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Downloaded from
YTS.MX
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(wind blowing)
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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX
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(soft music)
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I was 16 years old when I met Tennessee.
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He was 13 years older than I was.
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We became great friends.
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It really was a sort of intellectual friendship,
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though people inevitably thought otherwise.
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(fireworks)
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Truman was magical and sweet
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and ferociously curious when I first knew him.
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Life was a wonderful basket of gifts
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he loved digging through,
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and he took and he shared.
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He was adorable.
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Tennessee had a remarkable laugh.
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It wasn’t coarse or vulgar or even especially loud.
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It just had an amazing sort of throaty,
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Mississippi-riverman ring to it.
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You could always tell when he walked into a room,
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no matter how many people were there.
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People to whom I first showed my writing
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said I couldn’t write, shouldn’t write.
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But I feel that if you are a writer,
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you are going to be one
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and absolutely nothing in the world will interfere.
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Writing is a simple impulse,
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at heart, a simple function.
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It was never meant to be a profession,
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perhaps not even a vocation.
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It was simply meant to be a single man’s way
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of calling out to others.
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The only thing that really mattered
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to Tennessee was writing.
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He was a compulsive writer,
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like some people are compulsive readers
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or drinkers or whatever it is.
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And of course he’d just go on writing and writing
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and writing and writing.
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Truman wanted more than any of us
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to be famous and loved and envied.
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It was not enough that he had been
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a good friend to many of us.
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He had to be a good friend to Greta Garbo, Albert Camus,
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James Dean, and Jesus,
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and anyone else who had newsprint that day.
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All of us wanted to be noticed.
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All of us.
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The fantasy of affirmation begins
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when you’re the teased queer
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on schoolyards and in classrooms.
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One day, you tell yourself,
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I’ll be famous and powerful and beloved.
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Will you welcome the man who’s that magnificent writer...
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Will you welcome a great dramatist...
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...Mr. Truman Capote.
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...Mr. Tennessee Williams.
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(applause)
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(lively music)
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(unintelligible chatter)
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Come and sit down.
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Come and sit down.
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(applause continues)
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You’re a star.
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At what age did you realize
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that you were a star writer personality?
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A star?
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I’ve gotta separate these two things...
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(chuckles)
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A personality or a writer?
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Well, you’re sort of...
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You’re a mixture of the two.
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What was the spur that initially started
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you writing, do you think?
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Well, my mother bought me a typewriter
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when I was 13.
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And I think I’d already shown some interest in writing.
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Probably around 11.
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People say they can see you in your plays,
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and they can see your family...
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Oh, I’m very personal as a writer, yes,
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I don’t mean to be, I just am...
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unavoidably.
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(soft music)
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I think the only thing I’ve done that is,
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what you would call an autobiographical work,
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was The Glass Menagerie.
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It was the first hit that I had.
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The play is memory.
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Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted.
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It is sentimental.
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It is not realistic.
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I am the narrator of the play
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and also a character in it.
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Look Mother, I’ve got no thing,
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no single thing in my life here
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-that I can call my own! -Lower your voice.
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Yesterday, you confiscated my books!
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-You had to-- -Yes, I did, I did!
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I took that horrible novel back to the library,
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that awful book by that insane Mr. Lawrence.
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(laughs)
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I cannot control the output of a diseased mind
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or people who cater to them.
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I won’t allow such filth in my house!
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No, no, no, no, no!
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I automatically fall asleep
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every time I go to The Glass Menagerie
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despite marvelous performances.
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I guess it’s the monotone of that woman’s voice.
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It’s almost based on my mother.
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(laughter)
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The other characters are my mother, Amanda,
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my sister, Laura,
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and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scene.
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There is a fifth character in the play who doesn’t appear
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except in this larger-than-life size photograph.
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This is our father who left us a long time ago.
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See how he grins?
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He’s been absent going on 16 years.
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What do you think the themes are
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of The Glass Menagerie then?
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The necessity...
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...to break...
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...tender bonds, you know?
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If you are to realize yourself,
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it’s necessary to break certain strong but tender bonds.
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You live in a dream!
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You manufacture illusions!
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Where you going? Where you going?
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-Where you going? -I’m going to the movies.
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Go to the moon, you selfish dreamer!
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Writing was always an obsession with me,
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quite simply something I had to do.
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It was as if I were an oyster
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and somebody forced a grain of sand into my shell.
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Then a pearl started forming around the grain,
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and it irritated me, made me angry,
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and tortured me sometimes.
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But the oyster can’t help
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becoming obsessed with the pearl.
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(geese honking)
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Other Voices, Other Rooms
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was an attempt to exorcise demons,
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an unconscious, altogether intuitive attempt,
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for I was not aware,
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except for a few incidents and descriptions,
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of it being in any serious degree autobiographical.
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Rereading it now,
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I find such self-deception unpardonable.
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Our younger viewers may never have seen
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an outrageous photograph of you
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that appeared on a book cover...
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It wasn’t outrageous, it was terrific.
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(laughter)
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It was just a casual picture, really.
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And they put it on the back of the jacket and...
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It received as much attention as the book itself.
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-Oh, far more. -Yeah.
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(laughs)
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In fact, the reviewers reviewed the photograph.
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(footsteps in grass)
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In Other Voices, Other Rooms, Joel, your main character,
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you said what Joel wanted was to be loved.
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Has that been a problem with you as well?
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I was loved by my mother and father,
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but I never saw them.
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Except for my cousin, Sookie,
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there was a great absence of...
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of love in my childhood.
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In the end, I suppose everybody has to invent his own world,
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and that’s truly what I did.
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I invented myself,
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and then I invented a world to fit me.
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What would you say is the most memorable book
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by somebody else that you’ve ever read?
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Ah, let’s see...
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The most memorable book by somebody else...
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Hmm.
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Um, well, I suppose, um...
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Moby Dick.
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I read it when I was about 14 years old,
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and I suddenly for the first time
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saw all the real possibilities of art and writing.
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There are many things in world literature
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that I consider better than Moby Dick,
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but that was the first book that ever made
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a really tremendously deep impression on me.
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I think the most moving writer to me
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that ever lived was Chekhov.
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He’s almost been a fetish with me, Chekhov,
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I read everything about him I can find.
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I love his letters, his journals,
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and of course his theater.
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(chatter)
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Do you think that your locale, the south,
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is similar to Chekhov...?
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Very much. Very much.
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Like czarist Russia, yes.
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(whistling)
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Can I help you, ma’am?
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Well, they--they told me to take a streetcar named Desire,
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and then transfer to one called Cemeteries,
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and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields.
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There’s your car now.
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I started Streetcar when Menagerie was playing
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in Chicago.
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Thank you.
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And the only idea I had was of a--
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a young woman waiting for a beau who doesn’t arrive.
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You know?
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That’s all I had to begin with,
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but I began to weave around it.
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(mellow music)
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You must be Stanley.
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I’m Blanche.
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Oh, you’re Stella’s sister.
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Yes.
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Oh, hiyah.
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Yeah, where’s the little woman?
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In--in the bathroom.
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Oh...
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Well, where you from, Blanche?
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Uh, I live in Oriole.
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I...
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Hey, you mind if I make myself comfortable?
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My shirt is sticking.
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Please, please do.
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"Be comfortable," that’s my motto up where I come from.
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It’s mine, too.
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It’s hard to stay lookin’ fresh in hot weather...
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Why, I haven’t washed or even powdered and here you are.
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Well, you know, you gotta be careful,
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you’re sitting around in a damp thing,
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you catch a cold.
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Especially when you’ve been exercising hard
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like bowling is.
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I think that Blanche and Stanley Kowalski
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are the two sides of every human nature.
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Stanley and Blanche were on a collision course
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and one of them had to break,
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and the one that broke was Blanche.
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I feel that I am both Stanley and Blanche.
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(typing)
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Why did I write?
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I think because I found life unsatisfactory.
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I needed to create an imaginary life
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in an imaginary world and, you know, imaginary characters.
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(soft music)
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I don’t think that what an artist uses as a subject
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is as important as how he uses it.
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A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary,
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and through sheer artistry and willpower,
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turn it into a work of art.
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That occasionally, very rarely,
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in sudden moments one feels in art
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a state of grace,
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where it’s as though a voice from a cloud
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is speaking to you and dictating to you
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what is transmitted through your hands.
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I invariably have the illusion
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that the whole play of a story,
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its start and middle and finish,
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occur in my mind simultaneously,
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that I am seeing it in one flash.
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But in the working out, the writing-out,
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infinite surprises happen.
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Thank God, because surprises, the twist,
270
00:15:38,187 --> 00:15:41,399
the phrase that comes at the right moment out of nowhere,
271
00:15:41,399 --> 00:15:43,651
is the unexpected dividend,
272
00:15:43,651 --> 00:15:47,822
that joyful little push that keeps a writer going.
273
00:15:50,783 --> 00:15:53,161
Marilyn Monroe was my first choice
274
00:15:53,161 --> 00:15:56,164
to play the girl, Holly Golightly.
275
00:15:56,164 --> 00:15:59,625
Holly had to have something touching about her,
276
00:15:59,625 --> 00:16:00,877
unfinished.
277
00:16:00,877 --> 00:16:02,420
Marilyn had that.
278
00:16:02,420 --> 00:16:06,507
At that age, she was exactly right for the part.
279
00:16:09,385 --> 00:16:10,761
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
280
00:16:10,761 --> 00:16:11,929
(laughter)
281
00:16:11,929 --> 00:16:14,182
But Paramount double-crossed me
282
00:16:14,182 --> 00:16:17,143
and gave the part to Audrey Hepburn,
283
00:16:17,143 --> 00:16:19,061
although she did a terrific job.
284
00:16:19,061 --> 00:16:20,438
(soft music)
285
00:16:20,438 --> 00:16:22,356
Don’t you just love it?
286
00:16:22,356 --> 00:16:23,733
Love what?
287
00:16:23,733 --> 00:16:25,026
Tiffany’s!
