-I told Martha to throw these goddamn things away. -Happy Rockefeller.
Couldn't just be a girl from the secretarial pool with you.
It always has to be a monument to your fucking ego.
Oh, so it's my fault? I'm not the one who told him everything.
Of course I told him!
He was there for me. Where were you?
Have you ever wanted to have a conversation with me?
No. Your bloated lack of discretion--
What the fuck did we do to him?
Other than roll out the red carpet
so he could prance on twinkle toes into our world.
He was a fucking guest!
Carol Matthau, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Lee.
He leaves them practically alone.
It's hatred. Pure hatred.
I feel like I'm going insane.
He comes off far worse than any of you do.
I need something. I need a pill. Where--
Martha, would you make Mrs. Paley
-a cup of tea, please? -Yes. You have a phone call, sir.
Thank you. I'll bring you a Valium.
I don't want your fucking help!
You miserable little fuck. Don't call here again. Ever.
You might as well move to Patagonia.
That is how isolated you will be, starved of oxygen.
And I will watch. I will watch as you die alone.
So go and die.
It's Truman. You know what to do.
So do it after the beep. Here it comes.
The beep.
Mr. Capote, it's Jimmy Baldwin.
If you are there, hiding behind some hideous piece of ormolu furniture,
please pick up.
I'm counting. One, two...
-Hello, Mr. Baldwin. -Mr. Mailer tells me
- you're despondent. - Is this true?
I mean, stunned, shocked.
I am speechless. This is the worst time in my life, I think.
I may have tried to kill myself last night.
Let me turn this thing off.
It's taping us. I don't need that.
So the ladies who lunch are taking their pounds of flesh, are they?
Oh, no. Not pounds.
All of it.
Flaying me alive.
A concentrated effort to effectively ensure I am a social pariah.
What are you doing right now?
Well, I was standing at the window,
thinking about throwing myself into the East River, frankly.
Then you called.
Let's meet for lunch.
The scene of the crime, today, 1:00 sharp. I'll reserve.
I don't wanna go there. It's full of enemies.
They might not even let me in.
What a story that would be.
They can't refuse entry with this Black man, can they?
They're all glowering.
What if somebody comes over and starts a ghastly scene?
Well, I'll just beat the living shit out of them.
Besides, you've had ghastly scenes here before, haven't you?
Didn't that murderess spritz you with Chablis once?
Sancerre, actually.
Mr. Capote.
Gonna tell you some hard truths today.
You're going to spend the day listening and learning from me.
Class begins henceforth, baby.
I'm not a very quick study, Jimmy.
Then let's order some oysters.
Ah, this is faux Basque shit.
I've been to the Basque coast, darling. This is not Basque.
This is New York continental froufrou.
Why are you being nice to me?
We're friends, I mean, but we're not close friends.
Mr. Baldwin, I'm told you have a special request?
Oh, yes. The best thing-- The best thing I ever ate was in a place outside of Biarritz.
Something called Kokotxas. Do you know it?
Kokotxas was cod cheeks in a salsa verde.
There's olive oil, there's fish stock, garlic, finely chopped parsley,
and it comes on this perfect crusty bread. Can you do something like that?
We need to do something to bolster this man's flagging spirits.
Of course, sir.
I've noticed that most minorities--
Blacks, thank God, Asians, women, Jewish folk--
they all have a community to turn to in their time of need.
The homosexual, not so much. Not yet.
I mean, what? You, me, Gore, Tenn?
We're the only gay American men of letters, pretty much.
I'm not counting Frank O'Hara and Ginsberg because they are just poets.
Gore hasn't reached out to you, I'm guessing.
Gore?
Are you kidding?
He's dancing in joy at my misfortune.
Voodoo doll in hand.
Well, because he's jealous of you.
I'm not jealous of you. Today, Truman,
I am going to be your community. Because you need one.
You are important to this country. Your words and ideas.
As-- As are yours.
Well, we know that. We're not talking about me today.
Your story is being dismissed as a-- as a small salacious roman à clef.
It is much more than that.
It is?
I mean, it is.
I wanna know what you left out.
All the awful things you could have said about the Swans.
Why do you wanna know that?
Tell you at the end of the day.
Start with Babe. I know she's your favorite.
Can we talk about this in the bedroom?
What is there to talk about?
Everyone overheard
because you happen to slip in that in between
buying a Max Beckmann painting and a Max Ernst painting in Berlin
that you just fucked somebody! Listen to me!
It's the sex stuff that I revealed
in my sneak peek magazine article that's made them mad.
It's not the bang-bang cruelty or even their funny names.
