Nearly a quarter century ago, legendary journo and The Paris Review co-founder George Plimpton published “Truman Capote: In which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career.” But it’s only been recently that the raw material behind that candid oral history has come to light – and formed the basis of filmmaker (and onetime Obama White House adviser) Ebs Burnough’s entrancing 2019 doc The Capote Tapes (available for streaming on Amazon Prime). By combining mesmerizing archival footage, an era-appropriate soundtrack, and the titular audiotapes of interviews that Plimpton conducted after Capote’s death – boxes of which Plimpton’s widow in turn handed over to the director – Burnough crafts a welcome revisitation of the rebel scribe who lived (and died) by the mantra, “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
“Unless you’re famous in New York you’re not famous,” states a Capote confidant in the film, and the Breakfast at Tiffany’s author certainly embraced that adage as well. Or, as Jay McInerney puts it, no one really cares about your background in NYC – the question is, “How entertaining are you?”
That answer led to Capote’s quick high society rise and inevitable self-inflicted downfall.
As Capote himself once admitted to one of those ladies who lunch (aka his “swans”), “People are amused by me. People are fascinated by me. But people don’t love me.” Or as another friend pointedly notes about the women who ruled the Big Apple’s social scene, “You don’t break into that world – you’re taken up by that world.” To them Capote was less a writer, or even a loyal companion, than he was the entertainment. And the jester will be allowed entry to the court only so long as he sticks to his assigned role.
Tellingly, the bestselling author also said that more tears are shed over “answered prayers than unanswered ones.” Which brings us to Capote’s source of strength and his Achilles heel. He was a giant of a writer whose powers of observation were sharp and immense – he once zeroed in on the attractiveness of Babe Paley’s “incompleteness” – and he knew it.
Tremendous talent likewise took him to the top, and he rightly viewed himself as a master – one surrounded by much less talented female friends who forever thought of him as their servant. Even the infamous Black and White Ball – Capote’s “one great moment of power and recognition” (according to Lee Radziwill) and “the only important ball of the 20th century” (according to Andre Leon Talley) – that he hosted in ’66 at the Plaza Hotel couldn’t save him. Certainly not from himself.
Ironically for Capote, it was this dual identity (another acquaintance referred to him as a “candied tarantula”) that could not be reconciled – a fate familiar to many gay men at the time, though any struggle with sexuality was foreign to such an out-and-proud man of (biting) letters. As Capote himself wrote in a line from Answered Prayers, “Let’s order something that takes forever so we can get drunk and disorderly.” Crashing one’s own party the perfect unhappy ending.
And while Capote may have had a complicated relationship with his swans there were women outside his orbit for which he expressed sincere admiration – notably the jazz icon Lady Day. So it’s fitting that James Erskine’s Billie (streaming on Hulu), which also emerged in 2019, is likewise a portrait of an artist based on newly found audiotapes. In this case the interviews were recorded in the 70s by journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl, who died (under mysterious circumstances) before she was able to complete her book on Billie Holiday.
Luckily, Erskine was able to acquire the rights to those tapes, weave them together with a trove of archival footage, and create one simple yet remarkable film (no talking heads required).
Which also attests to Kuehl’s ability to get folks to talk in the first place. Not just friends and family members, but fellow musicians (“I saw the whole world in that face,” says the singer Sylvia Syms), psychiatrists – even a pimp. And then there’s Holiday on Holiday, in her own poetic words. “I always wanted to sing like an instrument,” she explains – like “Louie Armstrong’s horn.”
When asked why so many jazz greats die so young, Lady Day – who made it all the way to an impressive 44 before the fallout from a lifetime of substance abuse finally caught up with her – has an answer to that as well. “We try to live 100 days in one day.” A sentiment Capote, whose own substance abuse destroyed his liver in similar fashion, would understand all too tragically well.
Image credit: The William Gottlieb Collection and MOSCOT