288
00:16:26,444 --> 00:16:28,529
The book was really rather bitter,
289
00:16:28,529 --> 00:16:31,407
and Holly Golightly was real.
290
00:16:31,407 --> 00:16:33,075
A tough character,
291
00:16:33,075 --> 00:16:35,536
not an Audrey Hepburn type at all.
292
00:16:47,965 --> 00:16:48,966
A girl can do as well as that
293
00:16:48,966 --> 00:16:50,718
on trips to the powder room.
294
00:16:50,718 --> 00:16:52,511
I mean, any gentleman with the slightest chic
295
00:16:52,511 --> 00:16:54,889
will give a girl a $50 bill for the powder room.
296
00:16:54,889 --> 00:16:56,265
Now, always ask for cab fare too.
297
00:16:56,265 --> 00:16:57,391
That’s another $50.
298
00:16:57,391 --> 00:16:59,936
(mellow music)
299
00:16:59,936 --> 00:17:03,397
Holly Golightly was not precisely a call girl.
300
00:17:03,397 --> 00:17:06,525
She had no job but accompanied men
301
00:17:06,525 --> 00:17:09,403
to the best restaurants and night clubs,
302
00:17:09,403 --> 00:17:11,948
with the understanding that her escort
303
00:17:11,948 --> 00:17:16,035
was obligated to give her some sort of gift.
304
00:17:16,035 --> 00:17:18,162
Mag darling, what are you doing here?
305
00:17:18,162 --> 00:17:20,454
The main reason I wrote about Holly,
306
00:17:20,454 --> 00:17:23,040
outside of the fact that I liked her so much,
307
00:17:23,040 --> 00:17:25,586
was that she was such a symbol
308
00:17:25,586 --> 00:17:28,130
of all these girls who come to New York,
309
00:17:28,130 --> 00:17:30,716
and spin in the sun for a moment,
310
00:17:30,716 --> 00:17:35,179
like mayflies, and then disappear.
311
00:17:35,179 --> 00:17:38,641
I wanted to rescue one girl from that anonymity,
312
00:17:38,641 --> 00:17:41,602
and preserve her for posterity.
313
00:17:48,401 --> 00:17:52,947
New York is like a city made out of modeling clay.
314
00:17:52,947 --> 00:17:55,533
You can make it whatever you want.
315
00:17:57,034 --> 00:17:59,287
It’s the only city in the world
316
00:17:59,287 --> 00:18:02,248
in which you can have totally separate lives,
317
00:18:02,248 --> 00:18:05,167
groups of friends that don’t know one another,
318
00:18:05,167 --> 00:18:07,795
or anything about one another.
319
00:18:13,551 --> 00:18:16,012
Although I can live for long stretches
320
00:18:16,012 --> 00:18:18,889
in mountainous or seaside solitude,
321
00:18:18,889 --> 00:18:22,184
primarily, I am a city fellow.
322
00:18:23,185 --> 00:18:24,937
I like pavement.
323
00:18:24,937 --> 00:18:28,065
The sound of my shoes on pavement.
324
00:18:29,567 --> 00:18:32,403
Stuffed windows, all-night restaurants,
325
00:18:32,403 --> 00:18:34,155
sirens in the night.
326
00:18:34,155 --> 00:18:36,824
Sinister but alive!
327
00:18:39,702 --> 00:18:41,662
Book and record shops that, on impulse,
328
00:18:41,662 --> 00:18:44,248
you can visit at midnight.
329
00:18:44,248 --> 00:18:46,292
And in that sense,
330
00:18:46,292 --> 00:18:50,129
New York is the world’s only city city.
331
00:18:50,129 --> 00:18:52,548
(mellow jazz music)
332
00:18:55,676 --> 00:18:58,054
The insidious thing about New York
333
00:18:58,054 --> 00:19:00,306
is that you play a little game of importance
334
00:19:00,306 --> 00:19:02,683
and begin to believe it
335
00:19:02,683 --> 00:19:05,102
because it is nurtured by others playing
336
00:19:05,102 --> 00:19:08,731
their little games of importance, too.
337
00:19:08,731 --> 00:19:14,028
It is all an artificial aura, created by New York.
338
00:19:16,989 --> 00:19:19,784
Gore Vidal was a handsome kid
339
00:19:19,784 --> 00:19:22,036
and I was quite taken by his wit
340
00:19:22,036 --> 00:19:24,997
as well as his appearance.
341
00:19:24,997 --> 00:19:28,125
We found that we had interests in common
342
00:19:28,125 --> 00:19:31,796
and we spent a lot of time together.
343
00:19:31,796 --> 00:19:34,590
Please don’t imagine that I am suggesting
344
00:19:34,590 --> 00:19:36,842
that there was a romance.
345
00:19:36,842 --> 00:19:39,470
We merely enjoyed conversation
346
00:19:39,470 --> 00:19:42,807
and a lot of laughter together.
347
00:19:42,807 --> 00:19:44,433
I rather liked Gore.
348
00:19:44,433 --> 00:19:49,897
He was amusing, bright, and always very vinegary.
349
00:19:49,897 --> 00:19:52,733
We were both terribly young, and at the same time,
350
00:19:52,733 --> 00:19:55,945
very knowledgeable about what we were doing.
351
00:19:58,072 --> 00:20:00,074
(energetic music)
352
00:20:00,074 --> 00:20:01,450
(crowd chatter)
353
00:20:01,450 --> 00:20:04,370
One evening after dinner at The Plaza,
354
00:20:04,370 --> 00:20:06,747
Gore and I decided to visit Tennessee,
355
00:20:06,747 --> 00:20:09,792
who was living nearby.
356
00:20:09,792 --> 00:20:12,086
But Tennessee was not at home.
357
00:20:14,922 --> 00:20:16,882
I had been out late one evening,
358
00:20:16,882 --> 00:20:19,343
and when I returned to the apartment,
359
00:20:19,343 --> 00:20:22,680
I heard the voice of Truman Capote,
360
00:20:22,680 --> 00:20:25,683
shrill with agitation.
361
00:20:25,683 --> 00:20:29,019
In the apartment were Truman, Gore,
362
00:20:29,019 --> 00:20:30,688
and a female policeman.
363
00:20:30,688 --> 00:20:32,648
They were called the "Bo-Peep Squad"
364
00:20:32,648 --> 00:20:35,985
in those days.
365
00:20:35,985 --> 00:20:37,945
The lady on the Bo-Peep Squad
366
00:20:37,945 --> 00:20:40,781
had been passing along by patrol-car
367
00:20:40,781 --> 00:20:44,034
as they were climbing through the transom.
368
00:20:44,034 --> 00:20:46,537
She pursued them into the pad,
369
00:20:46,537 --> 00:20:49,373
and she was now holding Gore and Truman
370
00:20:49,373 --> 00:20:52,710
for breaking and entering.
371
00:20:52,710 --> 00:20:55,963
"Whose house is this?" demanded the officer.
372
00:20:55,963 --> 00:20:58,632
"It belongs to Tennessee Williams," I said.
373
00:20:58,632 --> 00:21:01,135
"And I am Truman Capote."
374
00:21:01,135 --> 00:21:02,970
She said, "Who?"
375
00:21:02,970 --> 00:21:04,972
"Here’s a copy of Other Voices,
376
00:21:04,972 --> 00:21:08,684
I want to prove to you that I am a writer."
377
00:21:08,684 --> 00:21:11,270
When Tennessee showed up, she asked him,
378
00:21:11,270 --> 00:21:12,688
"They broke into your house.
379
00:21:12,688 --> 00:21:15,149
Do you want to press charges?"
380
00:21:15,149 --> 00:21:16,859
I said, "Listen, Tennessee!
381
00:21:16,859 --> 00:21:19,653
Don’t you do anything of the sort!"
382
00:21:19,653 --> 00:21:24,783
I said, "Well, they weren’t here when I left, I know that."
383
00:21:29,622 --> 00:21:33,751
At that time, I was considered way beyond the pale.
384
00:21:33,751 --> 00:21:36,295
I was the only public character
385
00:21:36,295 --> 00:21:40,716
who didn’t care what anybody said or thought.
386
00:21:40,716 --> 00:21:42,676
You’re very frank about your homosexuality
387
00:21:42,676 --> 00:21:43,802
in the memoirs.
388
00:21:43,802 --> 00:21:45,429
It must have been an enormous pressure
389
00:21:45,429 --> 00:21:48,891
on you as a boy in that sort of society.
390
00:21:48,891 --> 00:21:51,727
I was aware of course,
391
00:21:51,727 --> 00:21:56,315
for a long time before it ever surfaced,
392
00:21:56,315 --> 00:22:00,986
that I had a homosexual tendency.
393
00:22:02,071 --> 00:22:05,366
I was a very slight youth.
394
00:22:05,366 --> 00:22:07,952
I don’t think I had effeminate mannerism
395
00:22:07,952 --> 00:22:10,704
but somewhere deep in my nerves
396
00:22:10,704 --> 00:22:13,624
there was imprisoned a young girl,
397
00:22:13,624 --> 00:22:16,043
a sort of blushing school maiden,
398
00:22:16,043 --> 00:22:20,965
much like the one described in a certain poem or song.
399
00:22:20,965 --> 00:22:23,509
I didn’t feel as if I were imprisoned
400
00:22:23,509 --> 00:22:25,219
in the wrong body.
401
00:22:25,219 --> 00:22:27,429
I wasn’t transsexual.
402
00:22:27,429 --> 00:22:29,181
I just felt things would be easier
403
00:22:29,181 --> 00:22:31,767
if I were a girl.
404
00:22:31,767 --> 00:22:33,602
My mother said to me,
405
00:22:33,602 --> 00:22:35,854
"I’m taking you to Dr. Murphy.
406
00:22:35,854 --> 00:22:37,481
I think you’re a homosexual,
407
00:22:37,481 --> 00:22:41,110
and I want him to give you some male hormone shots."
408
00:22:41,110 --> 00:22:43,153
In effect, she was saying,
409
00:22:43,153 --> 00:22:46,490
"I think you’re a homosexual, you little monster."
