Douglas McGrath Tagged Articles at Cinematical

"Rain is good," Truman Capote mumbles as a soft downpour begins while Dick Hickock and Perry Smith are preparing to climb the steps of the gallows. What he means is the rain will add some texture to the climactic ending that has delayed his novel -- the death of its main characters. Even though Hickcock and Smith were stone cold murderers of an entire Kansas farm family, Capote was seized with anxiety about wishing them dead so that his "non-fiction novel" about their crimes could end on a perfect artistic note. The author's ability to hear and recognize such a note is vividly portrayed in the opening scene of Doug McGrath's Infamous, where singer Peggy Lee (Gwyneth Paltrow, returning the favor for Emma) is inexplicably overcome by emotion while singing a ballad on stage. The lump in her throat stops her mid-croon, causing all heads in the room to turn. Capote's eyes glisten as he watches in silence while Lee composes herself. To him, this is just another interesting life moment that must be re-packaged into art.

If all of Infamous were as original and insightful as that early scene, it would be easier to shake off the extreme deja-vu experience of watching the film. Although its allegedly based on a different source book than its sister film Capote, released a year ago, the similarities between the two are so numerous as to warrant a shot-by-shot comparison. If you saw Capote, you've seen about 80 percent of Infamous, so it's a big compliment for me to say the remaining 20 percent is good enough to make it worth watching. Apart from Peggy Lee in the prologue, the only important character that didn't already get a once-over in Capote is grizzled old socialite Babe Paley, played here by Sigourney Weaver, who should work more often. Paley was one of Capote's famous "swans" who loaded him up with the gossip he would secretly funnel into his next book, Answered Prayers. He promised anyone who would listen that the book would be an American answer to Proust's Remembrances of Things Past, with a million salacious anecdotes and half-truths regurgitated as high art.

I live in Austin, Texas, where the autumn film festival season starts around the third week of September and doesn't let up until nearly November. Therefore, when the weather finally starts to cool off a bit, I tend to look forward to watching obscure and little-known films at Fantastic Fest, aGLIFF, and Austin Film Festival (plus maybe Cinematexas if I can squeeze it in). However, I can think of a few new releases due in theaters this fall that I can't wait to see:

• Tideland -- Ever since the Terry Gilliam movie debuted at Toronto last year -- no, even before that, when Jeff Bridges posted still photos he took on the set of the film to his personal site -- I have been dying to see Tideland. I don't care how many of you saw it already and thought it was stinky. I liked The Brothers Grimm, so obviously I'm not going to necessarily be in sync with the popular taste on Gilliam films. Also, I love Bridges when he's in cool stuff and not scary Hollywood product.
• Infamous (or whatever they're calling it this week) -- "The other Truman Capote movie" was shot in Austin a couple of years ago and I've been intrigued ever since. It's directed by Douglas McGrath, who adapted and directed one of my favorite Jane Austen adaptations, Emma, and also co-wrote the screenplay for one of the funnier Woody Allen film's of the past 10 years, Bullets Over Broadway.
• Fast Food Nation -- I saw an early trailer and a clip from this film when Richard Linklater spoke to a UT class I was auditing in the spring. I also visited a postproduction garage sale on the Austin Studios lot last year for a film called "Coyote" and found out it was the code name for Fast Food Nation. I'm very curious to see how Linklater transformed a nonfiction book (that kept me from bringing raw ground meat into my house for a year) into a narrative film.

For more of Cinematical's Fall Preview, see: Erik's Picks and Scott's Picks.

According to a post at The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog, everyone associated with Douglas McGrath's Infamous is hoping that Philip Seymour Hoffman is a loser at Sunday's Oscar ceremony. Why? Well, Infamous is also about Truman Capote's relationship with killers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, albeit from a slightly different angle (it's based on George Plimpton's book about said relationship, whereas Capote's source is a book by Gerald Clarke).

McGrath's film, which will be hit theaters in New York and LA in October, stars Toby Jones as Capote, Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee, and Daniel Craig, that bit of Bond-y goodness, as Smith. Also appearing in the film (and supposedly hating on Hoffman) are an array of stars, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver and Isabella Rossellini. But here's what I don't get: why would a Hoffman loss be better for Infamous than a win? It's not as if the movie won't get distribution if he wins, or something - Warner Independent Pictures already has the rights. And Capote's profile couldn't possibly get any higher, so the competition won't be anything new. I'm not sure I buy this whole "they want Hoffman to looooooose!" angle.