Allan Gurganus: I think I read it when it came out and I was a junior high school age kid. And I remember the title was extremely beautiful, I thought the title was what everything a title should be…an invitation, a mystery, and uh I loved mockingbirds and there was part of the cult of living in the South, there’s always one on every corner just singing its little gullet out.

One of the things that struck me initially as someone who lived in a town of 24,000 was…I felt the permission to write about small-town life, and the permission to feel that huge international drama, all the circumstances of truth, justice, and the American way, could be played out in a town of 2,000 souls. And could be played out by a single just man who stands up to be counted.

He…Atticus resembled a lot of the, sort of Harvard educated lawyers who had gone away to school and come home. Faulkner is full of those people too, who seemed in those days to be the real aristocrats, I mean, the people who could have done anything but chose not to leave, the people who had a kind of comprehensive vision of the sociology of the town and were amused by it and forgave it and…defended the wrongly accused.

I was close enough to Scout’s age to be attracted both to the child-likeness of the boys and the sagacity of the adult perspective, I think it’s one of the things that’s not quite understood about the book, is that Lee manages to be a child and an adult, the analysis of the town is very, very shrewd and, like, with the wisdom of an 80 year dowager who’s seen it all. And yet, the boys can be very, very fresh and very innocent, and beguiling and Huck Finn like.

I think Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird have a lot in common and I think she learned a lot from Twain in terms of a child’s critical vision of the hierarchy, of the system.

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“Fondly… is one of the most challenging projects I have ever undertaken,” said Jones. “A Good Man is an honest and unflinching portrait of that process.”

Through two tumultuous years, witness raw moments of frustration as Jones struggles to communicate his vision to his dancers and collaborators, as well as moments of great exhilaration when movement transcends the limitation of words. Jones and his company come face-to-face with America’s unresolved contradictions about race, equality and the legacy of our 16^th President. Initially an indictment of “The Great Emancipator,” the work evolves into a triumph of hope for our struggling democracy, with Jones revealing that Lincoln was “the only white man I was allowed to love unconditionally.”

“Abraham Lincoln and Bill T. Jones make total sense to me. The courage and convictions of both men are a testament to the timeless endurance of art and action,” says Susan Lacy, series creator and executive producer of American Masters, a seven-time winner of the Emmy^® Award for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. The series is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET New York Public Media. WNET is the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, New York’s public television stations. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local documentary and other programs to the New York community.

“I had always wanted to make a film that follows the creation of art from the very beginning all the way to the end,” says Bob Hercules. “Bill T Jones: A Good Man gave us that chance since we were wisely brought in by Ravinia at the very start of Bill’s research phase. Luckily, we had the resources and determination to keep filming through the whole process up to the premiere of the piece two years later. The result is an unvarnished look at how art gets created.”

“We tried to convey the immense amount of ideas and information that Bill T. Jones transfers into movement, music and speech for a performance. As we watched Bill’s struggles in putting his feelings about Lincoln and the contradictions and complexities of American democracy into Fondly…, we found ourselves drawn into the same contradictions about our democracy and our hopes for the future of this country,” says Gordon Quinn.

Throughout the film Jones explains how his childhood, artistic journey, personal feelings about Lincoln, and current emotional and physical condition affect the piece’s direction and development. Bill T. Jones: A Good Man also features interviews with dancers, musicians, crew, and staff from the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, including Executive Director Jean Davidson, Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong, Producing Director Bob Bursey, and Creative Director/Set Designer Bjorn G. Amelan, as well as Welz Kauffman, CEO and president of Ravinia Festival. Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray premiered at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, on September 17, 2009. The film features performances from the Ravinia premiere and rehearsals at the New 42^nd Street Studios in New York City, along with production, writing and research sessions, including an emotional viewing of Lincoln’s personal effects at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Archival performances include Still/Here (1994), Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land (1990) and Jones’s collaborations with his late partner Arnie Zane in Valley Cottage (1980), Blauvelt Mountain (1980) and Monkey Run Road (1979).

Bill T. Jones: A Good Man is a co-production of A Good Man Film LLC, Kartemquin Films, Independent Television Service (ITVS), THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET, and Media Process Group, with the cooperation of the Ravinia Festival. Bob Hercules and Gordon Quinn are directors. Joanna Rudnick is producer. Keith Walker is directory of photography, David E. Simpson is editor and Rachel Pikelny is associate producer. Gordon Quinn is executive producer for Kartemquin Films and Sally Jo Fifer is executive producer for ITVS. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers. Funding for Bill T. Jones: A Good Man is provided by the Ravinia Fund for Artistic Initiatives, Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Leiden, Mrs. June Bild Pinsof and Mrs. Madeleine Pinsof Plonsker, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Sage Foundation. This PBS Arts Fall Festival presentation is in collaboration with PBS member station WTTW. Funding for the launch of PBS Arts has been provided by Anne Ray Charitable Trust, public television viewers and PBS.