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Killer Joe
This exciting first play by the author of Osage County premiered at Chicago's Steppenwolf before going on to acclaimed productions in London and New York. Hired by the dissolute Smith family to murder the matriarch for insurance money, Killer Joe takes the daughter to bed as a retainer against his final payoff which sets in motion a bloody aftermath as the "hit man" meets his match.
84 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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664 people want to read
About the author
Tracy Letts
15 books241 followersTracy Letts is an American playwright and actor who received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play August: Osage County.
Letts was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to best-selling author Billie Letts, of Where The Heart Is and The Honk And Holler Opening Soon fame, and the late college professor and actor Dennis Letts. His brother Shawn is a jazz musician and composer. He also has a brother Dana. Letts was raised in Durant, Oklahoma and graduated from Durant High School in the early 1980s. He moved to Dallas, where he waited tables and worked in telemarketing while starting as an actor. He acted in Jerry Flemmons' O Dammit!, which was part of a new playwrights series sponsored by Southern Methodist University.
Letts moved to Chicago at the age of 20, and worked for the next 11 years at Steppenwolf and Famous Door. He's still an active member of the Steppenwolf company today. He was a founding member of Bang Bang Spontaneous Theater, whose members included Greg Kotis (Tony Award-winner for Urinetown), Michael Shannon (Academy Award-nominee for Revolutionary Road), Paul Dillon, and Amy Pietz. In 1991, Letts wrote the play Killer Joe. Two years later, the play premiered at the Next Lab Theater in Chicago, followed by the 29th Street Rep in NYC. Since then, Killer Joe has been performed in at least 15 countries in 12 languages.
In 2008, Letts won a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County. It had premiered in Chicago in 2007, before moving to New York. It opened on Broadway in 2007 and ran into 2009.
His mother Billie Letts has said of his writing, "I try to be upbeat and funny. Everybody in Tracy's stories gets naked or dead." Letts' plays have been about people struggling with moral and spiritual questions. He says he was inspired by the plays of Tennessee Williams and the novels of William Faulkner and Jim Thompson. Letts considers sound to be a very strong storytelling tool for theater.
Letts was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to best-selling author Billie Letts, of Where The Heart Is and The Honk And Holler Opening Soon fame, and the late college professor and actor Dennis Letts. His brother Shawn is a jazz musician and composer. He also has a brother Dana. Letts was raised in Durant, Oklahoma and graduated from Durant High School in the early 1980s. He moved to Dallas, where he waited tables and worked in telemarketing while starting as an actor. He acted in Jerry Flemmons' O Dammit!, which was part of a new playwrights series sponsored by Southern Methodist University.
Letts moved to Chicago at the age of 20, and worked for the next 11 years at Steppenwolf and Famous Door. He's still an active member of the Steppenwolf company today. He was a founding member of Bang Bang Spontaneous Theater, whose members included Greg Kotis (Tony Award-winner for Urinetown), Michael Shannon (Academy Award-nominee for Revolutionary Road), Paul Dillon, and Amy Pietz. In 1991, Letts wrote the play Killer Joe. Two years later, the play premiered at the Next Lab Theater in Chicago, followed by the 29th Street Rep in NYC. Since then, Killer Joe has been performed in at least 15 countries in 12 languages.
In 2008, Letts won a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County. It had premiered in Chicago in 2007, before moving to New York. It opened on Broadway in 2007 and ran into 2009.
His mother Billie Letts has said of his writing, "I try to be upbeat and funny. Everybody in Tracy's stories gets naked or dead." Letts' plays have been about people struggling with moral and spiritual questions. He says he was inspired by the plays of Tennessee Williams and the novels of William Faulkner and Jim Thompson. Letts considers sound to be a very strong storytelling tool for theater.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
September 21, 2018
Okay, this is a page-turner of a play but dang, I probably never want to see it. It's basically awful people being awful at each other, with gruesome consequences. I can see it being very effective in the theater, and the book itself is pretty well written, but not necessarily a way I want to spend my time.
August 13, 2023
Playwright Tracy Letts would later adapt this 1993 trailer-park noir (his first play) into a screenplay for William Friedkin’s 2011 film version. The play, like the movie, is dark and funny, a kind of white trash Mamet/Tarantino mashup. While most of the play’s dialogue reappears in the film, Letts and Friedkin open things up and further exploit the bloodshed and sexual violence. However, the notorious fried chicken scene that resulted in the film’s NC-17 rating is here on the page in all its depravity.
December 19, 2018
Is it cheating to read a couple short screenplays to finish my reading goal for the year? Anyway, if we're talking quality regardless of quantity, this play is nuts and made me really look forward to rewatching the film. These characters are so despicable and awful that the words and stage directions themselves hold up on their own. It just works, in an uncomfortably dark and abhorrent way.
Read
April 9, 2025An excellent f*cked up thriller. The second play by Letts I've read and I'm going to read them all.
