[dog whimpering]
[whimpering continues]
[dog whimpering]
I told Martha to throw these goddamn things away.
Happy Rockefeller.
It couldn't just be a girl from the secretarial pool.
With you, it always has to be a monument to your fucking ego.
Oh, so it's my fault?
I'm not the one who told him everything.
Of course I told him!
He was there for me. Where were you?
Have you ever wanted to have a conversation with me?
No!
Your bloated lack of discretion and--
What the fuck did we do to him?
Other than roll out the red carpet
so he could prance on twinkle toes into our world.
He was a fucking guest!
Carol Matthau, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Lee...
he leaves them practically alone.
It's hatred.
Pure hatred.
[phone ringing]
I feel like I'm going insane.
He comes off far worse than any of you do.
I need something.
I need a pill. Where...?
Martha, would you make Mrs. Paley a cup of tea, please?
Yes, you have a phone call, sir.
[Bill] Thank you. I'll bring you a Valium.
I don't want your fucking help.
[door closes]
You miserable little fuck.
Don't call here again. Ever.
You might as well move to Patagonia.
That is how isolated you will be,
starved of oxygen.
And I will watch.
I will watch as you die alone.
So go and die.
[dial tone]
♪ ♪
[phone r
[ringing continues]
[Truman on answering machine] It's Truman.
You know what to do,
so do it after the beep. Here it comes, the beep.
[answering machine beeps]
[James Baldwin] Mr. Capote, it's Jimmy Baldwin.
If you are there, hiding behind some hideous piece
of Ormolu furniture, please pick up.
I'm counting.
One.
Two...
[Truman] Hello, Mr. Baldwin.
Mr. Mailer tells me you're despondent.
Is this true? N'es pas?
Oui, j'suis desolé.
I mean, stunned, shocked.
I'm speechless.
This is the worst time in my life.
I think...
I may have tried to kill myself last night.
Let me turn this thing off, it's taping us.
I don't need that.
So the ladies who lunch
are taking their pounds of flesh, are they?
Oh, no. Not pounds.
All of it.
Flaying me alive.
A concentrated effort to effectively ensure
I am a social pariah.
What are you doing right now?
Well, I was standing at the window,
thinking about throwing myself
into the East River, frankly.
Then you called.
Let's meet for lunch.
The scene of the crime, today, 1:00 sharp, I'll reserve.
[Truman] I don't want to go there.
It's full of enemies.
They might not even let me in.
[James] What a story that would be.
They can't refuse entry with this Black man, can they?
They're all glowering.
What if somebody comes over and starts a ghastly scene?
Well, I'll just beat the living shit out of them.
[laughing]
Besides...
you've had ghastly scenes here before, haven't you?
Didn't that murderess spritz you with Chablis once?
Sancerre, actually.
Mr. Capote,
I am going to tell you some hard truths today.
You're going to spend the day listening and learning from me.
Class begins henceforth, baby.
I'm not a very quick study, Jimmy.
Then let's order some oysters.
Oh, what is this faux Basque shit?
I've been to the Basque coast, darling, this is not Basque.
This is New York continental frou-frou.
- [sighs] - [James chuckles]
Why are you being nice to me?
We're friends, I mean, but we're not close friends.
[waiter] Mr. Baldwin, I'm told you have a special request.
Oh, yes, the best thing... the best thing I ever ate
was at a place outside of Biarritz.
Something called kokotxas. Do you know it?
Ko-ko-txas?
With cod cheeks in a salsa verde.
Olive oil with fish stock,
garlic, finely-chopped parsley,
and it comes on this perfect crusty bread.
Could you do something like that?
We need to do something
to bolster this man's flagging spirits.
[waiter] Of course, sir.
I have noticed that most minorities,
Blacks, thank God, Asians, women, Jewish folk,
they all have a community to turn to in their time of need.
The homosexual, not so much.
Not yet.
You, me, Gore, Tenn,
we are the only gay American men of letters pretty much.
I'm not counting Frank O'Hara and Ginsburg
because they are just poets.
Gore hasn't reached out to you, I'm guessing.
[laughs] Gore? Are you kidding?
