"To me there is no more haunted, complex terrain in America than the countryside between Port Gibson, Mississippi, and the river. The land is full of ghosts. . . . Medgar Evers returned here from infantry combat in France after World War II to attend Alcorn State University. Here he met and courted his future wife, Myrlie. And it is because of him and of her that I am making this journey on this day to the Windsor Ruins a few miles north of the Alcorn campus. Just out of Port Gibson, a sign on the side of the road said: WINDSOR RUINS CLOSED TODAY. Hollywood had taken them over." Thus, Willie Morris begins an intensely personal journey--both dramatic and emotional--involving racism, murder, history, and Hollywood. For years Morris has portrayed American life through lyrical evocations of his own experience. Now he brings together the harsh realities of race and the magical illusions of Hollywood in an unusual book about the making of the movie Ghosts of Mississippi and its more complicated historical background: the 1963 assassination of the courageous civil rights activist Medgar Evers and the conviction thirty years later of his killer, Byron De La Beckwith, in one of the most striking cases in the annals of American jurisprudence. The Ghosts of Medgar Evers is not only a dramatic account of the making of a major motion picture about one of the most heinous crimes of this century; it is also an examination of the murder itself and the people involved that explains why it took so long for justice to prevail. Morris was on hand both for the trial and for the making of the movie. As the filming progressed, layer after layer of ironies, of personal and public deja vus, unfolded. With director Rob Reiner and producer Fred Zollo, Morris traveled the Mississippi back roads known to him since boyhood, surveying the story's real locales. He was present when the assassination was reenacted at the actual murder scene, and on the Hollywood soundstages when the trial was filmed--recreations that involved a number of participants in the original events, including three of Evers's children, who witnessed his death in 1963. His sons Darrell and Van Evers portrayed themselves as adults in the movie, and his daughter, Reena, played a juror in the 1994 trial. The filming, Morris reports, was often emotionally wrenching, particularly for the family members: When Alec Baldwin, as assistant district attorney Bobby DeLaughter, made his final summary to the jury, Reena wept openly. The South today and the unadorned politics of race are juxtaposed and intermingled with the politics and mechanics of moviemaking. The Ghosts of Medgar Evers is Willie Morris at his best. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Rob Reiner's 1997 film The Ghosts of Mississippi, about the murder of 1960s civil rights activist Medgar Evers and the eventual conviction of his killer 30 years later, was widely regarded as an earnest but uninspired film redeemed only by James Woods's performance as Evers's flamboyantly racist assassin. It was also a commercial flop. Even so, Mississippi author Morris's account of the making of the film might have been an interesting investigation into the politics of race and popular culture, and a chance to exploit the inherent comedy of movie people in the heartland. But instead, the book itself is well-meaning and uninspired, an overly detailed, credulous account of the minutiae of Hollywood filmmaking, written in the slow rhythm of a cocktail party raconteur dropping names, some familiar, some not. Film principals such as director Reiner and actor Alec Baldwin are quoted at length, speaking in the cliches of the celebrity profile, while Evers's widow Myrlie, who consulted on the film, remains a rather distant figure. The film's technical aspects are exhaustively described, but much of what Morris finds so fascinating will be common knowledge to many movie fans. Indeed, Morris retails some of the hoariest Hollywood stories--Howard Hawks introducing Faulkner to Clark Gable, for example--as if they were brand new. Most disappointingly, Morris, who knew or shared acquaintances with many of the real figures in the case, speaks of the thorny problem of race mostly in grandiloquent platitudes. Readers interested in race or in the murder itself will be bored by the pages of stargazing, while readers interested in film will have read much of this stuff before, about better movies. Author tour. Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Noted Southern-born journalist Morris, who covered the trial in which Byron de la Beckwith was finally convicted of murdering Medgar Evers, reconsiders both the murder and the subsequent Hollywood film.Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Everyone is a critic, except the occasional saint. The professional or citizen critic whose opinions are well publicized wields power that can be capricious, even deadly. Morris, former editor in chief of Harper's, has written a multilayered study of the critical reception of the film Ghosts of Mississippi. Rob Reiner's film, based on fact, is about Mississippi assistant D.A. Bobby DeLaughter (Alec Baldwin) reopening the case against Byron de la Beckwith (James Woods) for the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and, with the aid of the widow Evers (Whoopi Goldberg), bringing the murderer to justice. The book reads like a series of long magazine articles. The first is a paean to a place that lives in other people's infamy, and here Mississippian Morris introduces the idea of the subjective nature of opinion, carried through in the other "articles" about the actual filming in Mississippi and the special previews around the U.S. Finally, enter the critics. Apparently, the Variety critic was appalled at the filmmakers for making a film based on an actual event: "When future generations turn to this era's movies for an account of the struggles for racial justice in America, they'll learn the surprising lesson that such battles were fought and won by square-jawed white boys." Morris writes, "Soon Rob Reiner would be like Brer Rabbit getting stuck in the Tar Baby." Spike Lee went to the mat in protest of the "white heroes." Roger Ebert couldn't believe that Myrlie Evers wasn't the star. In the end, the film failed at the box office, and Morris haunts the film's Mississippi locations, pondering the ghosts of racial healing and progress. (Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1998)0679459561Bonnie Smothers From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.