It's the rough truth of it. It's Bill's affairs.
I don't know what matters more to him.
The fuck or me knowing about it.
You think it's harmless, flirting with the help?
Oh, it was hardly flirting, dear.
Well, I was mortified. She had legs like a tree trunk.
Why don't you cut one off and count the rings?
If I wrote a book, it would be called Thieves I've Known.
Starting with Betty Bacall, who stole my look.
The fabric I found, gray flannel that I found.
And any man I ever spent a night with, she had to do the same thing.
Until, finally, I heard from one of these guys that he couldn't tell the difference
who he was fucking, her or me.
And what's left of me after everything's been stolen?
"Formidable excellence" is how I'm described.
That's code for a dry hump.
I was trying to go after the men. Not the women.
Thank you.
The truth, Jimmy. The thing that I could have written but didn't
is that they all fuck everybody and get away with it.
The affairs of the rich are different.
But these women pillory anyone else
who does so, as if they were above it all.
Babe had many affairs in their apartment
when Bill would go to LA for his programming trips.
I even helped her pick out the outfits.
One time she wanted to dress up as an Hermès pirate for a lover.
- The men were always unsuitable.
Lee. Lee plays the part of America's original Pilgrim,
but she's a true slattern, voracious and predatory.
But the worst is Slim.
In the final years of her marriage,
she relegated Kenneth to the guest room
and brazenly paraded in a series of lovers.
And even CZ, who is the human chastity belt,
she had her time as a party girl.
Does she not remember posing nude for Diego Rivera?
Mostly her lovers are the tiny vegetables she tends to.
Because vegetables can't talk or talk back.
And there's a double standard.
When the men get caught, oh, brother, hell to pay.
But what did the men ever get for their women's indiscretions? Nothing.
And in many ways, the women are far, far worse.
- Darling. - They make the men pay
because the ultimate threat to the Swans are younger women.
God, do they hate them.
Please excuse me while I throw up.
Babe?
I hope you get this message. I hope Bill...
doesn't erase it.
I'm at Côte.
And without you...
it's nothing.
Nothing even tastes good.
I never meant to hurt you.
And why did you leave all that out?
You know, fascinating fact.
Swans are actually terribly aggressive with one another.
One race of swan hates the other.
I read a bit about them before our lunch, dear man.
The Beswick swan, for example,
hates the whooper with a kind of rabid passion.
A mute swan will do anything to eviscerate a trumpeter swan and take its home
even if the trumpeter lived there first.
A swan... ...it will kill if it can.
Yes, as they are trying to kill me.
My Swans, yes.
And I think they might actually succeed.
No, fuck them. No.
Oh, thank you.
My Swans would never do this.
Have lunch alone with a Black man.
I am aware. This is not news.
Maybe they just never thought they had to,
but they are constitutionally, by nature,
not curious enough to cross the imaginary barriers.
Come out and say it. You can say it.
Well, there is a...
subtle racism below the surface of the water they swim in.
Exactly. Your next chapter.
Well, it's never overt, the racism. Or the classism.
It's subtle, but it's meant to convey one thing:
"I am a privileged, wealthy white woman, and I am better than you."
And the pecking order speaks volumes.
Blacks for labor.
Gays for entertainment.
Women for the men to look at.
And all of us there to serve them.
And the people next to her and Bill?
White, money, power.
Even Jack usually wasn't invited.
Too overtly homosexual.
Us together might upset the other guests.
Oh, it stung me, those parties. It really did.
Okay, let's talk Bianca Jagger. Or rather, let's not.
I say we all get on the same page. Oh, she's fine for a dinner party.
But you don't want her purring on your sofa.
Does this have anything to do
with Bianca's skin not being alabaster white?
Of course, they would argue no.
They don't include Bianca because she's too loud or some such other reason,
but I think it does.
They didn't want to corrupt the pool.
Whites only, WASPs only.
They're not even aware they're doing it.
It's just that this kind of bigotry
is so intrinsic to their world and who they are
that they can't see it even when it's right in front of them.
Let me tell you something. It's impossible for a white person--
or an American white person-- to not be, in some fundamental sense, a racist.
Mmm.
Well, I worry about what I'm not seeing. I spend so much time with them.
How can I not be guilty as well?
Well, you are, of course, but the question is how you address it.
I've always wondered at the great effort
it seems to take a certain segment of society to work so hard
to ignore what was happening.
Their good work, never meant for us.
Well, it's all for their world, no one else's.
The Met, the Botanical Gardens, the New York Public Library, the Frick.
It's for preservation of their monuments.
