Truman Capote and New York socialites
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The second season of the anthology “Feud” tries to answer the question of why Truman Capote was friends with New York socialites for twenty years, and then exposed them to ridicule.
Babe Paley (Naomi Watts) cries into her vest to her best friend, writer Truman Capote (Tom Hollander): she was so lonely at a fashion show in Paris! Her husband Bill (a media producer for the CBS television network) became estranged from her. And upon returning to New York with a suitcase of new Givenchy outfits (“Hubert has outdone himself!”) Babe discovered that Bill was having an affair with the governor’s wife, this vulgar aunt: she wears a stinking Caleche Hermes perfume, and it contains too much sandalwood. He tumbled with her right in the marital bed – there was a giant stain of menstrual blood left there!
– This rubbish set everything up. You need to change your mattress and rise above this. “Don’t become another divorcee from Manhattan going crazy in Westchester,” the author of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” consoles the soulmate who was the prototype of Holly Golightly. Other social “swans” of New York, as Capote called them, also believed that Holly was copied from them – after all, these writers generally drag everyone and everything into their books.
Seven years later, Capote will again drag the “swans”, led by Babe, into a book: he will publish in Esquire a chapter from the unfinished novel “Answered Prayers,” where he will put on public display that same bloody mattress. This is an infection. He will bring out his best friend and cheating husband under other names, but all of New York will understand who he meant, and his friendship with Babe will come to an end.
As for wealthy widow Anne Woodward (Demi Moore), the end will come literally. Capote and Woodward can’t stand each other, she hisses, “Faggot!” and he teases her, “Mrs. Bang Bang.” Capote says that she deliberately shot her husband, although the police consider it an accident – they say he mistook him for a robber. When Woodward learned about the upcoming publication in Esquire, she poisoned herself. A shocked Babe retells this story in the restaurant by the third “swan”, Slim Keith (Diane Lane), and Babe’s eyes widen in horror: after all, they laughed so much when Truman “tested” his version at Paley’s dinner party!
The writer was brought to the Paleys in 1955 by Hollywood tycoon David Selznick, promising that “Truman is very funny.” Bill could not yet understand why the hell Harry Truman should be funny. The misunderstanding with different Trump(e)us is quickly resolved, and Babe laughs boisterously, but then no one can even imagine what kind of fun awaits them ahead. Truman will make everyone look like damn dolls – all his “swans”, including the blonde CC Guest (Chloe Sevigny) and the sultry Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart). In retaliation, they will turn on him and ruin his life.
Of course, sooner or later, this plot had to fall into the hands of Ryan Murphy, a pop culture deconstructor who writes “an American history of everything” – horror, crime, subcultures and sacred monsters. How he writes it is another question. When applied to Murphy’s work, it is no longer a question of whether it is good or bad: there is bad, there is camp (deliberately bad – so that is already good) and there is Ryan Murphy. In the new season of the anthology, seven of the eight episodes are directed by Gus Van Sant – and gives Capote’s sad story tenderness, wraps it in a light retro haze, glides the camera over the flawless faces of the “swans” and their neat hairstyles – how could anyone possibly offend them?
And so. By 1975, Capote had either written himself off or raised the bar too high, creating his own version of “The Search for Lost Time,” a black comedy about the rich and famous. The accusatory heart was silent, but the accusatory liver spoke – he drinks heavily, he does not have the skill to keep his mouth shut, but he has the skill to write in the same spirit, especially since he has already missed four deadlines for the publishing house, and they are demanding the return of 400 thousand deposits. And here they are, the “swans”, right at hand – delightfully empty, beautiful parasites. “He sees how people behave, like an astronomer who sees constellations, it’s a conditioned reflex,” the writer’s trusted friend Jack Dunphy (Joe Mantello) sadly explains to Babe. “Maybe he’s a misogynist?” — Lee Radziwill purses his lips. No, more like a misanthrope. There is also a psychoanalytic version in the series: Capote ridiculed high society, not sparing his friends, in memory of his mother (Jessica Lange), a temperamental southerner who vainly dreamed of the social drawing rooms of New York, where people like her were not accepted. But the simplest, most unpretentious version also bursts out from the screen in all its glory: Capote did it because he could and wanted to. “Mistakes are what make us interesting,” he tells Babe. Well, yes, but other people are unhappy. He just thought that they would forgive, and did not see through his telescope that such people do not forgive.
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