He's dancing in joy at my misfortune,
voodoo doll in hand.
It's because he's jealous of you.
I'm not jealous of you.
Today, Truman, I am going to be your community.
Because you need one.
You are important to this country.
Your words and ideas.
As... as are yours.
Well, we know that. We're not talking about me today.
Your story is being dismissed as a...
as a small salacious roman a clef.
And it is much more than that.
It is?
I mean, it is.
[chuckles softly]
I want to know what you left out.
All the awful things you could've said about the swans.
Why do you want to know that?
I'll tell you at the end of the day.
Let's start with Babe.
I know she's your favorite.
[Bill] Can we please just talk about this in the bedroom?
[Babe] What is there to talk about?
Everyone overheard.
Of course, you happened to slip in
that in between buying a Max Beckmann painting
and a Max Ernst painting in Berlin,
that you just fucked somebody. Listen to me!
[Truman] It's the sex stuff that I revealed
in my Sneak Peek magazine article that's made them mad.
It's not the Bang Bang cruelty or even their funny names,
it's the rough truth of it, it's Bill's affairs.
[Babe] I don't know what matters more to him,
the fuck or me knowing about it.
♪ ♪
♪ How long has this been going on? ♪
You think it's harmless, flirting with the help?
Oh, it was hardly flirting, dear.
Well, I was mortified.
She has legs like a tree trunk.
Why don't you cut one off and count the rings?
If I wrote a book, it would be called Thieves I've Known.
Starting with Betty Bacall, who stole my look.
The fabric I found, gray flannel that I found?
And any man I ever spent a night with,
she had to do the same thing,
until finally I heard from one of these guys that he couldn't
tell the difference who he was fucking, her or me.
- [laughter] - And what's left of me after everything's been stolen?
"Formidable excellence" is how I'm described.
- That's code for a dry hump. - [laughter]
[Truman] I was trying to go after the men.
Not the women.
♪ ♪
The truth, Jimmy, the thing that I could have written
but didn't is that they all fuck everybody
and get away with it.
The affairs of the rich are different,
but these women pillory anyone else who does so,
as if they were above it all.
Babe had many affairs in their apartment
when Bill would go to L.A.
for his programming trips.
I even helped her pick out the outfits.
One time, she wanted to dress up
- as a Hermes pirate for a lover. - [elevator dings]
The men were always unsuitable.
[bell dings]
Lee...
Lee plays the part of America's original pilgrim,
but she's a true slattern,
voracious and predatory.
But the worst is Slim.
In the final years of her marriage,
she'd relegated Kenneth to the guest room
and brazenly paraded in a series of lovers.
And even C.Z., who is a human chastity belt,
she had her time as a party girl.
Does she not remember posing nude for Diego Rivera?
Mostly, her lovers are the tiny vegetables she tends to.
Because vegetables can't talk, or talk back.
[Truman] I mean, there's a double standard.
When the men get caught, oh, brother, hell to pay.
But what do the men ever get
for the women's indiscretions? Nothing.
And in many ways the women are far, far worse.
- [Babe] Darling... - [Truman] They make the men pay
because the ultimate threat to the swans are younger women.
And, God, do they hate them. [chuckles softly]
Please excuse me while I throw up.
[sighs]
[inhales sharply]
Babe?
I hope you get this message, I hope Bill...
doesn't erase it.
I'm at Cote.
And without you...
...it's nothing.
Nothing even tastes good.
I never meant to hurt you.
- [phone clicks] - [coin jingles]
[James] Why did you leave all that out?
You know, fascinating fact,
swans are actually terribly aggressive with one another.
One race of swan hates the other.
I read a bit about them
before our lunch, dear man.
The Beswick swan, for example,
hates the Whooper with a kind of rabid passion.
A Mute swan will do anything
to eviscerate a Trumpeter swan and take its home,
even if the Trumpeter lived there first.
A swan? Mm.
It will kill if it can.
[Truman] Yes.
As they are trying to kill me.
My swans, yes.
And I think they might actually succeed.
No, fuck them. No.
Oh, thank you.
My swans would never do this.
Have lunch alone with a Black man.
I am aware. This is not news.
Maybe they just never thought they had to.
