Showing posts with label Capote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capote. Show all posts

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Capote

Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.

When I woke up this morning, I had no plans to watch Capote. The reported death of Philip Seymour Hoffman earlier today forced my hand, though. His death is a damn tragedy and a waste of a tremendous talent. What better way to honor one of the great actors of this generation than to watch the film that earned him his Best Actor Oscar? And so, Capote, a film that I was planning on holding back and saving for a day when I needed a film I knew I really liked.

Like many a biopic, Capote doesn’t cover the full life of Truman Capote but instead focuses on what became the most significant event of his life: the investigation and writing of In Cold Blood, the first non-fiction novel. In Cold Blood is the story of the brutal murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas on a night in November in 1959. I’ve read In Cold Blood. It’s a hell of a book, the sort of thing that anyone interested in really excellent writing should read. What Capote suggests is that the creation of the book was far more than simple.