the playwright Horton Foote has died. I haven’t wanted to post it, because I haven’t wanted it to be true.

When I directed a scene from COURTSHIP, a few years ago, a small scene between two women built on alternating levels of quietness, I and the two actresses – high school students – earnestly worked away on it for two weeks. We knew it was good, but we didn’t know how good. When they performed it, in almost no light, it was the most real thing I’d ever seen. More real than life. I and the actors and everyone were all so surprised by the way these simple words made something so, I can’t be smarter about this, so REAL.

At eight o’clock in New York tonight, the Broadway marquees will be dimmed for a minute, in his honor.