But they are constitutionally by nature
not curious enough to cross the imaginary barriers.
Come out and say it. You can say it.
Well, there is a...
subtle racism below the surface
of the water they swim in.
Exactly. Your next chapter?
Well, it's never overt,
the racism,
or the classism.
It's subtle, but it's...
meant to convey one thing:
I am a privileged, wealthy white woman
and I am better than you.
And the pecking order speaks volumes.
Blacks for labor,
gays for entertainment,
women for the men to look at,
and all of us there to serve them.
And the people next to her and Bill?
White. Money. Power.
Even Jack usually wasn't invited,
too overtly homosexual,
us together might upset the other guests.
Oh, it stung me, those parties. It really did.
Okay, let's talk Bianca Jagger.
Or rather let's not.
I say we all get on the same page.
Oh, she's fine for a dinner party,
but you don't want her purring on your sofa. [laughs]
[Truman] Does this have anything to do with Bianca's skin
not being alabaster white?
Of course they would argue no,
they don't include Bianca because she's too loud,
or some such other reason, but I think it does.
They don't want to corrupt the pool.
Whites only. WASPs only.
They're not even aware they're doing it,
it's just that this kind of bigotry
is so intrinsic to their world and who they are
that they can't see it even when it's right in front of them.
Let me tell you something, it's impossible for a white person
or an American white person,
to not be, in some fundamental sense, a racist.
Mm.
Well, I worry about what I'm not seeing.
I spend so much time with them,
how can I not be guilty as well?
Well, you are of course,
but the question is how you address it.
I've always wondered at the great effort it seems to take
a certain segment of society to work so hard
to ignore what was happening.
Their good work? Never meant for us.
It's all for their world.
No one else's.
The Met, the Botanical Gardens,
the New York Public Library,
the Frick.
It's for preservation of their monuments.
Then let's go somewhere
to brighten up the day a bit, my dear.
[chuckles]
So, tell me something.
Are you in love? Or dating anyone?
Me? My love life has been a series of...
arias, fumbles,
half-finished sentences and a quick amour,
and fleeing into the night.
Living in Paris helps.
Exile makes sex more felt.
Mm. I remember that.
You sleep with a sailor in Marseilles
and you really get to know what a Frenchman is like,
what he smells of, what he dreams of.
Maybe I could just--
No, don't go. Stay.
Stay here.
It will feel like surrender to your adversaries.
- They want you gone. - [Truman chuckles]
Why did we never date?
We were in Italy at the same time.
We've circled each other...
We would've murdered each other.
Two flowers, no gardener, that's... [laughs]
We are here to talk about the swans.
I brought you here for a reason.
From the collection of William S. Paley.
Now, you tell me why. Why do they care so much about art?
Well, they love to put their names on things,
but they don't know how to love them, these things.
They collect and collect and collect,
the appetites are insatiable,
but the swans are never full.
They're like a starving person who keeps buying food
only to tuck it away in their pantry
and then the person says, "Why am I so hungry?
My shelves are positively overflowing with food."
[both chuckle]
Everything the swans do is skin-deep.
It's why they're not truly interesting people.
Their situations are interesting,
sure, their lives are fascinating,
but they, themselves, are truly dull.
They don't know what's going on in the world.
They don't read anything
except the Ladies' Home Journal or McCall's.
It's funny because Lee really wanted to be an artist.
She tried her hand at interior design.
She has a great high style.
She loved designing her own homes,
ordering people about.
It never occurred to her that designing for other people
would involve taking orders.
I don't know, Lee.
It's just not what we discussed.
Well...
what would you like me to do?
Would you like me to go back to the Garment District
and ask them to cut and hem a whole new set of drapes?
It's not what we discussed.
[Truman] You know what it is?
There's not one ounce of humility
or empathy or compassion.
They don't care about any of that.
They only care that they appear to care about it.
Tell me, in nature the one thing swans are good at is parenting.
[laughs] Let me tell you this.
I said one time to C.Z.,
"Doesn't it bother you that the governess
sees your children more than you do?"
And she replied without batting an eyelash,
"Of course I see my children,
I go fox hunting with them."
All my swans are horrible mothers,
all of them.
