It’s not hard to get why Hollywood has become fascinated by the 1959 Clutter murder and subsequent covering of the case by Truman Capote taking form in In Cold Blood. The facts of the case are of the sort that agitates with equal measure curiosity and fear. Perry Smith, the triggerman who shot 4 members of the Clutter family during a nightmarish night robbing their home in a sleepy Kansas outpost, after his capture, conjured empathy in most that met him because of his sheer patheticness combined with charisma and sensitive intuition. He was disarming, to Truman, it seems, as well as members of law enforcement who dealt with him until his death by hanging. And though it is hard to feel too sympathetic given the detailed confession of the events, which are gruesome and terrifying, when I closed the cover, it was also impossible to feel that anybody won or even that justice had really been served.

If you haven’t see Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, I recommend it. It is more about the man and his relationship to the story than about the crime. The book is far more disturbing but if you can stomach the details, the writing is amazing - I won’t review it because that is well-trodden territory. But the combination of the 2 stories got me thinking about documentary and the relationship of documentarian to his/her subject.

I assume that Capote is a well-researched film and it probably captured as much as is known about his long relationship to the case. Given his intense involvement, long hours spent in intimate discussion with nearly everyone material to it, I was astonished to see him not reference himself (almost entirely) in the book. Late in the book, there is a line said by Perry that is attributed to a “friend” of Perry’s - but since Perry had no friends but Capote and one who is named in other sections, that line must have been told to him. Later, Capote relates testimony by Hickock (the other murderer) as told to a “journalist who is permitted to visit from time to time” - again, it seems obvious it is Capote but he denies it by using 3rd person. If you saw the movie, you know that Capote nearly missed the execution, yet the scene is in the book and devoid of any clues that he had a stake in being there.

What is perplexing me is that I can’t decide whether having an acknowledgment by the author revealing his connection is material to the retelling of the Clutter’s murder. The style of the writing is to recount the story through the words of those who lived it, strung together and organized by Capote for maximum impact. It’s a brilliant work of literature; like a good film, his artistry heightens the experience (I found myself looking on the internet for photos of Smith and Hickock because I was seeing them as monsters in my head; I needed to see their human faces).

I’m also curious about the film version - it has Capote agonizing over the fact the Perry won’t admit or retell the story of what happened that night but in the book, Perry’s confession was taken by law enforcement on his extradition ride from Las Vegas back to Kansas. Capote keeps saying he can’t finish the book until he has the confession, but given his close relationship to Dewey, he would have had the confession. He might have wanted to hear it from Perry himself given their closeness, but that wouldn’t hold him up from completing the book. Unless he didn’t get the confession from Dewey, in which case, I wonder why the movie didn’t address that.

Maybe it’s the blossoming of personal documentary, or thinly veiled subjectivity in journalism these days, but I found myself put off by Capote’s denial of his role in the story. Was he simply an objective journalist? If he wasn’t, what part of the story is colored? I’m not sure any of it matters to the story he told, which is what is challenging my own notions. Could it be possible that in certain circumstances, objectivity is possible, even in those as extreme as In Cold Blood? Or at least that the story need not be colored by the author’s involvement?

This is something documentarians deal with every day and I don’t necessarily expect an answer but I’d welcome thoughts, or perhaps other stories that illuminate this issue.