In Cold Blood (1967)

In Cold Blood

Time—who needed a tornado to get to the land of oz when all i needed was a game of bridge every saturday night, some nice ice tea & dreams of murder 1959 with me strangling “dick” hickcock in bed night after night… i got to play dorothy of course with my ruby slippers and constant amazed look of wonderment when cute handsome “dick” hickcock came to murder me in my dreams at night with his lopsided handsome face and snarky smirk that just wouldn’t quit all the way until they hung him & the rope jerked his neck one last nodded so knowingly when madame haynes said this or miss reeble said that or mister mosher opined about his fictitious knighthood and adventures in paris and rome—all of which i took very seriously as if i were embedded in a mysterious tableaux vivant with two lovely witches of the east and west along with the charming wizard of oz himself while first in black and white then technicolor but before all that sitting in the living room there on constitution street sipping some ice tea with the 3 small town intelligentsia who liked me & cultivated me like a decadent orchid because i could discuss the new yorker and knew how to laugh properly at the shrewd cosmopolitan cartoons and looming grim presbyterian church so very weird & full of déjà vu years later seeing it up there on the screen that same way each time replaying 1967 all over again with truman capote reading that nytimes tidbit about some kansas murder— then before you know it he’s on the santa fe super chief with harper lee mosher the astute town historian along with miss reeble who ran the tombstone business and mrs. haynes the owner of haynes’ hardware where the two clutter murderers bought their rope to make their fame and fortune in lovely holcomb ks in capote’s cold blood— the scene as they drive by the granada my doppelganger boyfriends— they’re still living back in athens that little college town—along comes the laidback eisenhower fifties mise-en-scene with hwy 50 and santa fe connecting the sleepy little town with the big world out there—playing bridge with me