410
00:22:46,490 --> 00:22:47,783
(soft music)
411
00:22:47,783 --> 00:22:49,785
(water trickling)
412
00:22:49,785 --> 00:22:50,953
As time goes on,
413
00:22:50,953 --> 00:22:53,998
you finally settle down on one side or another,
414
00:22:53,998 --> 00:22:56,584
homosexual or heterosexual.
415
00:22:56,584 --> 00:22:58,669
I was homosexual,
416
00:22:58,669 --> 00:23:01,297
and I never had any guilt about it at all.
417
00:23:01,297 --> 00:23:02,840
(chimes tinkling)
418
00:23:02,840 --> 00:23:08,721
I ache with desires that never are quite satisfied.
419
00:23:08,721 --> 00:23:12,349
This promiscuity is appalling really.
420
00:23:12,349 --> 00:23:14,852
One night stands.
421
00:23:14,852 --> 00:23:18,981
The cold and beautiful bodies of the young.
422
00:23:18,981 --> 00:23:22,443
They spread themselves out like a banquet table,
423
00:23:22,443 --> 00:23:25,613
you dine voraciously and afterwards,
424
00:23:25,613 --> 00:23:30,242
it is like you had eaten nothing but air.
425
00:23:30,242 --> 00:23:33,078
Animals have a season for it.
426
00:23:33,078 --> 00:23:37,166
But for me, it was a round-the-calendar thing.
427
00:23:37,166 --> 00:23:40,919
I was just terribly over-sexed, baby.
428
00:23:43,213 --> 00:23:45,466
Did you find yourself being very, very guilty
429
00:23:45,466 --> 00:23:48,969
about your homosexuality then?
430
00:23:48,969 --> 00:23:53,307
-I must have, don’t you think? -Yes.
431
00:23:53,307 --> 00:23:56,727
I must have had terrific sexual repressions
432
00:23:56,727 --> 00:23:59,438
for sensuality to have permeated my work
433
00:23:59,438 --> 00:24:02,441
as strongly as it has.
434
00:24:02,441 --> 00:24:05,110
Shame, shame, shame on you
435
00:24:05,110 --> 00:24:06,820
(shouting)
436
00:24:06,820 --> 00:24:10,282
Baby Doll was condemned by Cardinal Spellman,
437
00:24:10,282 --> 00:24:11,867
the Archbishop of New York,
438
00:24:11,867 --> 00:24:13,869
as a "degrading picture
439
00:24:13,869 --> 00:24:16,705
that stimulated immorality and crime."
440
00:24:16,705 --> 00:24:18,874
I know about you, and you’re making me very nervous.
441
00:24:18,874 --> 00:24:20,376
(threatening shout)
442
00:24:20,376 --> 00:24:21,752
(screaming)
443
00:24:21,752 --> 00:24:24,380
Hoo-hoo! Hiyah! I’ll get ya!
444
00:24:24,380 --> 00:24:27,883
And he instructed those under his spiritual care
445
00:24:27,883 --> 00:24:31,178
to stay away from it "under pain of sin."
446
00:24:31,178 --> 00:24:32,596
(shouting)
447
00:24:32,596 --> 00:24:35,140
Despite such condemnation,
448
00:24:35,140 --> 00:24:39,269
Baby Doll received four Academy Award nominations,
449
00:24:39,269 --> 00:24:41,647
including best screenplay.
450
00:24:41,647 --> 00:24:44,149
(laughter)
451
00:24:44,149 --> 00:24:46,193
I was very late in having a consummated--
452
00:24:46,193 --> 00:24:49,071
I never even masturbated, you know,
453
00:24:49,071 --> 00:24:53,909
till I was, um, let’s see, 26.
454
00:24:53,909 --> 00:24:59,873
I never had a consummated love affair until I was 27.
455
00:24:59,873 --> 00:25:03,043
I never had a consummated homosexual affair
456
00:25:03,043 --> 00:25:04,670
until I was 28.
457
00:25:06,171 --> 00:25:08,090
People would not pursue me.
458
00:25:08,090 --> 00:25:09,800
I was always the one who pursued.
459
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:12,094
(chuckles)
460
00:25:12,094 --> 00:25:14,054
But I did quite successfully.
461
00:25:14,054 --> 00:25:15,764
(laughs)
462
00:25:15,764 --> 00:25:18,142
And I had a 14-year love affair.
463
00:25:18,142 --> 00:25:20,310
-With Frank? -Frank Merlo.
464
00:25:20,310 --> 00:25:21,729
He was a great, great person.
465
00:25:21,729 --> 00:25:24,648
He created a lovely life for me.
466
00:25:24,648 --> 00:25:26,108
Everybody loved him.
467
00:25:26,108 --> 00:25:28,527
(energetic music)
468
00:25:32,906 --> 00:25:37,745
Tomorrow, Frank and I are going over to Ischia.
469
00:25:37,745 --> 00:25:40,330
Truman and his new lover, Jack Dunphy,
470
00:25:40,330 --> 00:25:43,083
whom he imported here from the United States,
471
00:25:43,083 --> 00:25:45,002
are already there.
472
00:25:45,002 --> 00:25:46,170
(laughter, chatter)
473
00:25:51,884 --> 00:25:54,887
Ischia is a dream.
474
00:25:54,887 --> 00:25:58,223
The water is still too cold for swimming,
475
00:25:58,223 --> 00:26:01,643
but there is a long walk you can take among the hills
476
00:26:01,643 --> 00:26:04,938
to some radioactive hot springs.
477
00:26:04,938 --> 00:26:07,399
They are supposed to give you marvelous
478
00:26:07,399 --> 00:26:11,653
and quite indiscriminate sexual energy.
479
00:26:11,653 --> 00:26:13,322
I expect Truman’s lover
480
00:26:13,322 --> 00:26:16,158
will be making frequent excursions there
481
00:26:16,158 --> 00:26:20,871
if the affair is to be one of extended duration.
482
00:26:20,871 --> 00:26:23,749
Jack is a very steady person,
483
00:26:23,749 --> 00:26:27,711
a very good writer, a big student of languages,
484
00:26:27,711 --> 00:26:32,758
a great outdoors person and a fabulous skier.
485
00:26:32,758 --> 00:26:36,428
There’s never any competition between us.
486
00:26:36,428 --> 00:26:40,557
He is the only person I trust one hundred percent.
487
00:26:40,557 --> 00:26:43,018
He is everything to me.
488
00:26:43,018 --> 00:26:44,686
He is not my shadow.
489
00:26:44,686 --> 00:26:46,730
He is not my alter ego.
490
00:26:46,730 --> 00:26:50,025
Jack is the only person I will love
491
00:26:50,025 --> 00:26:53,612
until the day I die.
492
00:26:53,612 --> 00:26:56,490
Truman has been wrapped around Jack
493
00:26:56,490 --> 00:27:00,369
like a boa constrictor practically every minute
494
00:27:00,369 --> 00:27:03,872
except when he was making little invisible pencil scratch
495
00:27:03,872 --> 00:27:08,585
in a notebook that is supposed to be his next novel.
496
00:27:08,585 --> 00:27:13,215
Merlo and Tenn latched onto us like barnacles.
497
00:27:13,215 --> 00:27:16,677
Taken in tiny doses, I’m really very fond of them both,
498
00:27:16,677 --> 00:27:19,847
but darling, I can’t tell you what it’s been like.
499
00:27:19,847 --> 00:27:23,100
Frankie nags Tennessee all day and night
500
00:27:23,100 --> 00:27:25,102
and Tennessee, I have discovered,
501
00:27:25,102 --> 00:27:27,688
is a genuine paranoid.
502
00:27:39,157 --> 00:27:41,952
I was with Jack for 30 years.
503
00:27:41,952 --> 00:27:44,079
We’re still very great friends.
504
00:27:44,079 --> 00:27:45,831
We didn’t break up at all.
505
00:27:45,831 --> 00:27:49,084
I just stopped sleeping with him, that’s all.
506
00:27:51,837 --> 00:27:53,088
Which is more powerful do you think,
507
00:27:53,088 --> 00:27:55,007
friendship or love?
508
00:27:55,007 --> 00:27:57,175
Friendship.
509
00:27:57,175 --> 00:27:58,176
I mean, I actually-
510
00:27:58,176 --> 00:27:59,887
I--I think friendship and love
511
00:27:59,887 --> 00:28:02,806
are exactly the same thing.
512
00:28:02,806 --> 00:28:04,683
How do you mean?
513
00:28:04,683 --> 00:28:09,271
Well, obviously sex is not love.
514
00:28:09,271 --> 00:28:12,482
I mean, it’s a temporary situation, isn’t it?
515
00:28:12,482 --> 00:28:14,276
I mean, sex can lead to love, obviously,
516
00:28:14,276 --> 00:28:16,194
but--but friendship,
517
00:28:16,194 --> 00:28:19,197
real friendship inevitably leads to love.
518
00:28:19,197 --> 00:28:21,283
There can’t be any friendship
519
00:28:21,283 --> 00:28:24,328
unless there’s a real friendship.
520
00:28:24,328 --> 00:28:27,539
But then one doesn’t have that many friends in a lifetime.
521
00:28:27,539 --> 00:28:31,084
But if friendship leads to love, must it also,
522
00:28:31,084 --> 00:28:32,836
does it normally lead to sex, too?
523
00:28:32,836 --> 00:28:34,254
No.
524
00:28:34,254 --> 00:28:35,464
Friendship lead to sex?
525
00:28:35,464 --> 00:28:37,799
No, friendship, once it’s gone to love?
526
00:28:37,799 --> 00:28:38,800
It ought to--
527
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:40,010
(chuckles)
528
00:28:40,010 --> 00:28:43,430
In a--in a perfect world, it would, but the--
529
00:28:43,430 --> 00:28:45,599
no, I mean, when friendship has gone to love,
530
00:28:45,599 --> 00:28:47,517
does it always lead to sex?
531
00:28:47,517 --> 00:28:49,144
Friendship has gone to love...
532
00:28:49,144 --> 00:28:51,396
No.
