The Gardener's Son

''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).

Plot

Dr. Perceval makes a house call to the Gregg estate in the company town of Graniteville, South Carolina. William Gregg, the owner of the town cotton mill, is declared dead following an illness. The doctor and Mrs. Gregg then visit the home of Patrick McEvoy, a gardener employed by the Greggs, to attend to his son Robert. Robert's leg had earlier been broken in an industrial accident, for which William's son James may be at fault. Seeing that the leg has become badly infected, Mrs. Gregg convinces Robert to assent to amputation. William Gregg is buried in a well-attended ceremony with an adulatory eulogy.

Robert, now equipped with a prosthetic leg and crutch, takes a job sweeping up at the mill. A group of impoverished people come by train to Graniteville seeking work but James, now the mill's owner, turns them away. Over supper, with Robert absent, the McEvoys discuss his perplexing, troubled nature. Mrs. Gregg and James visit the grave of an unnamed boy who died visiting Graniteville in 1855. James chides his mother for her paternalistic concern for the poor. Robert's 14-year-old sister Martha, who works spinning cotton, goes looking for Robert and finds James, who makes lewd remarks and offers to pay her a gold piece, prompting her to flee. Mr. Giles, an assistant at the mill, finds Patrick in his glasshouse and inquires after Robert, who has been absent from work. Patrick answers that he does not know his son's whereabouts.

Some time later, Martha writes a letter to Robert telling him "mama has took sick again" and that she and her father wish he would return home. Robert hops off a horse-drawn cart and drives away two Black gravediggers when he discovers they are burying his mother, who he says "don't belong to the mill." Robert finds his father's glasshouse barren and learns he is no longer employed as a gardener. That night Robert drinks whiskey and commiserates with employees of the mill, including Pinky. The next morning, Robert wakes up in a barn. As Patrick starts his shift at the mill, he learns his son has returned. Robert confronts James in his office. After an argument ensues, James surmises that Robert is there begging for money and offers him a gold piece. Robert draws a pistol. James reaches for a desk drawer. Robert shoots him in the stomach and exits the mill. James stumbles outside and fires at Robert, missing. Robert returns fire, killing James. Patrick and other mill employees walk outside.

Robert stands trial, accused of murder. The prosecutor reads an opening statement before a majority-Black jury. Mr. Giles and another witness testify. After trial, Robert's attorney O. C. Jordan speaks with a discouraged Patrick, telling him that he is confident Robert will go free, and that it would be unwise for Robert to testify as doing so would risk an unpopular sullying of the Gregg name. Jordan also reveals that the defense has agreed with Mrs. Gregg to avoid calling any female witnesses. A constable asks Patrick to return home to console his wife. Starks Sims, a boy who works for Mr. Giles, testifies that he witnessed Robert shoot James. W. J. Whipper, a Black attorney for Robert's defense, cross-examines Starks; Whipper asks if Starks had ever read any notes written by James to any female employees of the mill. Starks replies that he had never done so because he is illiterate. That night, Patrick goes to ask Whipper to have Robert testify and Whipper responds that it would not be possible because of Robert's erratic nature, but reassures Patrick and counsels him about the limitations of the law.

At trial, Robert is sentenced to death. Martha goes to Mrs. Gregg, apparently to plead her brother's innocence, but then tells Mrs. Gregg that James "never done nothing" to her. Believing Martha is there to console her, Mrs. Gregg takes ease and asks her servant Daphne to bring tea. Martha says that the Greggs "must have failed him somewhere". Martha says she wonders what she would have said if asked to testify and speculates that she would have told about the gold piece, but downplays its significance. Enraged, Mrs. Gregg orders her to leave.

Robert poses in a studio for a portrait photograph taken, seated, from the waist up, taking care that his legs not be shown. The photographer asks if copies might be made to print for sale, with half of the proceeds to go to his family. Robert replies that he does not mind if people are ignorant enough to buy his image, but does not want his family to know where any proceeds are sent from. In the street, Martha encounters Robert, who says he was never meant to be hanged and should have gone to the penitentiary. Martha says she would have testified and told "any kind of lie" in his defense. Robert tells her to forget she had a brother and to find the best man she can and make him treat her right. Robert is executed by hanging. Dr. Perceval declares the time of death. Patrick takes his son's body in a coffin onto a cart and rides away.

