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INFAMOUS CAPOTE
If only a handful knew much about Truman Capote, we might be acclaiming him as one of America’s literary giants on the strength of his breakthrough In Cold Blood. Or one of our most gifted stylists. But we do know more about Truman than we ever wished to and it’s colored everything, and nearly all of it blackish: Capote the midget fairy as a malicious gossip, as a drunk and drug addict, as a wasted talent. Before he became the N.Y. literati’s biggest little joke, he was its biggest little darling, sought out by minions as an example of chic liberalism, as every high society dame’s best gay chum. A marvel of a wordsmith wasn’t beside the point, but that point was less appreciated than his acid flamboyance as party favor. Why two movies about him were made in a single year is a matter of superfluity, and though Capote and Infamous are very decent, they’re maddening to interested viewers because they tell the same basics—how getting involved in the story of the murders and murderers of a Kansas family inadvertently altered his life. Capote feels very consciously stripped of Truman’s more flagrant affectations, while Infamous indulges them; the former contains the Oscar-winning performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who’s got the voice down almost perfectly as it’s all about breath control and as consequence we watch and listen to the actor too intently, and in the latter, Toby Jones looks like Truman and has his feminine squeakiness. The cautious Capote is based on Gerald Clarke’s bio, with actor Dan Futterman (son of Robin Williams in The Birdcage) penning the screenplay and Bennett Miller directing. Infamous, written and directed by Douglas McGath, has used George Plimpton’s collection of remembrances by some of Truman’s friends, acquaintances and enemies. Clarke’s is a well-documented read, yet it’s regrettably short of any real insights into the kind of relationship Truman had with The New Yorker’s esteemed editor William Shawn, who had anxieties about Truman’s “sissy” persona appearing incongruous to In Cold Blood and thus being subjected to damaging ridicule. (Shawn’s prestige and gentility kept the New York Times caged for a while, as it was always ready back then to pounce on an overt or half-closeted gay.) Nor does Clark write much about how Truman personally felt about Perry Smith, one of the murderers chillingly framed in what is generally regarded as the first and most celebrated of “nonfiction novels.” In Infamous, Shawn is so minimal as to be nonexistent, just as he is in Plimpton’s chatty conversations, but we get Daniel Craig’s Perry as a handsome rough trade manipulator of Truman. (The script provides for a kiss without confirming if it ever happened; I tend to doubt it.) Movie license not unexpected, but improbability matters more than prurience: Truman was accused in later life of falsifying facts, or punching them up with fantasy, engaging in aggrandizement of his own sexual attraction, and accused of lifting characters from other novelists or real personalities as his own—the most persistent accusation was stealing Christopher Isherwood’s Sally Bowles for Holly Golightly. Capote and Infamous superficially make implicit the suggestion his notorious decline in becoming a living caricature of himself started when In Cold Blood was published, with fame and fortune unleashing restraints and booby traps, and soon after coinciding with Truman falling into the destructive self-victimization of needing to top himself in order to win the meaningless smooches from parasites he cavorted with and trying to meet the demands from media snipers pressuring him to produce his next masterwork. Drenched in booze and drugs, he probably couldn’t make inner peace with an acceptance that there wasn’t another in him—dead, he gave loathers the half-baked Answered Prayers—nor accept without regret that In Cold Blood would be a once-in-a-lifetime achievement. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |