anyone seen this yet? we're going to go see it tonight. i guess that it focuses on his writing of In Cold Blood. the book is based on the murder of a family that lived about ten miles from where i grew up, so i'm pretty anxious to see it.

I haven't seen it, but am def. anticipating a great performance from PSH.

he really pulls it off, and he (capote) was such a complex character. it was really interesting to watch him move through the different aspects of the man. i would highly recommend the movie. i'm anxious to hear another apple's take on it. dan, when you see it, you'll have to let me know.

Great!! ANOTHER one that I'll either have to go out of town to see or wait for the DVD. So much for the 8-plex we have here, and the fact that one of the small screens was being set aside for indie and art films. It's been operational for about 3 years now, and I have yet to see it happen! Bah!

That said, I LOVE PSH!

Cher

janelle, i saw it tonight and did think of you. who else do i know in kansas (besides brandon)?

i thought the film was so-o-o sl-o-o-ow but artfully made and beautifully acted. the whole film is philip seymour hoffman, i swear the man was in every scene.

i knew next-to-nothing about capote or in cold blood, and you know what it reminded me of? dateline nbc. capote was, of course, a much more fascinating character and smarter (no doubt) than, say, stone phillips, but really -- i think the true crime genre he invented/created is in direct line with the likes of dateline or 48 hours investigates.

i found it especially interesting to see how he was working out his own life story by interviewing the murderers.

and the connection to harper lee was news!

I don't know anything about this movie, but I have seen a couple of previews about it, it seems like a good flick.


How is the connection to Harper Lee made? or is that part of the plot of the movie?

harper lee was capote's research assistant, and her book was accepted by a publisher during her time in kansas. catherine keener (YOWZA!) plays her.

oooh! i'm so glad that you saw it!

yeah, i never knew about the harper lee connection either, which is weird because i grew up hearing about the story all of my life. my dad went to every day of the trial and still has his notes from it. something else that i learned recently after talking to my brother about the movie is that a lot of people suspect that capote actually wrote To Kill a Mockingbird and attributed it to Harper Lee due to the fact that she didn't write another thing. hmmmm....

hmmm
i think it was capote's b/f in the movie who says, "i had no idea she was even a writer!" or something like that. hmmmm

We watched this movie tonight and I thought it was excellently done. I can see why PSH won the best actor for his performance.
I remember Truman Capote when he was alive.
I thought the movie was very sad and depressing and the whole idea of Truman's involvement with the story was so odd to me.
(((SPOILER)))
It seemed to me he started investigating it because he thought it would be a sensational book, but got so caught up and involved with the two killers...especially Perry, it became an obsession.
I believe he had fallen in love with Perry during the process. I think continuing to write this book was very much a contributing factor in Capote's downward spiral to alcoholism and eventual death. The more he learned about the horrific crime, the more he felt tortured, I think. His relationship with the killers until their execution (hanging...OMG how barbaric...which he witnessed per request of Perry) I believe changed his life and he would never be able to forget it.
I imagine he was never the same afterward. It was his last book.

I'm depressed now.

This movie was fascinating and I was completely drawn into the story. Such a deep, literary movie and what an interesting person Capote was! Now I want to read In Cold Blood. Harper Lee's character in this movie also drew me in and I would like to learn more about her.

I want to travel to Spain and write books...

One couldn't help but think of Dead Man Walking while watching this film. Somehow the connection b/t Sister Helen Prajean and Truman Capote spending so much time getting to truly know a killer on death row and the whole concept of that is haunting.

Did you guys notice how the movie did not in anyway take side in the capital punishment issue? Nor in any other question really? Is this a trend? I think i noticed the same thing in some other "serious" hollywood movie, I can't remember which. Like it is way to do a serious movie without offending anyone?


Anyway, it was a great film. Amazing acting.

I got to see this last week in the theater here (they FINALLY bring it to town AFTER the f-ing Academy Awards). I agree with PSH's BA award ... he was incredible. I, too, remember Capote and felt that PSH nailed him (no pun intended).

My thoughts about Harper Lee and TKaM. I think that she did write it. I'm not sure Capote couldn't have but done some bragging had he had something/anything to do with it. Maybe he helped her out, but I feel she wrote it. I either heard this or read this somewhere, but the boy who visited his aunt was supposed to be Capote. I, too, want to read more about Lee and want to reread TKaM. I recently watched the movie on TNT. Funny, how I'd forgotten how good it was.

Back to Capote. I enjoyed the movie tremendously. I would have liked it better had it been filmed in B&W like Goodnight and Good Luck was. As I've alread said, I can't rave about PSH's performance enough. However, there were a couple of places where the film dragged a bit, and perhaps because I was running on little sleep from the night before, I found myself nodding a bit. I can't remember when or what; I just remember nodding and standing up to stretch.

Cher

Here's more on the "Mockingbird" authorship issue (among other things).

i thought this movie was great.
psh was amazing in this.

i don't think that they made reference to it in the movie, but that was actually the last hanging in Kansas.

my favorite movie last year...

as i understand it, harper lee and truman capote lived next door to each other while growing up, and the character 'dill' in mockingbird was based on capote.

Saw it last night. Definately NOT Oscar material in my opinion. PSH was good, as was Katherine Keener, but overall, this is a movie that, in my opinion, should never have been made. Capote was never the story--the story was always the murders, and to have that going on in the background while this sad, pathetic little man played his sad, pathetic little games with people who had no power, well, it sucked righteously in my opinion. I felt no sympathy for him whatsoever and there was nothing at all redemptive about how things played out. The only thing that came of it was a new-fangled genre (CNF). That he and Harper Lee never published anything else is a stor best told in synopsis.

As far as I can tell, this movie was made for that small audience who find the cult of personality surrounding a mildly bizarre figure more compelling than the works such a person actually produced.

So that's my opinion.

i agree that this wasn't worth the hoopla it got but, anna, wasnt the point of the film that it wasn't about capote. wasn't this essentially a hubris moral tale without a redemptive side? the only thing i got out of it was how irony could be neatly wrapped and overused.
d.

I don't disagree, but I am surprised that you seem to think that Oscars mean something.

Patrik

Fair enough. I don't even generally watch them, I have such a low opinion of them, but for some reason this year I got hooked. Hopefully it won't happen again.

And d., I don't know what the movie was supposed to do as I haven't read anything about it. What it did do was give me a lower opinion of Capote than I already had. He was so self-righteous and self-serving. That said, I'm all about The Real Story, but I gotta have a reason to care. I know a ton of bitchy queens with a gift for gab. I can get that in real life.

LOL! Ain't that the truth?! But PSH certainly did them proud.

Cher