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In the Press

For press inquiries: Kristen O'Brien • kristengobrien@gmail.com

Press: Past Events

Anne Rapp and Bruce Beresford Interview — Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Movie Metropolis WYN 88.9FM

July 2021

Movie Metropolis' Peter Krausz sits down with filmmaker Anne Rapp and Tender Mercies director Bruce Beresford to discuss Horton Foote: The Road to Home during the 2021 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival.

Horton Foote: The Greatest Playwright You’ve Never Heard Of

Factual America Podcast

November 29, 2020

Today we’re talking about Horton Foote (1916-2009), the award-winning playwright and screenwriter. In the recently released documentary Horton Foote: The Road to Home, the celebrated screenwriter Anne Rapp helps us to learn more about this unsung Texas and American legend.

‘Road to Home’ is a love letter to Texas writer Horton Foote

Houston Chronicle

November 16, 2020

Andrew Dansby

Anne Rapp spent years as a script supervisor ensuring continuity on such films as Tender Mercies. One day on screen may be shot over weeks in real time, so Rapp would make sure characters and sets looked the same. While making a documentary about Horton Foote — the famed playwright and screenwriter — Rapp noticed he showed up for a second drive around his hometown of Wharton to talk about the people and places that informed his award-winning work in a different colored sweater than the first day they’d filmed him.

AFF 2020 Winners Announced

Austin Film Festival

November 2, 2020

Austin Film Festival (AFF), the premier Festival to recognize the writer’s contribution to film, television, theatre and new media, is thrilled to announce the 2020 Film Competition Jury & Audience Award winners alongside the Script Competition winners. Following each screening, audience members cast their votes for the Audience Award, recognizing the audience’s Festival favorites among the 2020 film slate.

THE FOLLOWING AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS WERE SELECTED BY CATEGORY:

Texas Independent Feature: Horton Foote: The Road to Home, directed by Anne Rapp

Up Close With One of Texas’s Most Prized Playwrights in a New Documentary

Texas Monthly

October 23, 2020

Barbara Purcell

When Horton Foote was six years old, he arrived home out of breath one afternoon, covered in dirt and sweat. Stunned, his mother listened as he described a most harrowing scene: a wild dog had chased him across a cotton field, and the town marshal—while on horseback—pulled him up and saved his life. When Foote’s father went to thank the marshal the following day, he had no idea what the man was talking about. “I wrote my first story,” the ninety-year-old Foote recalls with a smile in Anne Rapp’s new documentary, Horton Foote: The Road to Home.

Austin Film Festival 2020: Taking the ‘Road Home’ with Horton Foote

Austin American Statesman

October 22, 2020

Michael Barnes

Movie veteran Anne Rapp, best known as a script supervisor, has made an exquisite documentary about Horton Foote, the Texas screenwriter (Tender MerciesTo Kill a Mockingbird) and playwright (The Trip to BountifulThe Orphans’ Home Cycle) who died in 2009.

Film review: New Horton Foote documentary gets to the heart of a writer

Sightlines

October 22, 2020

Charles Ealy

People who follow the Texas literary scene know that the late Horton Foote ranks among the best of the state’s writers. So it’s gratifying to report that a new documentary about him captures his brilliance and warmth and bolsters his place in the literary canon. Horton Foote: The Road Home explores the themes and characters of Foote’s many tales and screen adaptations, from Tender Mercies and To Kill a Mockingbird to The Trip to Bountiful and The Orphans’ Home Cycle.

‘Horton Foote’ Documentary Celebrates The Texas Writer Many Texans Don’t Know

Texas Standard

October 23, 2020

Laura Rice

Anne Rapp directed and produced Horton Foote: The Road To Home. The film has its world premiere at the 2020 Austin Film Festival. The festival is primarily virtual this year, but the documentary is getting a special in-person screening with a very limited audience. Foote was born in Wharton, Texas, and based most of his writings on his experiences there.

