How much did the mythology of Truman Capote cloud getting to the essence of the man?
When I took the job I wasn’t well read on Capote, so I didn’t really know much about him actually. I knew about him when I was a kid, seeing him on talk shows and I knew what he’d written and why he was famous. So the instinct to do it wasn’t anything as grand as trying to break through the mythology. It was more the issues of the story that the script brought up that fascinated me. The more I read around it, the more fascinated I became. What aspects of the script persuaded you this was going to be more than just a standard biopic? It was about a man before his great piece, the thing that will last and stay on long after he’s gone. And then the journey he made to get there. A no win situation develops, where he wants something so badly that he’ll do anything to get it, and in doing so doesn’t actually get what he wants. It’s that whole idea of being careful what you wish for and it’s that whole Faustian bargaining thing. All of that is in there, but it happens to be a real story that
