You Can’t Handle The Tru

The life of Truman Capote, his social rise and subsequent fall from grace is a great story; the stuff of books, documentaries, Vanity Fair articles, TV movies and now a Ryan Murphy series on Hulu. Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans contains the kind of subject matter that showrunner Ryan Murphy excels at bringing to a series: great true stories with queer themes that get in the viewer’s head. Then a queer (or queer-adjacent) audience endlessly debate them online. He assembles great talent, lets them shine, dresses them in sumptuous period costuming with great sets and needle-drop moments.

These television events also inspire a lot of online content  about these true stories: articles written about what he got right and what he got wrong.  (These are shows  to watch with a phone or tablet in hand!) But these series are the kind of thing that make Ryan Murphy a frustrating and puzzling figure in the entertainment world. Murphy often plays fast and loose with the truth. And while there’s nothing wrong with embellishing things to tell a better story, the story he ends up telling is quite maudlin, obvious, and more in tune 2024’s values than the period he’s actually depicting.

Murphy has famously profiled other notable 20^th century gays for mini-series, like Halston and Andy Warhol. But in this instance, Murphy, with the help of screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz, has decided–for puzzling reasons–not to give Capote his own bio-series but instead to make Capote’s falling out with New York high society the subject of the second season of his series called “Feud” whose first season focused on the legendary feud between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.

Feud is a misleading term for what happened between author Truman Capote and The Swans, the bevy of high society women that Truman befriended, mined their lives for content and then betrayed. A proper feud involves two warring factions of equitable power and agency who go back and forth, tit for tat, to the delight and/or disgust of everyone watching. Joan Crawford and Bette Davis had a feud. Nikki Minaj and Meagan Thee Stallion are having a feud. The Swans simply kicked Truman to the curb and destroyed him. There was no back and forth.  This was basically a mob hit. And Truman had it coming.

Truman Capote’s literary success endeared him to New York’s High Society.  But what kept him rolling in dinner invitations and talk show appearances was his ability to gossip. He was an excellent storyteller, and he always had his ear to the ground. And, in turn, his constant presence at dinner parties and his friendships with the rich and powerful provided him with access to fresh gossip. He starts to write unflattering and revealing things about these elite friends of his and, very swiftly, they drop him.

This is the sort of story that someone like Edith Wharton (had she been alive in the 1970s) would have captured brilliantly. When someone disappears socially in the 20th century, it’s very subtle. Everyone is still very nice and polite but the party invitations grind to a sudden halt and all of a sudden, you see the life you once through a glass partition. Murphy tells this subtle story with a sledgehammer. He over-explains everything through expository dialogue. In real life, when these ladies dropped Truman, they did so without a lot of fanfare, planning or discussion. They crossed him off a list. But the way Murphy/Baitz tells this story, La Cote Basque becomes a sort of war room where the swans plan out Truman’s ostracism ilike the storming of the beaches of Normandy.

What Murphy and Baitz don’t seem to grasp is that Truman never really had any power to begin with. He was the gay court jester; the flavor of the month. He was there to entertain. Meanwhile there were dozens of exceptional and dishy queers–like Halston and Bill Blass–who would have happily and deftly filled the void and lunched with those ladies in his stead. These ladies loved Truman, but he was as replaceable as a pair of nylons. His ostracism didn’t warrant such careful planning. At that point, it feels like Murphy is clutching at straws to fill the remaining episodes. So he makes up some stuff to fill the void.

The third episode is a mockumentary of sorts and a flashback to happier days. The series alleges that famed documentarians Albert and David Maysles (Grey Gardens) made a documentary about The Black and White Ball, a legendary social event that Capote threw in honor Katherine Graham at the peak of Capote’s social powers and long before the Swans dumped him. Although, in real life, the Maysles brothers made a short documentary about Truman Capote, and thus had a relationship with him, it wasn’t about The Black and White Ball and the Swans never participated. Why would they? The series presents the “documentary”  as “lost footage” and we are to suppose that they filmed this and then someone powerful insisted that they scrap the project because it was too embarrassing for everyone involved. It feels like an episode of The Office. There’s a lot of “turn the cameras OFF!” going on.

At first glance, this is a clever conceit.  But when you really think it through it’s just stupid. Murphy and screenwriter Baitz are clearly trying to draw some sort of connector between the idea of mid-century high society and the reality show television of today. The swans seem thrilled and self-conscious at the presence of a camera that is documenting their every move.  They are–as far as Murphy and Baitz are concerned–the OG “Real Housewives”.  They compete for Truman’s attention and the chance to be “the guest of honor.”

Meanwhile, in reality, the Swans were already famous and received plenty of media attention. The key to their appeal was their silence and perceived distain for the media that documented their every carefully curated move. People who appear on reality shows, like Omarosa or Countess Luann, are largely doing so to get the fame they lack. They need the attention. Not so with the Swans, who would never agree to be the subject of a cinema verité documentary and would never allow the Maysles Brothers to capture their competitive or bitter natures on film.

Another outrageous liberty that Murphy and Baitz take with the truth is a final meeting between Truman and Babe Paley. In real life Babe Paley, the apex of New York High Society and Truman’s best friend, dropped Truman like a rock when he dished in his novel Answered Prayers about the affairs her husband Bill Paley had. They never really spoke again. If they ran into each other, she would exude cool politeness and, when asked, claimed to have not yet read Answered Prayers.  In the series, Truman runs into Babe outside of Bergdorf’s.  She’s staring at a black-and-white dress in the window (geddit?). After much hesitation, he approaches her. Babe, dying of cancer and struggling with her previous decision to drop him, addresses Capote with kindness.

A thaw occurs between them but maybe too quickly. Babe asks him if he’s still writing. “I’m trying,” he answers. “It is the most important part, the trying.” She says. “Because whoever really succeeds in the end?”

What? It’s possible that this might be a fantasy of sorts for either Truman or Babe, but it seems to be just the slapping of a happy face onto a dark situation.  It’s never quite clear that Truman and Babe were actually good friends. He might have entertained her, and their relationship might have raised his social status, but it never feels as though they truly cared about each other. It doesn’t seem that Truman deeply cared about anyone. He might have missed those trips to Jamaica on her private plane, but it’s doubtful she spent a lot of time dwelling on their relationship. She had a family and close female friends and she was battling cancer. Where does this fantasy sequence come from and why?

And, at that point, there were still four more episodes to go!

By making Capote’s fall from grace seem more like a long-simmering feud than it actually was, it seems as though Ryan Murphy is so hellbent on empowering gay people, that he ignores the actual homophobia and marginalization that happened to gay men like Capote who were largely expendable.