"The Paper Chase" is a 1973 film starring Timothy Bottoms, Lindsay Wagner, and John Houseman. Based on John Jay Osborn, Jr.'s 1971 novel, "The Paper Chase", it tells the story of James Hart, a first-year law student at Harvard Law School, his experiences with Professor Charles Kingsfield, a brilliant, demanding contract law instructor, and Hart's relationship with Kingsfield's daughter. Houseman earned an Academy Award for performance as the professor.

The exterior shots of Harvard Law School buildings were filmed on the Harvard Law School campus, and the library shots were filmed in the Harvard Andover library at the Harvard Divinity School. All interiors were shot on stages in Toronto. In a 1999 interview, Gordon Willis said production designer George Jenkins "reproduced the Harvard Law School in The Paper Chase beautifully." The scene of Hart and Ford entering a building to take their final exam near the film's end was shot in front of the Law School's iconic oldest building, Austin Hall. Most of the extras for the Harvard Law School venue scenes were then current Harvard Law students paid a $25 per diem by 20th Century Fox.

The film is a faithful adaptation of the novel, although it adds two things not in the book: Hart's first name and middle initial (James T.), and his grade in contract law (93, an A). In both the novel and the film, Hart makes a paper airplane out of the unopened letter containing his grades and sends it sailing into the ocean.

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