We need to talk about the F-word. I mean, it’s used so liberally in this one episode of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans that even in such respectful censoring, we do ourselves a disservice given the need to plumb just what we (or the swans and Capote, really) mean by such a word. For the derogatory term for gay men, here it curiously stands at the center of another infamous feud involving Capote. As Lee puts it, “It’s just two fags fighting.â€
The two fags in question are Capote and Gore Vidal (unseen and unheard, a spectral figure all around). Their feud results from Capote’s constant drinking and his penchant for playing the part of court jester on prime-time television. The drinking, in fact, has clearly begun to affect all his relationships. He may enjoy dolling up Kate Harrington née Kerry O’Shea (Ella Beatty) as one of his swans, but the young would-be model is increasingly concerned about her new father figure losing himself in drinks. A sentiment shared by Richard Avedon (Jeffrey Grover), who, after undoing all that Truman had done to make Kate look matronly (to look like Babe, really) and shooting some fabulous headshots, scolds Capote for letting it all get to him.
All Truman hears, though, is Avedon nudging Kate to dance in front of his camera: “Movement is youth!†he beams at her. And that’s what Truman proceeds to do, trying to regain some semblance of youth and style at Studio 54 with C.Z., who’s less enamored with the entire affair (there’s nowhere to sit!). No matter, an increasingly drunken Capote has understood that even if the writing has fallen by the wayside, he’s at least a famous person. One the American public thoroughly enjoys on their television screens and in talk shows — that’s where Vidal comes in.
During one of those interviews (in real life, it was a Playboy interview), Capote makes the mistake of sharing a particularly ghastly story about the Hollywood and The City and the Pillar novelist — all having to do with him having been kicked out of a 1961 White House function after drunkenly touching then First Lady Jackie Kennedy. For a writer who came from the moneyed, political class, the incident is embarrassing on its own; that it is being aired out by a fellow gay writer whom he’d long despised is a bridge too far. Vidal sues Capote. The matter could be put away if the person who told Capote the story would come forward, but that person wouldn’t dream of it. Lee, clearly harboring a lot of ill-will toward Truman, opts to pretend that she’d never known, let alone told that story about her sister, telling her fellow swans that she’d rather not get involved: “It’s just two fags fighting,†Lee dryly admits. And it’s the line that elicits a response from C.Z., a line Chloë Sevigny was born to deliver: “We owe them a modicum of respect — the homosexuals, I mean.â€
She’s talking to Babe, who is perhaps a bit swayed by C.Z.’s position, though they both understand that men like Truman and women like themselves are caught in a bit of a bind. This was quite the popular thing to discuss in the late ’70s when visions of allyship were clearly changing, perhaps all too fast for the people depicted here in Feud. Look no further than Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s 1977 graphic novel-cum-manifesto, The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, which sketched out (among other things) the very vexing relationship between men, faggots, and women: “For a thousand years, the women did not trust the faggots,†it reads at one point. “They would allow the faggots to arrange their hair into elaborate, beautiful designs. They would allow them to fill their houses with carved wood and soft fabrics. They would allow them to play music at their parties. But they did not trust the faggots, for they knew the faggots only as men, and they could not trust men.â€
This is what Feud is getting at; its entire plot is anchored by the fragile bond between fey gay men like Truman and beautiful women like Babe or C.Z. By the unspoken and yet strictly held detente that seems to have existed (and perhaps exists still) between these two groups of people whose penchant for the superficial, the vapid — the feminine, really — is needlessly put down by society writ large. Feud nudges us to notice how Babe and C.Z. are kind of silly as they go to buy gloves, while Capote rightly points out he may have been similarly understood as nothing more than an accessory (a cute fluffy Pomeranian, no less!). The warring way in which misogyny and homophobia are interlocked in their feud ends up being the key to understanding how the falling out between Capote and his swans actually telegraphed a changing of the guard, a change of style.
It’s why C.Z. feels embarrassed about going to Studio 54, let alone being photographed in such a cramped, sweat-filled space: There’s a time to bow out.
And, in a way, that’s what Truman tries to do. He wants to get sober (or so he says) and flees to Palm Springs, where he doesn’t so much get dry as get busy with a handyman named Rick. A trade trick if there ever was one, Capote even brings him back East, where Rick’s inability to carry a conversation about anything other than air conditioners leaves C.Z., Kate, and Jack aghast. Add to that the fact that Capote’s cruelty has only been exacerbated by his rift with Vidal (“an untalented hack of a writerâ€), and you see how he’s grasping at straws by trying to stay current to avoid going out of style. As C.Z. watches him on television slurring his words and as Jack sees he’s not yet gotten over the loss of his many swans, it’s clear to them both that there’s little either can do to really help him. He’s on yet another downward spiral; if only he could sit down and write!
Alas, an addict can’t really shake off his illness all that easily; soon enough, he’s trying to get better again. He wants to get tucked and plucked by his doctor (the better to look younger, as required by a rapidly changing world obsessed with youth), wants to spend time writing Answered Prayers again, and even finds a way to be okay with Rick eventually leaving him, though not before being needlessly cruel about it.
The episode ends, at least, with a final push to keep chipping away at his Proustian endeavor, a kind of faggot revenge against all that had first coddled and encouraged him. It’s a melancholy moment because it may be the first instance when Capote, at his desk, realizes exactly what kind of book he was writing: a eulogy for a time gone by. He writes of friendships as sun-dappled light on one’s skin, and his narrator missing said friendships even as he lays in a hammock in Tangier with the desert heat all around him.
Director Gus Van Sant makes the moment all the more heartbreaking by intercutting it with the playful Easter bonnet anecdote Capote had been thinking about earlier with C.Z., a time when he and his swans could relish each other’s company into a fit of giggles while donning ridiculous hats. But that’s all gone. The sun has set on those friendships. He and them are all the chillier for it.
Wit Versus Beauty
• I love the idea that the easiest way to remember poetry, as Truman does, is to just listen. It’s what he tells Kate as he regales her with bits and pieces of “The Walrus and the Carpenter†by Lewis Carroll.
• If you want to see footage of what a slurring Truman looked like whenever he went on late-night television in the 1970s, look no further than YouTube, where you can watch him on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
• I can’t be the only one who thought of Sondheim’s Company as C.Z. finds that her favorite millinery store is closing. “Does anyone still wear a hat?,†if you must know, was already a line being uttered on the Broadway stage back in 1970 — Capote’s swans were, years later, clearly a dying breed.
• Speaking of hats … give Sevigny and Naomi Watts Emmy nominations for their reaction to there no longer being a gloves section at their favorite department store. Related: Look no further. We have found the best onscreen credit yet: “Snide Salesgirl,†played by Serena Ryen.
• Better read: “Jacqueline Susann looks like a truck driver in drag†or “her new love interest, Herbert Ross, has sucked more cocks than a deckhand on the Fire Island ferry come August†or maybe even the more innocuous sounding, “your tumbleweed of a girlfriendâ€? I’m only sad the episode found no time for my favorite Vidal read, which is in Capote’s Women: “You see, behind his façade, he’s [Gore] really just a bowl of not-quite-congealed jello.â€
• Capote has never been as relatable as a writer, let alone as a gay man, as when he tells Kate he’s obviously been busy writing and scribbling away just as he sits at a Palm Springs pool with a drink in hand.