by MATTHEW HAYS

There’s something pretty damn eerie about watching Philip Seymour Hoffman play the late author Truman Capote. He has the mannerisms and vocal intonation down. And, as Hoffman confirms, he used the technique of getting into character from “the outside in,” studying Capote’s mannerisms via documentary footage, and then arriving at a sense of the person from there. Like some of the greatest film performances, Hoffman manages to get the skin-deep stuff down while illuminating his character’s essence at the same time.

It’s an astonishing achievement, one fans of Hoffman knew he was up for. Long an exemplary character actor, Hoffman has usually been relegated to supporting-role status, turning in show-stopping performances in a broad range of movies, from Boogie Nights (1997) to Happiness (1998) to The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to Cold Mountain (2003). (He did have the lead in the underseen Owning Mahoney in 2003, playing a gambling addict.)

Indeed, Hoffman’s keen talent seems all but undeniable—that is, until you speak to the actor. Sitting in a lounge chair at the Toronto International Film Festival, sipping a glass of ice water, Hoffman says he was “petrified with fear” about taking on the legendary Truman Capote. “I was in a state of terror about whether or not I could do this film, whether or not I could succeed,” Hoffman states, straight-faced.

Midwest massacre

Filmgoers will be very, very happy Hoffman took the plunge. Making Capote, which was shot last winter in Winnipeg, meant a new role for Hoffman beyond the lead: He signed on as executive producer. “That meant checking schedules and budgets as well,” he says, looking a bit weary. “Anyone who tells you making a film was smooth and easy is lying.”

Capote is also, notably, the first feature filmmaking effort for director Bennett Miller—amazing too, given the film’s confidence and finesse. Capote captures a key point in American pop culture history. In 1959, Capote, then an up-and-coming writer (he had penned his novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s the year previous), spotted a small article in The New York Times about a Kansas family of four that had been murdered. The killers were still at large, and this small-town community had been understandably shaken by the massacre. Capote wanted to write the first non-fiction novel ever. His theory was that a great writer could apply the techniques generally reserved for fiction—detailed descriptions, psychological insights—and apply them to a meticulously researched piece of non-fiction journalism. The result, he felt, would change the face of American popular writing. He was correct.

Capote managed to convince the editors at The New Yorker to send him to Kansas to study the crime scene and write about it. And for those who never saw footage of Capote (he later became a staple of the talk-show circuit), he wouldn’t be the most obvious choice of reporter to send to small-town America in the ’60s. Fey and quite obviously queer, Capote was initially met with suspicion by the folk of Holcomb, Kansas. But this film illustrates beautifully how he won them over, effectively seducing many in the town—including the captured murderers as they faced trial and ultimately the death penalty—and got his story. The result, In Cold Blood, was first published in 1966, and prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote “the most perfect writer of my generation.”

Making Truman human

Hoffman confesses that he hadn’t even read the landmark book before reading the script for Capote. “After I read the screenplay, there was a lot of Capote reading to do. I didn’t spend too much time analyzing his writings though. I tried to look at the work through the eyes of Capote then.” There were, as Hoffman points out, two Capotes—the man before In Cold Blood and the man after. As the film insinuates, Capote’s seduction of the killers and his ultimate betrayal of them devastated him, leaving him haunted by his own tactics. He stated quite clearly after their execution that he may well have been in love with one of the killers. “There’s a passion about the killers in the book,” notes Hoffman. “The way that he writes about them, it tells you a lot about how close he got to them.”

There was plenty of footage of Capote showing up, often quite drunk, on various TV programs in the ’70s—and this was something Hoffman wanted to avoid. Instead, he turned to footage of Capote taken in the mid-’60s, when he was still relatively sober and together, and at the height of the fame culled from In Cold Blood. “The Maysles Brothers documentary, With Love From Truman, was a bible for me. It really captured Capote before he succumbed to severe alcoholism.”

Filming in Winterpeg

As well, Hoffman visited with Capote’s biographer, Gerald Clarke, who played recordings of conversations with Capote. The result of the extensive homework is Hoffman’s embodiment of Capote, who looked and sounded something like a gay Muppet. (For the record, Hoffman has never seen The Doors, in which singer-composer Paul Williams delivers a hilariously hammy cameo playing Capote.)

“Yes, getting into this character is intriguing,” confirms Hoffman. “But it’s the story that was most fascinating to me. All the technical stuff playing him was daunting and scary, but that wasn’t the reason for doing it. I had to be drawn into it in a different way. I loved this story, it’s a classic tale, really. The way he got drawn into the saga. It’s so subtle and simple, and yet so devastating.”

Hoffman says there were a number of different ways he got to the heart of Capote and the story. Geography even played a part. “Winnipeg was very, very cold. It was very isolated. I had never been there before. I didn’t know anyone. There was a certain similarity in that I was trying to get to know people in the town, much the way Capote did.” Hoffman did not, as some reports have suggested, wander about the streets of Winnipeg in character. “I didn’t go to shops and speak like him—that would have been really frightening! While I was on set, I did remain in his voice and manner, though. Doing Truman was a bit like an athletic event—if you’re running a race, you don’t want to have to stop and start again, it’s harder that way. Trainers will tell you to start and stop again because it burns up more calories—it takes more energy that way. If I let it go, it took up too much energy during the day.”

Countering conservatism

Then comes the inevitable question: What about the Oscar for best actor? This year sees buzz surrounding a number of high-profile performances, among them Heath Ledger’s in Brokeback Mountain and David Strathairn’s in Good Night, and Good Luck, as well as Hoffman’s. (All three films, notably, take place in a past conservative era—no coincidence—and are seen as part of Hollywood’s response to America’s Bush-led lurch to the right.) “Yes, it would mean a lot,” acknowledges Hoffman. “But I think more than me, it would mean that this film could be acknowledged as a whole. I think the ensemble in this film is tremendous.”

And Capote marks another round of Hoffman playing queer. “I think it’ll always be a tricky thing for some actors, but that never has been for me. I’ve always played a broad range of characters. It’s the story that pulls me in.”

Hoffman has just finished a decidedly different project. He’s finished playing the villain in the big-budget Mission: Impossible III, opposite Tom Cruise. And while out gay characters continue to multiply on the big and small screens, Hoffman agrees that there remains a massive closet for Hollywood’s A-list, a door that has yet to be broken down.

“There are certain actors in certain genres that makes it trickier for them. I’m not them, so I’m wary of judging them. It must be awful to be in that position, to not be able to explore any character—because there are so many stories to be told.

“It must be something to be cornered that way.”

Capote opens Friday, Dec. 16

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