533
00:28:51,396 --> 00:28:53,231
You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of sex,
534
00:28:53,231 --> 00:28:55,025
do you really?
535
00:28:55,025 --> 00:28:56,860
Well, that’s not true either.
536
00:28:56,860 --> 00:28:59,613
But, I mean, I just don’t see what--
537
00:28:59,613 --> 00:29:02,699
what connection this really falls,
538
00:29:02,699 --> 00:29:05,494
because, you see, I don’t think that sex
539
00:29:05,494 --> 00:29:08,121
has anything to do with friendship.
540
00:29:08,121 --> 00:29:09,998
I think that it’s very difficult
541
00:29:09,998 --> 00:29:12,125
to have a sort of sexual relationship
542
00:29:12,125 --> 00:29:14,544
with somebody who actually is a friend.
543
00:29:14,544 --> 00:29:16,338
What is love?
544
00:29:16,338 --> 00:29:19,633
Love is a feeling, isn’t it?
545
00:29:21,593 --> 00:29:23,595
What sort of feeling?
546
00:29:23,595 --> 00:29:24,763
Oh...
547
00:29:27,975 --> 00:29:31,103
Ah, well, there’s sexual love.
548
00:29:32,980 --> 00:29:35,357
I think sexual love is usually
549
00:29:35,357 --> 00:29:39,403
the best introduction to love.
550
00:29:39,403 --> 00:29:43,782
But I do think, uh, there is something beyond it.
551
00:29:45,450 --> 00:29:47,911
How often have you felt that purification of love?
552
00:29:47,911 --> 00:29:50,247
How often have you gone beyond that?
553
00:29:56,795 --> 00:30:02,009
I--I’ve never enumerated the times.
554
00:30:02,009 --> 00:30:06,388
I’ve never lived without feeling love though.
555
00:30:06,388 --> 00:30:07,514
-Really? -Yeah.
556
00:30:07,514 --> 00:30:09,433
I’m talking too intimately to you!
557
00:30:09,433 --> 00:30:11,101
Let’s get on to something...
558
00:30:11,101 --> 00:30:12,185
(laughs)
559
00:30:12,185 --> 00:30:14,521
Let’s get on to something more general.
560
00:30:14,521 --> 00:30:16,064
(laughs)
561
00:30:16,064 --> 00:30:18,233
Have you ever been in love?
562
00:30:18,233 --> 00:30:20,235
Oh yes, mm-hm.
563
00:30:20,235 --> 00:30:22,404
-Often? -No. Twice.
564
00:30:22,404 --> 00:30:23,739
(audience laughs)
565
00:30:23,739 --> 00:30:27,200
And was it just like heightened friendship then?
566
00:30:29,369 --> 00:30:30,537
Yes.
567
00:30:32,330 --> 00:30:33,498
(audience laughs)
568
00:30:33,498 --> 00:30:34,666
(chuckles)
569
00:30:36,668 --> 00:30:38,754
Have you found you’ve had more sex relationships
570
00:30:38,754 --> 00:30:41,590
than love relationships or less?
571
00:30:41,590 --> 00:30:44,009
(audience laughs)
572
00:30:45,343 --> 00:30:46,928
Let’s see, more sex...
573
00:30:46,928 --> 00:30:50,766
No, I’ve had more love relationships
574
00:30:50,766 --> 00:30:52,601
than sex relationships.
575
00:30:52,601 --> 00:30:54,561
But you only had two love relationships?
576
00:30:54,561 --> 00:30:55,771
Yes.
577
00:30:55,771 --> 00:30:57,230
Oh, wait, then you’re trapping me--
578
00:30:57,230 --> 00:30:58,315
you’re trapping me!
579
00:30:58,315 --> 00:31:00,108
(audience laughs, claps)
580
00:31:00,108 --> 00:31:01,151
You’re trapping me.
581
00:31:01,151 --> 00:31:03,070
(laughs)
582
00:31:04,488 --> 00:31:05,906
Pretty good, pretty good,
583
00:31:05,906 --> 00:31:07,449
but you didn’t quite get away with it.
584
00:31:07,449 --> 00:31:11,119
(laughs)
585
00:31:11,119 --> 00:31:13,538
I love you, and that’s worth fightin’ for.
586
00:31:13,538 --> 00:31:14,873
Not Skipper!
587
00:31:14,873 --> 00:31:16,708
-Skipper was no good! -Maggie!
588
00:31:16,708 --> 00:31:18,293
Maybe I’m no good either.
589
00:31:18,293 --> 00:31:19,711
Nobody’s good.
590
00:31:19,711 --> 00:31:22,464
But Brick, Skipper is dead!
591
00:31:22,464 --> 00:31:24,424
-And I’m alive! -Maggie!
592
00:31:24,424 --> 00:31:26,635
Maggie the Cat is alive!
593
00:31:26,635 --> 00:31:28,178
I’m alive!
594
00:31:28,178 --> 00:31:30,889
Why are you afraid of the truth?
595
00:31:30,889 --> 00:31:33,141
You have an affinity for women characters
596
00:31:33,141 --> 00:31:34,142
in your plays.
597
00:31:34,142 --> 00:31:35,143
(gunshots)
598
00:31:35,143 --> 00:31:36,353
And they’re more vivid somehow
599
00:31:36,353 --> 00:31:38,271
and more striking than the men.
600
00:31:38,271 --> 00:31:42,192
You almost never meet a dull, boring Southern woman.
601
00:31:42,192 --> 00:31:44,569
No, you meet very difficult ones,
602
00:31:44,569 --> 00:31:46,530
but they’re never dull or boring.
603
00:31:46,530 --> 00:31:48,824
And they’re always eloquent.
604
00:31:48,824 --> 00:31:50,951
And so therefore I’ve found them
605
00:31:50,951 --> 00:31:54,663
ideal people as protagonists
606
00:31:54,663 --> 00:31:56,998
for plays set in the south.
607
00:31:56,998 --> 00:31:58,625
(soft music)
608
00:31:58,625 --> 00:32:00,627
Tell us a funny little story, Stanley.
609
00:32:00,627 --> 00:32:03,130
Something to help us out.
610
00:32:03,130 --> 00:32:05,715
I didn’t think you liked my stories, Blanche.
611
00:32:05,715 --> 00:32:07,092
I like them when they’re amusing,
612
00:32:07,092 --> 00:32:08,677
but not indecent.
613
00:32:08,677 --> 00:32:09,970
I don’t know any refined enough
614
00:32:09,970 --> 00:32:12,389
for your taste.
615
00:32:12,389 --> 00:32:15,976
In this style, every Sunday these families
616
00:32:15,976 --> 00:32:19,020
get together with a huge table
617
00:32:19,020 --> 00:32:22,232
with your 25 people sitting.
618
00:32:22,232 --> 00:32:25,485
And so Aunt Edna says,
619
00:32:25,485 --> 00:32:28,822
"Do you remember the time that George broke down the car?"
620
00:32:28,822 --> 00:32:30,323
"Oh, you haven’t got that right?
621
00:32:30,323 --> 00:32:32,742
That’s not what happened. Such and such happened."
622
00:32:32,742 --> 00:32:35,704
Then, "No, no, no, Ed was the one that broke the car."
623
00:32:35,704 --> 00:32:38,707
Well, the story goes on and on and on and on
624
00:32:38,707 --> 00:32:41,376
and on and on for hours around the table,
625
00:32:41,376 --> 00:32:44,087
and at the end of dinner you’ve got a novel.
626
00:32:44,087 --> 00:32:46,506
(energetic music)
627
00:32:47,924 --> 00:32:50,802
The Grass Harp is very real to me,
628
00:32:50,802 --> 00:32:53,388
more real than anything I’ve ever written,
629
00:32:53,388 --> 00:32:55,599
probably ever will.
630
00:32:55,599 --> 00:33:00,604
It was a bittersweet recollection of my childhood.
631
00:33:00,604 --> 00:33:04,691
It kept me in a painful emotional state.
632
00:33:04,691 --> 00:33:07,986
Memories are always breaking my heart.
633
00:33:07,986 --> 00:33:09,404
I cry.
634
00:33:09,404 --> 00:33:11,156
It is very odd,
635
00:33:11,156 --> 00:33:13,658
I seem to have no control over myself
636
00:33:13,658 --> 00:33:15,285
or what I’m doing.
637
00:33:15,285 --> 00:33:17,287
(leaves rustling)
638
00:33:26,171 --> 00:33:28,381
Perhaps this is so.
639
00:33:28,381 --> 00:33:30,884
But my own life has always seemed to me
640
00:33:30,884 --> 00:33:33,887
more a series of closed circles,
641
00:33:33,887 --> 00:33:38,433
rings that do not evolve with the freedom of a spiral.
642
00:33:38,433 --> 00:33:40,852
For me to get from one to the other
643
00:33:40,852 --> 00:33:43,813
has meant a leap, not a glide.
644
00:33:43,813 --> 00:33:47,275
What weakens me is the lull between,
645
00:33:47,275 --> 00:33:50,362
the wait before I know where to jump.
646
00:33:53,448 --> 00:33:56,618
Truman Capote’s play, The Grass Harp,
647
00:33:56,618 --> 00:34:00,163
opened in New York on Thursday.
648
00:34:00,163 --> 00:34:02,749
I’ve only seen one notice in the Times,
649
00:34:02,749 --> 00:34:04,251
which was a rave notice,
650
00:34:04,251 --> 00:34:07,504
and I’m of course, insanely jealous.
651
00:34:08,588 --> 00:34:12,676
How I do hate myself for it,
652
00:34:12,676 --> 00:34:15,762
even though I had earned two Pulitzer Prizes,
653
00:34:15,762 --> 00:34:18,764
two New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards,
654
00:34:18,764 --> 00:34:20,809
and a Tony Award.
655
00:34:20,809 --> 00:34:22,518
(birds chirping)
656
00:34:22,518 --> 00:34:25,938
I was jealous of every other writer.
657
00:34:25,938 --> 00:34:27,857
-Really? -Yes.
658
00:34:27,857 --> 00:34:29,734
Did you hate it when Faulkner--
659
00:34:29,734 --> 00:34:31,235
when a Faulkner novel got a great review?
