True Stories 5: 60s—In Cold Blood

Going from last week’s telling of the heroic story of Lawrence of Arabia to this week’s telling of the opposite—a story with a character who is not at all laudable—makes for an interesting look at the range that film can explore. Point being, you don’t have to choose a likeable person as the focus of your film —he/she just has to be interesting. And interesting isn’t a strong enough word to describe the twisted psyche of Perry and his partner Dick as they commit horrific murders in In Cold Blood [1967] by Richard Brooks.

Like many films, this one was based on a book. Truman Capote, who wrote the book In Cold Blood said he did so in an attempt to figure out why such a senseless act could happen. Interestingly, this chilling story would have a second life nearly 40 years later in the film Capote—which we’ll be talking about a few weeks down the road.

Read the book. Watch the movie and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s a trailer that applauds the filmmakers for the authenticity of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q56bqi9dJwk

And that authenticity comes across on the screen. This isn’t a film that was shot on the lot in Hollywood—it portrays the small-town Kansas life because that’s where it was filmed. Going there and immersing yourself in that setting would be crucial to writing this kind of screenplay. A glamorous place to visit? Certainly not—but necessary for your story to be as vivid as it can be.

Another huge challenge for the writer is how to make such a despicable pair of murderers—to some extent—sympathetic. Of course, they’re not meant to be sympathetic, but to understand their crimes, their psyches, one must also not forget they are human. How did they get to be that way? Is there a redeeming bone in their body? And those are questions that will make you as a writer work to get to the bottom of these guys and try to understand how they got here.

As I said before, we don’t have to like the characters you choose to write about, but we have to find them interesting—and, hopefully, fascinating.

When Capote wrote the book, he said he’d invented a new genre—the nonfiction novel. Which is pretty much true and has spawned many more such books. But the film launched something more—the ‘true crime’ film. And true crime today, as a genre, is huge—in books and films.

One of the most exciting things for the writer in this genre is that any court transcripts about the crime you’re focusing on are in the public domain—this means that you can use them as the source for dramatizing scenes in your film. So if a wife, for example, testifies that she didn’t kill her husband and takes you through her movements on the day of the killing, you can dramatize that, bring it to life in your script.

In many ways, In Cold Blood became the benchmark for all true crime films that would follow. And while most of us certainly don’t want to exalt the perpetrators of a crime, I think there’s something in us that wants to understand what drove them to commit those crimes—and that’s your job as the writer to try and uncover.

Next week, a different kind of true crime film—and one that came out in the same year as In Cold Blood—a film about two horrible killers, but killers who have been romanticized over the years: Bonnie and Clyde.

Copyright © Diane Lake

03Jul22

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