Babe is an interior woman.
Sensitive and deep, but also deeply self-absorbed.
Ruled by a need for order and perfection
that no mortal can ever attain.
[children laughing]
I said chrysanthemums, not carnations.
[whispering] Chrysanthemums.
[laughter]
Amanda, sweetie, send everyone home now, okay?
I don't feel well.
I need some quiet.
Thank you, darling.
[Truman] The woman is so preoccupied
with her own world, she's not even aware of the way
she's ravaged her children's lives.
And get that buffoon out of my house.
[chuckles]
- [crashing] - Oh, my God.
[Truman] But I always felt her pain.
Felt she knew she wasn't cut out for motherhood.
It was too overwhelming loving messy, living things.
[sobbing]
[sobs hysterically]
You know, sometimes I'm jealous of people making art like this.
You get to hide in that abstraction.
I much prefer figuration.
You know how the goddamn artist feels about the subject.
Like those wonderful Dick Avedons he has out right now.
He makes the Duchess of Windsor like a cadaver.
He even makes his own father a gargoyle.
Maybe this lopsided circle is filled with rage, too.
Maybe that's his mother's smile when she's drunk.
[chuckles]
Art, most of the work in this building,
is about anger, truth and revenge for something.
Art is revenge, isn't it?
And so you're saying...?
Stop apologizing to them.
To any of them. Defy them.
Defy the foul fowls,
the Trumpeter swans, the Tundra swans,
the Black-necked swans.
Truman, do you understand?
People think I wanted to hurt them.
And admit you did.
Admit it and keep going because you...
You are the toughest little faggot in this town, baby.
But I don't like what I'm seeing lately.
I don't like it when I see you on television
showboating and incoherent.
You're better than that.
I drink, Jimmy, because...
I've been wounded my...
entire life, over and over.
I'm in pain.
I know you are.
Truman, so am I.
So is she and him and them over there,
but none of us end up in a blackout on television,
so why are you?
Because I'm afraid.
Of what?
Everything.
Abandonment.
Or acceptance.
In their world.
Life with them, life without them.
Both are unbearable.
But, Truman, they have abandoned you.
The worst has happened and here you are.
The rest is up to you.
I really could use
a nice pick-me-up.
A little goddamn drinky.
- [James sighs] - Come on.
Okay, I do know a very unlikely place
where the bartender is a shaman
with a maraschino cherry and rye.
- Mmm. - But, Truman...
Two drinks only.
Well, and who doesn't love a maraschino?
[chuckles]
From Cote to cocksucker bar in one lovely afternoon.
How I love New York!
This day is cheering me up.
Two drinks only, Truman.
Really. Got to get ahold of this booze thing, man.
- [groans] - It's your main problem.
Drags you all the way down to hell.
Oh, God, you're right,
we would've killed each other if we'd been lovers.
Two drinks.
Then we're leaving, Truman.
[rock music playing on jukebox]
♪ ♪
[Truman groans] Jimmy, I have to say this.
Because you're a gentleman, you haven't brought it up.
I-I am ashamed, I have been unkind.
About whom?
You.
Not really. A few picayune criticisms
of my work here and there, mostly true.
I've criticized you, Truman, but only with the intent to...
educate and uplift.
Yes, and your words sting because I admire you so.
A criticism only hurts if you believe it.
[chuckles softly]
My swans would never do this, what you're doing.
In a crisis, in a time of treachery.
No, no, no.
Because they compete and they are deeply disloyal.
They may pretend to hate what I wrote about Ann,
but they loathed her and they treated her savagely.
[Ann] Hello, ladies.
You are exactly who can answer this question.
I'm supposed to be meeting Otto Preminger for lunch.
He's now 20 minutes late.
I mean, at what point do you just give up
and order for yourself?
Mind if I sit down?
Oh, I wish you could,
but we're being joined in just a second.
What I would do is not sit and wait
because clearly you can't dine alone.
I would go home.
[Babe] Yes. What you do in that situation is you send a note.
You write it while you are sitting at home
with your soup and sandwich, by yourself.
Yes, that's exactly what you should do.