September 13, 2016
Called a black comedy - I believe this was Tracy Letts first play - era 1999. I call it pulp fiction. The characters were developed well and altho there was plenty of violence this play was one that moved well and kept you on the edge of your seat waiting for the next scene. Teaming with sex and violence, the premise was the hiring of a hit man to claim the insurance money. This play later became a movie.
April 27, 2023
Tracy Letts explores extremes of the life in a rural part of Texas among white, poor, “trailer” folk whose psychological state he closely dissects while following a dysfunctional family which members plot to murder another member of their family in order to collect a large insurance claim. When they hire a disturbing assassin “Killer Joe” the story slowly takes darker as well as a more absurd turn caused by the intricate relations between the family members.
October 3, 2017
This play was fucked. Up.
June 19, 2020
Que galera podre, amei.
January 18, 2022
My first play i got free tix to at Steppenwolf was a tracy Letts play, Bug, which I rlly loved so i went back to read his first one here
Still pretty f’d up but in a more familiar way which u can tell by the fact that of the three i’ve read so far this is the only one they made a movie of. Very twisty-turn-y, entertaining yarn.
Apparently this was first put on a in a tiny theater in some obscure illinois town, and Even tho it wasn't as good as bug if i just bumped into this play looking for some local theater or something, holy crap i would been buzzing afterwords! lots of fun ty tracy
Still pretty f’d up but in a more familiar way which u can tell by the fact that of the three i’ve read so far this is the only one they made a movie of. Very twisty-turn-y, entertaining yarn.
Apparently this was first put on a in a tiny theater in some obscure illinois town, and Even tho it wasn't as good as bug if i just bumped into this play looking for some local theater or something, holy crap i would been buzzing afterwords! lots of fun ty tracy
June 6, 2018
4.5 stars, really. The best plays are the ones about absolutely dysfunctional people and how they attempt to relate to one another. Letts has a stellar way of putting it all together.
Chris Smith comes up with a fool-proof plan to have his mother killed for her insurance money, recruiting Killer Joe, a detective and occasional hitman, to do so. He ropes his father Ansel into agreeing to it, while his younger sister Dottie is the supposed beneficiary of the policy. They attempt to keep her ignorant of the scheme. Accordingly, things refuse to go to plan.
Chris Smith comes up with a fool-proof plan to have his mother killed for her insurance money, recruiting Killer Joe, a detective and occasional hitman, to do so. He ropes his father Ansel into agreeing to it, while his younger sister Dottie is the supposed beneficiary of the policy. They attempt to keep her ignorant of the scheme. Accordingly, things refuse to go to plan.
"DOTTIE: My momma tried to kill me when I was real little. She put a pillow over my face and tried to stop me from breathing, 'cause she cared more about herself than her little baby, and she didn't love me like a mother loves a little baby. And she thought she'd done it, and she was happy, 'cause then she didn't have to worry about me eating her food, and sleeping in her bed, and growing up to be the part of her that was cut out and grown into a better thing than she had been, had ever been. 'Cause that would mean the best part of her was me. But she hadn't done it, she didn't give me back to Him, she only made me sick, made me not be for a while; but then I was and she was sad that I was, and that I always would be."That was the first conversation Dottie and Joe have. It just knocked me around a bit; that phrasing. I had to put this away for a hot minute and come back hours later. But when I did come back, Dottie was still amazing (and played by Sarah Paulson in the 1998 run, which Letts also seemed to be very excited by, if the (!) after her name is any indication) and then this happened:
JOE: (He hands one of the photographs to Ansel.)So you know, exceptional.
Is that your dick?
March 7, 2018
Brutal, biting portrayal of ugly, despicable people. This play will probably never be done in the Capital Region due to it's sexuality and violence. Please prove me wrong!
January 28, 2022
Finding the right fight coordinator for this play may be more critical than choice of director.
March 19, 2024
BRILLIANT!! Tracy Letts is just great again, action packed, whilst also keeping the claustrophobic family vibe. Horrible people being horrible to each other! Love it!
April 29, 2025
Interesting examination of the patriarchy and all the vile ways women are used as currency, objects, toys, means to an end, etc.
May 5, 2023
Mamita nada como el amor de una familia 🙏 te reís a la par que pensas esta gente es un desastre. Muy bueno, mantiene la tensión, es ridículo, es violento, es cómico, disparatado y complejo. Me encantó.
