| The Gardener's Son | |
|---|---|
.jpg) DVD cover | |
| Genre | Historical drama |
| Based on | The Gardener's Son: A Screenplay by Cormac McCarthy |
| Screenplay by | Cormac McCarthy |
| Directed by | Richard Pearce |
| Starring |
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| Composer | Charles Gross |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Barbara Schultz |
| Producers |
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| Cinematography | Fred Murphy |
| Editor | Norman Gay |
| Running time | 113 minutes |
| Production company | KCET |
| Budget | $200,000[1] |
| Original release | |
| Network | PBS |
| Release | January 6, 1977 |
| Infobox instructions (only shown in preview) | |
The Gardener's Son is a 1977 American historical crime drama television film directed by Richard Pearce and written by Cormac McCarthy. Set in the company town of Graniteville, South Carolina during the Reconstruction era, the story is based on a real historical 1876 murder and subsequent trial. The Gardener's Son dramatizes the tensions between the working-class McEvoy family and the wealthy Greggs, whose patriarch owned the town cotton mill. Brad Dourif stars as Robert McEvoy, a disgruntled amputee who in 1876 killed James Gregg (Kevin Conway). The plot presents the complex material and psychological conditions for the crime while leaving the ultimate question of motive ambiguous.
The public television station KCET produced the film as the twelfth entry in its anthology series Visions. Pearce, known as a documentarian, was new to filming a fictionalized story. He learned of the story of the McEvoys and Greggs in a footnote from a biography of William Gregg, an influential industrialist and father of James. Impressed by McCarthy's novel Child of God (1973), Pearce asked the author to write what would be his first screenplay. While developing the screenplay, McCarthy and Pearce spent several months researching the circumstances of the murder, the community's reaction to the crime, and the socioeconomic conditions in Graniteville during the period.
Though set in South Carolina, The Gardener's Son was mostly filmed around Burlington, North Carolina and partly in Virginia. It was shot on location at historical sites that had been scouted for their period accuracy, far from the visible encroachments of modern technology like powerlines. Other members of the cast included Nan Martin, Jerry Hardin, Anne O'Sullivan, Penny Allen, Ned Beatty, and Paul Benjamin, plus 34 nonprofessional actors from around North Carolina cast in bit parts. Charles Gross composed the spare, Appalachian-influenced score.
The Gardener's Son premiered on PBS stations on January 6, 1977, to positive reviews. It has remained out of print on home video for decades, seeing a small-scale DVD release in 2010. McCarthy's screenplay was published as a book by Ecco Press in 1996, containing scenes and lines cut from the film version. Because of its general unavailability, The Gardener's Son is commonly experienced only as a closet drama to be read, rather than a film to be watched. The film is remembered for its pivotal place in McCarthy's career as his first dramatic work, his first work of historical fiction, and his first time participating in a film production. Despite several further efforts at screenwriting, McCarthy would not get a second original screenplay made into a film until The Counselor (2013).
- ^ Pearce 1996, p. vi.