The Georgia Review will sponsor a showing of That Evening Sun Nov. 14 at 4 p.m. in the auditorium of the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries. The film features Hal Holbrook, an Academy Award-nominated actor who will be in Athens for a sold-out campus performance of Mark Twain Tonight!
Both events are part of the 2013 Spotlight on the Arts at UGA.
That Evening Sun is based on the William Gay short story, “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down,” which appeared in the fall 1998 issue of The Georgia Review. About a decade later, Atlanta-born director Scott Teems created That Evening Sun, a feature-length film based on Gay’s story and starring Holbrook. Free and open to the public, the screening will run just under two hours.
Holbrook is both tender and bitingly hilarious as Gay’s crusty protagonist, said Stephen Corey, Georgia Review editor. In the film, Holbrook’s character, Abner Meecham, walks away from the nursing home where he was forcibly placed by his son and makes his way home to discover strangers living in his house.
Of note to Athens moviegoers is that Patterson Hood of the local band Drive-by Truckers wrote several original songs for the film’s soundtrack.
“We showed That Evening Sun several years ago at Ciné in downtown Athens, with an appearance by Hood, and it was quite a hit,” Corey said. “We at The Georgia Review thought it only fitting to honor both Gay (now deceased) and Holbrook in this way, and we are especially pleased to be able to do so within the context of the Spotlight on the Arts Festival.”