 Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, Clifton Collins Jr.
Director: Bennett Miller
Year Of Release: 2005
Plot: After seeing a short article in the New York Time about the murder of an entire family in Kansas, writer Truman Capote is so intrigued that he travels to the state with the idea of writing something about it. As he investigates the crime and the people involved, he becomes more obsessed and the article he was planning to write turns into a long gestating book – In Cold Blood. He also develops a close relationship with one of the killers, Perry Smith. However despite his feelings, he knows that in order to complete his masterpiece satisfactorily, the murderers must be executed. |
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood really is a brilliant book and I would highly recommend that you read it, if you haven’t done so already. While some have criticised it for inaccuracies, few books about murder have explored things in such detail, with an almost obsessive need to try and understand how someone could do something as hideous as murder an entire family. You can feel Capote grappling with an event that seems incomprehensible to him - how could someone do that? - and minutely dissecting it, both to understand the actual events and how the killers had got to that point.
Yes, he got some things wrong and ignored his part in what happened after the killer’s arrest, but overall In Cold Blood is still a masterpiece. I’m sure I’ll talk more about the book when I get to the 1967 film adaptation in a few months time, but do go out and read it.
Of course with the film Capote, about Truman’s experience writing the book, Phillip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for basically doing an impression of Droopy the cartoon dog. Of course I kid, he gives a magnificent performance, although there’s little doubt that Hoffman in the film and the real-life Capote do sound like Droopy.
However the thing I find most incredible about the entire story of Capote going to Kansas to investigate the murder of an entire family, is the involvement of Nell Harper Lee, who went with him. It seems incredible to me that Truman Capote, one of the great American men of letters, was childhood best friends with Harper Lee, author of what many consider to be the best novel of the 20th Century, To Kill A Mockingbird.
What are the odds of that?
Well, of course, it’s not just pure coincidence that these two massively influential people knew each other. Capote was already well known, not least for Breakfast At Tiffany’s, before To Kill A Mockingbird was published. It’s difficult not to feel that having him as a friend must have helped Lee find a publisher.
However it’s not like she didn’t write a brilliant book, so we can’t say it was all Capote’s doing. What I suspect is that it’s one of those cases where you have two talented people, and that they both spurred the other to achieve things either might have had difficulty managing alone. As the film suggests, Truman was prone to flights of fancy, while Harper was a grounding influence. The friendship between the effete lad and the tomboy, both of whom spent their early lives in Monroeville, Alabama, and stayed friends forever afterward, galvanised both of them to be able to see beyond themselves to the possibilities of what they might achieve.
For Truman in particular, who had a rather lonely childhood after his parents divorced and he was brought up by relatives, the influence of having people around him like Lee seems to have been large, as does the fact that while he may not have been happy, he was from a community of high-achieving people. From a very early age Truman was fascinated by reading and writing and it was Lee who was one of the few people his age who seemed to understand that (it’s worth noting that neither came from literary families, so they seem to have encouraged each other in that direction).
The two stayed friends after Truman moved to New York when he was 11. Sadly his New York life wasn’t much happier that his lonely Deep South one, as his new stepfather turned out to be an embezzler and the family went from a cushy Park Avenue apartment to virtual poverty.
However it still seems strange to me that these two knew each other from when they were tiny, but then it doesn’t seem that rare for childhood friends to both find a lot of success. After all Dan Futterman, the actor and star of A Mighty Heart and Judging Amy, who wrote the screenplay for Capote, went to high school with Bennett Miller, who directed the film and had already become a successful commercials and music videos director before he made the Oscar-winning movie. Phillip Seymour Hoffman meanwhile first knew Miller at university. They’d all found independent success after knowing each other in their youth, but then came back together for Capote.
Or there’s the rather bizarre fact that Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were college roommates at Harvard.
It does seem to be that achieving your full potential isn’t just about having talent, but that it’s also having others around you from an early age – both your own age and older – who give you the tools for later success. Capote may have been lonely, but the community he and Harper grew up in sowed the seeds for their later success. This is why quite a lot of childhood friends all find success, because they’re both given similar opportunities and exposed to the right attitudes that serve them well when they go out into the world. And of course it’s also true that friends can give each other the confidence to try and do things they wouldn’t without someone backing them up.
Of course it doesn’t always happen like that, but considering the number of famous people that most of us know (i.e. none) compared to the number of celebs who knew each other when they were little, it certainly seems true that having the right friends and environment is vital to what you will eventually achieve.
TIM ISAAC
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