Nancy tells it Slim Keith to his friends in The Basque Coast: “I met Princess Margaret at a party in London and after chatting for a while you wonder… how the hell did they get to where they are?” A pearl of the many that appear throughout the eight chapters of Feud: Capote vs The Swansa wonderful series created by Ryan Murphy about the complex relationships of the author of In cold blood with a select group of ladies from New York high society.
Of course Capote was a lot of Capote. This is how he defined himself: “I am an alcoholic, a drug addict and a homosexual. I am a genius”, although his genius did not prevent him from making the mistake of publishing in Esquire a text, The Basque Coast, 1965in which she revealed many of the intimacies that her friends had told her over the after-dinner meals at the distinguished restaurant. That was the beginning of her end, her radical social isolation, since the select and powerful group of ladies were much more qualified than Princess Margaret to justify her place at the top. The article that sowed discord was a preview of what would later be published as Prayers answered. The series that Max exhibits is impeccable with the environment in which “the swans” developed. Luxury houses, luxury wardrobes for a luxury cast: Tom Hollander, Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloë Sevigny, Demi Moore and Calista Flockhart, to name a few, actors and actresses who represented Capote himself, Babe Paley, Slim Keith , CZ Guest, Ann Woodward and Lee Radziwill, all of them cannon fodder for the so-called heart magazines, despite the cardiologists.
The series is a display of brilliant dialogues. Some samples: “I hope you wiped the earpiece… you never know where things have been in Andy’s Factory,” Capote comments from Palm Springs to his interlocutor. “Have you ever been to Europe?” Capote asks him after sleeping with the young man who just fixed his garbage disposal. “I went to Korea once.” “Well,” Truman replies, “that’s the best part of Europe. If you have been to Korea you have already seen it all.” “Criticism only hurts if you believe it,” James Baldwin tells Capote in a bar. Sometimes television is more than just a dumb box.
