Children on Their Birthdays (2002)

Director:

Mark Medoff

Writers:

Truman Capote (short story)
Douglas Sloan (writer)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Family

Tagline:

Sometimes extraordinary things happen in the most ordinary places

Plot:

12 year old Lily Bobbit moves to Medda, Ala, and immediately makes an impression on the residents when she and her friends team up to outsmart a con man, the town is changed forever.

Plot Keywords:

Friendship | Alabama | Bittersweet | Americana | Widow

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Sheryl Lee	...	Elinore Murphy (as Sheryl Lee Diamond)
Joe Pichler	...	Billy Bob Murphy
Jesse Plemons	...	Preacher Star
Tania Raymonde	...	Lily Jane Bobbit
Christopher McDonald	...	Speedy Thorne
Tom Arnold	...	Lionel Quince
Phyllis Frelich	...	Mrs. Bobbit
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Cynthia Baker	...	Ada Willingham
Tom Brainard	...	Comedian
Brazhal Brewer	...	Rosalba Cat
Ritch Brinkley	...	Acey Trump
Emily Clibourn	...	Cora Mae
Freeman Coffey	...	Mr. Cat
Caitlin Collins	...	Janice
Susan Coolidge	...	Cowgirl Singer
Marilyn Dodds Frank	...	Mrs. Quince
John Judd	...	Jeb
Weston Mueller	...	Butch
Lucina Paquet	...	Mrs. Sawyer
Alexander Piccolo	...	Malcolm Doralle
Paul Quaintance	...	Reverend
Joe Van Slyke	...	Mr. Dixon

MPAA:

Rated PG for mild thematic elements and brief language.

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

Germany:o.Al. | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Aurora, Illinois, USA

Company:

Frantic Redhead Productions

Movie Connections:

References The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Soundtrack:

Signed It Always

Painfully Unfaithful to the Original Short Story

If you love Capote, and if you love his whimsical, dark, comic short story "Children on Their Birthdays", DO NOT WATCH this unfaithful and insulting adaptation. The writers and producers have turned Mr. C's insightful piece on the role of the artist in society into melodramatic slop touching on a wishy-washy childhood crush and a stale, lukewarm statement on prejudice and race. Gone are the biting satire, insight, clever language, and punch-in-the-gut beginning and ending sentences of the original piece replaced by a made-for-TV generic script and story that bare little if any resemblance to the source material.

Capote when he died asked to be cremated, half his ashes interned on the west coast and half on the east so that he could be throughout eternity be bi-coastal. Though he can't roll in his grave, his ashes are surely undulating in their urns in California and New York after this disgrace bearing the name of one his most wonderful and cherished short stories.