So, I send a note,
in which I tell him to go fuck himself,
and then I heat up some sad soup
and eat a half a tuna sandwich?
In other words,
get the fuck out of here?
[laughs] Well, I would never have put it like that, but...
I forget that you're not afraid to be vivid, are you?
The swans, they despise growing older.
Once the bloom of youth began to fade,
every one of them either underwent a brutal regime
of fetal sheep cell injections
or went under the knife.
[James] What about yourself?
You've succumbed to the same pressures and vanities, no?
Well, it comes from a very dark place.
[Lee] Have you seen Bill Blass lately?
He looks like he's just come back from the fountain of youth.
[Truman] One person gets something done,
everyone else has to follow suit.
Are you really relying on your wit
to keep you in the game, Truman?
I saw you on Cavett last weekend,
and Lord knows I'd want somebody to tell me.
You're looking awfully weathered, to put it politely.
And... And fat.
I'm saying this because I love you to death
and you're so often on television these days.
More visible than ever.
I think you might want to do something, my dear.
[Truman] Someone raises the stakes, you ante up
or you risk being thrown from the table.
And they don't eat. None of them eat.
They live on air, water,
tiny portions of very rare meats.
♪ ♪
A life without appetites is a life without joy.
- No. - Cas...
Oh, come on.
No, it's time to get you home.
Our two drinks are over.
[sighs]
Are you going to tell me what this day was all about?
Mm.
All in good time.
["Eres tú" by Mocedades playing]
[ice rattling]
Now, it's just grapefruit juice for our little nightcap, right?
Because last call was at the bar, Truman.
Yes, yes.
Shocking how little flavor grapefruit
has all by itself, isn't it? [chuckles]
Tell me more swan facts.
I had so much fun at the library.
Y-You must know that a full one-fifth
of male swans are homosexual?
Mm. Well, it makes sense.
Swans are so comme il faut.
Yes, and they couple, even raise cygnets together,
and are far more successful than the straights.
80% of the children of gay swans live,
as opposed to something like 30% of the heterosexual ones.
A lady swan might join them, I kid you not,
for a ménage, and then go off,
and the two gents raise the babies.
Why do they thrive so well, their kids?
The gay swans are stronger, you see.
They are more able to provide.
Hmm.
Can you imagine all the successful,
gay New York artists and writers as swans?
Tenn, Frank O'Hara, Ginsburg, Albee,
even Gore, Andy, and so on.
Perhaps your next ball?
I'm going to heat up those crab cakes.
[grunts]
Do you need more juice?
I'm fine.
- Just juice, Tru. - Mm.
[bottle opens]
[drink pours]
[refrigerator closes]
[sighs]
Truman.
Hey, man.
Yes. Okay.
I need vodka. I just do.
I know, I understand.
I do.
I understand.
Sit down and listen to me.
It is time for our 11:00 number, Mr. Capote,
the reason I gave you this day,
one of my few days in New York
before I fuck off back to France.
Close your eyes, just for a second,
until you see a glimmer
of your great gargantuan, enormous worth and gifts
which you have criminally lost sight of in your sickness.
In your disease, which you reek of.
Yes, you threw away the ten years
since you published In Cold Blood,
you jettisoned your unparalleled ability to paint hell.
I cannot blame you.
In Cold Blood would have flattened anyone.
I don't know what you sold to the devil to write it,
but let me tell you a secret.
You can steal whatever the devil took right back.
The moment you are born, Mr. Capote,
the process of our dying begins.
Ticktock, ticktock.
And as the years go on, the dying accelerates
until the final breath, and then silence.
That is the order of the universe.
This life, Truman, is vicious and dark,
and you and me, we are angels
sent here to light it on fire, and illuminate.
Some of us, some of us real swans,
not those fake dime store porcelain trinkets
that you call swans, some of us, like you and me,
we are given a torch,
and your job was to keep it alight,
it was to endure it and write the world.
Goddamn it, Mr. Capote,
your work isn't even half done,
you have miles to go.
Your fucking torch is still lit.
Faint motherfucking glow, but it is still lit.
The lunches and the trips and the soufflés
and the yachts, and the nausea of demented privilege
with these pathetic creatures are over.
