[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on The Firm
You know that bank that John Grisham was laughing all the way to? - he bought it!! He's the Bill Gates of legal fiction; the Rupert Murdoch of thriller writers; the Stephen Spielberg of...well, you get the idea! By any standards, he has achieved a remarkable success, so much so that his publishers proclaim him the world's best selling author.
He was born in Arkansas, the same state that Bill Clinton calls home. He got a degree in accounting and Law, from the fabled "Ole Miss" (a University in Mississippi).
Now, most lawyers go on to practice in a pretty dull routine - surrounded by wills and land titles, they spend their days buried in more paper than a recycling centre. This might be good enough for your everyday hack, or even your ego-driven corporate type, but Grisham had different ideas.
Like the actor that longs to direct, there is an author deep inside many trial lawyers. In some ways it goes with the territory - after all, most legal arguments are a fiction in themselves.
You trust the stage of the court, pulling the threads of a plot together to make a persuasive story. Isn't that what they say a novel is from the reader's point of view - a willing suspension of disbelief? In other words, if you connect the dots, and make it seem real, the reader will go along for the ride. And as any trial lawyer will tell you, that's pretty much the same thing you want from a judge and jury.
When Sydney Pollack made the decision to direct "The Firm," he had probably started to brace himself for comparisons between his movie and John Grisham's best-selling book by the same name. He doesn't have much to worry about. After the first 90 minutes, the comparisons between reel....
