Vidal on Capote ... and Bush - Democratic Underground

understandinglife

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Thu Mar-16-06 01:17 AM
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Vidal on Capote ... and Bush

May we ask you about “Capote”?

Oh, Capote. I spent half a century trying to avoid him, in life, and now suddenly I’m surrounded by him.

He was a pathological liar. He couldn’t tell the truth about anything, and he’d make it up as he went along. He always wore dark glasses, and his eyes would drop behind the dark glasses, and he would seem to be looking down at his nose, and then as he got more and more frenzied—the lies really very frenzied, they were orgasmic—you would start to see the eyes begin to roll up to see if you’d fallen for what he was saying.

And it was always about famous people, some he’d barely heard of before. I remember he told me once “I’m the American Proust.”

So I said, “So who’s your Mme Verdurin?”

“Who?”

He had not heard of one of Proust’s principal characters. He was confidently illiterate. It’s highly suitable that he would become iconic, because he didn’t know anything, and never told the truth. Doesn’t he fit in the age of Bush?

Did you find the movie to be an accurate reflection of his personality?

Well no, but it wasn’t supposed to be. It was a good movie, and they touched upon his treachery toward the two boys. He wants them to swing, because if they don’t he can’t finish his book and if he hasn’t finished his book, he’s in trouble.

Kenneth Tynan, a great critic of that period, did an attack on “In Cold Blood.” It ran in The Observer in London. The headline was “For Cold Cash,” which was about the right tone, and that was pretty much the tone of the movie. The movie is quite brave about showing somebody who did not have any redeeming characteristics, nor did they pretend he had.

And how about the book itself?

Oh, I couldn’t read it. I read a bit of it in The New Yorker and thought; I’m not interested in murders, and pointless ones at that! I don’t know what excitement he got out of it. Obviously some voyeuristic aspect of himself was well served by contemplating it.

In the film he had a frightening way of being able to create an empathetic connection with whomever he was trying to seduce at the time. Did he have that in real life as well?

Yes, he was a very astute flatterer.

Doesn’t sound like it worked so well on you.

No, it didn’t. We were always linked, my first bestselling novel was in 1948 and his was also published in 1948. He was a year older than—I was 23, he was 24. And there we were, our names were forever linked on the bestseller list, and he started saying things about me, which people were delighted to hear.

But I just avoided him for years…. You know, there is a second Capote movie coming up, and I’m in it. I’m being played by quite a good British actor—Rupert Everett. I ran into him recently, and he told me he was playing me, and so I said well, have a good time, and he said, “You know I’ve been complaining it’s such a small part.”

I said, “Because I avoided Capote!”

Link:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060303_gore_vidal_sex_oscars

The folk who understood and portrayed Capote as having "no redeeming characteristics" should be able to do a Bu$h flick in their sleep ... except for all the nightmares they might have about just what a cold blooded, mass murderer Bu$h is.

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