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March232006

Tru Confessions

Filed under: Headline Shooter

In Cold Blood

I'm finally reading In Cold Blood and, of course, it's fantastic. From the Calcutta Telegraph:

Capote the film invites one to imagine a time when writers achieved the kind of fame and notoriety that is today associated with pop culture personalities. More importantly, Truman was a natural born self-promoter who paved the way for the cult of celebrity that is omnipresent today.

His fame cut across all categories, from high to low culture, from literary seriousness to high society frivolity. His name was a constant in newspapers, magazines and TV shows. When he walked around Manhattan, truck drivers would affectionately call to him — “Hey, Truman, how are ya ?” — and long distance telephone operators would know who he was the instant he picked up the phone.

Are there any writers alive who'd be recognized that way? Maybe Stephen King, in Maine, but no one else that I can think of. The first time I saw Capote I met a guy in the theater from Kansas, a screenwriter, who'd met Capote at a college reading and said Philip Seymour Hoffman had channeled him eerily well. Do you think the Clutter house in the movie is fancy enough? I had no idea they were so prosperous; now that I'm reading the book it makes much more sense that Perry Smith and Dick Hickock had picked out Herb Clutter as a goldmine. Also, as I'm sure you know, many people at The New Yorker weren't happy about the depiction of Mr. Shawn, which is indeed startlingly vampiric. David Denby's representative note of protest was adamant enough to be repeated in the short listing for the film, in which Denby observes that Shawn "is pictured, bizarrely, as hungry for the bloody details of the crime."

The Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World has an elegant look back at the Clutter killings on the 40th anniversary of In Cold Blood, with profiles, old and new photos (including two photos of Perry Smith's paintings), and the original Journal-World coverage of the investigation. Especially interesting is an interview with Bobby Rupp, Nancy Clutter's high school boyfriend, who once trekked three miles in a snowstorm to give her his Christmas present. What a guy. He hadn't liked Capote much, apparently, and hasn't spoken much about that time; this is a good look into his life since.
2 comments

Comments

Finally reading the book, eh! I read it last year, and at first didn't like it, but the more I read, the more I was drawn into it. I became completely engrossed by the end.I think the house is fancy enough, just because they're supposed to be that type of tightwad hardworking family, the way I perceived them. That's why Clutter was imagined by the more profligate-minded criminals to be a sort of miser hoarding his gold in a safe somewhere in the house, and it's also what gives such irony to the search for the booty, which just isn't there. It's all in the bank and in the farm. Didn't see Capote the film, though. Ever since The Aviator, I can't bear to watch anyone do an impression of an real person for over an hour.

carolitaMarch 23, 2006

I think the filmmakers used the real Clutter house to make the film In Cold Blood - strange but, I think, true. My will to Google is weak. And I think that house looked a lot like the house in Capote.

zpMarch 24, 2006

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