Yan Qi
Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, translated by Xia Shu, Nanhai Publishing Company: New Classic Culture, October 2013 edition, 359 pages, 39.50 yuan
First, the writer Capote
Last night I woke up with a sudden thought: Perry said he didn't know anything about me, not really. I lay awake in bed thinking about it, and then realized that in some way this was true. You don't even understand that the superficial facts in my life have some specific similarities with yours. I was an only child, much younger than I was older—always the youngest boy at school. When I was three years old, my parents divorced. My father (who has since been married five times) was a traveling salesman, and I spent most of my childhood wandering with him around the South. He wasn't bad for me, but I didn't like him and still do. (I never saw him again, he lives in New Orr). My mother, who was only sixteen years old when she gave birth to me, was very beautiful. She married a very wealthy Cuban man, with whom I lived since I was ten (most of the time in New York). Unfortunately, my mother, after several miscarriages, had mental problems and became an alcoholic, which made my life miserable. Later, she committed suicide (on sleeping pills). I dropped out of school at the age of sixteen and have been on my own ever since – getting a job at a magazine (and starting to write at a very young age). I've been intellectually and artistically precocious – but emotionally underdeveloped. Of course, I always have emotional issues – mostly because of a "question" you asked me on our last visit, and I answered the question truthfully (not explicitly)!
It's a very sketchy resume. But I'm not used to revealing my heart in this way. I don't care to tell you anything though.
It's a letter from writer Truman Garcia Capote to interviewee Perry Smith on December 15, 1963, at 70 Willow Street, Brooklyn, New York City, when Perry had been in Lansing prison for five years and had experienced repeated appeals, and he would move from death row to "corner" three months after receiving the letter. "Corner," a slang term for inmates, is the Kansas State Penitentiary Execution Chamber, which contains an unpainted wooden gallows with a faint smell of pine.
The author's book is the famous "Cold Blood", published in 1966, adapted in 1966, I have difficulty retrospective of the release of the film that year, but the hot screening of "Capote" in 2005 made this case appear in the public eye again.
Perry's portrait first appears in Cold Blood at breakfast at the "Little Jewel" café, and as a superb master of portrait observation, Capote depicts Perry's appearance in several steps: he, like Mr. Clutte (the head of the family to be killed by him), never drinks coffee. "He'd rather drink sars. Three pieces of aspirin, a smoothieste, a couple of Moore cigarettes, and that's his breakfast. The map of Mexico in his hand had long been crumbled into tatters. The young man still had hundreds of maps like this, and now he appeared at the "Little Gems" café entirely because he had received a letter, an invitation to go and implement a plan, with his belongings. It makes another murderer, Dick, wonder about the heavy possessions he brings. When he closed the map and stood up, his first complete presentation was this: when sitting, he looked as if he were bigger than ordinary, with strong shoulders and arms, like a weightlifter who was squatting with luck (in fact, weightlifting was his hobby). But some parts of his body were not in harmony with other parts, and the little feet wrapped in black boots with steel buckles might have been more appropriate if they were to wear the delicate dancing shoes of the ladies. When he stood up, he was no more than much taller than a twelve-year-old, and his two short, rickety legs didn't seem to be enough to support an adult's body, and he looked strange, not like a well-built truck driver, but like a retired horse racing knight—old age and loose muscles. Because he stood outside the grocery store waiting for his companion Dick, one of the ways he spent his time was by looking in the mirror, and by looking at the mirror of the mirror, he would be deeply fascinated by his own face, and each angle would have a different impression; playing the guitar and singing, fantasizing about public performances was another way for him to kill time, and he had a song called "After The Period":
Every April, parrots flock after flock,
Red, green,
And orange-red,
Fly, fly, fly overhead,
I saw them flying, and I heard them singing high in the sky,
Singing songs calls for the spring light of April...
Six years later, in April, Perry and Dick were on the gallows.
