What Hollywood Really Thinks of True Crime

Film director Tom Kalin won raves at Cannes for his film Savage Grace, which is based on a decades-old murder story immortalized in a very well reviewed true crime classic, also titled Savage Grace. With Julianne Moore in the lead role, I have been looking forward to it.

So I was curious to see what the director thought of the true crime book on which his lauded film is based. Here's what the director said in a recent interview:

{Question} The film is an adaptation of a book by Natalie Robins and Steven Aronson. Tell us about the source material.

{Answer} TK: It is basically a non-fiction book called Savage Grace that came out in the 1980s. It is a classy version of the true-crime book that has pictures in the middle.

In the States there are these cheap paperbacks that tell us of lurid tales of crime. And always in the middle there are photographs of the main characters.

This book was of a different caliber. The writing is much better and it tells the story not just as you see in the film but of the Baekeland family. It covers about a hundred years, and it follows the themes [of] the film but in a much more sprawling way. It is both a shockingly tabloid book that covers madness and matricide but is also something much deeper. It has resonance with Greek tragedy.

Sheesh, aren't the pictures usually in the middle in non-fiction books? Cheap, lurid, tabloid -- I wonder what the director will say when those adjectives are flung at his film? Et tu, Brute!?

Update, May 29, 2008: Sure enough, the film has been labeled "criminally lurid." There's a surprise.

Comments

[Fiz]

I thought it rather a good book at the time! What does he do to really bad ones???? :-(

[carole gill]

The book was excellent. I found it "unputdownable!" And you make a great point: there are true crime books and there are true crime books--They are definitely aimed at different kinds of readers. Some readers I think are probably serial killers already or about to be!
Am looking forward to seeing the film, btw should be terrific.

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