660
00:34:31,235 --> 00:34:33,737
Oh, when--great-- great writers like that,
661
00:34:33,737 --> 00:34:35,364
I wasn’t jealous.
662
00:34:35,364 --> 00:34:38,451
I was only jealous of those who happened to have shows
663
00:34:38,451 --> 00:34:41,955
on the same block of Broadway as I had.
664
00:34:43,915 --> 00:34:47,502
My whole life has been dominated by jealousy.
665
00:34:47,502 --> 00:34:51,339
It is the one uncontrollable thing with me.
666
00:34:51,339 --> 00:34:54,009
It’s the key to my character.
667
00:34:54,009 --> 00:34:56,303
I’m jealous about everything.
668
00:34:56,303 --> 00:34:59,431
If I pass a shop with an antique cup
669
00:34:59,431 --> 00:35:01,057
in the window, for instance,
670
00:35:01,057 --> 00:35:03,143
and I see someone else looking at it,
671
00:35:03,143 --> 00:35:05,687
I’ll turn around and go back and buy it.
672
00:35:05,687 --> 00:35:08,189
(soft music)
673
00:35:08,189 --> 00:35:10,609
(water flowing)
674
00:35:17,532 --> 00:35:22,746
Italy is the place of soft weather and golden light
675
00:35:22,746 --> 00:35:27,792
and of great bunches of violets and carnations...
676
00:35:27,792 --> 00:35:31,546
...with the Greek ideal surviving so tangibly
677
00:35:31,546 --> 00:35:34,716
in the grace and beauty of the people
678
00:35:34,716 --> 00:35:37,260
and of the antique sculptures.
679
00:35:39,554 --> 00:35:43,683
In Rome, you rarely see a young man on the street
680
00:35:43,683 --> 00:35:46,353
who does not have a slight erection.
681
00:35:47,729 --> 00:35:50,315
Often they walk along Via Veneto
682
00:35:50,315 --> 00:35:52,567
with their hands in their pockets,
683
00:35:52,567 --> 00:35:56,738
caressing their genitals quite unconsciously,
684
00:35:56,738 --> 00:35:58,656
and this regardless of whether or not
685
00:35:58,656 --> 00:36:01,409
they’re hustling or cruising.
686
00:36:01,409 --> 00:36:03,703
They are raised without any
687
00:36:03,703 --> 00:36:08,083
of our puritanical reserves about sex.
688
00:36:08,083 --> 00:36:09,918
Good-looking young Italians
689
00:36:09,918 --> 00:36:13,088
never think of themselves as anything else.
690
00:36:13,088 --> 00:36:16,174
And they are rarely mistaken.
691
00:36:16,174 --> 00:36:17,676
(wind blowing)
692
00:36:17,676 --> 00:36:19,886
You move so much, and you have homes in various places,
693
00:36:19,886 --> 00:36:21,638
and you travel the world.
694
00:36:21,638 --> 00:36:23,139
Are you rootless?
695
00:36:23,139 --> 00:36:25,934
I am a gypsy, I’m a gypsy at heart.
696
00:36:40,365 --> 00:36:42,909
For 30 years, I lived everywhere
697
00:36:42,909 --> 00:36:46,287
and had houses all over the world.
698
00:36:46,287 --> 00:36:48,998
Home is where your hat hangs.
699
00:37:21,531 --> 00:37:25,618
Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes,
700
00:37:25,618 --> 00:37:28,997
containers of riddles never to be solved,
701
00:37:28,997 --> 00:37:32,208
nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors,
702
00:37:32,208 --> 00:37:33,710
or, for that matter,
703
00:37:33,710 --> 00:37:37,172
the most inquisitive, persistent travelers.
704
00:37:37,172 --> 00:37:39,591
(water splashing)
705
00:37:44,804 --> 00:37:49,392
I understand that Miss Capote is in Italy,
706
00:37:49,392 --> 00:37:51,811
but we have not collided.
707
00:37:51,811 --> 00:37:55,732
She is now reported to be at the fashionable resort
708
00:37:55,732 --> 00:37:57,317
of Portofino,
709
00:37:57,317 --> 00:38:01,738
which is much smarter than Capri.
710
00:38:01,738 --> 00:38:05,158
Frank and I have a new member of the family,
711
00:38:05,158 --> 00:38:10,079
an English bull puppy named Mr. Moon or Moony.
712
00:38:10,079 --> 00:38:13,500
Truman has invited us to Portofino,
713
00:38:13,500 --> 00:38:17,378
but will not extend his hospitality to Mr. Moon,
714
00:38:17,378 --> 00:38:19,589
as he has a female dog
715
00:38:19,589 --> 00:38:22,801
of approximately the same species.
716
00:38:22,801 --> 00:38:25,428
Anyway, I’m not at all sure
717
00:38:25,428 --> 00:38:28,097
I would like to share a house with that one,
718
00:38:28,097 --> 00:38:30,475
as there would be more than one bitch
719
00:38:30,475 --> 00:38:32,852
under the roof, that’s for sure.
720
00:38:34,229 --> 00:38:35,563
Why do writers fall in and out
721
00:38:35,563 --> 00:38:36,814
of friendship with each other?
722
00:38:36,814 --> 00:38:39,192
Well, jealousy, don’t you think?
723
00:38:39,192 --> 00:38:40,902
Writers are the most disagreeable,
724
00:38:40,902 --> 00:38:44,572
unpleasant people in the world.
725
00:38:44,572 --> 00:38:46,950
Most people think because somebody
726
00:38:46,950 --> 00:38:48,826
is a painter or a writer
727
00:38:48,826 --> 00:38:51,538
or somehow a creative individual
728
00:38:51,538 --> 00:38:52,830
that they must be intelligent.
729
00:38:52,830 --> 00:38:54,707
It is not so!
730
00:38:54,707 --> 00:38:59,295
I mean, there are many writers who are...
731
00:38:59,295 --> 00:39:00,505
(sighs)
732
00:39:00,505 --> 00:39:03,841
...fantastically creative, and even a kind of a genius,
733
00:39:03,841 --> 00:39:05,760
-like Tennessee Williams. -Mm-hm.
734
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:07,929
And Tennessee’s not intelligent.
735
00:39:12,934 --> 00:39:14,894
Writers are paranoid
736
00:39:14,894 --> 00:39:17,605
because they’re living two lives.
737
00:39:17,605 --> 00:39:19,190
Their creative life,
738
00:39:19,190 --> 00:39:21,526
which they are most protective of,
739
00:39:21,526 --> 00:39:24,571
and their life as a human being.
740
00:39:24,571 --> 00:39:27,198
They have to protect both lives.
741
00:39:27,198 --> 00:39:31,077
I put a premium on the creative life.
742
00:39:31,077 --> 00:39:33,788
Would you say you’re a happy person, in fact?
743
00:39:38,710 --> 00:39:41,879
Gosh, uh, relatively.
744
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:46,259
I think so.
745
00:39:46,259 --> 00:39:48,136
People are always saying, "Are you happy?"
746
00:39:48,136 --> 00:39:50,972
I think it’s the most idiotic question I know.
747
00:39:50,972 --> 00:39:53,308
I mean nobody is "happy."
748
00:39:53,308 --> 00:39:56,894
There’s just no such thing, happiness is flashes.
749
00:39:56,894 --> 00:40:00,565
Happiness is like orgasms, or sneezes.
750
00:40:00,565 --> 00:40:02,650
You know, they happen intermittently.
751
00:40:02,650 --> 00:40:05,028
(chuckles)
752
00:40:05,028 --> 00:40:07,322
Well, I still do think the greatest happiness
753
00:40:07,322 --> 00:40:09,240
is felt in, um...
754
00:40:10,325 --> 00:40:12,785
...moments of great, um...
755
00:40:16,497 --> 00:40:20,043
...tenderness between two people.
756
00:40:20,043 --> 00:40:25,757
We all have a great desire to escape from ourselves
757
00:40:25,757 --> 00:40:32,305
and to feel joined to another human being
758
00:40:32,305 --> 00:40:36,351
because to be alone is to be lonely.
759
00:40:36,351 --> 00:40:39,771
Are you, yourself, lonely, ever lonely?
760
00:40:39,771 --> 00:40:41,481
Well, for one thing,
761
00:40:41,481 --> 00:40:44,984
the very way that my work goes
762
00:40:44,984 --> 00:40:48,196
necessitates my spending weeks and weeks
763
00:40:48,196 --> 00:40:51,366
and months virtually alone.
764
00:40:51,366 --> 00:40:54,452
And I don’t really, basically mind being alone.
765
00:40:54,452 --> 00:40:57,538
But nevertheless, I mean, um,
766
00:40:57,538 --> 00:40:59,040
as Virginia Woolf says,
767
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:01,501
"Here is one room and there is another."
768
00:41:01,501 --> 00:41:03,628
And I’m always quite conscious of the fact
769
00:41:03,628 --> 00:41:07,131
that all of us are really in separate rooms.
770
00:41:07,131 --> 00:41:09,258
I don’t like being alone.
771
00:41:09,258 --> 00:41:10,885
But your best work, your best writing,
772
00:41:10,885 --> 00:41:13,763
has come from Tennessee Williams alone?
773
00:41:13,763 --> 00:41:14,847
Oh, that?
774
00:41:14,847 --> 00:41:17,642
You’re not alone, you’re with your characters,
775
00:41:17,642 --> 00:41:20,311
with the people you’re creating.
776
00:41:20,311 --> 00:41:23,481
And they--they are very good company.
777
00:41:23,481 --> 00:41:24,816
Mendacity!
778
00:41:24,816 --> 00:41:27,402
Look at all the lies that I gotta put up with!
779
00:41:27,402 --> 00:41:30,113
Pretenses! Hypocrisy!
780
00:41:30,113 --> 00:41:31,447
Pretending like I care for Big Mama.
781
00:41:31,447 --> 00:41:34,992
I haven’t been able to stand that woman in 40 years!
782
00:41:34,992 --> 00:41:36,077
Church!