December 5, 2022
A short analysis, cortito. Hopefully it packs as much of a punch as the play. Because Dottie’s crazed shooting at the end of Act II is such a reverse of what’s expected, it almost takes a rereading of the play to understand the characters of Chris, Joe, and Dottie herself. How could Chris be the object of her murderous intentions? Is Joe next? Why Ansel and not Sharla? Let us take a moment to deconstruct this. Ansel’s turning on Chris is a long time coming. However small it may be, Ansel’s holdings are precisely the thing that Chris bemoans his absence of. Chris’ Lennie monologue lays bare most clearly his wish for hearth, home, and comfortable money, masked in the guise of the saving of his sister. He regularly ridicules Ansel’s holdings of these two things, capitalizing on Ansel’s still sorry financial state after his belittling to enlist him in the plot. Chris’ womanizing is hinted at in his Corpus references but is shown at this point in his story to be unsuccessful; Ansel, by contrast, has the sexually ravenous Sharla to content him, a woman he defends still (face-cutting) after the revelations of her affair with Rex. Chris’ vitriol for his stepmother and occasionally his father, shown clearly in the troll-throwing, is second only to his hatred for the trailer that he must return to, the trailer that Letts traps the characters and audience in throughout the duration of the play. Ansel’s patience comes to an end in his suicide-wishing during the funeral preparations. Chris, despite the unusually harsh nature of this condemnation coming from Ansel, is unfazed, turning instead to Dottie. Let us as well turn to this enigmatic individual.
Knowing the audience’s doubts of Dottie’s lucidity, Letts writes his own characters to question this understandable simplification, showing that her sleepwalking carries with it point and purpose. Long thought to be the hapless rape victim of Joe’s sick hunger, Dottie shows herself as a person desiring of the killer in her need to return to him in lieu of an escape with Chris and her acceptance of marriage and nativity in Scene IV. But a quivering trigger finger causes us to doubt the lot of this, as do two revealings of Dottie from earlier in the play. Firstly, Dottie’s description of her similarity to the unintentionally flaming Viva (live!) as well as her warning of Chris concerning her temper makes things even more complex. Is the cold Dottie of Scene IV calculating in the destroying of all three of her male manipulators, or is she raging beyond sense? Is Dottie keeping from flame by putting out the fires around her, or does she wade intentionally into it? Surely there’s something unordinary about her mental state; is it brought on by her mother’s suffocation, abuse at the hands of her neglectful family, or a deliberate ruse? In the end, whose side is she on, and what is significant about the sparing of Sharla? Her raw vulnerability with Joe is something seen nowhere else in the book. Does this tell us anything?
Lastly, we have the titular hitman. The constancy of T-Bone has reason in him; he is the one who silences the dog. There is nary a mention of him as in every other scene opening. He fades into anonymity. Is this a show of respect? Is it as simple as painting him as a silencer? Or does Joe bring freedom, like some might say he does to Dottie? Is lack of struggle, a contentedness or sometime apathy, preferable to the conflict that rages throughout the trailer park? Joe’s odd manners make him a gentleman of the most vicious kind. He charms Dottie with his greeting, in contrast to Chris’ profane, three-part breakdown that marks the beginning of the story. Joe cannot take name-calling. It’s for this reason alone, seemingly, that he puts Sharla through so much torture. It’s for this reason that he initiates conflict with Chris, a dangerous thing indeed given the armedness of the latter. Joe is callous, shown by his disinterest in Chris’ bloodiness, a place where the Dottie/Chris relationship shines. Chris’ tornness paints the plot just as much as Joe’s surety. Both are completely naked in front of him; he flaunts his nakedness in front of every character. He is a man marked by fate—his three-part patronizing of Chris in Scene IV, Act II tells us as much. And he is a man of success—success, that is, until the advent of Dottie and the pride of the child.
ANSEL: Now look what you did. I’m in the doghouse.
CHRIS: Fuck her.
ANSEL: Yeah, well, you don’t live here—
ANSEL: I never had a thousand dollars in my life.
CHRIS: How would you like to?
DOTTIE: Did you build this city all by yourself?
CHRIS: What? Uh, yeah. Sure did. Brick by brick.
DOTTIE: I heard that at the wedding.
The door of the trailer opens and Killer Joe Cooper enters…
JOE: The door. I knocked, but you had the TV turned up too loud to hear me. I decided not to stand in the rain.
DOTTIE: Well, you scared me half to death—
JOE: And I apologize.
DOTTIE: That’s okay. It’s okay.
DOTTIE: I had an aunt who set herself on fire…but not on purpose…They say she’s the one in the family I look most like…Her name was Viva. Isn’t that a great name? She never got married, I don’t think.
CHRIS: Just how stupid are you? Are you really that stupid?
(Ansel grabs a plastic troll, hurls it at Chris’s head. Chris dodges, and the troll smashes into the wall.)
ANSEL: You watch your goddamn mouth!
ANSEL: She wants to get out of her dress!
…CHRIS: LET HER CHANGE! (To Dottie) Go change.
(She exits down the hall.)
ANSEL: She looked great.
CHRIS: It’s bad enough we gotta give the son-of-a-bitch a present. We don’t have to gift wrap it.
ANSEL: This is my home—
CHRIS: You don’t have a home—
ANSEL: —and I call the shots around here—
CHRIS: Shut up.
ANSEL: Just so you know.
