In Cold Blood (1967)

Nora's Nite
Pasta with meat sauce, salad, cookies

1967 Bosley Crowther review in the New York Times:

Why did two who had originally intended robbery, and who had not committed murder before, suddenly come to the point of slaughtering four innocent persons in cold blood? And what does this single explosion of violence indicate as to society's pitiable vulnerability to the kooks that are loose in the land?

This pervasive concern with the natures and the backgrounds of the two young men who commit the murders and are therefore the symbols of the forces of evil in this dramatic scan accounts for the considerable alteration that Mr. Brooks has made in the substance and structure of Mr. Capote's book.

With a proper disregard for the extraneous, he has dropped out much of the detail of life in the community of Holcomb that Mr. Capote so patiently inscribed, and he has swiftly introduced his two marauders and brought them to the driveway of the Clutter home on that fateful night.

Then, with a rip in the sequence that is characteristic of the nervous style of the film—it is done with frequent flashbacks and fragmentations of continuity—he cuts to the interior of the Clutter home on the morning after the crime and the discovery of the bodies by the housemaid (but unseen by the camera), to her shrieking horror.

Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly:

Brooks’ expository screenplay doffs its cap to the intersection of the two Americas Capote saw in the case — one decent and God-fearing (in the movie, the ill-fated Clutter family are naively presented as total innocents), the other psychopathic and deceitful — and dutifully hints at a homoerotic bond between the killers. But there’s little sign of Capote’s worldly irony or his mandarin prose, in part because he is weakly represented in the film by a journalist (“You’re not here to write news,” John Forsythe’s detective observes acidly) who’s no more than a standard noir iconoclast, and straight as a die too. For all its conventional psychodrama, In Cold Blood is primarily memorable for the fine acting of Robert Blake (he’s the one with qualms!) as the schizoid Perry Smith and, in particular, Scott Wilson, who’s just terrific as Dick Hickock, at once an all-American boy and a pure outsider and therefore the one who most interested Capote. I enjoyed Bennett Miller’s Capote, but I wonder what it says about our current cultural obsessions that today we are more fascinated by a celebrity journalist than by a pair of murderers willing to kill for no compelling reason.

From the first part of In Cold Blood (via The New Yorker):

Like Mr. Clutter, the young man breakfasting in a cafe called the Little Jewel never drank coffee. He preferred root beer. Three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes—that was his notion of a proper “chow-down.” Sipping and smoking, he studied a map spread on the counter before him—a Phillips 66 map of Mexico—but it was difficult to concentrate, for he was expecting a friend, and the friend was late. He looked out a window at the silent small-town street, a street he had never seen until yesterday. Still no sign of Dick. But he was sure to show up; after all, the purpose of their meeting was Dick’s idea, his “score.” And when it was settled—Mexico. The map was ragged, so thumbed that it had grown as supple as a piece of chamois. Around the corner, in his room at the hotel where he was staying, were hundreds more like it—worn maps of every state in the Union, every Canadian province, every South American country—for the young man was an incessant conceiver of voyages, not a few of which he had actually taken: to Alaska, to Hawaii and Japan, to Hong Kong. Now, thanks to a letter, an invitation to a “score,” here he was with all his worldly belongings: one cardboard suitcase, a guitar, and two big boxes of books and maps and songs, poems and old letters, weighing a quarter of a ton. (Dick’s face when he saw those boxes! “Christ, Perry. You carry that junk everywhere? “ And Perry had said, “What junk? One of them books cost me thirty bucks.”) Here he was in little Olathe, Kansas. Kind of funny, if you thought about it; imagine being back in Kansas, when only four months ago he had sworn, first to the state Parole Board, then to himself, that he would never set foot within its boundaries again. Well, it wasn’t for long.

1967 Roger Ebert interview with Robert Blake:

Although most film stars spend their days talking about themselves, their dogs, wives, next pictures, favorite recipes and hidden genius, Blake spent the weekend talking about "In Cold Blood" and its producer-director, Richard Brooks.

