Seven years ago, Ryan Murphy produced the first season of FIEF, about famous disputes between famous people. That first season, which dealt with the long-discussed rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, was a success even though almost everyone portrayed had been dead for decades.. Surprisingly, there hasn’t been a new story for Murphy to sink his teeth into until now.
FEUDADO: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Initial shot: Author Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) walks to a lake and watches swans swim by. The year is 1984. He observes the beauty, but concentrates on a black swan among the white ones.
The essence: “1968”. Capote enters a luxury building on the Upper West Side. He is there to visit her friend Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), who appears to have suffered the ultimate indignity at the hands of her husband, CBS president Bill Paley (Treat Williams). He constantly has affairs, and this time, a date with Happy Rockefeller (Rebecca Creskoff) ended with her bleeding all over her room; Happy deliberately didn’t tell Bill that she was on her period. Capote consoles her but tells her not to talk to anyone about this and not to divorce her; In her opinion, her luxurious life as a New York society wife is much better than being a sad divorcee languishing in Westchester.
“1955.” Bill and Babe Paley first meet Capote when David O. Selznick (Scott Zimmerman) invites the author on a trip to Montego Bay that the Paleys and Selznicks are taking. Paley is under the mistaken impression that the “Truman” Selznick speaks of is the former president, but both he and Babe are immediately charmed by Capote’s flamboyant candor and his ability to tell a great story.
Over dinner in Montego Bay, Capote talks about a story he is working on, about the accidental shooting of Woody Woodward Jr. by his wife, Ann Woodward (Demi Moore). He suspects that she actually killed him deliberately and that Woody’s influential family covered up the death.
“1975”. Capote suffers from writer’s block and his partner, Jack Dunphy (Joe Mantello), is concerned about the amount of alcohol Capote drinks. Capote goes to a Turkish bath and meets John O’Shea (Russell Tovey), a Long Island bank executive. Despite being married and having children, O’Shea describes himself as a “sexual sociopath.” He eventually makes O’Shea his manager.
He takes O’Shea to a lunch with members of a high-society women’s group he calls “the Swans.” Babe Paley is one of them, as are Slim Keith (Diane Lane) and CZ Guest (Chloë Sevigny). While gossiping about all the dirt in their own lives and the lives of other high-society couples, the three women advise Capote to leave O’Shea. At the same time, Ann Woodward sees Capote and confronts him about the stories about her husband’s death that he has been spreading among her mutual group of friends for the past two decades.
O’Shea suggests Capote write about the Swans and what happens in their group. In November, an extract from Capote’s new novel appears in the magazine “La Côte Basque 1965”. Don, which is a thinly veiled Roman key about swans and their lives. It is so scandalous that it leads Ann Woodward to commit suicide. Of course, Babe Paley and the other Swans feel betrayed by Capote, and Slim Keith is the first to express the idea of revenge.
What shows will it remind you of? This is the second season of Ryan Murphy Fief Anthology series, the first since the 2017 series about the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. This time, the show is written by Jon Robin Baitz based on the book by Laurence Leamer (Capote’s Women: a true story about love, betrayal and the swan song for an era) about the rivalry between Capote and the Swans. Gus Van Sant, also an executive producer (along with Murphy and Watts), directs most of the episodes. There will also be inevitable comparisons to the 2005 film. Soft topwhere the late Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for playing the author.
Our opinion: Our initial thoughts after watching the first episode of Fight: Capote vs. The Swans I was wondering who would care about this dispute between these long-dead rich women and this long-dead famous author. But the first chapter of Fief was a success, even though the rivalry between Davis and Crawford occurred more than half a century earlier.
But something about this story felt different. The tagline for this series is “The Original Housewives,” and that seems like the level of drama we’re getting here. Capote knows all the dirt in the Swans’ lives, uses it to advance her career at a particularly low point, and pays the social price for it. That’s the whole story.
Sure, it could be fun to watch the Swans destroy Capote’s social standing as the limited series progresses. And of course, watching the all-star cast (we haven’t even mentioned Calista Flockhart as Lee Radzwill and Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson) sink their teeth into the roles of these powerful, vengeful women will produce some interesting scene-chewing moments. But the story itself seems like one of those real housewives Arguments about someone not inviting someone else to dinner: fun to watch but ultimately dramatic little things.
Since the first episode focused more on Capote than the swans, we got a good look at Hollander’s take on the noted author. Hoffman set the standard nearly two decades ago, highlighting the more flamboyant aspects of Capote’s mannerisms and personality without making it seem like an impression. We’re not sure if Hollander’s performance will live up to that. Sure, he has mannerisms and a low voice, but the Capote of the first episode is a man of extremes. Either he is the narrator who can fix a group of people in his narrative, or he is spiraling into self-loathing over the fact that “Truman Capote” has become a character he can no longer. control completely.
In other words, Hollander’s interpretation has yet to show any subtlety or modulation. But that may be more a product of the material than anything else. And as the story continues to move back and forth in time, where we see Capote’s friendship with the Swans develop and then fall apart, we may see more of the nuance we’re looking for.
Sex and skin: Bill Paley and Happy Rockefeller are shown having sex, before Paley realizes that Happy was on her period and didn’t tell him.
Parting Shot: Back at the lake in 1984. Capote, chastened, examines the swans and takes a drag on his cigarette.
Sleeping star: We were happy and sad to see Treat Williams as Billy Paley; As far as we know, this is his last on-screen role. And considering we usually see Russell Tovey as a cop or criminal in various British dramas, seeing him as a sexually voracious American banking executive was refreshing.
Most pilot line: When Capote tells the story of Ann “Bang Bang” Woodward at dinner in Montego Bay, he tells Paley, “Bill, you should tell your boys in 60 minutes, because it is a murderous story.” A problem: 60 minutes It premiered in 1968, 13 years after that scene occurred. Mistakes like that drive us crazy, because they could easily be avoided with a five-second Google search.
Our call: TRANSMIT IT. We hope that Fight: Capote vs. The Swans will provide some juicy scenes between its incredible cast, and that will be enough to keep us watching. But the story itself is so low-stakes that it leaves us cold.
Joel Keller@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but make no mistake: he’s a couch potato. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and other places.
