed as good works are on behalf of children, in and of themselves they will never accomplish the goal of changing things for the better for all the children without Americans becoming good citizens. The magnitude of evil, the size of the Beast, if you will, is too great to overcome by any single effort, or combination of efforts now existing because they are often so fragmented and very often at cross purposes because of religious or political differences and prejudices.

I wish I could get good people, We the People, to understand that unless we have good government, good leaders and good laws nothing is going to change for the better no matter how much time, energy, and money is expended on all good works no matter how many children good people believe they are helping. I wish I could get good people involved in the political process, that good people would recognize the way to accomplish something of substantive and lasting value for all children is the task of good citizens. As I came to realize, I could never make things really better for my own children until things became better for all children.

Good people throughout history have allowed the insanity of their own prejudices to overcome the wise sanity of prioritizing and cherishing children, all children, and the result has been a history of the insanity of hatreds based on prejudices, invariably leading to the insanity of every description of lynch mob and war rather than the wise sanity of peace.

Looks simple enough on the face of it, doesn't it. Then what's the problem? The problem is the prejudices of good people who consistently fail to recognize or admit of such prejudices, good people who refuse to admit of their prejudices or face them for they are, and consistently confuse what they believe with what they know. The problem is the same one throughout history that has led to the need of the vigilante and Boo Radley, and to good people who will become a lynch mob or a jury condemning the innocent like Tom Robinson to death, to good people who will kill one another in the name of God, race, or political ideologies.

But when little Scout climbs up on her father's lap, when that little one knows she is protected, needed, and loved. Ah, what a difference that should make in a man! No man with that memory, no man with such power and wealth in his arms, no man who loves as Atticus loved his children, is going to let any prejudice rule his passions. I believe such a man's passions and mind already have a monarch, and one who rules with the wisdom of love, God Himself, through His most precious little agents of love and wisdom: Children.

Simple enough? Just try preaching this sermon. Watch good men, for example, nod their heads in the affirmative of the need of their accepting women and children as of equal value to men, of the civilizing influence of women and children to contravene war. Then watch these same men in their hypocrisy go on about business as usual!

It is so very easy to accept the fact that there is no belief or fear of God in people like the evil Ewell or his daughter, people that put their hands on a Bible and swear before God and neighbors, before all humankind to tell the truth, and then lie in order to put an innocent man to death. But it is not easy to accept the fact that obviously good people may have no belief or fear of God in them.

But logic would seem to demand this to be the case. If good people are going to agree that children are the closest thing to the heart of God Himself and then live as though there is something of greater importance, the very least such good people are guilty of is the stench of hypocrisy!

I have said that most people would say it is easy to be on the side of the angels. I have also pointed out the fact that while this is easy to say, it is very difficult to practice. Particularly when you attempt to be on the side of the angels in trying to speak for the children in confronting the prejudices and hypocrisies of good people.