Truman Capote In Capote
I heard somebody say that you can’t do a caricature of Truman Capote because he himself was nearly a caricature of Truman Capote. Playing up the famous author’s ticks and mannerisms is easy, but getting under the surface to explore what drove the man to write what might be his best known work, and what was definitely his final book, required an actor of incredible skill.
Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Capote in the film of the same name, directed by Bennett Miller. Sure, we get to see Capote for all his quirks and quarks, but we also get to see the author less composed, struggling with the secrets and lives and half-truths he’s peddled in order to complete In Cold Blood, and whether or not he had enough of a conscience to care.
Throughout the breadth of the film, Hoffman keeps in mind the many facets of Capote’s personality. On the one hand, there’s Capote the self-promoter, always talking about this book he’s working on and about how it will be break the mould of previous crime novels published by being a true crime, crime novel.
Later, after he reads excerpts to a New York audience, one his subjects, Perry Smith (played by Clifton Collins Jr.), asks about the title “In Cold Blood,” feeling his confidence betrayed by Capote with such an inflammatory name for the novel. Capote assures him that the title was slapped on prior to the reading by his publisher. It’s a flat out lie though, as we see the author brag about his title selection to Kansas Bureau of Investigations detective Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper).
Capote is so determined to keep his access to Smith and his co-conspirator Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) that he’ll tell them anything to get his “ending.” After Smith and Hickock have been hanged for their crimes, Capote asks his friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) if there was anything he could have done to save them from their fate. “Maybe not; the fact is you didn’t want to,” she says. It’s a cold drink of truth, and in the end, through Hoffman, you realize that Capote knew it too.