Movie Review: Infamous

The script is adapted from the oral biography by George Plimpton, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. This book of interviews with Capote friends covering the same period of time as the other Capote film (1959-1965) helps give Infamous a more realistic and urbane look at the New York society Capote cavorted about within.

A true friend to famous rich society ladies-who-lunch – most likely because Capote was no threat to the rich and powerful men they were married to – Capote loved nothing more than to sit in elite New York restaurants and gossip over long boozy lunches and parties with his socialite girlfriends.

Gossiping served Capote well as he is shown here snaking his way into the hearts and minds of the people who were close to the Clutter family in Kansas, the family who's murder was depicted in Truman Capote's last  book, In Cold Blood. The book was a huge bestseller and created a new type of reportage that all current celebretainment magazines now feature.

Lovely cameo appearances by Capote's real life gal pals include brief performances by Gwyneth Paltrow playing Peggy Lee singing in an opening scene, Signourney Weaver as Babe Paley (wife of William Paley, founder of CBS, and famous for the saying "One can never be too rich or too thin"), Juliet Stevenson as fashionista editor Diana Vreeland, Hope Davis as Slim Keith, Isabella Rossellini as Marella Agnelli. There are more lengthy and interesting supporting performances by Peter Bogdonovich as columnist Bennett Cerf and, in yet another forgettable whitebread performance, Jeff Daniels as policeman Alvin Dewey, who knew the Clutter family and was protective of their memory.