What kind of person was Capote? In the remaining images, we can see the young Capote with a unique appearance, and the covers of several of his books are pictures of himself, thin and refreshing. The most sensational at the time was the feminine photograph of twenty-three-year-old Capote leaning on the couch, looking at best a teenager. Bennett Surf, then head of Random House, was confident in the publicity of the portrait, but he could never have imagined that the book had not yet been published, and that the photograph had already appeared in Life magazine and occupied an entire page. "It was Truman's own account," Seffer wrote memoirs wistfully, "and I still don't know how he did it." In a later interview, Capote declared that he didn't like the photo very much, "but, in business, I knew that this 'drug addict' look was good for the 'business.'" The "too pretty, too fragile, too pale, girl-like warmth makes his eyes seem incredibly soft", and the "Joel" described in Capote's first novel, "Other Voices, Other Rooms", is himself.
In 2005, actor Philip Hoffman gave an extraordinary interpretation of Capote's spiritual core, and won the 78th Academy Award for Best Actor for this role, in fact, Philip Hoffman did not have the same beautiful face as Capote himself, and John le Carré, the "greatest master of spy fiction of the twentieth century", did not hesitate to praise him: to meet the next Philip, we will have to wait a long time.
The actor is very fat, with disheveled blonde hair, and has nothing to do with Hollywood's usual glamorous beauty. The wonderful thing about him is that he has created a lot of "obscene" images. In Happiness, he plays a masturbating youth who makes harassing phone calls to strangers in his spare time. From this more obscene way, he excavated a very human performance element from this more obscene way and less likable action. Johann Le Carré said, "From what I observed while he was working, his creative talent was restrained and very personal. I suspect he would never claim to be a theory-first playwright, nor would he be good at talking about the inner world of his characters. So Philip had to talk to himself, which must have been rather morbid, riddled with questions such as: When, exactly, should I lose my self-control completely? Or rather, why do I insist on going down this path when I know the tragic ending that is destined? But tragedy seduces Bachmann like a lamp, and it seduces Philippe just as much. ”
Stills from the movie Capote, right by writer Harper Lee
Philip Hoffman's debut in the Capote film comes from a new York city party, "at least be honest with the facts", the voiceover presupposes, seeing him holding a wine glass and teasing women with "honesty", "I'm honest about what I write, I'll let you know if it's autobiographical, whether it's about me", the room is full of smoke, the ladies are flustered, but when asked if he is gay, he says he is not so controversial.
The birth of a great work comes from newspaper clippings, a total of three shots, introducing the case and the victims, the first shot is scissors from top to bottom in the middle of the scene to cut the newspaper to explain the case, the big letters read: The kulak family of three was killed; the second shot is a scissors vertical clipping across the screen, the specific small print report is that the wife and child of the Klat family were found dead in the Kansas home; the third is the portrait of Mr. Klatt, the victim of the scissors, in the newspaper.
On December 30, 1959, Perry was arrested, Capote watched him in the crowd as he was escorted, their eyes briefly collided, and Perry stepped up the steps (thirteen steps are the slang for the gallows). In the second half of the film, Capote steps up the red carpet for the premiere of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," using an elevated slow-motion shot that should be accompanied by jazz, and people look up at him, his expression intriguing. Capote, who was extremely exhausted due to Perry's incessant appeals, said truthfully but coldly to Harper Lee: "If they win, I will have a nervous breakdown and will never recover, and I can only pray that the situation will work in my favor." ”
Everything seems to be for this great novel, and he has also revealed his heart, and in the movie, after Perry recovers from a hunger strike, Capote tells him, "I was constantly abandoned when I was a child, and my mother would take me to the new town to socialize with another man, and every night she locked me alone in a hotel room." My mom would pull the door bolt and tell the administrator not to let me out anyway. I was terrified, I shouted, and finally collapsed on the carpet by the door, and fell asleep. After a few years like this, she threw me to relatives in Alabama. "The two had a very long conversation." I'm going to take your diary with me, and I want to take a good look at it, and if I leave without knowing you, the whole world will treat you like a monster forever, and I don't want that. Friends Harper Lee's eyes are clear, such as "Truman, do you respect him," or at the end of the film, "I can't do anything for them, save them," Harper says, "But the truth is, you don't want to do it." ”
Capote died in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984, at the age of fifty-nine, according to autopsy reports, of "liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug poisonings."
Capote's character, Philip Hoffman, was found dead on February 2, 2014, in his New York apartment at the age of 46, dying of accidental acute mixed drug poisoning, containing heroin, cocaine, phenol and amphetamines.
