What a waste of my time!!!

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Sadly Over-hyped

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A much better, much-abbreviated version of this documentary appears as "The Song of the Mockingbird" on the "special 35th Anniversary commemorative edition" VHS tape I have. Interestingly, this appears on the tape AFTER the movie itself, which, before the advent of DVDs, was an idea I liked.I have to agree with other "complainers" that the full-treatment documentary on the DVD, "Fearful Symmetry," is just too long and rambling, and really doesn't "capture" anything about the making of TKAM that wasn't captured in the VHS version. One thing of note I learned from the DVD version (SPOILER ALERT!!!): Philip Alford and Mary Badham evidently did not get along during filming, and so -- sure, just what you'd expect from a 13-year-old boy -- Phillip tried to kill 9-year-old Mary in the rolling-tire scene.But my chief complaint, not mentioned in the other comments: The female narrator, evidently attempting the Kim Stanley style of TKAM's narration, is pretty darn annoying. The shorter VHS documentary doesn't include this bit of pretentiousness.All in all, however, what can we do? Since the abbreviated "Song of the Mockingbird" from the VHS is not going to be available, we have to settle for "Fearful Symmetry" (questionable title). I'm just glad I can forego purchasing the two-disk special-edition DVD (where the commentary track has its problems as well), being happy with the VHS.

This is in response to a few of the comments posted below. (See comments below for more information.) I do believe, as at least one other person commented, that this is a very informative documentary. If it rambles a bit, so what? Let's give those rambling on a little bit of license to do so. After all, they were there and these were their experiences and, to be frank, they know more about their experiences than we do. (And if we don't want to know any more about their experiences, we can simply do the smart thing and TURN OFF THE MOVIE.) And if it makes them feel better to ramble on and reminisce, what's the harm? One day, we will all be old and someone will wish WE would quit rambling on and on about our experiences.As for those "random Southern people" mentioned in an earlier post, if memory serves, those people were the people actually from the town where Harper Lee grew up. They knew her and her father. They went to school with her. They played with her as children. They shared some very personal experiences with the author which, when shared, lend a lot of personal and emotional depth to both the movie and the book which would not have been gained simply by viewing or reading. They offer a view of Harper Lee, and of the world in which they all grew up, in a very different perspective, a sort of "third person" perspective. And, as we all know, a third person perspective often helps us to see things about ourselves and our world, things which we would not have noticed otherwise--things which help us become well-rounded people. Similarly, these people--rambling and with their seemingly "pointless" third person points of view--actually help to make both the book and the film more well-rounded.If the documentary had simply been about behind the scenes technicalities and about the stars of the film itself, I would have been very turned off. As we all know, the film which wishes to make a statement, as this one does, is not about the actors themselves. It is not intended to be a star vehicle, although that sometimes happens. It is much bigger than that. It is also not about the technicalities. Amusing and entertaining as they may be to learn of later, technicalities are what the finished film tries not to present. Instead, a film of this caliber tries to bring to life a human story and to make a statement about the human condition, whether to criticize it or to praise it. And it tries to make us better than we were before. Adding the Southern people from Harper's past, with their ramblings and anecdotes, only serves to reinforce that statement.

In reading through the reviews, I see one reviewer who savaged this documentary. I find this criticism excessive, and would like to temper it a bit.It is true that this documentary is poorly titled, and a bit rambling. But that is hardly the point. "Fearful Symmetry" gives one the chance to see most of the people involved in the creation of the film "To Kill a Mockingbird" discuss the process of making this classic. The interviews with Gregory Peck (Atticus Finch), Robert Mulligan (the director), Horton Foote (the writer), Elmer Bernstein (the composer), Philip Alford (Jem), Mary Badham (Scout), Brock Peters (Tom Robinson) and Robert Duvall (Boo Radley) are all priceless. It is quite a marvel that so many of the main people involved were still alive 36 years later. Especially in the light of Peck's recent passing, I think we should be less critical of the rambling nature of the documentary. I learned many things about the writing of the book, its translation to a screenplay, and the various difficulties in transforming a screenplay to a movie that has become an American classic. What more should one wish from a documentary of this nature?

Spoilers herein.Here is a textbook case of the different forces that shape books, films and TeeVee shows.This was a wonderful book because of the way observation was managed and the language was rooted in place. There were lots and lots of literary tricks pulled, most of which enrich the experience. It still is worth reading. It expands the mind.From that, Hollywood extracted a film. All of the literary devices are lost as a matter of necessity. In their place are a few strong performances and some artsy salon photography of the kids. The focus of the film is now not in its texture, but in the story itself. Instead of the racial injustice being a device to move the narrative, we have it at the only focus.Well, that was good enough in its day because of the role film plays in shaping the national consciousness. This film went a very long way toward defining a national morality concerning at least Southern-style racism. But the context has changed, and Peck's style of acting in particular is now unpopular -- and somewhat annnoying -- in films of substance. It is now a simple morality play, with some skill but little art, not entirely unlike `Gentleman's Agreement.'Now along comes this TeeVee show which is the third abstraction in the series (real life, the book, the film, now this). The point of this is pretty diffuse, with lots of elements that don't make sense together. For instance, we have a wholly incongruous and inapt title and epigram, several remembrances of place (with films of the location, interviews of old-timers and voiceovers from the book), interviews with all the key participants in the film, some footage of the civil rights struggle with rambling observations by an articulate black lawyer, and a few other talking heads on various elements of the book or film. The whole thing is hopelessly unfocused and it is a scandal that it is carried in the same basket as the book or even the film. The film, if overly blunt, was at least coherently focused. But you see, with TeeVee stuff it doesn't matter, a rude and disturbing fact that places the viewers of this mush in precisely the space as the trailer trash originally targeted. That's because the viewers are not prompted to think at all, we are told what the message is. What the lesson is. What the moral is. What every normal person would think.Naturally, racism is bad. But look at what this TeeVee thing does. The real problem is how societies become whole and live by mechanisms that seem to demand stereotypes, something the book takes headon. Stereotyping is the problem, which in the South settled on race, or rather racially-defined class. Now look what this show does: it substitutes one evil stereotype for another. The blacks are noble, the (roughly) equally impoverished white trash are given all the traits originally assigned to the blacks -- they are dirty, inarticulate, liars, sexual deviants, violent, chummily conspiratorial.So while giving us the standard sixth grade civics lesson, it reinforces the basic problem of parading stereotypes and reinforcing the mechanism of stereotyping. That's the evil of TeeVee: the medium demands it. A worse example is the `Paradise Lost' TeeVee `documentary.' It similarly discusses a purported legal injustice that it says happened because of the stereotyping of the stupid white folks involved. It similarly exploits its own stereotypes by pounding home the stereotype of the people they accuse of stereotyping. It similarly takes its title from a classical text with no connection whatsoever, but which gives the illusion of an Olympian vision and moral neutrality.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 4: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.