The good move, as Susan Whitall reports in The News, is that a three-day "Literary Arts and Film Festival" will honor 'Dutch' this November at the Birmingham Community House.

The odd news is that contest prizes for screenplay treatments and 5-min. films are $100 to $500, while the top three teen short-story writers get $50 to $250 . . . even though potential sponsors are being asked to "invest" $1,500 to $100,000.

Another off-key choice is the absence of any award for a novella or novelistic storyline/characters summary -- in other words, a category actually linked to the lifetime achievement honoree's main discipline.

Too picky?

In any event, it is cool to see Elmore as "a Birmingham legend who has contributed significantly to the arts in the state" . . . even if it seems that Community House organizers wish he had been a filmmaker.