Come on. Let's go somewhere to brighten up the day a bit, my dear.
So tell me something.
Are you in love or dating anyone?
Me? My love life has been a series of arias, fumbles,
half-finished sentences and a quick amour, and fleeing into the night.
Living in Paris helps.
Exile makes sex more felt.
Mmm. I remember that.
You sleep with a sailor in Marseilles,
and you really get to know what a Frenchman is like,
what he smells of, what he dreams of.
Maybe I could just--
No, don't go. Stay. Stay here.
It'll feel like surrender to your adversaries. They want you gone.
Why did we never date?
We were in Italy at the same time.
We've circled each other.
We would have murdered each other.
Two flowers, no gardener. That's--
We are here to talk about the Swans.
Brought you here for a reason.
From the collection of William S. Paley.
Now, you tell me why. Why do they care so much about art?
Well, they're allowed to put their names on things,
but they don't know how to love them, these things.
They collect and collect and collect.
The appetites are insatiable, but the Swans are never full.
They're like a starving person who keeps buying food
only to tuck it away in their pantry.
And then the person says, "Why am I so hungry?
My shelves are positively overflowing with food."
Everything the Swans do is skin-deep.
That's why they're not truly interesting people.
The-Their situations are interesting, sure.
Their lives are fascinating, but they themselves are truly dull.
They don't know what's going on in the world.
They don't read anything except the Ladies' Home Journal
or McCall's.
It's funny, because Lee really wanted to be an artist.
She tried her hand at interior design.
She has a great high style and she loved designing her own homes,
ordering people about. It never occurred to her
that designing for other people would involve taking orders.
I don't know, Lee.
It's just not what we discussed.
Well, what would you like me to do?
Would you like me to go back to the garment district
and ask them to cut and hem a whole new set of drapes?
It's not what we discussed.
You know what it is? There's not one ounce
of humility or empathy or compassion.
They don't care about any of that.
They only care that they appear to care about it.
Tell me. In nature, the one thing swans are good at is parenting.
Let me tell you this.
I said one time to CZ, "Doesn't it bother you
that the governess sees your children more than you do?"
And she replied, without batting an eyelash,
"Of course I see my children. I go fox hunting with them."
All my Swans are horrible mothers, all of them.
Babe is an interior woman, sensitive and deep
but also deeply self-absorbed,
ruled by a need for order and perfection that no mortal can ever attain.
I said chrysanthemums, not carnations.
Chrysanthemums.
Amanda, sweetie. Send everyone home now, okay?
I don't feel well. I need some quiet.
Thank you, darling.
The woman is so preoccupied
with her own world, she's not even aware
of the way she's ravaged her children's lives.
And get that buffoon out of my house.
Oh, my God.
But I always felt her pain.
Felt she knew she wasn't cut out for motherhood.
It was too overwhelming, loving messy, living things.
You know, sometimes I'm jealous of people making art like this.
You get to hide in that abstraction.
I much prefer figuration.
You know how the goddamn artist feels about his subject.
Like those wonderful Dick Avedons he has out right now.
He makes the Duchess of Windsor like a cadaver.
He even makes his own father a gargoyle.
Maybe this lopsided circle is filled with rage too.
Maybe that's his mother's smile when she's drunk.
Art. Most of the work in this building is about anger, truth
and revenge for something.
Art is revenge, isn't it?
And so you're saying?
Stop apologizing to them, to any of them.
Defy them.
Defy the foul fowls,
the trumpeter swans, the tundra swans, the black-necked swans.
Truman, do you understand?
People think I wanted to hurt them.
And admit you did.
Admit it and keep going because you--
you are the toughest little faggot in this town, baby.
But I don't like what I'm seeing lately.
I don't like it when I see you on television showboating and incoherent.
You're better than that.
I drink, Jimmy, because...
I've been wounded my entire life over and over.
I'm in pain.
I know you are.
Truman, so am I.
So is she and him and them over there.
But none of us end up in a blackout on television, so why are you?
Because I'm afraid.
Of what?
Everything.
Abandonment or acceptance in their world.
Life with them, life without them.
Both are unbearable.
- But, Truman, they have abandoned you.
The worst has happened and here you are.
The rest is up to you.
I really could use a nice pick-me-up.
A little goddamn drinkie.
Come on.
Okay, I do know
a very unlikely place
where the bartender is a shaman
with a maraschino cherry and rye. Mmm.
But, Truman, two drinks only.
Come on, who doesn't love a maraschino?
Mmm.
From Côte to cocksucker bar in one lovely afternoon.
How I love New York.
This day is cheering me up.
