Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation is a thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable examination of the strikingly complex yet always witty and spikey relationship between two literary giants, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. While Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s documentary makes a perfect companion piece to Ebs Burnough’s The Capote Tapes (2020), its tighter focus allows for real depth and poignancy.
The story of the luminaries’ relationship is very much told in their own words, with two actors ‘performing’ as they read from letters and notebooks, capturing the cadences and idiosyncrasies of both men. Jim Parsons takes on the distinctive vocal style of Capote while Zachary Quinto adopts the refined and mannered drawl of Williams, their voices set against archival photographs, magazines and footage of the pair.
All of this is set alongside judicial use of television footage, mostly from interviews of the pair by David Frost and Dick Cavett, which provides a striking reminder that television interviews in decades past did not pull their punches, with both men interviewed in depth about their sexuality, their craft, their notion of what love is and their demons. Also included are snippets from filmed adaptations of their work, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, which also allows plenty of opportunity for comments about how much they disliked the films.
Immordino Vreeland’s documentary opens with details of where the writers were from and how they become friends as young men (though not lovers, as both are keen to point out). They continued to offer support and encouragement to each other, but up to a point as it was often tempered by a modicum of jealousy, expressed with biting wit. Both became famous in the 1950s, with their friendship and rivalry lasting almost 40 years, until their deaths within a year of each other.
They were both striking figures whose creativity developed during difficult childhoods, and who both enjoyed great acclaim which was followed by periods of alcoholism and artistic challenges. Immordino Vreeland manages to create a sense of a film conversation between the pair, at one point splitting the screen so they appear to sit down together, Parsons and Quinto voicing a kind of cerebral dual as they talk candidly about their work, life and friendship.
The lives of the two men bear striking similarities. Both came from the American South, also from families of alcoholics — Williams’ father was a big drinker and Capote’s mother died from an overdose of pills and alcohol. Following stratospheric success their careers began to decline in the late 1960s. They seemed like two sides of the same coin, but both felt the need to needle each other – Williams opted not to attend Capote’s famously lavish Black and White Ball in 1966, while Capote bitingly comments in one TV interview how: ”Tennessee is not intelligent.”
But in the end, it is Williams and Capote’s brilliance that shines through in a film that offers the viewer a wonderfully compulsive immersion into a rich, amusing, bitter and sad, but ultimately inspiring artistic world.
US, 2020, 86mins
Dir: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Production: Fischio Films, Peacable Assembly, Gigantic Studios
Producers: Lisa Immordino Vreeland, Mark Lee, Jonathan Gray
Cinematography: Shane Sigler
Editors: John Northrup, Bernadine Colish
Music: Madi
With (voices): Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto
