More human than Truman

There’s something both familiar and unsettling about the first word that comes out of actor Toby Jones’s mouth as Truman Capote in the new film Infamous. He’s at a swank New York City nightclub with one of his society-lady “swans,” Babe Paley (played by Sigourney Weaver). The two are doing the meet-and-greet, making their way to their prime table, and just as they sit down Capote waves his hand, looks almost directly at the camera, and squeaks, “Hi.”

It’s the Capote voice and manner we all know. But with this one word, Jones hints that somewhere below the seamless performance that was Truman Capote in real life lies a sensitivity we’re not used to seeing. It’s a tiny glimpse that this Capote story is going to be different.

It would have to be, since Infamous follows exactly the same period in his life as last year’s Capote, the acclaimed film fueled by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning lead performance. (Infamous was made at the same time but delayed by the studio when Capote was released first.)

Capote, the celebrated author and toast of New York City’s café society, takes an extended trip to a small town in Kansas where an entire family has been murdered. He camps out with the convicted murderers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, and gets them to spill all the gory details. He emerges seven years later with the novel In Cold Blood, which skyrockets him to international acclaim and makes him a very wealthy man. And he never again completes a book-length work.

“I came at this movie to answer a question,” says Infamous writer-director Douglas McGrath (Nicholas Nickleby, Emma). “What happened to Truman Capote after In Cold Blood? If you look at his life before, it’s almost an unbroken series of successes and achievements. From that point on, everything goes wrong for him for the next 20 years of his life before he dies. Professional failure and humiliation. Terrible public embarrassments. I kept thinking, What happened?”

According to McGrath, the answer is simple: Capote was in love with Smith, and it shattered him to see Smith executed.

As McGrath tells it, Perry Smith, played by Bond-to-be Daniel Craig, is a hulking, working-class thinking man. Capote, who comes to Kansas full of New York City attitude (Babe Paley sends him a can of Beluga caviar as a care package the first week), quickly learns that in order to crack Smith’s shell, he’s going to have to let his own guard down. In doing so, he is confronted with a reality he’s never faced: The shiny veneer that is Truman Capote ceases to matter inside a Kansas jail cell. Smith and Capote develop an attachment to each other, and in one surprising scene they have a loaded physical exchange, including a prolonged kiss.