783
00:41:36,077 --> 00:41:39,080
It bores me, but I go...
784
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:41,749
And all those swindling lodges and social clubs
785
00:41:41,749 --> 00:41:43,126
and money-grabbing auxiliaries
786
00:41:43,126 --> 00:41:46,421
that’s--that’s got me on the number one sucker list.
787
00:41:46,421 --> 00:41:49,006
Boy, I’ve lived with mendacity.
788
00:41:49,006 --> 00:41:50,883
Now why can’t you live with it?
789
00:41:50,883 --> 00:41:54,595
Big Daddy is one of the great characters.
790
00:41:54,595 --> 00:41:57,890
Big Daddy talked like my father talked.
791
00:41:57,890 --> 00:42:01,811
He was at first with the telephone company,
792
00:42:01,811 --> 00:42:04,981
in the capacity of a lawyer for them.
793
00:42:04,981 --> 00:42:07,483
Then he was a traveling salesman.
794
00:42:07,483 --> 00:42:10,319
I saw very little of him then.
795
00:42:10,319 --> 00:42:13,281
And then he was made sales manager
796
00:42:13,281 --> 00:42:16,284
of a branch of the International Shoe Company.
797
00:42:16,284 --> 00:42:18,161
And he began to see more of me,
798
00:42:18,161 --> 00:42:19,996
and he didn’t like what he saw.
799
00:42:19,996 --> 00:42:23,124
And we didn’t get along well.
800
00:42:23,124 --> 00:42:25,501
I wanted you to love me.
801
00:42:25,501 --> 00:42:27,920
-Didn’t I do? -No.
802
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:29,380
Not me. And not Gooper.
803
00:42:29,380 --> 00:42:30,923
And not even Mama.
804
00:42:30,923 --> 00:42:32,884
That’s a lie. I did love her.
805
00:42:32,884 --> 00:42:34,093
I’d give her anything, everything she wants...
806
00:42:34,093 --> 00:42:35,261
Things!
807
00:42:35,261 --> 00:42:37,180
Things, Papa, you gave her things,
808
00:42:37,180 --> 00:42:40,057
a house, a trip to Europe, all this junk!
809
00:42:40,057 --> 00:42:42,351
Some jewelry, things, you gave her things, Papa,
810
00:42:42,351 --> 00:42:43,686
not love!
811
00:42:43,686 --> 00:42:44,896
I wonder what he didn’t like about you.
812
00:42:44,896 --> 00:42:46,147
Did he have any idea you were going to be
813
00:42:46,147 --> 00:42:47,982
-a world-famous playwright? -Well, I didn’t live up
814
00:42:47,982 --> 00:42:53,070
to his concept of the ideal young man,
815
00:42:53,070 --> 00:42:54,781
I don’t think.
816
00:42:54,781 --> 00:42:56,491
(soft music)
817
00:42:56,491 --> 00:42:59,035
Off and on, my father would make
818
00:42:59,035 --> 00:43:01,871
abortive attempts to show affection.
819
00:43:01,871 --> 00:43:06,292
He would ask me to go downtown to the movies with him.
820
00:43:06,292 --> 00:43:11,005
I would go, but would be frozen stiff with fear of him,
821
00:43:11,005 --> 00:43:15,259
and being defeated repeatedly, he gave up.
822
00:43:15,259 --> 00:43:18,262
I think he loved me.
823
00:43:18,262 --> 00:43:21,098
My grandparents had together been
824
00:43:21,098 --> 00:43:25,561
the greatest support and kindness to me all my life.
825
00:43:25,561 --> 00:43:27,730
They brought calm and order to me
826
00:43:27,730 --> 00:43:30,775
in my usually chaotic state.
827
00:43:30,775 --> 00:43:34,237
(mellow piano music)
828
00:43:34,237 --> 00:43:38,741
Do you remember the young boy in Other Voices, Other Rooms
829
00:43:38,741 --> 00:43:42,245
who goes to a crumbling mansion in search of his father
830
00:43:42,245 --> 00:43:46,833
and finds an old man who is crippled and can’t speak
831
00:43:46,833 --> 00:43:50,336
and can only communicate by bouncing red tennis balls
832
00:43:50,336 --> 00:43:52,004
down the stairs?
833
00:43:52,004 --> 00:43:56,008
Well, I suddenly understood that, of course,
834
00:43:56,008 --> 00:43:58,970
this represented the search for my own father,
835
00:43:58,970 --> 00:44:01,305
who I seldom saw.
836
00:44:01,305 --> 00:44:04,016
And the fact that the old man is crippled,
837
00:44:04,016 --> 00:44:06,644
and it was my way of transferring
838
00:44:06,644 --> 00:44:10,481
my own inability to communicate with my father.
839
00:44:10,481 --> 00:44:12,775
I was not only the boy in the story,
840
00:44:12,775 --> 00:44:15,278
but also the old man.
841
00:44:18,489 --> 00:44:22,326
You sometimes have to perform a little lobotomy
842
00:44:22,326 --> 00:44:26,747
and cut people out of your mind or they will drag you down.
843
00:44:26,747 --> 00:44:30,084
I cut my father out long ago.
844
00:44:30,084 --> 00:44:33,045
I grew up with my stepfather, Joe Capote,
845
00:44:33,045 --> 00:44:35,089
my mother’s second husband.
846
00:44:35,089 --> 00:44:37,508
(soft music)
847
00:44:50,897 --> 00:44:53,816
(applause)
848
00:44:53,816 --> 00:44:56,319
(cheering)
849
00:44:56,319 --> 00:44:59,947
Once you were a success, did he like you a lot more?
850
00:44:59,947 --> 00:45:02,408
Well, yes, I think he was inclined to.
851
00:45:02,408 --> 00:45:04,577
The last picture I remember of my father
852
00:45:04,577 --> 00:45:08,247
was standing under the marquee
853
00:45:08,247 --> 00:45:10,625
of a movie theater in Knoxville
854
00:45:10,625 --> 00:45:13,085
that was showing Baby Doll.
855
00:45:13,085 --> 00:45:16,005
And the caption said, "Tennessee’s dad says,
856
00:45:16,005 --> 00:45:18,841
’I see nothing wrong with this picture.’"
857
00:45:18,841 --> 00:45:20,343
(laughing)
858
00:45:20,343 --> 00:45:24,472
I guess he was associating Baby Doll with mother.
859
00:45:24,472 --> 00:45:25,890
I won’t get into that.
860
00:45:25,890 --> 00:45:28,643
(chuckling)
861
00:45:28,643 --> 00:45:30,436
(dog whining)
862
00:45:30,436 --> 00:45:31,812
What do you feel about your plays
863
00:45:31,812 --> 00:45:32,980
being turned into films?
864
00:45:32,980 --> 00:45:34,440
Were you always disappointed or--
865
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:38,277
Nearly always very disappointed.
866
00:45:38,277 --> 00:45:40,613
You see, most of my films were made
867
00:45:40,613 --> 00:45:43,950
during the heavy censorship period in America.
868
00:45:43,950 --> 00:45:46,160
And endings had to be changed
869
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:49,872
which almost contradicted the meanings of the play.
870
00:45:49,872 --> 00:45:54,502
And unless you’ve seen the play,
871
00:45:54,502 --> 00:45:55,753
you wouldn’t know from the films
872
00:45:55,753 --> 00:45:57,713
what it was about.
873
00:45:57,713 --> 00:46:00,508
It often affected only the last few minutes
874
00:46:00,508 --> 00:46:02,385
of the films.
875
00:46:02,385 --> 00:46:04,387
So I advise all people who see my films
876
00:46:04,387 --> 00:46:07,431
to leave the cinema
877
00:46:07,431 --> 00:46:09,225
about five minutes before the end.
878
00:46:10,518 --> 00:46:11,644
Blanche!
879
00:46:11,644 --> 00:46:13,396
-Come on, honey. -Don’t you touch me!
880
00:46:13,396 --> 00:46:14,981
Don’t you ever touch me again.
881
00:46:14,981 --> 00:46:18,609
In Streetcar, it had to be intimated
882
00:46:18,609 --> 00:46:23,906
that Stella would never again sleep or live with Stanley.
883
00:46:23,906 --> 00:46:26,283
And of course, the point is she would,
884
00:46:26,283 --> 00:46:28,369
because that’s how life is.
885
00:46:28,369 --> 00:46:30,287
Even though he might have raped her sister?
886
00:46:30,287 --> 00:46:33,249
Yes, that’s how life is.
887
00:46:33,249 --> 00:46:37,169
Films are more lasting than play productions,
888
00:46:37,169 --> 00:46:40,423
and I’m afraid that my plays will be remembered mostly
889
00:46:40,423 --> 00:46:43,300
by the films made of them.
890
00:46:43,300 --> 00:46:46,971
And for that reason it is terribly important to me
891
00:46:46,971 --> 00:46:52,435
that I should get as much artistic control as possible.
892
00:46:52,435 --> 00:46:54,395
When you were writing plays,
893
00:46:54,395 --> 00:46:56,939
were you writing for particular actors,
894
00:46:56,939 --> 00:46:58,816
or were you thinking--
895
00:46:58,816 --> 00:47:01,152
I’ve only written for particular actors
896
00:47:01,152 --> 00:47:03,446
in the cases of Brando
897
00:47:03,446 --> 00:47:05,448
and of Anna Magnani.
898
00:47:07,324 --> 00:47:10,244
Why do you say these things...
899
00:47:10,244 --> 00:47:11,996
to me tonight?
900
00:47:11,996 --> 00:47:16,375
Because nobody ever gets to know anybody.
901
00:47:16,375 --> 00:47:20,087
We’re all...
902
00:47:20,087 --> 00:47:24,216
We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement
903
00:47:24,216 --> 00:47:26,093
inside our own lonely skins
904
00:47:26,093 --> 00:47:30,306
for as long as we live on this earth.
905
00:47:30,306 --> 00:47:33,059
Not to me.
906
00:47:33,059 --> 00:47:36,020
I’m not a big optimist.
