Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences was born to be a movie. The book was an immediate best-seller on its release in 1966, and plans were afoot to film it almost before it rolled off the presses. Capote's improbable inspiration was a 300-word piece in the New York Times — then, as now, little more than a blurb — about a murder in a remote corner of Kansas; something about it captivated his imagination, and he spent the next seven years crafting, along with his friend and fellow novelist Harper Lee, a masterful true-crime story about the pointless killing of the Clutter family. Just as Capote had no idea at the time how obsessed he would become with the story of the Clutters and the murderous drifters, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, who took their lives, the public had no idea that the book he wrote about them would launch a new genre of fiction — the 'non-fiction novel' — and stand out as an early example of what would become known as 'the New Journalism'. It would also cast a huge shadow over Capote's life and career; of all his works, none save Breakfast at Tiffany's would so resonate with the public.
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