Not quite done with In Cold Blood.
In Cold Blood: Hoffman
Thought I was done with In Cold Blood, but Facebook friend Wilfred Robert mentioned the movie Capote. I knew about it, mentioned it yesterday in fact, but wasn’t going to write about. But he changed my mind.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener starred in the 2005 movie Capote. This is how IMDB describes the movie:
“In 1959, Truman Capote learns of the murder of a Kansas family and decides to write a book about the case. While researching for his novel In Cold Blood, Capote forms a relationship with one of the killers, Perry Smith, who is on death row.”
I saw the movie, maybe two or three times, fifteen years ago, but don’t remember much about it. However, I do remember liking the movie.
Hoffman was outstanding – despite the fact Truman Capote died 20 years earlier, giving Hoffman no opportunities to interact with him.
The plot goes like this: After a short upbringing in Alabama, Truman Capote moves to New York City, gains stature as a writer and becomes part of the social elite.
He’s writing autobiographical pieces for The New Yorker magazine but becoming bored with his assignments. So after reading a New York Times article about the cold-blooded murders of the Clutter family in rural Kansas, he believes that’s his ticket to writing a best-seller.
He pitches his editors at The New Yorker to write an investigative story about the murders, they agree and assign the story to him. He then pitches his childhood pal Nelle Harper Lee to be his research assistant.
By the way, when Harper Lee saw her pal’s success, she decided to move to New York to try to follow in his footsteps. At this point in the story, she finished To Kill a Mockingbird and her agent sold it to a publisher. She’s been paid an advance and has both money in her pocket and time on her hands. So she travels to Kansas with Capote.
She’s an ace. Using her southern charm, she gets close to a lot of the locals. She gets especially close to the wife of Alvin Dewey. He’s the KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) agent leading the manhunt to track down the killers. And between Harper Lee and Capote himself, they compile 8,000 pages of notes.
Alvin Dewey takes solving the case personally because he knew the Clutter family. From Dewey’s wife, Harper Lee extracts a lot of inside information about the investigation – information that goes into the book. To repay her new friend for the info, Harper Lee makes sure the movie producers pay her a consulting fee of $10,000.
At the same time, Capote is so full of himself that he believes he can revolutionize true crime by transforming the story into a non-fiction novel. He plans to take the facts, then add his own creative embellishments to make the story read like a fictional detective story.
To get the facts, he connects with the killers and spends countless hours visiting them in jail, gaining their confidence, and tapping into their brains. In the process, he becomes emotionally attached to Perry Smith, who seems to be more sensitive and more submissive than his partner in crime.
In that way, Truman Capote himself becomes part of the story.
Neither Dick Hickock nor Perry ever divulged any of the details about how they killed the Clutters to the police. But Capote gains those details from Perry Smith.
All in all, Capote produced a great book.
Chris Cooper plays KBI agent Alvin Dewey.
He has 77 acting credits, starting in 1984 with one spot in All My Children, one spot each in The Equalizer and Miami Vice, four episodes of the Lonesome Dove mini-series.
Then came the movies This Boy’s Life, Money Train, A Time to Kill, The Horse Whisperer, My, Myself, and Irene, The Patriot, The Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy, Seabiscuit, and more.
Except for All My Children, I saw him in everything else just listed and he was good every time.
Mark Pellegrino played Dick Hickock. Pellegrino has 177 acting credits. He was in two movies I saw – Death Wish 4: The Crackdown and Lethal Weapon 3, but I don’t remember him.
He was also in four episode of NYPD Blue and five episodes of Dexter, but I never saw either – even though people tell me I’d like Dexter.
Clifton Collins, Jr. plays Perry Smith. When I watched the trailer earlier today, his face looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
He has 123 acting credits. During the last ten years he’s had multiple appearances in five TV series – The Event, Red Window, Cleaners, Ballers, and Veronica Mars – none of which I’ve seen.
But right now, I just placed his face.
He was Hector Lorca in The Stewmaker episode on The Blacklist. I saw that episode more than a dozen times and he was good.
For my money, they are the only actors I care about in Capote. Here’s the trailer.
Something in that trailer blew up my ears like dynamite exploding in my back yard. I’m going to play the snippet that drew my attention. See is you catch it, too.
In any case, it led to the discovery of some fascinating stuff In any case, and that’s what I’m writing about tomorrow.
I’m America’s Best Crime Writer and I approve this message.
Comments
Comments Off on In Cold Blood: Hoffman