([Chris’] shirt and pants are soaked with blood…Joe exits to Dottie’s bedroom. Sharla and Ansel keep their distance from Chris, examining him from across the room…Dottie enters, wearing a robe. She rushes to Chris. Joe emerges again, now wearing a pair of slacks.)
CHRIS: I started a rabbit farm. I built the whole thing, by myself…I loved those little bastards. They smell like shit, and they fuck all the time, but they’re awful easygoin’ animals. I left for a couple weeks, ‘cause of this girl down in Corpus, and when I got back, a rat, or a skunk, or somethin’ had got in the pen, and it was rapid. Awful hot out, too. They just tore each other apart. Their eyes were rollin’ and foamin’ at the mouth, and…and screamin’...They sound just like little girls.
ANSEL: (To Chris) Hey. Why don’t you do us all a big favor and kill yourself?
CHRIS: We can do this thing, Dottie. We can pull it off.
DOTTIE: Not if somebody makes me mad.
SHARLA: You son-of-a-bitch—
…JOE: There’s no need for name-calling. I haven’t called you any of those names. You be polite to me. I’m a guest.
JOE: JUNIOR! YOU’RE HOME!...---that’s the way the world turns, right?...That’s the way the cookie crumbles?...Caveat emptor, you know what I mean?
(Sharla rakes change, keys, everything from the kitchen table onto the floor.)
JOE: A baby? (Beat) A baby? (He smiles broadly, proudly…) A baby!
(Ansel holding his stomach, Sharla crying behind him, Joe smiling, Dottie with her finger tensed on the trigger, Chris dead in the refrigerator. Blackout.)
Knowing the audience’s doubts of Dottie’s lucidity, Letts writes his own characters to question this understandable simplification, showing that her sleepwalking carries with it point and purpose. Long thought to be the hapless rape victim of Joe’s sick hunger, Dottie shows herself as a person desiring of the killer in her need to return to him in lieu of an escape with Chris and her acceptance of marriage and nativity in Scene IV. But a quivering trigger finger causes us to doubt the lot of this, as do two revealings of Dottie from earlier in the play. Firstly, Dottie’s description of her similarity to the unintentionally flaming Viva (live!) as well as her warning of Chris concerning her temper makes things even more complex. Is the cold Dottie of Scene IV calculating in the destroying of all three of her male manipulators, or is she raging beyond sense? Is Dottie keeping from flame by putting out the fires around her, or does she wade intentionally into it? Surely there’s something unordinary about her mental state; is it brought on by her mother’s suffocation, abuse at the hands of her neglectful family, or a deliberate ruse? In the end, whose side is she on, and what is significant about the sparing of Sharla? Her raw vulnerability with Joe is something seen nowhere else in the book. Does this tell us anything?
Lastly, we have the titular hitman. The constancy of T-Bone has reason in him; he is the one who silences the dog. There is nary a mention of him as in every other scene opening. He fades into anonymity. Is this a show of respect? Is it as simple as painting him as a silencer? Or does Joe bring freedom, like some might say he does to Dottie? Is lack of struggle, a contentedness or sometime apathy, preferable to the conflict that rages throughout the trailer park? Joe’s odd manners make him a gentleman of the most vicious kind. He charms Dottie with his greeting, in contrast to Chris’ profane, three-part breakdown that marks the beginning of the story. Joe cannot take name-calling. It’s for this reason alone, seemingly, that he puts Sharla through so much torture. It’s for this reason that he initiates conflict with Chris, a dangerous thing indeed given the armedness of the latter. Joe is callous, shown by his disinterest in Chris’ bloodiness, a place where the Dottie/Chris relationship shines. Chris’ tornness paints the plot just as much as Joe’s surety. Both are completely naked in front of him; he flaunts his nakedness in front of every character. He is a man marked by fate—his three-part patronizing of Chris in Scene IV, Act II tells us as much. And he is a man of success—success, that is, until the advent of Dottie and the pride of the child.
ANSEL: Now look what you did. I’m in the doghouse.
CHRIS: Fuck her.
ANSEL: Yeah, well, you don’t live here—
ANSEL: I never had a thousand dollars in my life.
CHRIS: How would you like to?
DOTTIE: Did you build this city all by yourself?
CHRIS: What? Uh, yeah. Sure did. Brick by brick.
DOTTIE: I heard that at the wedding.
The door of the trailer opens and Killer Joe Cooper enters…
JOE: The door. I knocked, but you had the TV turned up too loud to hear me. I decided not to stand in the rain.
DOTTIE: Well, you scared me half to death—
JOE: And I apologize.
DOTTIE: That’s okay. It’s okay.
DOTTIE: I had an aunt who set herself on fire…but not on purpose…They say she’s the one in the family I look most like…Her name was Viva. Isn’t that a great name? She never got married, I don’t think.
CHRIS: Just how stupid are you? Are you really that stupid?
(Ansel grabs a plastic troll, hurls it at Chris’s head. Chris dodges, and the troll smashes into the wall.)