"Listen," he said, "you don't know what this guy went through for me. He kept telling them he wanted to cast me as Perry Smith and Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock. And the front office kept saying sure, sure, now get Paul Newman on the phone. Brooks had to fight every inch of the way."

Blake talks softly, with pauses between his sentences, as if testing every word for truth. He is a compact, intense man of 32 and bears a startling resemblance to the man who walked into the Clutter home near Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959 and shotgunned four people to death. After that murder, of course, Truman Capote flew to Kansas and began the research that led to "In Cold Blood."

"This was a big book with a lot of money riding on it," Blake said. "It cost a big pile just to buy the rights. And so naturally the studio wanted Brooks to protect their investment, You know, hire established box-office stars, shoot in color, all that jazz.

"But brooks didn't want it that way. To begin with, he insisted on black and white. And he was right. It would have ruined this film to shoot it in color. Every second had to seem real - and, you know, the funny thing is that black and white always seems more real than color."

He stopped for a moment to regain his train of thought. "Oh, yeah. So black and white was the first thing. Then Brooks said he wanted to shoot in Kansas, on location at the scene of the crime, right there in Holcomb and in the Clutter house.

"I remember he said at the time that it might make trouble if he went to Kansas. But look at it this way, he said. If we shot it in Nebraska, people would say, 'Isn't that just like Hollywood? It happens in Kansas and they shoot it in Nebraska.'"

Blake sipped a double Jack Daniels on the rocks - his usual order - and smiled.

"And then the third thing was, he felt the actors had to be unknown. Especially the killers. It would be a sacrilege to have Marlon Brando creeping around the Clutter house. So he held out for Scott and myself, even though we meant nothing, absolutely nothing, on the marquee. I really respect that."

American Masters on Truman Capote:

Born in New Orleans in 1924, Capote was abandoned by his mother and raised by his elderly aunts and cousins in Monroeville, Alabama. As a child he lived a solitary and lonely existence, turning to writing for solace. Of his early days Capote related, "I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about eleven. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it."

In his mid-teens, Capote was sent to New York to live with his mother and her new husband. Disoriented by life in the city, he dropped out of school, and at age seventeen, got a job with THE NEW YORKER magazine. Within a few years he was writing regularly for an assortment of publications. One of his stories, "Miriam," attracted the attention of publisher Bennett Cerf, who signed the young writer to a contract with Random House. Capote's first book, OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS, was published in 1948. OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS received instant notoriety for its fine prose, its frank discussion of homosexual themes, and, perhaps most of all, for its erotically suggestive cover photograph of Capote himself.

With literary success came social celebrity. The young writer was lionized by the high society elite, and was seen at the best parties, clubs, and restaurants. He answered accusations of frivolousness by claiming he was researching a future book. His short novel, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1958), took much of its inspiration from these experiences. With the publication of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and the subsequent hit film staring Audrey Hepburn, Capote's popularity and place among the upper crust was assured. His ambition, however, was to be great as well as popular, and so he began work on a new experimental project that he imagined would revolutionize the field of journalism.

In 1959, Capote set about creating a new literary genre -- the non-fiction novel. IN COLD BLOOD (1966), the book that most consider his masterpiece, is the story of the 1959 murder of the four members of a Kansas farming family, the Clutters. Capote left his jet-set friends and went to Kansas to delve into the small-town life and record the process by which they coped with this loss. During his stay, the two murderers were caught, and Capote began an involved interview with both. For six years, he became enmeshed in the lives of both the killers and the townspeople, taking thousands of pages of notes. Of IN COLD BLOOD, Capote said, "This book was an important event for me. While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry." IN COLD BLOOD sold out instantly, and became one of the most talked about books of its time. An instant classic, IN COLD BLOOD brought its author millions of dollars and a fame unparalleled by nearly any other literary author since.

Cinematography giant Conrad Hall's bio via the ASC:

Hall was born in Papete, Tahiti, in 1926. His father, James Norman Hall, was a volunteer pilot in the American expeditionary force that supported the French army during World War I. He and another American pilot, Charles B. Nordorf, went to Tahiti in search of a quiet place to write about their unit’s experiences during the war. They subsequently collaborated on the novels Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, The Hurricane and Botany Bay. James Norman Hall also married a Tahitian princess.