Two drinks only, Truman. Really. You've got to get a hold of this booze thing, man.
It's your main problem.
Drags you all the way down to hell. Oh, God, you're right.
We would have killed each other if we'd been lovers.
Two drinks. Then we're leaving, Truman.
- Jimmy, I have to say this, because you're a gentleman,
and you haven't brought it up. I-- I am ashamed.
I have been unkind.
About whom?
You. Not really.
A few picayune criticisms of my work here and there, mostly true.
I've criticized you, Truman, but only with the intent to educate and uplift.
Yes, and your words sting because I admire you so.
Well, criticism only hurts if you believe it.
My Swans would never do this, what you're doing.
In a crisis, in a time of treachery.
No, no, no.
Because they compete and they are deeply disloyal.
They may pretend to hate what I wrote about Ann,
but they loathed her and they treated her savagely.
Hello, ladies.
You are exactly who can answer this question.
I'm supposed to be meeting Otto Preminger for lunch.
He's now 20 minutes late.
I mean, at what point do you just give up and order for yourself?
Mind if I sit down?
Oh, I wish you could.
But we're being joined in just a second.
What I would do is not sit and wait,
because clearly you can't dine alone. I would go home.
Yes. What you do in that situation is you send a note.
You write it while you're sitting at home
with your soup and sandwich by yourself.
Yes, that's exactly what you should do.
So, I send a note
in which I tell him to go fuck himself.
And then I heat up some sad soup and eat a half a tuna sandwich.
In other words,
"Get the fuck out of here."
Well... ...I would never have put it like that,
but I forget that you're not afraid to be vivid, are you?
The Swans, they despise growing older.
Once the bloom of youth began to fade, every one of them
either underwent a brutal regime of fetal sheep cell injections
- or went under the knife. - What about yourself?
You've succumbed to the same pressures and vanities, no?
Well, it comes from a very dark place.
Have you seen Bill Blass lately?
He looks like he's just come back from the fountain of youth.
One person gets something done, everyone else has to follow suit.
Are you really relying on your wit to keep you in the game, Truman?
I saw you on Cavett last weekend,
and, Lord knows, I'd want somebody to tell me.
You're looking awfully weathered, to put it politely and--
and fat. I'm saying this because I love you to death,
and you're so often on television these days, more visible than ever.
I think you might want to do something, my dear.
Someone raises the stakes, you ante up or you risk being thrown from the table.
And they don't eat. None of them eat.
They live on air and water, tiny portions of very rare meats.
A life without appetite is a life without joy.
Cas-- - No.
Oh, come on.
No, it's time to get you home.
Our two drinks are over.
Are you gonna tell me what this day was all about?
All in good time.
Now, it's just grapefruit juice for our little nightcap, right?
Because last call was at the bar, Truman.
Yes, yes.
Shocking how little flavor grapefruit has all by itself, isn't it?
Tell me more swan facts.
I had so much fun at the library.
Well, you-you must know that a full one-fifth of male swans are homosexual.
Mmm. Well, it makes sense.
Swans are so comme il faut. Hmm.
Yes, and they couple, even raise cygnets together
and are far more successful than the straights.
Eighty percent of the children of gay swans live
as opposed to something like thirty percent of the heterosexual ones.
A lady swan might join them, I kid you not, for a ménage
and then go off and the two gents raise the babies.
Why do they thrive so well, their kids?
The gay swans are stronger, you see.
They are more able to provide.
Hmm.
Can you imagine all the successful gay New York artists and writers as swans?
Tenn, Frank O'Hara,
Ginsberg, Albee, even Gore, Andy and so on.
Perhaps your next ball?
- I'm gonna heat up those crab cakes.
Do you need more juice? I'm fine.
Just juice, Tru.
Mmm.
Truman.
Hey, man.
Yes, okay.
I need vodka. I just do.
I know. I understand.
I do.
I understand.
Now sit down and listen to me!
It's time for our eleven o'clock number, Mr. Capote, the reason I gave you this day,
one of my few days in New York before I fuck off back to France.
Close your eyes just for a second,
until you see a glimmer
of your great, gargantuan, enormous worth and gifts,
which you have criminally lost sight of in your sickness,
in your disease, which you reek of.
Yes, you threw away the ten years since you published In Cold Blood.
You jettisoned your unparalleled ability to paint hell.
I cannot blame you. In Cold Blood would have flattened anyone.
I don't know what you sold to the devil to write it.
But let me tell you a secret.
You can steal whatever the devil took right back.
The moment you are born, Mr. Capote, the process of our dying begins.