ANSEL: You watch your goddamn mouth!
ANSEL: She wants to get out of her dress!
…CHRIS: LET HER CHANGE! (To Dottie) Go change.
(She exits down the hall.)
ANSEL: She looked great.
CHRIS: It’s bad enough we gotta give the son-of-a-bitch a present. We don’t have to gift wrap it.
ANSEL: This is my home—
CHRIS: You don’t have a home—
ANSEL: —and I call the shots around here—
CHRIS: Shut up.
ANSEL: Just so you know.
([Chris’] shirt and pants are soaked with blood…Joe exits to Dottie’s bedroom. Sharla and Ansel keep their distance from Chris, examining him from across the room…Dottie enters, wearing a robe. She rushes to Chris. Joe emerges again, now wearing a pair of slacks.)
CHRIS: I started a rabbit farm. I built the whole thing, by myself…I loved those little bastards. They smell like shit, and they fuck all the time, but they’re awful easygoin’ animals. I left for a couple weeks, ‘cause of this girl down in Corpus, and when I got back, a rat, or a skunk, or somethin’ had got in the pen, and it was rapid. Awful hot out, too. They just tore each other apart. Their eyes were rollin’ and foamin’ at the mouth, and…and screamin’...They sound just like little girls.
ANSEL: (To Chris) Hey. Why don’t you do us all a big favor and kill yourself?
CHRIS: We can do this thing, Dottie. We can pull it off.
DOTTIE: Not if somebody makes me mad.
SHARLA: You son-of-a-bitch—
…JOE: There’s no need for name-calling. I haven’t called you any of those names. You be polite to me. I’m a guest.
JOE: JUNIOR! YOU’RE HOME!...---that’s the way the world turns, right?...That’s the way the cookie crumbles?...Caveat emptor, you know what I mean?
(Sharla rakes change, keys, everything from the kitchen table onto the floor.)
JOE: A baby? (Beat) A baby? (He smiles broadly, proudly…) A baby!
(Ansel holding his stomach, Sharla crying behind him, Joe smiling, Dottie with her finger tensed on the trigger, Chris dead in the refrigerator. Blackout.)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 8, 2021
ReRead 8 February 2021
---
Killer Joe is probably my favorite Tracy Letts play. Bug's a close second, but Killer Joe is definitely tops.
Chris is in dire financial straits, and the only option seems to be killing his mother for the insurance money. He, his father, and his father's step-mother, hire Killer Joe: a crooked detective who murders on the side. The only problem is that Killer Joe requires payment up front, no exception, and the Smiths don't have it. But perhaps he'll make an exception for Chris's sister, who immediately catches his eye . . .
Such a menacing play, full of anger and malevolence and violence. The characters are coarse, and broad "white trash" stereotypes are freely utilized. But utilized smartly: in reveling in these stereotypes, Letts gets to the heart of his characters' dark souls, and finds complexity where one might only assume shallowness.
I had the good fortune of seeing a portion of this play performed in a small apartment kitchen: a particular scene with a shocking, garish, violent act perpetrated. It was shocking, perversely thrilling, even. Watching that scene drove home how loaded Letts's earlier works are. Intense, angry plays with big ideas, and an eye for what audiences want to see.
I like August: Osage County just fine, but when it comes to Tracy Letts, I gotta go with his earlier work, especially Killer Joe. Check it out: you won't regret it.
---
Killer Joe is probably my favorite Tracy Letts play. Bug's a close second, but Killer Joe is definitely tops.
Chris is in dire financial straits, and the only option seems to be killing his mother for the insurance money. He, his father, and his father's step-mother, hire Killer Joe: a crooked detective who murders on the side. The only problem is that Killer Joe requires payment up front, no exception, and the Smiths don't have it. But perhaps he'll make an exception for Chris's sister, who immediately catches his eye . . .
Such a menacing play, full of anger and malevolence and violence. The characters are coarse, and broad "white trash" stereotypes are freely utilized. But utilized smartly: in reveling in these stereotypes, Letts gets to the heart of his characters' dark souls, and finds complexity where one might only assume shallowness.
I had the good fortune of seeing a portion of this play performed in a small apartment kitchen: a particular scene with a shocking, garish, violent act perpetrated. It was shocking, perversely thrilling, even. Watching that scene drove home how loaded Letts's earlier works are. Intense, angry plays with big ideas, and an eye for what audiences want to see.
I like August: Osage County just fine, but when it comes to Tracy Letts, I gotta go with his earlier work, especially Killer Joe. Check it out: you won't regret it.