Cast

* Brad Dourif as Robert McEvoy
* Kevin Conway as James Gregg
* Nan Martin as Mrs. Gregg
* Jerry Hardin as Patrick McEvoy
* Anne O'Sullivan as Martha McEvoy
* Penny Allen as Mrs. McEvoy
* Ned Beatty as Pinky
* Paul Benjamin as W. J. Whipper

In addition to the professional cast, 34 bit parts were played by nonprofessional local residents from the around area in North Carolina where principal photography took place. Among the nonprofessional actors are:

* Earl Wynn as Dr. Perceval
* Austin L. Skipwith as William Gregg
* Esther W. Tate as Daphne
* Helen Harmon as Maryellen McEvoy
* Dwight Hunsucker as Mr. Giles
* Lish Burchette as First Gravedigger
* Ellis Williams as Second Gravedigger
* Martha Nell Hardy as Old Woman
* Ty Stevens as First Man in Doggery
* Walter Spearman as Mill Worker
* Larry Lambeth as O. C. Jordan
* John Robbins as Constable
* Malcolm Black as Stark Sims
* William Seals as Virgil

Cormac McCarthy makes a brief, uncredited cameo appearance in a non-speaking role as a stockholding investor in the mill. His cameo occurs just before the scene of the killing. Dressed in a dark coat and top hat, he can be spotted within a crowd of fellow businessmen on a tour of the mill, distinguishable as the youngest-looking member of the group. Stacey Peebles—a scholar of McCarthy's works—likened his small role to Alfred Hitchcock's famous cameos in his own films, though rendered ironic by the fact that the obscure author would have been unrecognizable to the viewing audience.

Development

Background on ''Visions'' series

''The Gardener's Son'' was produced by KCET, a Los Angeles-based PBS affiliate station, as the twelfth installment in its '' Visions'' series of made-for-television drama films. The series sought out original teleplays by American writers with no prior experience in television. Many of the films were historical dramas, like ''The Gardener's Son''. ''Visions'' often addressed serious social issues with "a deliberate pace far removed from the forced urgency of commercial television", and served as "a proving ground for drama on public television as well as for talented actors, directors and writers". Advertising materials pitched ''Visions'' as "Off-Broadway television".

Production of ''The Gardener's Son'' cost $200,000. Its budget reflected the average expenditure for entries in the ''Visions'' series, each made with much less money than the typical hour-long episode of major network era dramas. Funding was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Conception

In the mid-1970s, Richard Pearce was known for his work as a cinematographer on documentary films such as '' Hearts and Minds'' (1974). Pearce had come across the story of while conducting research on a journalism grant from the Alicia Patterson Foundation. He was using the grant funds to research the lives of Southern textile workers in the late 19th century. He became interested in the 1876 murder of James Gregg by Robert McEvoy after reading about it in the footnote of a history book, later learning that the story had endured in local folklore. Pearce went to Graniteville and spoke with many descendants of the original textile workers who came to the town in the 1840s, who he said "still tell Robert McEvoy's story—stories, I should say, because there are now at least eight or nine different versions." Pearce pitched the story to ''Vision'', and he was commissioned to direct and co-produce an episode. It would mark his first effort in fictional filmmaking.

Pearce consulted Tom Terrill, an economic historian at University of South Carolina. Terrill later published the article "Murder in Graniteville", giving an authoritative account of McEvoy's murder of Gregg. Terrill identified Pearce's source for the McEvoy–Gregg story as Broadus Mitchell's 1928 biography of William Gregg, owner of the Graniteville mill and one of the most significant industrialists of the Antebellum South. Mitchell's biography is a flattering portrayal of the elder Gregg, with a highly positive assessment of his patricianly leadership during the period of rapid industrialization. Gregg viewed the South's transition from an agrarian to a manufacturing-based economy as a means of enriching the general welfare of ordinary people and reducing poverty. Mitchell's biography characterized Robert McEvoy's crime as an act of thoughtless violence perpetrated by the "bad boy of the village". Contrarily, Terrill analyzed it as a vindictive eruption of class consciousness by an alienated worker against a capitalist. Pearce conducted and taped original interviews with Graniteville residents in 1974 and exchanged research materials with Terrill.

