Capote – The Shooting Script by Dan Futterman http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/02/capote-based-on-book-by-gerald-clarke.html - 10 out of 10

Capote – The Shooting Script by Dan Futterman http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/02/capote-based-on-book-by-gerald-clarke.html

10 out of 10

 

 

I have written a note when I first saw this magnificent film – the link is above – but since HBO has decided to include it again in its program, why not write again about the ‘same thing’,  first because if the motion picture has not changed, I did, five years have passed, and we have all been through a pandemic.

 

There is also the issue of expectations, I have learned that we need to lower them and we will not be disappointed, and then with time, because I know what is going on, one work or another is elating on first encounter, but less enchanting when scrutinized again, for whatever reason, it so happens that I have failed to enjoy what I liked the first time

White Man Falling http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/01/white-man-falling-by-mike-stocks.html is a recent example, if I was exhilarated and joyful five years ago, in 2023 (this year in fact) when I had hoped that I would laugh so much I will shake the chair, the same guru made me say that perhaps this is not so extraordinary.

 

However, Capote is wonderful, due in large part to the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won the Oscar for his mesmerizing performance – on  a side note, Toby Jones is Truman Capote in another film, and he is just as good, that is damn spectacular – and when I think of him, I remember the Zen Master story

This is what a Zen master keeps saying, in the story told by Philip Seymour Hoffman, at the end of Charlie Wilson’s War:

-              There is this Zen master and people keep coming to him with good or sometimes bad news like: Master, your horse has run away, it is so bad…We shall see…Master, your horse has come back with many wild ponies, it is so good - We shall see…Your son has escaped the army recruiters, wonderful news…We shall see…And so on and so on

 

Truman Capote reads in The New York Times about the atrocious murder of the Clutter family, on their farm in Kansas and he is so moved by the article that he decides to talk with his editor and to travel to the small town to cover the story, and when his plan is accepted, he takes Harper Lee with him.

As luck will have it, he meets in the town people who are familiar with his work, and some even admire it – Capote had written Breakfast at Tiffany’s http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/03/breakfast-at-tiffanys-by-truman-capote.html but notwithstanding the success of that wonderful book, his In Cold Blood will prove much more successful, with the public, creating in fact a new genre and makes him the most famous writer in America

 

The film presents the compelling story of the murders that are at the center of In Cold Blood http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/11/note-on-in-cold-blood-based-on-book-by.html and how Truman Capote and Harper Lee maneuver to try and find details, they befriend the wife of the investigator, and she invites them for dinner, during which the gay author tells stories with infinite charm, about Humphrey Bogart drinking with John Ford (I think that was one of the tales) and eventually, we find more information

The killers are caught, and then they are jailed, with Capote gaining access, and then sharing with his readers the horror – Perry Smith and Dick Hickock come to the Clutter farm because they had heard in jail (yes, they had been there before) that the man has a lot of money, and they want to rob him and then drive away.

 

Alas, the information was false and all they get in the end is a lousy forty or fifty dollars, for which they take lives, the way Perry would ‘confess’, they tried to pressure Mister Clutter, and they had the wife, daughter and sun hostages in the house, while Hickcock checked the walls in search for an elusive, eventually non extant safe, and somehow the unstable, I would say mad murderer would start a blood bath

Initially, what puzzled investigators and Capote was that the killers seemed to have taken care of the victims, they placed a pillow under the head of the son, as if to put him to sleep and then…shot him in the face – Perry says he was talking to Mister Clutter, assuring him that they will be fine, somebody will find them in the morning, and then suddenly, he just slashes his throat with a knife, and takes the shotgun

 

This was an access of madness -which is not to explain and use that infamous defense of ‘temporary insanity’ saying Perry and others like him just lose their minds for the moment, or minutes it takes them to murder, which could happen, but then all murders might have that, except for the real ‘premeditated ones’, and even there, could we not envisage a man (it is mostly a man) that becomes crazy and then kills

Truman Capote becomes close to Perry, perhaps his homosexuality plays a role there, I do not know, there is the fact that childhood explains the evolution, or involution of such characters, but that ads complexity to the plot – we could also think of Intellectuals http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html by Paul Johnson, a formidable book that explores the very dark, objectionable side of Tolstoy, Ibsen, Hemingway, Rousseau…

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world   – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html