THERE’S MORE TO THE STORY THAN YOU KNOW.

The year after Capote, the drama that followed author Truman Capote’s fascination over the countryside killings that inspired him to write “In Cold Blood”, came this film that is almost as good. Starts out as more of a light comedy as the flamboyant Capote clashes with rural Kansanites, but becomes more serious and gripping when he digs deeper into the case and meets the murder suspects. The same can be said for Toby Jones’s performance. He’s very good, and so is Daniel Craig as the killer Capote strikes a connection with. Interviews with people who are close to the writer adds flesh and blood to him and the film as a whole.

2006-U.S. 118 min. Color. Produced by Jocelyn Hayes, Christine Vachon, Anne Walker-McBay. Written and directed by Douglas McGrath. Book: George Plimpton (“Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career”). Cast: Toby Jones (Truman Capote), Sandra Bullock (Nelle Harper Lee), Jeff Daniels (Alvin Dewey), Sigourney Weaver, Daniel Craig, Hope Davis… Isabella Rossellini, Gwyneth Paltrow, Peter Bogdanovich.

Trivia: Mark Wahlberg, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Pfeiffer and Samantha Morton were allegedly considered for lead roles.

Quote: “When you’re talking to them, they seem like perfectly nice boys. To be frank, I’m much more concerned for my safety around Norman Mailer.” (Jones, after meeting the suspects)

Last word: “Dick Cavett introduced him [on his show] as a ‘master stylist’ and one of the great writers of his generation. […] I was just becoming a writer – and I thought, ‘Wow, I’d like to improve my style. What’s he like?’ He came out – and this was only a few years before he died – and he was in very bad shape, very heavy, perspiring. You know, right before you come on there’s a person stopping the perspiring and he was evidently perspiring. His head was lolling and over to the side. He didn’t seem good at all. I couldn’t reconcile that introduction with that person. He talked quite bitterly about Tennessee Williams who had just died, sympathetically of Tennessee Wiliams but quite bitterly about the press and how cruel the press had been to him, and how America doesn’t appreciate its artists. I found him fascinating and appalling and strangely sympathetic. I felt protective of him in some way. I just remember very distinctly thinking, ‘What happened to you?’ If you’re this master stylist and this is what you seem like, something must have gone wrong. I started reading his work and started reading about him, and I came to feel that what went wrong went wrong in Kansas.” (McGrath, About.com)

IMDb