On August 25, 1984, Truman Capote died. A new documentary highlights his life and his writing.

In cold blood Author Truman Capote is one of the most famous American writers of the second half of the 20th century. Capote’s greatest talent has perhaps been off the page, when he was on stage and in the center of the stage, promoting his image, appearing endlessly on TV talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett, David Frost, Johnny Carson. etc., cleverly, calculatingly cultivating what his contemporary Norman Mailer called “advertisements for myself”.

As he well knew, Truman’s unusual appearance instantly made him stand out in the crowd: this fish out of the water was more or less openly cheerful when it was strictly taboo; diminutive so dapper; a Southerner among the Manhattanites; possessor of a unique speaking voice; and bearer of a twisted and wicked mind. Alas, drug addiction later in life made the author even more spectacular.

Truman starred in Neil Simon’s 1976 detective story parody Murder by death, playing the role of the victim, and was portrayed in two back-to-back biopics, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 2005s Hood and Toby Jones in the years 2006 Infamous. The New Orleans-born blacksmith has also been the subject of documentaries such as Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation in 2020 and is now the main character of Capote bands.

Ebs Burnough’s new 98-minute non-fictional film features a clip from the most famous film featuring Capote, a three-time Oscar winner in 1962 Kill a mockingbird, based on the novel by Truman’s childhood friend, Harper Lee, with John Megna playing Truman as a six year old boy named “Dill Harris”. Tellingly, Dill introduces himself to Scout and Jem Finch bragging about being able to read.

Among others, Bands investigating whether the man who wrote the famous Breakfast at Tiffany’s actually wrote a manuscript (or part of an ms.) for his long-awaited, long-awaited but never finished (if even started?) novel Prayers without answers. Or was it just a literary hoax, for which Truman received (hijacked ??) a $ 1 million advance from a presumably deceived and deceived publisher? Where is the ms. installed in a safe somewhere? (I don’t remember the doc noting that an unfinished version of Prayers was actually released posthumously in 1986, two years after Truman’s untimely demise.)

Capote bands is built around a series of never-before-seen recorded interviews and includes glimpses of the jet set / beautiful people that Capote has mingled with and written about, such as Mick Jagger, Babe Paley, Andy Warhol, The Princess Lee Radziwill, Jackie O, etc. Interview subjects include Cavett, novelist Jay McInerney, Harper’s publisher Lewis Lapham, life partner of Truman, Jack Dunphy, and Dotson Rader, who wrote the book on the 60s protest, I amt Marchin‘ More, which takes its title from the anthem by Phil Ochs. The daughter of one of Capote’s lovers, Kate Harrington (a relationship with socialist Michael Harrington?), Whom Truman adopted, is interviewed throughout the documentary, providing personal details about her little-known private side, in particular his parenthood.

In terms of ambiance and setting, the elegant Capote bands is imbued with a very New York state of mind, with great shots and views of my old hometown, the city that never sleeps. When it comes to Manhattan glitter and their haunts like Studio 54, which Capote was a regular at, with their ostentatious emphasis on looks and style, they can seem silly. One of Bands’ fashion-related interview topics seem like a totally superficial jerk as he professes pure admiration for a socialite because she asks her maid to iron her five dollar bills regularly so that they are very neat. (Talk about having money to burn!)

Truman’s parents divorced two years after his birth in 1924 and more or less abandoned him to be raised by distant relatives in Monroeville, Alabama, where he met Harper Lee. I imagine that, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Capote had complicated and contradictory feelings about the rich, who, as Fitzgerald quite famously observed in a conversation with Ernest Hemingway, are “different from you and me. . They own and come early on, and that does something to them, makes them soft where we’re tough, and cynical where we’re confident, in a way that unless you’re born rich it’s very hard to understand. .

“They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than us because we had to discover for ourselves the compensations and the refuges in life. Even when they penetrate deep into our world or sink below us, they still think they are better than us. They are different.”

Capote apparently envied the society dwellers of the cafes he frequented, while simultaneously despising many of them and their bourgeois attributes as he observed them with his keen, perceptive, sour, ubiquitous eyes – and his articles. Call it “The Other Truman Doctrine”. When chapters or parts of his magnum opus have been published in Squire in mid-1976, some “friends” of high society who had confided in Capote thought they recognized themselves in his unflattering literary portrait. These not-so-high society glams felt betrayed and angrily lost friendship, denouncing his stories as mere gossip. Daily women’s clothing called Truman “The Tiny Terror” and Neil Simon killed him as the homicide target was stabbed in cold blood (sorry, I just can’t resist!) in Murder by Death.

In addition to exploring Capote’s homosexual status when it was verboten in America, Capote bands also reveals how fame corrupts artists in capitalist society. This has been noticed a lot before, as has Truman’s supposed love and / or lust for one of the In cold blood murderers was, as well as Capote’s supposed lobbying for the execution of these two killers in order to provide a grand finale to his “non-fiction novel”. It is grass well trodden, but Bands adds new details I had never heard before about the great puny putative American author.

Some of this tantalizing information is provided by Kate Harrington, who is able to offer such eye-opening information because she lived with her adoptive father. As a scribbler myself, I find the creative process of other word slingers to be of great interest. Of course, Truman, who died in 1984, did not use a computer to write: according to Harrington, one of our most renowned authors did not even use a typewriter. Instead, Capote scribbled on yellow legal blocks and reportedly found the act of writing itself difficult to do. I have long suspected that Truman was frequently faced with a daily dilemma and choice: the arduous task of putting his words, literally, on paper – which often meant painfully confronting his inner demons – or getting angry with Babe Paley. or Princess Lee Radziwill at a swanky joint such as La Côte Basque on West 55th St., drowning her grief with the swill that likely precipitated her early death from liver disease.

Capote bands shows what happens to artists when they put distractions – sometimes made possible by “success” in capitalist societies that reward a handful of talent (when most are doomed to hard lives) – before their art.

As such, this excellent, entertaining and informative documentary chronicling the life and career of one of America’s literary and gay icons is an uplifting tale. Bands marks the directorial debut of Ebs Burnough, former Assistant Social Secretary of the White House and senior advisor to Michelle Obama, and I look forward to the next film from this gifted filmmaker.

In the 1970s, as a teenager studying cinema at Hunter College on Park Avenue, I walked into a tobacco shop near 59th St. Bridge, presumably to buy a copy of the Voice of the village. A short bespectacled man in a khaki jumpsuit walked in, which I immediately recognized after watching late night television. “Sir. Capote, I gasped, when I was little, I saw In cold blood, and since then, I want to read it. With a smile and a twinkle in his eyes, without missing a beat, Truman drawled, “Well, you can take my word for it: the book is much better than the movie.” We both laughed. Capote bands brought back this funny memory and so much more, about one of our most enduring enigmatic writers, although to this day, rhythm Truman Capote, I haven’t had the courage to read his most loathsome true murder story. To tell the truth, I am more A Christmas memory kind of guy.

Not too fun fact from the review: Truman Capote died on August 25, 1984, in Los Angeles, at the Bel Air home of Joanne Carson, ex-wife of the host of The Tonight show, where the famous author had been a regular guest. His ashes were, for a time, interred in Westwood Village Memorial Park, near UCLA.

Capote bands opens in theaters September 10 and is available on TVOD and DVD October 26. The trailer can be viewed here.

---

DONOR