June 5, 2014
the newest stageplay from pulitzer prize-winning playwright tracy letts, killer joe revisits family drama and dysfunction - setting it this time in a trailer park outside of dallas. letts, as with august: osage country, exhibits an impressive command of dialogue and vernacular. noirish in theme, violent in the end, yet tinged with a delighting dark humor, the plot of killer joe, sadly, does not seem all that far-fetched. compelling on the page, it's likely captivating on the stage. letts is a fine dramatist; surely one of the more important figures currently at work in the american theatre today.
i'm generally dispassionate towards film adaptations, but matthew mcconaughey looks spectacularly sadistic!
your casserole smells nice. i think you got a good scald on it. i wish i had a funny story about blind dates or casseroles, but i don't. maybe one will come to me later. maybe not.
i'm generally dispassionate towards film adaptations, but matthew mcconaughey looks spectacularly sadistic!
November 29, 2014
From IMDB;
When a debt puts a young man's life in danger, he turns to putting a hit out on his evil mother in order to collect the insurance.
With Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple.
When a debt puts a young man's life in danger, he turns to putting a hit out on his evil mother in order to collect the insurance.
With Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple.
September 22, 2016
Read for my Contemporary British American Drama class.
May change my rating soon!
May change my rating soon!
Read
May 27, 2022Plays definitely still count towards the yearly reading goal, right?
Want to read
March 6, 2014
Southern Gothic
June 8, 2023
Killer Joe (Letts, 1993) is loosely based on a true story that Letts had read of a Florida family.
The play is categorized as dark comedy and thriller, with a considerably more weight given to the latter. It portrays a dysfunctional family involved in violence, sex and murder.
Chris Smith, a young drug dealer, hires Joe Cooper, a detective and hitman, to kill his mother so he can claim the mother’s insurance to pay his debt. Whether the mother is killed, who the real beneficiary is, whether Chris gets the money or someone else are all revealed through the conflicts and the complicated plot.
In effect, Chris is the center of the conflict because his huge debt puts the family in trouble.
All the characters in Killer Joe contribute in their own way to the rising action: the panting Chris with his nervous knocking on the door in the middle of the night, Sharla, his stepmother, with her uncovered private part when she opens the door to Chris, Ansel with his indifference to what goes around, Dottie, Chris’s sister with her innocence that makes her rather a commodity, and the Killer Joe who is the only life savior to Chris for the time being. That said, the most important character may be the mother whom we never meet and whose insurance is supposed to save Chris.
There are two symbols that pragmatically play a role in character and events development. We see Ansel, the apparently indifferent father, detaching himself from family affairs by watching TV all the time. The television helps him escape the family troubles and take refuge in his fantasies. He is aware of his own avoidance even when Joe asks him about Sharla’s cheating on him, “Were you aware of all this?” and he responds, “I’m never aware,” which paradoxically is not true.
Another symbolic role is given to the dog, which barks at everyone who walks around and toward the family’s mobile house except Killer Joe. Dogs in films are mainly used for their symbolic roles which ranges from friendship and fidelity, to what Chodosh (2018) suggested, “a villain’s muscles.” The latter is represented by the dog’s no-barking state every time Killer Joe, the antihero or villain, comes to visit the family.
Killer Joe has an enigmatic ending. After extreme physical violence and shooting, the play ends intensely when Dottie holds the gun toward Joe and says, “I’m going to have a baby.”
Killer Joe is a powerful drama on stage and screen. It evokes pathos but brings no catharsis.
The play is categorized as dark comedy and thriller, with a considerably more weight given to the latter. It portrays a dysfunctional family involved in violence, sex and murder.
Chris Smith, a young drug dealer, hires Joe Cooper, a detective and hitman, to kill his mother so he can claim the mother’s insurance to pay his debt. Whether the mother is killed, who the real beneficiary is, whether Chris gets the money or someone else are all revealed through the conflicts and the complicated plot.
In effect, Chris is the center of the conflict because his huge debt puts the family in trouble.
All the characters in Killer Joe contribute in their own way to the rising action: the panting Chris with his nervous knocking on the door in the middle of the night, Sharla, his stepmother, with her uncovered private part when she opens the door to Chris, Ansel with his indifference to what goes around, Dottie, Chris’s sister with her innocence that makes her rather a commodity, and the Killer Joe who is the only life savior to Chris for the time being. That said, the most important character may be the mother whom we never meet and whose insurance is supposed to save Chris.
There are two symbols that pragmatically play a role in character and events development. We see Ansel, the apparently indifferent father, detaching himself from family affairs by watching TV all the time. The television helps him escape the family troubles and take refuge in his fantasies. He is aware of his own avoidance even when Joe asks him about Sharla’s cheating on him, “Were you aware of all this?” and he responds, “I’m never aware,” which paradoxically is not true.
Another symbolic role is given to the dog, which barks at everyone who walks around and toward the family’s mobile house except Killer Joe. Dogs in films are mainly used for their symbolic roles which ranges from friendship and fidelity, to what Chodosh (2018) suggested, “a villain’s muscles.” The latter is represented by the dog’s no-barking state every time Killer Joe, the antihero or villain, comes to visit the family.
