Chris Dickey, who posted a comment last week, is the author of Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son, a much more vast and revealing book than any simple retelling of the months in which the movie was made could be. His revelations about his father can be stern, but the affection is always there, and he’s no slouch on other matters. Having described the illusion of using one boy holding and “playing” the banjo while a second, hidden boy worked the frets with his left hand, he observes the other Clayton, GA natives who served as extras in the film: “Of course Hollywood paid these people and treated them as gently as it knew how to do, but it was hard to get over the feeling as the lights went on and the cameras rolled that souls were being stolen here.” (p.170) Reading the book may help a little to ransom them back.
RTS 9/2/11
