The Paper Chase on DVD
by Rob - December 19th, 2008.Filed under: Uncategorized.
The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you — unlike any other schooling you have ever known before.
You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush, and, if you survive, you leave thinking like a lawyer.
—Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, Jr.
Opening class, Contract Law
Harvard University Law School
Woohoo! The Scavanger Hunt finally ends!
My friend (and redoubtable accountant) Larry Hancock just tipped me off that, at long last, Season One of one of my all-time favourite TV series, The Paper Chase, is coming out on DVD. Details about the release are here.
YouTube has long had a grainy video of the opening credits, including the terrific Seals and Crofts theme song.
And — how’s this for a nice coincidence! — the release date for The Paper Chase Season One is the same date as for my next novel, Wake: April 7, 2009.
There were a handful of TV shows that meant a lot to me when I was growing up, but most of them were science fiction: Fireball XL5, Star Trek, Search, The Six Million Dollar Man. But The Paper Chase, which came out when I was 18, and is based on John Jay Osborn Jr.’s novel of the same name, and the earlier motion picture adaptation which also starred John Houseman, wasn’t. But it was about rationalism, about prizing the intellect, about ethical conundrums — about all the things that I try to infuse into my SF writing.
YouTube also has an iconic scene from the first episode right here:
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site