Capote affected me as deeply as any film I've seen in some time. So up front I think it best to warn you that my discussion of it will probably serve as a perfect spoiler. I'm sorry, but to simply give this amazing film a superficial yea or nay sort of review just doesn't interest me. I was a little surprised when it was nominated for best picture, I'm not at all surprised now that I've seen it. In fact at this point I dare say that it's poised to sneak up in the same dark horse fashion as The Pianist and grab the gold. And unless a landslide Brakes down the Mountain, I'll certainly be shocked if Phillip Seymour Hoffman's superb work goes un-awarded. Though his transformation into character isn't as dramatic as Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles, it was certainly remarkable and belongs in the time capsule, as does the film itself.

From the opening seconds of the film, I knew Capote was going to be a very personal experience for me. The murders at the heart of the story took place just over a month before I was born and the spot-on period detail - the cars, architecture, clothing, furniture - everything looked exactly how the world looked when I first began to take notice of it. Seeing it always stirs that faint ache in that deepest of places where my oldest memories and emotions reside. I suppose a place inaccessible to the murderer Perry Smith and his cunning partner of sorts, Truman Capote. Two men so scarred by their tragic disaffecting childhoods that they recognized a bond. The films haunting exploration of this bond is what makes Capote such a truly extraordinary experience. I guess I really wasn't expecting the film to be such an intense and unflinching examination of human nature, nor did I expect that the title character would be portrayed in such a scathingly unflattering light. That Hoffman was able to keep you on his side for as much of the movie as he did, as well as keeping things light on their feet amid such profound pathos is why he'll probably win the Oscar. It's just one of those performances that can rightfully be placed beside Jack Nicholson's in Cuckoo's Nest and Gregory Peck's in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Obviously I didn't choose Peck's performance randomly, as one of the most fascinating aspects of the story, and quite frankly one of the main reasons I've been dying to see this film is because I wanted to gain an understanding as to how and why there existed this most unlikely friendship between Capote and Harper Lee (the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, played brilliantly by the enormously gifted Catherine Keener). From what I managed to gather from the film, I believe they grew up in the same neighborhood and were childhood friends. Boy, talk about Dill and Boo Radley all rolled into one. Anyone who knows me well, will be quick to answer that my favorite film of all time is To Kill a Mockingbird, and the fact that it's author, whom I've revered since I was Eleven years old, was childhood friends with Truman Capote is as bizarre a coincidental circumstance as I can think of. If you're familiar with Jem and Scout and Atticus, you've got to believe that Dill was inspired by Truman. How fascinating is it, that while she was writing Mockingbird she was with Capote in Kansas working as a research assistant for In Cold Blood? Goodness - I can scarcely wrap the old Bone brain around that. Considering that it took place concurrently - they were like the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of literature. In fact I'd like to challenge our readers to top that for bizarre coincidences. Good night and good luck.

Anyway, at the time of the murders Capote was kind of the go-to feature reporter for the New Yorker. The magazine that published a quirky little short story by E. Annie Proulx entitled Brokeback Mountain. Alright enough with the Jack Twists. Early on in the film we see Capote clipping out a news story about a grisly multiple homicide inside a remote farmhouse in Kansas. He calls his editor (Bob Balaban) and that very night he's on a train to Kansas, and sharing his cabin is Harper Lee, Elvis Presley and JFK. Every word of this is gospel. Upon reaching Holcomb Kansas (the town in Mockingbird is "Maycomb" and is fictitious) they are treated with suspicion and open disdain by local law enforcement, but between Harper's folksy charm, Truman's devious cunning and the starstruck wife of the main police investigator, it isn't long before they've gained access to every aspect of the story and to a large degree, become part of the story as well. Chris Cooper plays Alvin Dewey, the main lawman in the story, with that quiet, bible belt stoicism that he's all but minted. The Dewey's open their home to the town's celebrated guests, but Cooper keeps them at a cool distance. He was a good friend of the man whose throat was cut before he, his wife, son and daughter were shot in the head at close range with a shotgun, and once Capote oversteps his bounds, he levels a threat over the dinner table that comes into play in the final act.

Capote is painted as the life of the party, funny and devilishly clever and up until this point and well after the audience is on his side. Incidentally, he was an out-of-the-closet homosexual before anyone even knew that there was a closet and though the film is perfectly open about his relationship with Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood) never is there a mention of homosexuality. This was a day before sexual preference had been elevated to any kind of political issue, it was more of a novelty. Men like Capote and Liberace, were looked upon with curiosity more than prejudice. Thus it doesn't have any effect on the story, and in the innocence of the day, I think more people regarded his strange, swishy manner as individual eccentricity more than anything involving morality. Not everyone was naive to it, obviously not the New York cocktail crowd, but by and large homosexuality just had yet to emerge, which was refreshing in a way and I mention it just because it adds another very interesting facet to the story.

After Smith and Hickock are tried guilty and sentenced to hang, there is a revelatory moment that hints at where the film is going, but at the time you're still so enamored of Capote's clever ingenuity that it slips by unnoticed. It involves the bribing of the prison warden in order to gain ready access to the prisoners, it's one of the funnier moments of the film because of Hoffman's delivery of some great writing, still it marks a turning point - unrecognizable to everyone including Truman himself at the time, but it's truly the point of no return for the writer. It's a truism that many of our great writers make great personal sacrifices for their craft, and truly Capote reaped great fame and wealth for the book (In Cold Blood) he would bring out of that prison. But he plumbed unfathomable depths to dredge it out, indulging in shameful deceit and manipulation. It became hard to watch, as he befriends the condemned Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and forestalls his execution so that he might have enough time to fully exploit the situation. He plays and betrays his friend until he finally manages to get what he needs. Then when the Supreme Court issues a stay of execution he is seized by fear, turns to the bottle with a vengeance and soon we see him for the selfish petulant, coward that he was. At a party where his friend Harper Lee is being celebrated after the release of the filmed version of her book, he drinks himself into a corner and remains in a foul, unapproachable stupor. Harper Lee was his conscience and her success for her brilliant life-affirming work was like rock salt to his wounded world.

It's not like you're altogether unsympathetic to his situation, his fear of Cooper's threat was real, but his inability to face Smith and the fact that he literally had to pray that these men (who considered him their friend and defender) would die in the gallows and soon, so that his book would have the poetic ending he'd already written, was beyond haunting. It left him a whimpering shell of a man and left the audience without anyone or anything to side with. And nothing to root for but to see men swing at the end of a rope? This story is told so brilliantly that it's just humbling. The many ironies are illuminated with Shakespeare-like sharpness and Hoffman shades his performance with remarkable subtlety. As is well known Capote's prayers were answered, the stay was reversed and Smith got what he deserved. Hickock on the other hand did not do any of the killing and he hung anyway and Truman got what he deserved. In Cold Blood turned him into the golden boy of American literature.

The message of director Bennett Miller and writers Dan Futterman and Gerald Clarke masterful film is pointed and plain - it was Truman Capote who became the ultimate victim of his own machinations, he got what he needed in order to create his masterpiece, but he quite literally sold his soul to get it. And in spite of the celebrity, the Johnny Carson show, the endless parties - everything that he craved and imagined would make up for the misery of his childhood, he quite summarily drank himself to death and died a lonely, haunted man. Never to publish again. And I can't help but think the film's creators want you to believe that he deserved it.