John Grisham film true to life

Best-selling author John Grisham took his mother on to the set of A Painted House, the film based on his childhood memories of life on an Arkansas cotton farm, to see how filmmakers had recreated her parents’ house.

“She was astonished by the authenticity,” said Grisham in an interview with the CBS television network, which is screening the film in the US.

“It basically was the house my grandparents lived in and the house we lived in until I was seven.

“The detail was amazing. It wasn’t just the house that was so realistic. It was also the outhouse, the barn, the chicken coop, the tool shed, the garden - everything.”

Grisham was a consultant on the film, which is set in the summer of 1952 and draws on “local lore” from the Arkansas Delta.

Grisham first wrote the story as a serial in his magazine, Oxford American.