Conrad Hall was raised on the island in a cloistered literary environment. During his teens, his parents sent him to a private prep school in Santa Barbara, California. After graduation, Hall enrolled at the University of Southern California with instructions from his father to find a career. He decided to major in journalism but was discouraged by a low grade in a creative-writing class. “I noticed that the school had a cinema course, and that was very interesting to me for all of the wrong reasons,” he said. “I thought it was an easy way of getting through school. The problem was that once I shot a film and saw it on the screen, I was deeply affected. I realized that there was great power in telling stories through pictures…. It was a heady, profound concept for a young, idealistic person.”

His timing couldn’t have been better. Slavko Vorkapitch became head of USC’s film program in 1945, the year that Hall enrolled. Vorkapitch was a filmmaker who had migrated from Yugoslavia to Hollywood in 1922. He disdained Hollywood photoplay mentality and was noted for the power of the visual montages that characterized his films. “He had the spirit and soul of an artist,” said Hall. “He taught us the principles and said it was up to us to apply them.”

Citybeat portrait of Conrad Hall:

Hall is a wiry gentleman with white hair and beard. He is polite and soft-spoken. He insists that despite a 37-year career in movies, he has never participated in press interviews before, and it's easy to imagine that's the case. Inside the ballroom, he walks from table to table. Journalists ask Hanks about upcoming projects. For Hall, the majority of questions revolve around his past experience working with Newman.

"How has Paul Newman changed over the years?" one reporter asks Hall.

"Well, his eyes are a little less blue," Hall says, smiling. "But they're still baby blue."

Don't let Hall's lack of publicity fool you about his status in Hollywood. His photography is considered some of the tops in the business. The films he has shot, Tequila Sunrise, In Cold Blood and Harper, among many, are as beautiful, atmospheric and stunning as films come. Thanks to Hall's craftsmanship, they contain images that aren't soon forgotten by their audiences.

"Filmmaking is not so tough," Hall says. "It's all about problem-solving. It's not about standing on your head and doing tricks."

Hall is no celebrity, although he makes many of them look beautiful on the big screen. To some people, the cinematographer is just a member of the director's crew. To others, he's as significant a creative force as any of the actors. Still, if there is such a thing as film aesthetics, it's because of people like Hall. He creates what Art of the Moving Picture author Vachel Lindsay called "painting in motion." Hall crafts scenes of action and intimacy, and they all look stunning.

"There is an immense, childlike enthusiasm about the man," Mendes says, speaking later that day. "It's inspiring when you work with a 77-year-old man who has that kind of love and excitement still in him about what he does. And like Paul Newman, each day is like the first day of his career."

On the crew, the love for Hall is clear. After all, he is the person who makes it all look good, or bad if a shot turns out poorly. With movie audiences, there is no middle ground. Like the crowds outside Road to Perdition's premiere, nobody knows who he is.

Later in the day, inside his Chicago hotel room, Hall sits politely on a chair. He listens to questions, pauses and answers in his soft-spoken voice. His appearance is both gentlemanly and comfortable. He wears slacks and a sports coat and looks like a grandfather compared to the youthful publicists that surround him.

Hall has won two Oscars, one for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the other for American Beauty, Hall's first collaboration with Mendes. Road to Perdition, which is currently playing in theaters, looks to be an early favorite for year-end awards.

During the interview, Hall remains seated in the middle of his room. His arms remain folded at his side. He sits close. We're almost touching nose-to-nose. For the 77-year-old DP, the interview is a welcome opportunity to share his views. He has many, even if there aren't many moviegoers interested in hearing them.

"I remember the first time I was at the Oscars, I was afraid that I would forget somebody's name," Hall says. "But I remember John Wayne putting out his big paw to congratulate me. The second time I went to the Oscars, for American Beauty, it was a lot more fun."

Looking back, Hall has few regrets. He took part in many significant films. His son, Conrad W. Hall, the DP for The Panic Room, has become a significant cinematographer in his own right. The Hall family trade is continuing, at least for one more generation.