Ticktock, ticktock.
And as the years go on, the dying accelerates until the final breath and then silence.
That is the order of the universe.
This life, Truman, is vicious and dark.
And you and me, we are angels sent here
to light it on fire and illuminate.
Some of us-- Some of us real swans,
not this fake dime-store porcelain trinkets that you called Swans--
Some of us, like you and me,
we are given a torch, and your job was to keep it alight.
It was to endure it and write the world.
Goddamn it, Mr. Capote.
Your work isn't even half done.
You have miles to go.
Your fucking torch is still lit.
Faint motherfucking glow, but it is still lit.
Lunches and the trips and the soufflés and the yachts
and the nausea of demented privilege with these pathetic creatures are over.
Their world, you captured it forever
and everybody knows what you wrote.
It's a dictionary of disgust, the thesaurus of American nausea,
and I promise you one day it will be seen.
But you gotta finish what you began, baby.
That is your obligation.
Just as mine is to do everything I can do to change my world.
You gotta do that too.
What is your obligation?
It's not over?
It's not too late? Too late?
Baby, you set the table.
Now have the meal.
"Côte Basque" is to be a chapter in your story of how the ruling class die.
So keep going until you've killed all of them, Truman.
Truman, don't you get it?
Your book.
It is your firing squad that killed the Romanovs.
It's your...
guillotine that beheaded Marie Antoinette.
This is your slave revolt.
It's your "Rite of Spring" ushering in a new world.
Your Oppenheimer bomb, your Shiva, "I am destroyer of worlds."
Hmm. Now, go to bed.
You have more bends in your river.
Wake up without your hangover.
Shower, shave and put on the most comfortable sweater.
Have someone go out and get you some great bad bacon, egg and cheese thing
from the nearest deli.
And you...
get back to work.
The light is dimming,
but you're still here.
Your light is still shining.
Vegas, we're back with the electrifying Ann-Marg--
Did I wake you?
I'm headed back to Paris. I just decided to take the night flight.
You're leaving now?
James, thank you.
I'm getting ready to sleep.
I'm okay, I think. Thank you.
Hey, Truman. There's one final bit of swan lore I forgot to tell you.
Oh, okay.
You see, in England, the Queen owns all the swans,
all of the unmarked mute swans in the wild waters there.
And it's been that way since the 12th century.
It's the rich and the royal, they feasted on so many of them,
they were disappearing.
Served as centerpieces in their skin and feathers,
and with a lump of blazing incense in the beak at Christmas.
With a lump of blazing incense?
If she wanted to now, the Queen is still the only person
who could legally eat a swan in England.
That's wonderful.
I thought you'd appreciate it.
It's time for my flight, Truman. I've gotta go.
But you take care now, you hear?
Remember what I said. Thank you.
Hmm.
What have I been eating? An occasional egg sandwich and some spinach.
I don't know. I've been in a trance for three days, Jack, I tell you.
The words, the-the pain and the rage is just pouring out of me.
About the Swans.
About who they are, who they really are behind the plumage.
It's my best writing.
Jack, I've almost finished the book.
They think "La Côte Basque 1965" was bad?
Just wait for this.
I was reading some passages this morning to Joanne Carson, and she called Johnny,
and he wants me to give an entire week performing morsels every night.
And I said I'd do it.
This is my return.
Jack, I have to call you back. Talk soon.
- Matty, is everything okay in there? - Yeah. All good. Sorry.
Uh, it's-- The thing fell.
Well, are we almost ready? I'm famished.
Yes, I hope it's good. Uh.
I've never made anything like this before.
Uh, but I did my best.
Honey, I'm sure it's divine.
You've been my favorite waiter at Tavern On The Green for years,
and you have aspirations of being a chef, no?
Yes. Uh, I'm going to culinary school.
Well, then this is an opportunity of a lifetime.
Red or white?
Oh. No, thank you, dear. I'm not drinking.
Not until I finish the book.
Tell me again how you did it.
I want to remember this forever.
Uh, okay.
I went to Central Park, just like you said...
...in the dead of night.
Um.
And they were all sleeping there together,
but then I saw this big one kinda off to the side.
And I-I snuck up real slow and grabbed it by the neck.
It-- It kept moving even after I, uh,
-snapped it. -Did it attack you?
Um...
I used ginger because the other spice
in the recipe-- "galangala"-- doesn't exist anymore, I think.
Do you mean galangal?
You did well.
Very well.
I'm going to throw in an extra hundred bucks for those war wounds.
♪ Remember me ♪
♪ But ah-ah-ah! ♪
♪ Forget my fate ♪