2. The death penalty
In Cold Blood, Perry once noticed two emaciated gray male cats who appeared in Court Square every evening, looking around, stopping from time to time to check on the cars parked there. This phenomenon puzzled Perry, until a kind lady explained to him that he understood that the two cats were looking for dead birds on the front guardrail, and then, as soon as he saw the cats come out of the movement, he had a colic in his heart, "Because I have been like them for most of my life, I am their kind."
Before the 1960 Holcum murders officially began, he was held at Finney County Courthouse Prison, which is located on the fourth floor of the courthouse building, which is a very good day for Perry because it is clean and has a squirrel called "Red". He said he had pinned his hopes of escaping from prison on two young men who had been observing him for a long time and had been paying attention to him, one with red hair and the other with black hair. The young man stood in the square, smiling at Perry through the elm tree through the window, and waving at him, at least that's what he thought himself.
In the Capote movie, Capote typed, and the typing sound merged with Perry's voice: "I, fourteen, I said to her, Mom is dead, I can see it, a week later we got a notice, she was probably drinking too much or something, found her trembling, she hit me several times with that flashlight, hit me badly." That night I dreamed of the big yellow bird, grabbing the nun's eyes, dazzling like the sun, and lifting me up into the sky, and sometimes you see the real face of things. ”
The United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, but the reality is that thirty-eight of the fifty states in the United States have the death penalty and twelve states do not, such as Kansas, where Dick and Perry were tried, which abolished the death penalty before the Kratt case. Moreover, Kansas has not used the death penalty since 1976. Since death penalty cases take ten years from filing, trial, judgment, appeal, review (appeal and review in death penalty cases are automatic) to final exmission or execution. The trial of a death penalty case costs at least a million dollars, which can be described as a huge cost. Generally speaking, after a failed appeal in the state, a lawsuit can be filed in federal court, a new trial can be conducted under the right of habeas corpus in the U.S. Constitution, and if the appeal fails again, it can also be appealed to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Kratt family case has been successfully submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court three times. Governors and presidents could even be called upon to intervene administratively, announcing suspensions, commutations, suspensions, and even pardons. In Cold Blood, Dick reads a lot of law books on death row, and he wants to overturn the trial and seek a review, and he constantly writes letters protesting his trial. Dick had been stressing in his letter that he and Perry had not been given a fair trial, and finally one of them worked. The Kansas Bar Association's Legal Aid Committee appointed a lawyer, Schultz, to investigate, and "if the evidence is conclusive, the Association will file a human rights protection lawsuit with the Kansas Supreme Court to contest the validity of the original judgment." Schultz filed a petition for human rights protections, and the Kansas Supreme Court appointed a retired judge to preside over a full hearing. Two years after the trial, the original team of people involved in the trial regrouped in the Garden City courthouse, but dick's original two defense lawyers took the defendant's place and became the subject of investigation, investigating whether they had carefully prepared and defended the case they had tried. The hearing, which lasted six days, carefully investigated every point of suspicion in the case. The location was even transferred to the Lansing Prison, where Dick and Perry were imprisoned, in order to hear testimony from Dick and Perry. To show the fairness of the trial, the eight jurors swore they didn't know Dick and Perry at all and wouldn't bring prejudice into the trial.
The Supreme Court of Kansas ordered that the lives of the two prisoners must end between midnight and 2 a.m. on April 14, 1965.
More than two dozen witnesses witnessed the entire execution of Dick and Perry, including Capote, after which Capote witnessed the execution of two other criminals, and he admitted that he had the urge to write a letter against the death penalty, but he did not put it into practice.
In the movie "Capote", Perry wrote to Capote: "Dear Truman, where are you, I saw this in the medical dictionary, hanging death is caused by suffocation, neck vertebrae rupture, tracheal tearing, after losing the appeal, this sounds really miserable, miss you, lonely and longing for your appearance." ”
In the movie "Cold Blood", Dick, who is familiar with law books and constantly appeals, said: "Have you seen millionaires sitting in electric torture chairs? No, my dear, there are two kinds of laws, one for the rich and one for the poor. ”
Third, the murderer Perry
In 2005, Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Capote, and that same year was a haze for seventy-two-year-old American actor Robert Blake. Robert Blake played Perry in the 1966 film Cold Blood.
