Three Pieces of Shit: In Cold Blood, A Wilderness of Error, and Apocalypse Now (Especially Apocalypse Now)

By John-Michael Kuczynski

At first glance, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Errol Morris’s A Wilderness of Error, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now seem to occupy different worlds: literature, documentary film, and cinema. Yet despite their differences, they are united by a deeper and more damning commonality: all three are fundamentally dishonest works that betray the realities they claim to explore.Each, in its own way, sacrifices the truth in favor of self-indulgence, packaging fakery as profundity and corrupting real human suffering into a backdrop for personal or artistic vanity.

In In Cold Blood, Truman Capote reshaped the brutal murders of the Clutter family into a sentimental narrative.Falling in love, emotionally if not physically, with one of the killers, Perry Smith, Capote manufactured a portrait of a tragic, sensitive soul dragged into violence. The real Perry Smith — the manipulative, cold-blooded triggerman — was buried under a mountain of Capote’s emotional needs.The result was not journalism but emotional pornography: a falsified world built to satisfy the author’s hunger for meaning and connection rather than to confront the grimness of reality.

Errol Morris’s A Wilderness of Error commits a similar betrayal.Masquerading as an investigative documentary, it repackages long-settled facts about Jeffrey MacDonald’s guilt into an “open question,” propped up with mood lighting, cryptic narration, and aestheticized ambiguity.Morris didn’t uncover new evidence or offer new insights.He simply rehashed exhausted material, smoothing it over with production gloss to maintain the illusion that the case was still alive, still mysterious — when in truth, the psychological reality had already been fully revealed: MacDonald was a narcissistic killer who maintained the pretense of innocence for decades.By refusing to confront that reality, Morris turned a psychologically fascinating tragedy into a stylish but empty pose.

Finally, Apocalypse Now presents itself as a searing portrait of war’s madness and the darkness within man.In truth, it is a bloated, incoherent spectacle — a self-conscious attempt to create a Great Work without the discipline or honesty required to actually achieve greatness.Coppola doesn’t explore Vietnam; he uses it as wallpaper for pre-fabricated existential clichés, importing Heart of Darkness wholesale into a context where it does not fit.The result is a film that says nothing real about Vietnam, war, or human nature — a movie that substitutes spectacle for insight and noise for wisdom.

In each of these works, the same fundamental sin repeats itself:

• Capote wasn’t interested in the truth about Perry Smith.He was interested in being seen as someone who understood Perry Smith’s "troubled soul."

• Morris wasn’t interested in the truth about Jeffrey MacDonald.He was interested in being seen as the documentarian brave enough to question "received narratives."

• Coppola wasn’t interested in the truth about Vietnam.He was interested in being seen as a director of Great, Important Art.

In every case, real human suffering was not illuminated, but used — as a stage for private fantasies of insight, bravery, and profundity.

And that is why, despite their reputations, these works are fundamentally contemptible:They betray their subjects.They betray their audiences.And worst of all, they betray the truth itself — the one thing that art, journalism, and documentary alike are supposed to honor.

No amount of critical acclaim can erase that fact.