During an extremely elegant dinner of stratospheric elegance, Louisa Firth (Roya Shanks), a lady of the highest class, tells Truman Capote, the very famous and highly esteemed writer at the time, in 1968 – the success of “In Cold Blood” is not just hers Bank account filled with zeros, it also made her something of an object of social desire among the rich – she could never trust a writer. Amused, Capote (Tom Hollander in the kind of grace that made him the best screen Capote of all time) tells her he doesn't either, but he wants to know why she wouldn't trust him. Firth says without hesitation that the narrators always have the last word and, in his opinion, they are not the ones who should have it. Who should have it? asks the author. “Anyone who lived through World War II will tell you this. The person who has the most power. United States for example. He had the last word. “Two bombs and it’s over,” he replies. And he subtly and brutally adds: “Kabum.”
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This scene opens the long-awaited second part of Feud (the first three episodes are now available on HBO Max), the anthology series from the always brilliant and admirable Ryan Murphy – here accompanied by none other than Gus Van Sant and Jennifer Lynch in the direction and Jon Robin Baitz in the script – based on major fights between celebrities – the first part told the confrontation between Bette Davies and Joan Crawford during the filming of What? What was Baby Jane?, an incredible duel of interpretations between Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, perfectly sums up the kind of celebration that awaits us as viewers. That is, once upon a time there was an ugly – and repulsively charming – duckling who was doomed to be devoured by his sisters, wasteful swans, when they discovered he wasn't one of them, and he never was. They just pretended they did one thing or the other. To the writer for the associated social advancement; them, for fun and an acquired understanding.
Demi Moore as Anna Woodward, one of the “friends” the author betrayed in “Feud Capote vs the Swans.” Photo provided by FX
It is led by Babe Paley (a masterful Naomi Watts at her best), the wife of Bill Paley, the owner of CBS, who is completely destroyed by Capote's betrayal, not so much because of the social consequences he inflicts on her…” She tells of her husband, the tycoon's, recent mess in her skirts and plunges her into the misery of meek cuckold wives – what she loses: him.” Not for her husband, but for the writer with whom she had a feeling , as a best friend and at the same time a perfect man – funny, attentive, a bit pretty bad when it came to gossip – who she has never had anything to do with anyone. Babe and the rest of the enviable ladies of the New York jet set of the time – the late '60s and early '70s – who had greeted the writer as one would greet a court jester: “He is the conveyor of stories, and the stories are. They believe he is just entertainment and do not hesitate to destroy him when they discover that he believed he had the right to what Louisa Firth called “the last word.”
Let us remember that Capote had become a successful author after publishing In Cold Blood, the first non-fiction novel in history, a work halfway between journalism and literature, which depicts the vicious murder of a family, the Clutters, in their House in the reconstructed small town of Holcomb, Kansas. His editor, Joseph M. Fox, who tried to keep him, signed him a check for $300,000 so he could comfortably write his next novel. Capote asserted that he had his own version of “In Search of Lost Time” in mind. One in which the high society gossip he had access to would prevail. It would be a real bomb, he said. But did he write? No, he said he wrote and asked for more money. The publisher even advanced him a million dollars. Under pressure, he published a few chapters in Esquire magazine in 1975. One of them, named La Côte Basque in honor of the restaurant where he met with Babe and the others, his swans, practically blew everything up.
Chloë Sevigny as CZ guest, Warhol and Dalí's muse. Image provided by FX
Anna Woodward, a former showgirl married to another of these tycoons – amazingly played by Demi Moore in only one scene on the show – committed suicide with cyanide after reading it – the episode said she had her husband killed, what she had done with one shot – and the contempt with which she spoke of the events of the rest – made a very big difference, and in authentic hands. n, divas of interpretation: CZ Guest (Chloë Sevigny), the muse of Warhol and Dalí; Slim Keith (Diane Lane), Jackie Kennedy's little sister, Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart) – forced her so-called friends – were they ever friends? – to banish him because he played with fire and had burned himself to the point that it ruined his life and spelled his ultimate downfall. He died in 1984, dethroned and drunk, a victim of unbearable ostracism for someone who made a living telling lives.
Murphy has turned a fight so cruel and poisonous into a feast of interpretation, enjoyed as dreamily as the camera – always attentive to the textures of the satin, to a stimulatingly hypnotic half-light – allows, and which also ponders what happened Authentic life, loyalty and honesty that had been lost at the summit or never had, and, more interestingly, the real reason for Capote's attack: the poor boy whose gift for telling stories took him to the summit Chance to avenge his mother (a providential Jessica Lange), who always despised these types of women. A revenge that puts a twist on the fable of the ugly duckling – whose rise and fall is told here – who, no, was never accepted but returned to have the last word and was eventually crushed by the power of the swans . The unfinished Answered Prayers – the barely three chapters written – serve as battered evidence.
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