Research and screenwriting

Pearce asked the novelist Cormac McCarthy to adapt the story of the McEvoys and the Greggs into a dramatic screenplay. To reach the author, whom he did not know personally, he sent a postcard to a P.O. box in El Paso, Texas. McCarthy was an obscure novelist at the time and had no prior experience in filmmaking. Pearce had been impressed by McCarthy's third and most recent novel, ''Child of God'' (1973), which tells the story of an alienated Appalachian man's descent into necrophilia and murder. Already acquainted with the author's early work, Pearce felt especially impressed by the latest novel:

Pearce and McCarthy collaborated on the screenplay, working between motels in South Carolina and McCarthy's residence in Blount County, Tennessee. Research lasted from early April to November 19, 1975, as documented in a series of "research newsletters" sent by Pearce to the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Pearce had already found many primary sources and public records for McCarthy to use as reference material. McCarthy's primary responsibility was dramatization of the historical material, though he soon became just as engaged with the research as Pearce. The work brought them to the courthouse in Aiken and newspaper archives housed in Augusta, Georgia; McCarthy remarked that the latter were more useful.

As their work continued, Pearce and McCarthy uncovered numerous historical details that complicated Mitchell's rosy narrative of the Gregg family and their impact on the regional economy. They learned of an 1875 labor strike responding to docked wages and an 1877 petition to the governor, bearing hundreds of signatures, requesting that he commute McEvoy's death sentence. "We spent four weeks," McCarthy said, "in South Carolina researching the thing—in Columbia I even found a 22-page letter McEvoy had written Gov. Wade Hampton. And even then no one was quite sure why McEvoy did it. He just came into Gregg's office one day and shot him."

Pearce and McCarthy decided to leave the question of Robert McEvoy's motive purposely ambiguous. McCarthy told the Burlington '' Daily Times-News'' that the killing happened for no apparent reason, or "at least no single, clearly-defined reason, but obviously occurred because of a multiplicity of intertwined ideas and relationships that took their toll on the boy who was to become a murder". Pearce aimed to achieve a plausible, authentic portrayal of the character's emotional state without definitively spelling out the factors that cause the killing. The narrative's uncertainty and complexity, Pearce said, were "a reaction against the type of movies on TV" in which is left open to several interpretations, nothing is left to the imagination. I bent over backwards to avoid doing that. In so many movies, the motives and characters are too clearly defined. Life isn't that way."

McCarthy valued verisimilitude and drew every named character in ''The Gardener's Son'' from a verifiable person in the historical record. Beyond historical and literary influences, McCarthy likely drew cinematic inspiration from film titles listed in his archived notes, such as ''Black Orpheus'' (1959), ''La Dolce Vita'' (1960), ''In Cold Blood'' (1967), and ''The Great Gatsby'' (1974). Like the McEvoys, McCarthy remarked he too had grown up Irish Catholic in the South within majority-Protestant communities. Regarding Robert McEvoy's status as "a black sheep, the bad boy of the town," McCarthy said: "That was familiar to me, too. The kid was a natural rebel, probably just a troublemaker in real life. But in our film he has a certain nobility. He stands up and says, 'No, this is intolerable and I want to do something about it!

Production

Casting

Casting was primarily handled by co-producer Michael Hausman, whose previous experience included Miloš Forman's '' Taking Off'' (1971) and Elaine May's '' The Heartbreak Kid'' (1972) and ''Mikey and Nicky'' (1976). "We stressed to the actors," Hausman said, "that this is a 'prestige' venture rather than a profit-making one, since we obviously couldn't offer larger salaries." Despite the modest budget, Pearce said he found casting straightforward because the quality of writing provided by McCarthy drew actors' attention.

Brad Dourif, cast in the lead role of Robert McEvoy, told the press he chose to join the project for its screenplay. Dourif had recently been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' (1975). Hausman convinced Ned Beatty to play the role of Pinky by scheduling his scene to be filmed when he could stop en route to New York from an unrelated shoot further south. The main cast is rounded out by Kevin Conway, Nan Martin, Anne O'Sullivan, Penny Allen, Jerry Hardin, and Paul Beatty

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