Capote (2005)

The story of the writing of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. 

I was about fifteen when I read the book. It seemed like something from the distant past, but Perry Smith and Richard Hickock had only been executed thirteen years earlier. The book was sympathetic to Perry Smith who had been horribly abused as a child. Hickock had a head injury which was his only excuse.

The movie Capote covers the same ground, the 1959 murder of the Clutter family, but from the point of view of Capote writing the book, so it's more upbeat. We see Capote as a raconteur and hanging around with Harper Lee.  It doesn't follow the killers; it doesn't dwell on Smith's nightmarish past.

The executions in In Cold Blood were deeply disturbing. In Capote they were kind of a relief.