AFF 2020 Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing Night Films Announcement

Austin Film Festival (blog)

October 15, 2020

Austin Film Festival also released they will return to the Paramount Theatre on Saturday, October 24th for two live, socially-distanced film presentations. Anne Rapp’s Horton Foote: The Road to Home will premiere at 1:30PM CDT, and Will Bakke’s The Get Together will premiere at 6:00pm CDT at the historic Paramount theatre in downtown Austin. 

Interview: Anne Rapp, director, "Horton Foote: The Road to Home"

Lights Camera Austin

October 15, 2020

Robert Sims

With her documentary Horton Foote: The Road to Home, Austin-based director Anne Rapp paints a portrait of her friend Horton Foote against the backdrop of his Texas hometown of Wharton, the inspiration behind the fictional town of Harrison that plays a prominent role in the writer’s plays, films, and television productions. Filmed in the two years leading up to Foote’s 2009 death, Rapp’s documentary argues that to understand Foote and his writing you must first know and appreciate Wharton. 

Fantasy Drama ‘Nine Days’ to Open Austin Film Festival (EXCLUSIVE)

Variety

October 15, 2020

Dave McNary

The festival also will return to the Paramount Theatre on Oct. 24 for two live, socially-distanced film presentations: Will Bakke’s The Get Together  and Anne Rapp’s Horton Foote: The Road to Home. The venue will have safety guidelines in place, including required masks, touch-less temperature checks before entry, a healthcare professional onsite, and full theatre sanitation before films.

'There's No Other Place': Austin Film Festival Goes Virtual In 2020

KUT

October 16, 2020

Mike Lee

Anne Rapp, who’s a longtime writer and now a first-time director (her documentary Horton Foote: The Road to Home will be premiering at this year’s festival), also says she’ll miss that one-on-one interaction. “I’ve never been to any kind of film festival – or even film event – where there weren’t kind of ropes between the fancy people and the everyday people,” she says. “They call it the velvet rope, I guess. And those were gone [at the Austin Film Festival].”

"Horton Foote: The Road to Home" Takes the Writer Back to His Roots

Austin Chronicle

October 16, 2020

Rosalind Faires

"When I first asked Horton [Foote] if I could start following him around with a camera? He didn't immediately say yes," director Anne Rapp confessed. "He said, 'Let me think about it.'" It wasn't a totally out-of-the-blue question. Rapp met the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter of To Kill a Mockingbird when she was script supervisor on his 1983 film Tender Mercies, and they'd become friends in the intervening years. But he took the matter for documenting his life seriously.

What we’re looking forward to at Austin Film Festival 2020

Austin360

October 20, 2020

Matthew Odam

Horton Foote: The Road to Home: Former Robert Altman collaborator and Austinite Anne Rapp’s long-awaited documentary takes a warm look at the life and career of Texas writing legend and Pulitzer Prize winner Horton Foote, who penned the screenplays for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies, the film on which Rapp began her Hollywood career. World premiere 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Paramount Theatre and available for virtual screening beginning 7 p.m. Sunday. 

Director Anne Rapp on Horton Foote, Honest Writing, and An Ode To Small Town Civilities

AM/FM Magazine

October 21, 2020

Christine Thompson

Horton Foote: The Road to Home from director Anne Rapp will have its World premiere at the 2020 virtual Austin Film Festival with a screening on Sunday, October 25. Coincidentally, Foote was the inaugural recipient of AFF’s Distinguished Screenwriter Award in 1995. The film chronicles the creative journey of acclaimed Texas writer Horton Foote through his own eyes and voice at the end of his life.