907
00:47:38,064 --> 00:47:42,943
But I can’t agree with-- with something so sad.
908
00:47:45,071 --> 00:47:46,405
I’ll go up
909
00:47:46,405 --> 00:47:50,159
and get some clean linen to make up your bed.
910
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:58,751
(solemn music)
911
00:47:58,751 --> 00:48:01,754
Are you superstitious like most southerners?
912
00:48:01,754 --> 00:48:03,422
Very, very superstitious.
913
00:48:03,422 --> 00:48:07,384
I believe in astrology, tarot cards,
914
00:48:07,384 --> 00:48:09,678
I won’t walk under ladders, that whole bit.
915
00:48:09,678 --> 00:48:13,140
I had a great fight once with Tennessee Williams
916
00:48:13,140 --> 00:48:17,103
because we went to...
917
00:48:17,103 --> 00:48:19,605
to Capri together.
918
00:48:19,605 --> 00:48:21,565
This was a long time ago.
919
00:48:21,565 --> 00:48:23,025
Fifteen years ago.
920
00:48:23,025 --> 00:48:25,277
And we went to this hotel,
921
00:48:25,277 --> 00:48:30,199
and when they brought the keys with the numbers to them,
922
00:48:30,199 --> 00:48:32,660
I looked at my number and I didn’t like it.
923
00:48:32,660 --> 00:48:35,329
And I said to Tennessee, "Would you mind
924
00:48:35,329 --> 00:48:38,249
if I had your room and you give me your key?"
925
00:48:38,249 --> 00:48:41,335
And he said, "Well, no, all right."
926
00:48:41,335 --> 00:48:43,546
And so he did, and I went upstairs
927
00:48:43,546 --> 00:48:44,672
and then I came down,
928
00:48:44,672 --> 00:48:46,799
we were having a drink, and he walked into the bar
929
00:48:46,799 --> 00:48:48,759
with this terrible look on his face.
930
00:48:48,759 --> 00:48:52,221
He says, because he’s even more superstitious than I am,
931
00:48:52,221 --> 00:48:55,599
"I just figured out why you wanted me
932
00:48:55,599 --> 00:48:57,476
to have that number instead of you,
933
00:48:57,476 --> 00:48:59,603
because it adds up to 13."
934
00:49:01,438 --> 00:49:04,441
I used to be fantastically superstitious,
935
00:49:04,441 --> 00:49:07,278
I mean to the point of mania.
936
00:49:07,278 --> 00:49:09,655
I’ve tried to break myself of it,
937
00:49:09,655 --> 00:49:11,240
but I still do practically nothing
938
00:49:11,240 --> 00:49:13,659
on the 13th.
939
00:49:13,659 --> 00:49:17,371
A hat on a bed drives me into a frenzy.
940
00:49:17,371 --> 00:49:19,331
And I can’t allow three cigarette butts
941
00:49:19,331 --> 00:49:21,584
in the same ashtray.
942
00:49:21,584 --> 00:49:24,378
And I won’t travel on a plane with two nuns.
943
00:49:24,378 --> 00:49:26,297
(soft music)
944
00:49:28,716 --> 00:49:30,718
What are you most frightened of?
945
00:49:30,718 --> 00:49:33,387
I am claustrophobic to a terrible extent
946
00:49:33,387 --> 00:49:35,973
and I’m frightened of being penned in,
947
00:49:35,973 --> 00:49:39,268
being caught in a small space, and not able to get out.
948
00:49:44,648 --> 00:49:48,444
What are you scared of?
949
00:49:48,444 --> 00:49:51,655
I’m not afraid of the things that most people are afraid of.
950
00:49:51,655 --> 00:49:54,491
I’m not afraid of murderers.
951
00:49:58,495 --> 00:50:01,999
I didn’t choose that subject
952
00:50:01,999 --> 00:50:06,045
because of any great interest in it.
953
00:50:06,045 --> 00:50:10,132
It was because I wanted to write a--
954
00:50:10,132 --> 00:50:14,303
what I call, a "nonfiction novel,"
955
00:50:14,303 --> 00:50:17,765
a book that would read exactly as though it were a novel,
956
00:50:17,765 --> 00:50:22,144
except that every word of it would be absolutely true.
957
00:50:25,272 --> 00:50:30,903
And finally I settled on an obscure crime
958
00:50:30,903 --> 00:50:35,366
in this remote part of Kansas
959
00:50:35,366 --> 00:50:38,160
because I felt if I followed this
960
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:40,829
from beginning to end,
961
00:50:40,829 --> 00:50:44,750
it would provide me with the material
962
00:50:44,750 --> 00:50:49,255
to really accomplish what was a technical feat.
963
00:50:52,258 --> 00:50:55,344
All a truck gets us is from here to there.
964
00:50:55,344 --> 00:50:57,179
We wanna score.
965
00:50:57,179 --> 00:50:59,431
One guy with a fat wallet.
966
00:50:59,431 --> 00:51:02,059
And a fast car with a back seat.
967
00:51:02,059 --> 00:51:04,728
I sit beside him, you get in the back,
968
00:51:04,728 --> 00:51:07,439
I feed him a few jokes.
969
00:51:07,439 --> 00:51:10,859
I say, "Hey, Perry, pass me a match."
970
00:51:10,859 --> 00:51:12,111
That’s your signal.
971
00:51:12,111 --> 00:51:14,613
Fast, hard, snap, I grab the wheel.
972
00:51:16,448 --> 00:51:19,076
The great accomplishment of In Cold Blood
973
00:51:19,076 --> 00:51:22,496
is that I never appear once.
974
00:51:22,496 --> 00:51:25,207
There’s never an "I" in it at all.
975
00:51:32,548 --> 00:51:38,762
Dick, I thought, was just a small-time crook
976
00:51:38,762 --> 00:51:43,600
who got into water way over his head,
977
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:48,230
and was really responsible for this whole murder
978
00:51:48,230 --> 00:51:51,233
which Perry actually committed.
979
00:51:53,694 --> 00:51:55,863
I believe Perry did what he did
980
00:51:55,863 --> 00:51:58,657
for the reasons he himself states,
981
00:51:58,657 --> 00:52:01,577
that his life was a constant accumulation
982
00:52:01,577 --> 00:52:04,788
of disillusionments and reverses,
983
00:52:04,788 --> 00:52:06,832
and he suddenly found himself
984
00:52:06,832 --> 00:52:09,043
in the Clutter house that night
985
00:52:09,043 --> 00:52:12,629
in a psychological cul-de-sac.
986
00:52:14,882 --> 00:52:18,552
The Clutters were such a perfect set of symbols
987
00:52:18,552 --> 00:52:21,513
for every frustration in his life.
988
00:52:21,513 --> 00:52:23,390
As Perry himself said,
989
00:52:23,390 --> 00:52:25,476
"I didn’t have anything against them,
990
00:52:25,476 --> 00:52:27,770
and they never did anything wrong to me,
991
00:52:27,770 --> 00:52:30,564
the way other people have in my life.
992
00:52:30,564 --> 00:52:34,443
Maybe they’re just the ones who had to pay for it."
993
00:52:34,443 --> 00:52:36,653
(soft dramatic music)
994
00:52:36,653 --> 00:52:38,822
(pencil scratching)
995
00:52:42,284 --> 00:52:45,079
(thumping)
996
00:52:51,585 --> 00:52:54,213
(clattering)
997
00:53:04,264 --> 00:53:07,684
The subject matter and the loneliness
998
00:53:07,684 --> 00:53:11,271
led to a kind of, what you’d call,
999
00:53:11,271 --> 00:53:13,315
a definite darkness.
1000
00:53:13,315 --> 00:53:17,319
I mean, I’ve never been so nervous and so agitated.
1001
00:53:20,948 --> 00:53:22,408
No one will ever know
1002
00:53:22,408 --> 00:53:25,411
what In Cold Blood took out of me.
1003
00:53:25,411 --> 00:53:29,748
It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones.
1004
00:53:31,417 --> 00:53:34,461
It nearly killed me.
1005
00:53:34,461 --> 00:53:38,424
I think, in a way, it did kill me.
1006
00:53:38,424 --> 00:53:41,844
Before I began it, I was a stable person,
1007
00:53:41,844 --> 00:53:44,054
comparatively speaking.
1008
00:53:44,054 --> 00:53:48,559
Afterward, something happened to me.
1009
00:53:48,559 --> 00:53:50,727
I just can’t forget it.
1010
00:53:54,690 --> 00:53:58,610
The experience served to heighten my feeling
1011
00:53:58,610 --> 00:54:01,029
of the tragic view of life,
1012
00:54:01,029 --> 00:54:03,157
which accounts for the side of me
1013
00:54:03,157 --> 00:54:05,409
that appears extremely frivolous.
1014
00:54:05,409 --> 00:54:07,453
That part of me is always standing
1015
00:54:07,453 --> 00:54:09,413
in the darkened hallway,
1016
00:54:09,413 --> 00:54:11,957
mocking tragedy and death.
1017
00:54:11,957 --> 00:54:14,793
That’s why I love champagne and stay at the Ritz.
1018
00:54:14,793 --> 00:54:17,463
(upbeat music)
1019
00:54:19,590 --> 00:54:21,842
As a little boy from New Orleans,
1020
00:54:21,842 --> 00:54:24,761
I had always dreamed of giving the biggest
1021
00:54:24,761 --> 00:54:26,472
and the best goddamned party
1022
00:54:26,472 --> 00:54:29,308
that anybody had ever heard of.
1023
00:54:29,308 --> 00:54:31,477
I wanted to see important people
1024
00:54:31,477 --> 00:54:34,146
from every walk of life.
1025
00:54:34,146 --> 00:54:37,065
(mixed chatter)
1026
00:54:37,065 --> 00:54:39,985
It was a nice party, wasn’t it?
1027
00:54:39,985 --> 00:54:43,071
There was something warm and cozy about it,
1028
00:54:43,071 --> 00:54:45,741
quite the opposite of all the publicity.