Their world, you captured it forever
and everybody knows what you wrote,
it's a dictionary of disgust,
a thesaurus of American nausea,
and I promise you: one day it will be seen.
But you got to finish what you began, baby.
That is your obligation,
just as mine is to do everything I can do
to change my world.
You got to do that, too.
What is your obligation?
[quietly sobs]
It's not over?
- It's not too late? - Too late?
Baby, you set the table, now have the meal.
Cote Basque is to be a chapter in your story
of how the ruling class dies.
So, keep going until you've killed all of them, Truman.
Truman, don't you get it?
Your book, it is your firing squad
that killed the Romanoffs,
it's your guillotine that beheaded Marie Antoinette.
This is your slave revolt,
it's your Rite of Spring ushering in a new world,
your Oppenheimer bomb,
your Shiva "I am destroyer of worlds."
[chuckles]
Hmm.
Now go to bed.
You have more bends in your river.
Wake up without your hangover.
Shower, shave, and put on the most comfortable sweater.
Have someone go out and get you
some great bad bacon, egg and cheese thing
from the nearest deli.
And you get back to work.
The light is dimming.
But you're still here.
Your light is still shining.
[sighs]
[door opens]
[door closes]
[Truman exhales]
[commercial pl
[TV turns off]
[phone ringing]
[James] Did I wake you?
I'm headed back to Paris,
I just decided to take the night flight.
You're leaving now?
James, thank you.
I'm getting ready to sleep. I'm okay, I think.
Thank you.
And, Truman, there's one final bit of swan lore
I forgot to tell you.
Oh, okay.
You see, in England, the queen owns all the swans,
all the unmarked Mute swans in wild waters there
and it's been that way since the 12th century.
The rich and the royal, they feasted on so many of them,
they were disappearing.
Served as centerpieces in their skin and feathers,
with a lump of blazing incense in the beak at Christmas.
"A lump of blazing incense"?
If she wanted to now, the queen is still the only person
who could legally eat a swan in England.
That's wonderful.
I thought you'd appreciate it.
It's time for my flight, Truman, I've got to go.
But you take care now, you hear?
Remember what I said.
Thank you.
[line clicks]
♪ ♪
[coffee maker burbling]
Mm.
[Truman] What have I been eating?
An occasional egg sandwich and some spinach.
I don't know, I've been in a trance
for three days, Jack, I tell you.
The words, t-the pain and the rage,
is just pouring out of me.
About the swans, about who they are,
who they really are behind the plumage.
It's my best writing.
Jack, I've almost finished the book.
They think "La Cote Basque 1965" was bad?
Just wait for this. [chuckles]
I was reading some passages this morning to Joanne Carson,
and she called Johnny, and he wants me to give
an entire week performing morsels every night.
And I said I'd do it.
- This is my return. - [clattering]
Jack, I have to call you back.
Talk soon.
Matty? Is everything okay in there?
[Matt] Yeah. All good. Sorry.
Uh, just the... thing fell.
Well, are we almost ready? I'm famished.
Yes. I hope it's good.
Uh, I've never made anything like this before.
Uh, but I did my best.
Honey, I'm sure it's divine.
You've been my favorite waiter
at Tavern on the Green for years,
and you have aspirations of being a chef, no?
Yes, I-I'm going to culinary school.
Well, then this is an opportunity of a lifetime.
Red or white?
Oh, no, thank you, dear. I'm not drinking.
Not until I finish the book.
["Dido and Aeneas, Z. 626" by Henry Purcell playing]
♪ ♪
[clattering from kitchen]
Tell me again how you did it.
I want to remember this forever.
Uh, okay.
I went to Central Park,
just like you said, in the dead of night.
[clears throat] Um...
And they were all sleeping there together,
but then I saw this big one kind of off to the side.
And I-I snuck up real slow,
and grabbed it by the neck.
It-it kept moving even after I, uh... snapped it.
Did it attack you?
[gasps softly]
Uh, I used ginger
because the other spice in the recipe,
"galangala," doesn't exist anymore I think.
Do you mean galangal?
You did well.
Very well.
I'm going to throw in an extra hundred bucks
for those war wounds.
♪ ♪