The new documentary tails the great gay thor's wrg reer and high-society nnectns but also portrays his life as a fay man.
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TMAN CAPOTE PAVED THE WAY FOR MANY GAY MEN AMERI, A NEW FILM ABOUT HIS LIFE SHOWS
Directed by a gay former Obama Whe Hoe social secretary, Ebs Burnough, the film draws om the tap of wrer and edor Gee Plimpton’s 1997 oral history of Capote to build a more plete portra of the oral history also served as the basis of the 2006 film Infamo, but Burnough avoids the tenncy reprentatns of gay artists to simplify the role of inty their liv and works. Harrgton rells how Capote’s mother abandoned him ral Alabama, and that he nfid her about how “dreadful” was to live there as “this ltle gay, sawed-off man. The two big Hollywood movi about him — 2005’s Osr-wng Capote, starrg Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Infamo — zero on that era of his greatt mass market succs, when he prciently turned the murr of a prospero Kansas fay to the then-groundbreakg format of a nonfictn pecially draws all kds of nclns om his tortured, homoerotic relatnship wh the book’s crimal protagonist, Perry Smh, and the fallout of his journalistic betrayal as he awaed their executn.
The lumnist Sally Qun, for stance, pots out how he played to the role of the “walker, ” the role given to closeted gay men at the time as party mat and nfidant of women, even as nobody spoke openly about queerns. And we see him terrate his talk show appearanc as iends rell how he lost his wrg abily and the documentary is limed, ’s by the fact that, like most cultural work on gay men, nflat femy and sexualy ways that occlu further sight about genred inty.
At different moments, multiple iends pot out how much beg “on” st him; his life sound exhstg, almost entirely Tap clus the perspective of gay iends, some ways, Tman and Tennsee, which puts Capote and Tennsee Williams to nversatn as queer wrers throughout, brgs out certa nnectns that this sightful film still miss. Through snippets of their wrg, diari, and televisn appearanc, the film lays out their liv as gay men grapplg wh fame and visibily and adds to the unrstandg of Answered Prayers, for stance, Capote scrib Tennsee Williams as a “dumpy ltle guy wh a dramatic md who, like one of his own adrift hero, seeks attentn and sympathy by servg up half-believed li to total strangers. ” Down to that disavowal, he sounds, om a ntemporary vantage pot, ls like a gay man settled his genr nonnformy, and more like a trans femme person stgglg to figure themselv out a vlently bary way Capote ultimately found himself rnered a bary world adds pathos to the fact that he always believed the power of the wrten word, even though uldn’t save him eher.