Crime reporting is as old as journalism, born in the 18th century. In those first newspapers, the primitive journalists dedicated themselves to writing about the crimes of their time. Robberies, rapes, murders… Nothing has changed since then. What’s more, in more than three centuries, crime reporting has degenerated and sensationalism invades television. You only have to turn on the television and see the assortment of corpses with which Susana Griso, Sonsoles Onega, Ana Rosa Quintana, Nacho Abad, Joaquín Prat or any news program from the major media feed their storyboards.
In crime reporting, the barrier between being a professional or a vulture like those we see on television chasing widows, lawyers and neighbors with their microphones is blurred.
Truman Capote, of course, was not a vulture, nor was he the first to make good literature out of a gruesome crime, but he did remind us that crime reporting can become good journalism and good literature. Without the Holcomb massacre, Capote would not have written, for six years, In cold blood.
Another debate, of course, is that of nonfiction. It is still being written and published that nonfiction was invented by Capote in In cold bloodbut nothing could be further from the truth. Americans know how to sell themselves better than anyone else and their marketing is always more powerful, but, without going any further, the Spaniard Manuel Chaves Nogales had already practiced non-fiction before in The teacher Juan Martinez who was there and also the Argentine Rodolfo Walsh in Operation Massacre (both books, masterful, published by Libros del Asteroide).
The most devastating thing about reading In cold blood It is a painful certainty: we are beings dependent on chance
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The crime
The most devastating thing about reading In cold blood It is a painful certainty: we are creatures dependent on chance. No matter how much God the Clutter family believed in, or how much intelligence, hard work or social position, we must never forget that we are in the hands of chance. The Clutters, prosperous farmers, were the envy of Holcomb, Kansas, but a prisoner crossed their path, many miles from home, who confessed to another that on the Clutter farm, where he had worked and been treated very well, there was a safe with a lot of money. And that other prisoner, who believed this prison bravado, thought it would be a good idea to visit the Clutters, gag them, rob them and kill them.
And that is exactly what Perry Smith and Richard Hickock did on the night of November 14, 1959. They drove 400 miles across Kansas to the Clutters’ home, where they forced their way in at shotgun point. After discovering that the promised money was not there, they shot them in the head, leaving blood splattering the walls of the house. They also slit the throat of Herb Clutter, the father, and before leaving, Smith and Hickock recovered the spent cartridges. Their loot was a portable radio, a pair of binoculars and $480.
Richard Hickock y Perry Smith
The book
Capote had a revelation when he read the news of the massacre and decided to travel to Kansas and write a report for The New Yorker about what had happened. But he soon realized that in the small, conservative farming community of Holcomb, not a good report awaited him, but his future book. At that time he did not know that it would be his last novel (devastated by alcohol, he died forty summers ago and was unable to finish it). Prayers answered). The protagonists would be the Clutter family and their friends, the murderers and the investigators (the best off in the book, their hunt for the criminals is overwhelming) and the style a mix of journalistic reporting and fiction (Capote introduces invented dialogues, characters’ thoughts and even dreams).
Holcomb was accompanied by Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and a friend of Capte’s since childhood. With her he interviewed the neighbours and the officers in charge of the case and with her he witnessed the arrival of the murderers, arrested six weeks after the deaths, whom he later interviewed. But he ended up getting too involved, especially when he met Perry Smith in his cell. He also used him and hid from him that the title of his novel would be called in a crude way: In cold blood. In his encounters with the condemned man, the writer discovered a terrible childhood and a very bitchy life and identified with him.
In fact, in many of his pages, Capote shows himself obstinate in trying to find out the origin of evil in the childhoods of the two murderers, the reason for their terrible lack of empathy.
In cold blood contains an indisputable denunciation against the death penalty
And in the end, that involvement affected him emotionally and he confessed this in an interview: “It almost killed me. I think that, in a way, it killed me.” In addition, In cold blood contains an indisputable denunciation of the death penalty. When the novel was written, people in Tennessee, Illinois and Florida were killed by the electric chair, in Kansas by hanging and in Colorado by gas chamber. Today, 27 of the 50 states that make up the country contemplate the death penalty in their regulations and some of the executions contemplated in their laws include lethal injection, electrocution and even firing squad.
On the death penalty, Capote writes: “The death penalty is a relic of human barbarism. The law tells us that taking a man’s life is not lawful, but then gives an example of the opposite, which is as evil as the crime it seeks to punish. The state has no right to inflict it. It serves no purpose. It does not prevent crime, but cheapens human life and gives rise to new crimes.” And in the mouth of the murderer Hickock, he writes: “Well, what can you say about the death penalty? I am not against it, it is about revenge.”
Robert Blake y Scott Wilson
The movie
Although in 2005 Philip Seymour Hoffman played Capote very convincingly in Truman Capote (work for which he won the Oscar) and in 2006 Toby Jones did it equally convincingly in Infamousthe great film about this story remains In cold blood by Richard Brooks, a true crime pioneer released in 1967.
Capote, who had previously been courted by Otto Preminger (who wanted to film an adaptation of his novel with Frank Sinatra), gave the rights to Brooks for an exaggerated 30% of the box office receipts and made a fortune thanks to the fact that the film grossed more than 13 million dollars at the time. Capote earned 25 million dollars from the book and the film.
At Columbia Pictures they had the ridiculous idea that the killers were Paul Newman and Steve McQueen
In an effort to give his film a documentary feel and make it scarier, Brooks cast non-movie star actors against Columbia Pictures, who had the ridiculous idea of having Paul Newman and Steve McQueen as the killers. Brooks commented, “I love Paul, but that’s the problem; everyone loves Paul. He’s not scary.” Ultimately, Robert Blake as Perry Smith and Scott Wilson as Richard Hickock did great work. Before coming to them, Brooks went through over 500 actors (including Danny DeVito) and turned down Lee Marvin, who was dying to play Alvin Dewey, the lead investigator. Brooks had just worked with him on The professionals and he had seemed like an unbearable guy.
The most outstanding work of the entire team was that of the brilliant director of photography Conrad L. Hall, whose memorable black and white for this film is still studied in film schools. By deciding to shoot it in black and white, by the way, Brooks saved money for the production. But his decision was not economic, but creative. Brooks felt that color would be too romantic for such a dark story.
On the set of In cold bloodfilmed over 129 days in the spring of 1967, Brooks also shot on the Clutter farm and the family living there at the time were fined $15,000 for the disruption caused by the presence of a film crew. Unfortunately, the Kansas State Penitentiary refused to grant him permission to shoot on its premises and he had to recreate the prison scenes on separate sound stages.
For the soundtrack, Columbia wanted Elmer Bernstein, but Richard Brooks insisted on hiring Quincy Jones, who ended up composing the music during filming.
The film premiered on December 14, 1967 in New York and was promoted with a disturbing poster: the eyes we see in it are not those of the actors, but those of the real killers: Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith. Very few people noticed this disturbing detail.
You can see In cold blood On Filmin and on RTVE Play you can also enjoy the wonderful discussion that José Luis Garci dedicated to him (along with Juan Miguel Lamet, Clara Sánchez and José Antonio Porto) in How great is the cinema.