Take a Tour of Horton Foote’s Wharton with Director Anne Rapp

Texas Highways

October 22, 2020

Clayton Maxwell

One of the most poignant images in director Anne Rapp’s documentary, Horton Foote, The Road to Home, is that of the esteemed Texan playwright sitting on his front porch swing in Wharton. Foote, who died in 2009 just shy of his 93rd birthday, is widely considered to be America’s Chekhov. His many plays and screenplays delve into the human universals in ordinary small-town life; he won two Oscars, one for his screenplay of Tender Mercies and the other for his adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Director's Cut: Anne Rapp Zooms In to Talk About "Horton Foote: The Road to Home"

Cowboys & Indians

October 14, 2020

Joe Leydon

More than 40 years ago, playwright-screenwriter Horton Foote — already an Academy Award winner for adapting To Kill a Mockingbird for the big screen — had a confab with an executive at 20th Century Fox. He had been working on a screenplay about young Texans trying to establish themselves as country music performers, and wanted some feedback. The exec was impressed, but offered Foote some advice: The scenario might be more compelling with an older character in the mix.

Horton Foote: The Road to Home, Anne Rapp

Movies and Shakers

Al and Linda Lerner

Writer/Director Anne Rapp tells MoviesandShakers why she had to make this documentary about prolific writer, Horton Foote that had its World Premiere at the Austin Film Festival.. She tells why the prolific playwright (52 plays), and screenplay writer who won 2 Emmys, and Oscar and the Pulitzer Prize was not more famous. Robert Duvall, Richard Linklater, Edward Albee weigh in.

Check Out the Trailer for New Documentary Horton Foote: The Road to Home

Playbill

October 5, 2020

Dan Meyer

A new documentary about Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Horton Foote will make its world premiere later this month at the virtual Austin Film Festival. Check out the exclusive trailer for Horton Foote: The Road to Home above. The film, directed by Anne Rapp, chronicles Foote’s career through his own eyes and voice.

Horton Foote documentary highlights early Austin Film Festival lineup

Sightlines

August 31, 2020

Charles Ealy

The Austin Film Festival has announced the first wave of films that will be screening at this year’s virtual festival, and one of the biggest titles for Texas film lovers is Horton Foote: The Road to Home, a documentary from director Anne Rapp, documenting the creative life of the Texas literary legend.

Austin Film Festival’s 1st wave for 2020 includes Horton Foote doc

Austin360

August 28, 2020

Eric Webb

Austin Film Festival this week announced the first wave of films set to screen in its virtual 2020 festival. The list of movies includes the world premiere of Horton Foote: The Road To Home, a documentary directed by Anne Rapp that charts the creative life of Texas playwright and screenwriter Foote, who died in 2009.

Austin Film Festival Reveals First Wave Of Programming With Horton Foote Docu, ‘The Catch’, ‘Paper Tiger’ And ‘Death Of A Telemarketer’

Deadline
August 27, 2020
Dino-Ray Ramos

The 27th annual Austin Film Festival (AFF) has unveiled their first wave of programming for its virtual edition for the fest which takes place October 22-29. In addition to panels, the writers-driven fest will feature the world premiere of Anne Rapp’s Horton Foote: The Road to Home, which puts the spotlight on the work of the titular Oscar-winning screenwriter of the 1962 adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Woodstock Film Festival: ‘Horton Foote: The Road To Home’

Out of the Past
October 3, 2021
Raquel Stecher

Playwright Horton Foote (1916-2009) had been honored with many awards and nominations in his lifetime including Emmy awards, Tony nominations, the National Medal of Arts and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Tender Mercies (1983). But chances are, despite his widespread recognition, you may not have heard his name.

‘Flee’ Revs FYC Campaign as Hot Documentaries Shop for Deals at Woodstock Film Festival

Variety
October 3, 2021
Addie Morfoot

Anne Rapp and Jack Youngelson came to Woodstock looking to find a home for their respective docus Horton Foote: The Road To Home and Here. Is. Better.

Rapp has been working on Horton Foote – about the famed author and screenwriter of To Kill A Mockingbird and Tender Mercies — for the last 15 years. A script supervisor and screenwriter, Rapp met Foote on the set of 1983’s Tender Mercies.

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