Killer Joe has an enigmatic ending. After extreme physical violence and shooting, the play ends intensely when Dottie holds the gun toward Joe and says, “I’m going to have a baby.”
Killer Joe is a powerful drama on stage and screen. It evokes pathos but brings no catharsis.
May 29, 2023
The thing I love about Tracy Letts is that he takes a relatively mundane trope and turns it on its head. He did that with Bug for me and now with Killer Joe.
Killer Joe is about the dysfunctional Smith family that makes wrong decisions that soon turn fatal. Chris Smith, the mercurial eldest son, is in big trouble with a bad person and needs to pay a very high debt. He goes to his dad, Ansel, for help, but he refuses. However, Chris has a plan in the form of Killer Joe Cooper, a cop with a penchant for killing for money.
Based on a tip from his mother's boyfriend that names his younger simple-minded sister Dottie as the sole beneficiary in the event of his mother's demise, Chris decides to hire Killer Joe to murder his mother so Dottie can collect the money. Then, it can be split between Chris, Dottie, Ansel, and his stepmom, Sharla. The problem is that Chris and Ansel can't give him his fee upfront. Unfortunately for Chris, Killer Joe decides to take a retainer, and it's Dottie.
Although highly conflicted, Chris agrees, and things escalate hella quickly.
I really enjoy this play. I love the way Letts writes. It's like eavesdropping on someone's lives. His dialogue is authentic and chaotic. Killer Joe kept my attention and never let go. It was so compelling. In fact, I was having lunch with an acquaintance of mine, and I had finished using the bathroom, I hung back to finish reading the last bit of this play. It's that good. Those last few pages in the last scene are amazing.
Killer Joe is about the dysfunctional Smith family that makes wrong decisions that soon turn fatal. Chris Smith, the mercurial eldest son, is in big trouble with a bad person and needs to pay a very high debt. He goes to his dad, Ansel, for help, but he refuses. However, Chris has a plan in the form of Killer Joe Cooper, a cop with a penchant for killing for money.
Based on a tip from his mother's boyfriend that names his younger simple-minded sister Dottie as the sole beneficiary in the event of his mother's demise, Chris decides to hire Killer Joe to murder his mother so Dottie can collect the money. Then, it can be split between Chris, Dottie, Ansel, and his stepmom, Sharla. The problem is that Chris and Ansel can't give him his fee upfront. Unfortunately for Chris, Killer Joe decides to take a retainer, and it's Dottie.
Although highly conflicted, Chris agrees, and things escalate hella quickly.
I really enjoy this play. I love the way Letts writes. It's like eavesdropping on someone's lives. His dialogue is authentic and chaotic. Killer Joe kept my attention and never let go. It was so compelling. In fact, I was having lunch with an acquaintance of mine, and I had finished using the bathroom, I hung back to finish reading the last bit of this play. It's that good. Those last few pages in the last scene are amazing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 13, 2021
Türkçe okuduğum için yorumunu da Türkçe yapıyorum. Academia.edu sitesinde gezerken Türkçe çevirisi önerilenlerde çıktı. Tercümesini Selin Girit yapmış. Amerika'nın güney eyaletlerinde karavan parklarında yaşayan, ekonomik olarak alt sınıfta gruplandırılan yani fakir kişilere özgü konuşma biçimi ve davranış kalıpları anlatımı dilimize çok başarılı ve akıcı bir biçimde kazandırılmış.
Oyunun konusuna gelirsek; Teksas'ta bir karavan parkında yaşayan hepsi birbirinden problemli Chris (oğul), Sharla (üvey anne), Ansel (baba), Dottie'den (genç kız) mürekkep Smith ailesinde, Chris borçları sebebiyle hayat sigortasından Dottie'ye kalacak parayı alabilmek amacıyla öz annesini öldürtmeye karar verir. Bunu için Katil Joe ile anlaşılır. Katil Joe ise ödemeyi garanti altına almak için Dottie'nin kendisine rehin verilmesini şart koşar ve olaylar gelişir.
Bu kısa metinde; işlevsiz (dysfunctional) bir ailede yaşanan travmalar, ihanetler, Amerikan toplumunun sorunları, ahlaki çöküş gibi konular kara mizah kullanılarak birbirine çok güzel harmanlanmış. Tempo hiç düşmüyor. Çok trajik kısımlar var hikayede. Yazar iki cümleyle yüzünüze tokat gibi çarpıyor bu hüzünlü kısımları.
Tiyatro metinleri okumaya bu sene başladım. Çok da memnunum. Oyun yazarlığı bambaşka bir yetenek gerektiriyor gerçekten.
Oyunun konusuna gelirsek; Teksas'ta bir karavan parkında yaşayan hepsi birbirinden problemli Chris (oğul), Sharla (üvey anne), Ansel (baba), Dottie'den (genç kız) mürekkep Smith ailesinde, Chris borçları sebebiyle hayat sigortasından Dottie'ye kalacak parayı alabilmek amacıyla öz annesini öldürtmeye karar verir. Bunu için Katil Joe ile anlaşılır. Katil Joe ise ödemeyi garanti altına almak için Dottie'nin kendisine rehin verilmesini şart koşar ve olaylar gelişir.
