“Ever since I was a child, folks have thought they had me pegged, because of the way I am, the way I talk. And they’re always wrong.”
This film is based on a book by Gerald Clarke, a former writer for Time, the Atlantic and Esquire. He had been writing a series of profiles of famous writers including Gore Vidal, Vladimir Nabokov, Allen Ginsberg and P.G. Wodehouse when he met Truman Capote at a George Plimpton party and persuaded Capote to let him write his biography. He met with Capote for hundreds of hours, who eagerly asked his friends to cooperate. “ Tell him whatever you want,” he wrote one friend. “God knows everyone else has.” He told Clarke, “I won't respect you unless you tell the whole truth,” adding that he would never ask to see what he was writing about him. And he never did. Clarke interviewed hundreds of people and traveled all over the United States and Europe to talk to them. The book took thirteen years to finish. He began it when Capote was in his late forties and in good health. Ironically, he eventually found himself in the same position as Capote–waiting. Capote had to delay finishing ‘In Cold Blood’ for years waiting for the killers to be executed. Clarke collaborated closely with screenwriter Dan Futterman, director Bennett Miller and Philip Seymour Hoffman. His only regret: turning down an offer to play a cameo role in a party scene because he was traveling in Turkey and didn’t want to cut his trip short, saying “My close-up will have to wait”. The movie was filmed in 36 days and opened on September 30th, 2005 –Truman Capote’s birthday. Philip Seymour Hoffman won 23 awards including Best Actor Oscar.
