‘Capote vs. The Swans’ is brilliant evocation of ’60s N.Y.
Nina Metz
When a biography of Truman Capote was published in 1997, a review that ran in the Denver Post distilled his singular place in pop culture to its essence: “The uneducated arriviste from Monroeville, Ala., sneaked into the postwar jet set as court jester, raconteur, father confessor, partygoer and giver, scandalmonger and manipulator. And decades before gay liberation, he wore his homosexuality like a flamboyant badge of honor. It’s easy to forget that he actually wrote books.”
Those books included “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “In Cold Blood.” His final (and ultimately unfinished) work is at the center of the FX series “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.”
After the massive success of “In Cold Blood,” Capote turned his professional attention to his friends, the women of New York’s wealthy elite — his Swans, as he called them. The book was to be a lightly fictionalized but savage tell-all. Esquire magazine ran early chapters in the mid-’70s and the result was a scandale. The highclass avian excrement hit the fan and the Swans ejected him from their social circles. Capote’s world fell apart.
The book project was an albatross and Capote was plagued by writer’s block, in part because he was drowning in a pill and alcohol addiction. But also: An expose only works if you’re willing to reveal the ugliest truths and let the chips fall where they may. Capote was pained — baffled even — by that bargain, and he lived to regret it.
This is the second season of the “Feud” anthology series for FX, which premiered in 2017 and focused on the fraught relationship between Hollywood stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Ryan Murphy is executive producer once again, but this time out Jon Robin Baitz is the showrunner and writer of all eight episodes, and he brings a smart and vividly piquant energy to the series.
On the big screen, Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for 2005’s “Capote.” A year later Toby Jones played him in the film “Infamous.” But the FX series feels like the definitive version
‘FEUD: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS’
Rated: TV-MA
Where: 9 p.m. Wednesdays on FX and streaming on Hulu ★★★★1/2 (out of 5)
with British actor Tom Hollander.
Hollander captures all the right outward traits — Capote’s look, his nasally voice and distinctive carriage — but also a sense of his soul. He plays Capote as a man with real selfawareness of his flaws.
Naomi Watts is the faux serene, helmet-haired perfectionist Babe Paley (wife of media exec William S. Paley), who was the queen bee and Capote’s favorite. Diane Lane is the beautiful but grudge-holding Slim Keith (who was married to a couple of Hollywood bigwigs before landing herself a banker). Chloë Sevigny is C.Z. Guest, who is more than meets the eye, with her bouncy blonde hair and days spent gardening and horse riding.
Calista Flockhart is the elegantly brittle Lee Radziwill (trapped in a toxic rivalry with her sister Jackie O) and Demi Moore is Ann “Bang Bang” Woodward, who shot her husband when she mistook him for a burglar, but was rumored to have killed him on purpose.
These names will be familiar to anyone who lived through the 1960s and ‘70s, and to regular readers of Vanity Fair magazine. For everyone else, the show offers a delicious opportunity to fall down internet rabbit holes looking up backstories. These wives of tycoons created stylized personas for themselves, which in turn requires stylized performances from the cast, and yet they remain grounded in realism. The result is some of the best work of their careers.
Baitz captures Capote’s humor and insights with real wit, but also his cruelty and manipulations and self-delusions.
Despite his adoration, Capote sees the Swans for who they are. Boring. Vapid. Catty. Uninformed about the world. Terrible to their children. Desperate to keep up appearances.
That comes into focus when he spends a day with the author and fellow straight-shooter James Baldwin, who arrives to shake Capote out of his self-pitying stupor. It’s the best episode of the season, and while Chris Chalk may look nothing like Baldwin, he gives such a hilariously on-point performance, getting the voice and verbal rhythms just right.
In 1970, Stephen Sondheim famously mocked New York’s snobs in his song “The Ladies Who Lunch,” skewering their pointless, performative, overindulged lives: “Another chance to disapprove, another brilliant zinger/ Another reason not to move, another vodka stinger.”
I’ll drink to that, goes the next line. It’s a sentiment Capote took to heart.