Bu kısa metinde; işlevsiz (dysfunctional) bir ailede yaşanan travmalar, ihanetler, Amerikan toplumunun sorunları, ahlaki çöküş gibi konular kara mizah kullanılarak birbirine çok güzel harmanlanmış. Tempo hiç düşmüyor. Çok trajik kısımlar var hikayede. Yazar iki cümleyle yüzünüze tokat gibi çarpıyor bu hüzünlü kısımları.
Tiyatro metinleri okumaya bu sene başladım. Çok da memnunum. Oyun yazarlığı bambaşka bir yetenek gerektiriyor gerçekten.
August 20, 2020
Ah, this was his first play. I figured "Bug" was first because the film came out first. Did that logic not hold up? :P
Makes sense because it's a twisty crime thing with some memorable characters in it, but I find it quite difficult to figure out what the point of it is. Is there one? Money and corruption tear people apart, sure—but what's the Joe and Dottie relationship all about then? What does the ending mean? What?
Matthew McConaughey though—what a fucking actor. He did this, he did True Detective, he did The Beach Bum—there's a guy who's in it just to create and explore fascinating characters/be part of the best projects around. Matthew McConaughey gets 5* haha!!
Makes sense because it's a twisty crime thing with some memorable characters in it, but I find it quite difficult to figure out what the point of it is. Is there one? Money and corruption tear people apart, sure—but what's the Joe and Dottie relationship all about then? What does the ending mean? What?
Matthew McConaughey though—what a fucking actor. He did this, he did True Detective, he did The Beach Bum—there's a guy who's in it just to create and explore fascinating characters/be part of the best projects around. Matthew McConaughey gets 5* haha!!
March 18, 2023
I am definitely a fan of Tracy Letts' plays, but admittedly this is my least favorite of the ones I have read so far. It's extremely compelling, but it's the first one I've read that I had no desire to produce myself.
I like messy stories. I like dark stories. But "Killer Joe" gave me very little to hang on to. Almost everyone is terrible, almost everyone is very dim, and their motives are awful. That doesn't mean the dialogue isn't great, and that doesn't mean the story doesn't really motor along just like it should. But when I compare this to "Bug", I just don't feel the same kind of human connection within the desperation.
I like messy stories. I like dark stories. But "Killer Joe" gave me very little to hang on to. Almost everyone is terrible, almost everyone is very dim, and their motives are awful. That doesn't mean the dialogue isn't great, and that doesn't mean the story doesn't really motor along just like it should. But when I compare this to "Bug", I just don't feel the same kind of human connection within the desperation.
November 29, 2024
Owad’d Micro-Review #128
A decade before he wrote AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, Tracy Letts came up with this hyperbolic story about angst in a trailer park in the South. Chris, the play’s main character, gives us the flavor of the tale when he describes his home state of Texas as “nothing more than a bunch of hicks with too much space to walk around in.” Judging from the intrigues and mayhem that follow, he might have a point. The story has everything you’d expect in a good black comedy: addiction, greed, lust, sentimentality, revenge. The humor is superb and unexpected, the violence extreme. No punches get pulled. The result is a unique and memorable read.
A decade before he wrote AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, Tracy Letts came up with this hyperbolic story about angst in a trailer park in the South. Chris, the play’s main character, gives us the flavor of the tale when he describes his home state of Texas as “nothing more than a bunch of hicks with too much space to walk around in.” Judging from the intrigues and mayhem that follow, he might have a point. The story has everything you’d expect in a good black comedy: addiction, greed, lust, sentimentality, revenge. The humor is superb and unexpected, the violence extreme. No punches get pulled. The result is a unique and memorable read.
August 31, 2025
nicky handed me this book tha othr morning and said i shuld read it and provided zero context and it ended up being a demented play abt a dysfunctional family that gets into sum crazy fckd up shit. i honestly loved this so much. reminds me of out of the blue which is a movie i watched recently tht made me cry rly bad. this was rly effective and beautiful and disturbing. i kinda wish it made me cry. it almost did. i was reading it in the bathtub w the red lights on and then i had to put my head under the water and kept trying to see how long i culd do it without breatheing but it got hard and scary with the red lights. im going to read more of tracy letts' plays . :)
November 2, 2019
It's not often my library gets a digital script for a play so I try to read them when I notice one has come in. I'm a fan of Lett's August: Osage County so I wanted to read something else from him & while I recognize the gritty, no-need-to-pretty-things-up style, I really didn't like the characters. It's basically a bunch of awful people doing horrible things to one another. It was uncomfortable to read at times so I can only imagine how exquisitely uncomfortable it would be to watch & that's just not my cup of tea.
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