The Poison Pen: Capote Cursed By Burroughs in 1970 Letter

August 3, 2012

By Tom Blunt

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The always astonishing blog Letters of Note has reprinted a withering bit of hate mail sent by William S. Burroughs to Truman Capote back in 1970, following the gargantuan success of Capote’s In Cold Blood. It seems Burroughs was angry about Capote’s appearance before the Senate, during which he defended certain police tactics such as forced confessions (more context here). Here’s a bite:

You have betrayed and sold out the talent that was granted you… That talent is now officially withdrawn. Enjoy your dirty money. You will never have anything else. You will never write another sentence above the level of In Cold Blood.

Ouch! I can’t help wondering whether Bill Murray’s put the same sort of curse on “Ghostbusters 3″ with his extremely pointed non-involvement. In the most recent update, Dan Aykroyd did his best to make it sound like everything will be just dandy without him. Aykroyd cites the importance of “passing it on to a new generation,” but considering that Murray’s the only Ghostbuster whose film career has survived into the 21st century, what makes him so sure the new generation will care?

Oh Katherine Heigl, how you’ve been abused and taken for granted by Hollywood, that cruelest of lovers. The Tumblr site HEIGLR addresses these wrongs with a series of all-too-plausible movie posters, all drawing their artwork from this year’s dud, “One for the Money.”

An artist named Frazer Irving has given Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the silent film treatment, adapting it into a series of devastating black and white illustrations laid out like a graphic novel (here’s an index of all the pages). If you view them as a set of storyboards, you could have an animated feature that’s probably miles more interesting than any of the dozen or so adaptations currently in production.

Tags: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Frankenstein, Frazer Irving, Ghostbusters, In Cold Blood, Katherine Heigl, Letters of Note, Mary Shelley, One for the Money, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs