The writer in his domain
A few years ago, when watching the film CAPOTE - which fascinated me - made me read In Cold Blood and Gerald Clarke's biography of Truman Capote (more about those books here. Back then, I noticed that Clarke called Truman Capote's profile of Marlon Brando, written for the New Yorker, in some ways a trial run for In Cold Blood. But lacking interest in Marlon Brando - look, I don't deny that his iconic performances (bookoended by Stanley Kowalski and Don Corleone, with some more good ones thrown in among a lot of rubbish) are really all they're claimed to be, but I never found him compelling as a person, which btw actors don't have to be - I never checked it out. But now, confined to the train a lot of the day, I did. The New Yorker thankfully put the entire text online (unlike the Guardian which presents a cut version, hmph): The Duke in his Domain. And even if, like yours truly, you are no Brando fan, it's worth reading.
First and foremost, of course, because of Capote's command of language. In 1957, Brando was already beyond his zenith - we know that now, his contemporaries didn't - but Capote was just getting there, and it shows. What he can do with English makes me green with envy. Some choice samples:
It was as though he'd dozed off into a disturbing dream; his eyelids twitched, and when he spoke, his voice-an unemotional voice, in a way cultivated and genteel, yet surprisingly adolescent, a voice with a probing, asking, boyish quality-seemed to come from sleepy distances.
And, after a quick reminiscence of having seen the premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire after running briefly into the young actor before that in the late 40s:
Not the least suggestion of Williams' unpoetic Kowalski. It was therefore rather an experience to observe, later that afternoon, with what chameleon ease Brando acquired the character's cruel and gaudy colors, how superbly, like a guileful salamander, he slithered into the part, how his own persona evaporated-just as, in this Kyoto hotel room ten years afterward, my 1947 memory of Brando receded, disappeared into his 1957 self.
And
He was good with the children, at ease, playful, appreciative; he seemed, indeed, their emotional contemporary, a co-conspirator. Moreover, the condoling expression, the slight look of dispensing charitable compassion, peculiar to his contemplation of some adults was absent from his eyes when he looked at a child.
Now, the reason why Gerald Clarke called this a trial run for In Cold Blood isn't the magnificent style. And of course Brando was neither a killer nor a victim of same, nor a citizen of a small Kansas town. But he was notoriously buttoned up towards the press, and originally hadn't planned to spend more than the minimum amount of time with Truman Capote. Who did what he later did with one of the killers, Perry Smith: he used something extremely painful from his own life to get under Brando's skin. He even used the same thing. What all three men had in common was that they were sons of mostly absent fathers and alcoholic mothers who drank themselves to death. And so Capote's profile of Brando builds towards this climax which makes for as disturbingly intense reading today as it must have done then:
Brando has not forgotten Bud. When he speaks of the boy he was, the boy seems to inhabit him, as if time had done little to separate the man from the hurt, desiring child. (...). “But my mother was everything to me. A whole world. I tried so hard. I used to come home from school . . .” He hesitated, as though waiting for me to picture him: Bud, books under his arm, scuffling his way along an afternoon street. “There wouldn’t be anybody home. Nothing in the icebox.” More lantern slides: empty rooms, a kitchen. “Then the telephone would ring. Somebody calling from some bar. And they’d say, ‘We’ve got a lady down here. You better come get her.’ ” Suddenly, Brando was silent. In silence the picture faded, or, rather, became fixed: Bud at the telephone. At last, the image moved again, leaped forward in time. Bud is eighteen, and: “I thought if she loved me enough, trusted me enough, I thought, then we can be together, in New York; we’ll live together and I’ll take care of her. Once, later on, that really happened. She left my father and came to live with me. In New York, when I was in a play. I tried so hard. But my love wasn’t enough. She couldn’t care enough. She went back. And one day”-the flatness of his voice grew flatter, yet the emotional pitch ascended until one could discern like a sound within a sound, a wounded bewilderment-“I didn’t care any more. She was there. In a room. Holding on to me. And I let her fall. Because I couldn’t take it any more-watch her breaking apart, in front of me, like a piece of porcelain. I stepped right over her. I walked right out. I was indifferent. Since then, I’ve been indifferent.”
The last sentences (from "I didn't care anymore") were the only part of the profile I had been familiar with before, as Clarke quotes them in his biography. I don't think I've ever read something that encapsulates the emotional numbness reached with an addict parent so devastingly.
Of course, Brando, who hadn't intended to lay his psyche bare like that (his PR people, quoted by Capote in the same article, go on about what a lovely woman his mother was), was absolutely furious once The Duke in his Domain was published, but it was too late then. As this article about the interview and its results, called, sure enough, In Cold Type, states:
It is hard, perhaps, for the modern reader to get a sense of just how stunning Brando’s personal revelations would appear to an audience of the time. Today we are used to-and have even grown cynical about-tawdry stories of the rich and famous. But in 1957, the Hollywood studio system that for so long had carefully controlled the images of its stars was just coming to an end. Intimate details of an actor’s personal life had been confined to disreputable scandal rags. Never before had the inner psyche of a star of Brando’s magnitude been served up for public consumption, much less by a writer of Capote’s stature. This was something new.
(Another good retrospective on the article and what it meant is here.)
It's tempting to look at the ghastliness of intimate confessions at Ophra's and reality tv and say, Truman, that's your long term fault. But leaving that aside. Writing about living persons always has this intrusive aspect to it, not that it keeps us, and I include myself, from doing so. Now in the Brando-Capote case you could argue fair play. Brando had been a star for a decade at that point (and one who didn't care too much for pretenders to the throne; the article contains some terse, ambiguous remarks on the subject of James Dean), this was anything but his first interview, and Capote was visiting with the explicitly stated goal to interview him for an article. So anything he said was his responsibility. And yet. I can't imagine how it would feel like to have something this private laid out to the public at large. Then again, I can't imagine, in Capote's position, not writing it. Because, let's face it: take that climax away, and the article, beautiful language not withstanding, because just one more "interview with actor on set promoting their latest movie" exercise. There is a part of me, and usually the victorious one, that thinks: if you have a story in you that you regard as worth telling, then tell it, and tell it as well as you can.
Until, of course, I imagine myself as the subject of a story instead of the writer, and can't stop cringing.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/841725.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
First and foremost, of course, because of Capote's command of language. In 1957, Brando was already beyond his zenith - we know that now, his contemporaries didn't - but Capote was just getting there, and it shows. What he can do with English makes me green with envy. Some choice samples:
It was as though he'd dozed off into a disturbing dream; his eyelids twitched, and when he spoke, his voice-an unemotional voice, in a way cultivated and genteel, yet surprisingly adolescent, a voice with a probing, asking, boyish quality-seemed to come from sleepy distances.
And, after a quick reminiscence of having seen the premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire after running briefly into the young actor before that in the late 40s:
Not the least suggestion of Williams' unpoetic Kowalski. It was therefore rather an experience to observe, later that afternoon, with what chameleon ease Brando acquired the character's cruel and gaudy colors, how superbly, like a guileful salamander, he slithered into the part, how his own persona evaporated-just as, in this Kyoto hotel room ten years afterward, my 1947 memory of Brando receded, disappeared into his 1957 self.
And
He was good with the children, at ease, playful, appreciative; he seemed, indeed, their emotional contemporary, a co-conspirator. Moreover, the condoling expression, the slight look of dispensing charitable compassion, peculiar to his contemplation of some adults was absent from his eyes when he looked at a child.