Poster for the movie Cold Blood, released in 1966
The Emmy winner, who was acquitted by a criminal court eight months ago for allegedly killing his wife, was acquitted by a civil court eight months ago and was held responsible for his wife's death and should pay a huge compensation of $30 million to his four children. In February 2006, Robert reluctantly filed a bankruptcy application with the authorities.
The prosecution alleges that during an argument between Robert and his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, shortly after eating at an Italian restaurant in Studio City in Los Angeles, shortly after eating together at an Italian restaurant in Studio City, Los Angeles, during an argument, Robert lost his sanity out of anger and shot his wife on the spot. Bonnie was shot twice, dying, and died shortly after being taken to hospital. On April 18, 2002, Robert was arrested as the only suspect in the police at the time. During the investigation, police discovered that Robert had hired two Hollywood stuntmen to try to kill his wife, for which Robert faced one count of murder and two counts of hired homicide.
In the 1966 film Cold Blooded by Richard Brooks, Robert shows the trajectory of the murderer's dark mind. This is a crime film and road movie, the image temperament is tough, closer to the non-fiction version of Truman's "Cold Blood", depicting the whole process of how the murderers commit crimes to the gallows. The first scene shows Perry playing a guitar in a car bound for Kansas, first catching the viewer's eyes with the soles of his leather shoes, and then his tangled face in the dark. The film follows the criminals' journey of escape, and from the route of Dick and Perry, they travel through ten U.S. states (Kansas, Okhoma, Texas, California, Nevada, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida) and even flee to Mexico. They travel from one place to another, through the downtown, through remote mountain villages and towns, the escape route they choose is based on their own experience, and most of the footholds they go to are some humble hotels, shops, gas stations, etc.
The first space where Perry and Dick meet is the bathroom at the train station, and he looks in the mirror as he thinks about the Las Vegas show, and when Dick asks him what the big box is, he says it's all his stuff, books, letters and lyrics, souvenirs from Korea, "I have a treasure map that will lead us to find Captain Cortez's long-sunken treasure, sixty million Spanish gold off the coast of Mexico."
On the road ahead, Dick pulled out a map to explain to Perry the plan he was going to implement that night: four hundred miles west was Daddy Clatt's house, and in that office there was a small, old safe with ten thousand dollars, maybe more. At this point, Perry sneered at him, "So, that's the perfect plan you're talking about."
During the days when Dick and Perry fled, they often ran out of food and worried about survival every day. In order to solve the problem of food and clothing, Dick risked arrest and returned to Kansas, exchanging money with a fake invoice with his real name written on it, thus leaving a clue for the police search.
Finally Perry was in the house before going to the gallows, and Capote asked him: Do you want to write about your father? Perry shook his head. "I can send you a painting or your bronze medallion," said Perry, who had his back to Capote, shaking his head again and saying to Capote, "send him the treasure map, and maybe he'll be lucky, a lone wolf." "Then he began a long monologue that was shocking." It used to be a real home," he said. The rain outside the window hits the window, refracting through the light in the corner of Perry's eyes, as if his tears are flowing, "but no tourists have come", this scene is the highlight of Perry's film, but also the crime film's portrayal of the depth of the prisoner's humanity.
I often think of the scene in "Cold Blood", they parked on the road, carried an old man and a child, when asked if the child had any money, the child took the bottle out of his pocket and proposed, "If you can open slowly, we can pick up a lot of bottles to exchange for money, Johnny and I are eating by recycling the bottle money." Perry took the bottle pocket, looked into the distance, squinted his eyes, and said firmly, "I think I have found the treasure that Captain Cortez has sunk for a long time."
After a short "treasure tour", they were arrested.
The book "Cold Blood" ends like this: Sheriff Dewey looks at Susan who is far away and wishes her a long way," he watched as she hurriedly disappeared into the path. The soft hair fluttered and sparkled in the wind—Nancy could have grown into such a young lady. For a long time he also turned home and walked toward the bushes; and behind him was the vast blue sky and the heavy wheat, which rose and fell with the wind and whispered."
Editor-in-Charge: Huang Xiaofeng
Proofreader: Yan Zhang