Now, the reason why Gerald Clarke called this a trial run for In Cold Blood isn't the magnificent style. And of course Brando was neither a killer nor a victim of same, nor a citizen of a small Kansas town. But he was notoriously buttoned up towards the press, and originally hadn't planned to spend more than the minimum amount of time with Truman Capote. Who did what he later did with one of the killers, Perry Smith: he used something extremely painful from his own life to get under Brando's skin. He even used the same thing. What all three men had in common was that they were sons of mostly absent fathers and alcoholic mothers who drank themselves to death. And so Capote's profile of Brando builds towards this climax which makes for as disturbingly intense reading today as it must have done then:
Brando has not forgotten Bud. When he speaks of the boy he was, the boy seems to inhabit him, as if time had done little to separate the man from the hurt, desiring child. (...). “But my mother was everything to me. A whole world. I tried so hard. I used to come home from school . . .” He hesitated, as though waiting for me to picture him: Bud, books under his arm, scuffling his way along an afternoon street. “There wouldn’t be anybody home. Nothing in the icebox.” More lantern slides: empty rooms, a kitchen. “Then the telephone would ring. Somebody calling from some bar. And they’d say, ‘We’ve got a lady down here. You better come get her.’ ” Suddenly, Brando was silent. In silence the picture faded, or, rather, became fixed: Bud at the telephone. At last, the image moved again, leaped forward in time. Bud is eighteen, and: “I thought if she loved me enough, trusted me enough, I thought, then we can be together, in New York; we’ll live together and I’ll take care of her. Once, later on, that really happened. She left my father and came to live with me. In New York, when I was in a play. I tried so hard. But my love wasn’t enough. She couldn’t care enough. She went back. And one day”-the flatness of his voice grew flatter, yet the emotional pitch ascended until one could discern like a sound within a sound, a wounded bewilderment-“I didn’t care any more. She was there. In a room. Holding on to me. And I let her fall. Because I couldn’t take it any more-watch her breaking apart, in front of me, like a piece of porcelain. I stepped right over her. I walked right out. I was indifferent. Since then, I’ve been indifferent.”
The last sentences (from "I didn't care anymore") were the only part of the profile I had been familiar with before, as Clarke quotes them in his biography. I don't think I've ever read something that encapsulates the emotional numbness reached with an addict parent so devastingly.
Of course, Brando, who hadn't intended to lay his psyche bare like that (his PR people, quoted by Capote in the same article, go on about what a lovely woman his mother was), was absolutely furious once The Duke in his Domain was published, but it was too late then. As this article about the interview and its results, called, sure enough, In Cold Type, states:
It is hard, perhaps, for the modern reader to get a sense of just how stunning Brando’s personal revelations would appear to an audience of the time. Today we are used to-and have even grown cynical about-tawdry stories of the rich and famous. But in 1957, the Hollywood studio system that for so long had carefully controlled the images of its stars was just coming to an end. Intimate details of an actor’s personal life had been confined to disreputable scandal rags. Never before had the inner psyche of a star of Brando’s magnitude been served up for public consumption, much less by a writer of Capote’s stature. This was something new.
(Another good retrospective on the article and what it meant is here.)
It's tempting to look at the ghastliness of intimate confessions at Ophra's and reality tv and say, Truman, that's your long term fault. But leaving that aside. Writing about living persons always has this intrusive aspect to it, not that it keeps us, and I include myself, from doing so. Now in the Brando-Capote case you could argue fair play. Brando had been a star for a decade at that point (and one who didn't care too much for pretenders to the throne; the article contains some terse, ambiguous remarks on the subject of James Dean), this was anything but his first interview, and Capote was visiting with the explicitly stated goal to interview him for an article. So anything he said was his responsibility. And yet. I can't imagine how it would feel like to have something this private laid out to the public at large. Then again, I can't imagine, in Capote's position, not writing it. Because, let's face it: take that climax away, and the article, beautiful language not withstanding, because just one more "interview with actor on set promoting their latest movie" exercise. There is a part of me, and usually the victorious one, that thinks: if you have a story in you that you regard as worth telling, then tell it, and tell it as well as you can.
Until, of course, I imagine myself as the subject of a story instead of the writer, and can't stop cringing.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/841725.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.