1029
00:54:45,741 --> 00:54:49,203
The thing I resented most about some of the write-ups
1030
00:54:49,203 --> 00:54:51,705
was the idea the party was intended
1031
00:54:51,705 --> 00:54:55,083
to promote me or my books.
1032
00:54:55,083 --> 00:54:58,587
I was invited to the party of the year,
1033
00:54:58,587 --> 00:55:00,923
but chose not to attend.
1034
00:55:00,923 --> 00:55:03,383
People are never so unattractive
1035
00:55:03,383 --> 00:55:06,220
as when they think you are worth impressing.
1036
00:55:07,888 --> 00:55:11,183
Being feted and lionized on a small scale
1037
00:55:11,183 --> 00:55:12,851
has convinced me,
1038
00:55:12,851 --> 00:55:15,270
or rather confirmed my suspicion,
1039
00:55:15,270 --> 00:55:19,233
that success is a bore.
1040
00:55:19,233 --> 00:55:23,070
The struggle for me is creation.
1041
00:55:23,070 --> 00:55:25,572
Luxury is the wolf at the door,
1042
00:55:25,572 --> 00:55:27,783
and its fangs are the vanities
1043
00:55:27,783 --> 00:55:31,119
and conceits germinated by success.
1044
00:55:31,119 --> 00:55:33,455
When an artist learns this,
1045
00:55:33,455 --> 00:55:36,875
he knows where the dangers lie.
1046
00:55:36,875 --> 00:55:39,670
I really think you’ve written a masterpiece here.
1047
00:55:39,670 --> 00:55:41,463
Why, thank you.
1048
00:55:41,463 --> 00:55:45,384
You’ll get a much better dedication!
1049
00:55:45,384 --> 00:55:47,010
(laughing)
1050
00:55:47,010 --> 00:55:50,264
I was trained always
1051
00:55:50,264 --> 00:55:53,559
to do exactly what it is that I’m doing,
1052
00:55:53,559 --> 00:55:59,022
and part of that is to be able to accept success
1053
00:55:59,022 --> 00:56:03,652
without it, you know, knocking you out.
1054
00:56:03,652 --> 00:56:06,947
Just take it for what it is and ride with it.
1055
00:56:06,947 --> 00:56:08,323
You said once the only thing
1056
00:56:08,323 --> 00:56:10,242
you hate reading about yourself in the papers
1057
00:56:10,242 --> 00:56:12,244
-is the truth. -That’s it!
1058
00:56:12,244 --> 00:56:13,704
The lies are fine.
1059
00:56:13,704 --> 00:56:15,414
I don’t care what anybody says about me
1060
00:56:15,414 --> 00:56:17,666
as long as it isn’t true.
1061
00:56:17,666 --> 00:56:20,627
Do you like yourself or not?
1062
00:56:22,212 --> 00:56:24,047
Or do you adore yourself?
1063
00:56:24,047 --> 00:56:27,926
I don’t adore myself, no.
1064
00:56:27,926 --> 00:56:29,511
No, no.
1065
00:56:29,511 --> 00:56:30,762
Do you find yourself good company?
1066
00:56:30,762 --> 00:56:32,556
I, uh...
1067
00:56:32,556 --> 00:56:35,309
I never stopped to think about that very much.
1068
00:56:35,309 --> 00:56:37,519
I’m always saddled with myself,
1069
00:56:37,519 --> 00:56:40,355
I can’t do much about it.
1070
00:56:40,355 --> 00:56:41,773
-Right. -Do I like myself?
1071
00:56:41,773 --> 00:56:45,861
No, I don’t like myself very much.
1072
00:56:45,861 --> 00:56:49,990
I’m terribly moody, subject to awful depressions.
1073
00:56:49,990 --> 00:56:53,493
Are you in fact a despairing person?
1074
00:56:53,493 --> 00:56:55,162
Oh, no, I’m not despairing.
1075
00:56:55,162 --> 00:56:58,915
I wouldn’t remain alive if I were despairing.
1076
00:56:58,915 --> 00:57:02,377
I recognize a great deal
1077
00:57:02,377 --> 00:57:05,505
of darkness in life, it’s true.
1078
00:57:05,505 --> 00:57:08,884
Why is it that the plays are so full
1079
00:57:08,884 --> 00:57:13,597
of the less cheerful topics, like...
1080
00:57:13,597 --> 00:57:16,808
cancer and lobotomies and rape and adultery
1081
00:57:16,808 --> 00:57:19,478
and incest and nymphomania and homosexuality...
1082
00:57:19,478 --> 00:57:21,438
-All those things... -...and castrations?
1083
00:57:21,438 --> 00:57:23,940
Don’t you know that those are the things
1084
00:57:23,940 --> 00:57:29,196
that we all are obliged to live with?
1085
00:57:29,196 --> 00:57:31,615
We procured for him!
1086
00:57:31,615 --> 00:57:33,408
She used to do it in the smart,
1087
00:57:33,408 --> 00:57:36,078
fashionable places they went to before last summer.
1088
00:57:36,078 --> 00:57:37,371
Sebastian was shy with people.
1089
00:57:37,371 --> 00:57:38,538
She wasn’t.
1090
00:57:38,538 --> 00:57:40,832
Neither was I.
1091
00:57:40,832 --> 00:57:44,127
But we both did the same thing for him.
1092
00:57:44,127 --> 00:57:47,589
We both made contacts for him.
1093
00:57:47,589 --> 00:57:50,133
I can’t listen to this obscenity!
1094
00:57:50,133 --> 00:57:51,385
Stop her, Doctor.
1095
00:57:51,385 --> 00:57:53,261
Cut the truth out of my brain?
1096
00:57:53,261 --> 00:57:55,138
Is that what you want, Aunt Vi?
1097
00:57:55,138 --> 00:57:56,473
Well, you can’t!
1098
00:57:56,473 --> 00:57:58,684
Not even God can change the truth,
1099
00:57:58,684 --> 00:58:00,435
that we were nothing but a pair of--
1100
00:58:00,435 --> 00:58:02,020
-Doctor! -It’s the truth!
1101
00:58:02,020 --> 00:58:04,606
See how she destroys us with her tongue for a hatchet!
1102
00:58:04,606 --> 00:58:07,734
You’ve got to cut this hideous story out of her brain!
1103
00:58:07,734 --> 00:58:11,613
What put that subject into your mind?
1104
00:58:11,613 --> 00:58:14,199
Some person that I had known well
1105
00:58:14,199 --> 00:58:19,538
that had a cerebral lobotomy.
1106
00:58:19,538 --> 00:58:21,456
Your sister?
1107
00:58:21,456 --> 00:58:25,210
Rose had a great inner resentment towards mother
1108
00:58:25,210 --> 00:58:29,089
because she had imposed a monolithic Puritanism on her
1109
00:58:29,089 --> 00:58:31,049
during adolescence.
1110
00:58:31,049 --> 00:58:35,095
Rose loved to shock Mother.
1111
00:58:35,095 --> 00:58:37,139
My sister, she said, "Oh, Mother,
1112
00:58:37,139 --> 00:58:40,434
when I was at All Saints College,
1113
00:58:40,434 --> 00:58:45,021
you know, the girls used to abuse themselves
1114
00:58:45,021 --> 00:58:46,398
with altar candles
1115
00:58:46,398 --> 00:58:48,483
which they stole from the chapel."
1116
00:58:48,483 --> 00:58:51,111
And my mother screamed, and threw her arms in the air
1117
00:58:51,111 --> 00:58:53,530
and said, "Oh, doctor, doctor!
1118
00:58:53,530 --> 00:58:57,242
Do anything, anything at all
1119
00:58:57,242 --> 00:58:59,286
to stop her talking like this!"
1120
00:58:59,286 --> 00:59:02,664
(laughing)
1121
00:59:17,429 --> 00:59:19,931
(chair creaking)
1122
00:59:19,931 --> 00:59:22,058
(laughing continues)
1123
00:59:24,186 --> 00:59:27,856
In addition to the lobotomy, Rose underwent
1124
00:59:27,856 --> 00:59:33,612
65 electroconvulsive shock treatments.
1125
00:59:33,612 --> 00:59:36,323
I visited the sanatorium
1126
00:59:36,323 --> 00:59:40,035
and saw my dear little Rose.
1127
00:59:40,035 --> 00:59:43,205
She is like a person half-asleep now,
1128
00:59:43,205 --> 00:59:46,124
quiet, gentle,
1129
00:59:46,124 --> 00:59:51,338
not in any way revolting like so many of the others.
1130
00:59:51,338 --> 00:59:55,801
Sometimes her eyes filled with tears.
1131
00:59:55,801 --> 00:59:59,679
Be brave, dear little girl.
1132
00:59:59,679 --> 01:00:03,183
Why should you be there, little Rose?
1133
01:00:03,183 --> 01:00:06,102
And me, here?
1134
01:00:06,102 --> 01:00:08,772
Again and again, your plays do come out
1135
01:00:08,772 --> 01:00:11,942
of your personal life, don’t they? Tremendously.
1136
01:00:11,942 --> 01:00:15,695
Out of everybody’s personal life.
1137
01:00:15,695 --> 01:00:19,491
I think we all live with rape.
1138
01:00:21,034 --> 01:00:24,538
My god, we’re all victims of rape,
1139
01:00:24,538 --> 01:00:26,998
symbolically, aren’t we?
1140
01:00:26,998 --> 01:00:28,792
How?
1141
01:00:28,792 --> 01:00:32,337
Society rapes the individual.
1142
01:00:35,841 --> 01:00:39,177
What else do we all-- do we all live with cannibalism
1143
01:00:39,177 --> 01:00:41,263
-in the same symbolic way? -Cannibalism.
1144
01:00:41,263 --> 01:00:44,975
Yes, we live with that, too, in a symbolic way.
1145
01:00:44,975 --> 01:00:47,894
We all devour each other
1146
01:00:47,894 --> 01:00:50,063
in our fashion.
1147
01:00:51,773 --> 01:00:55,986
I don’t think my nerves can take it much more.
1148
01:00:55,986 --> 01:00:59,447
I am a writer of serious aim and intention
1149
01:00:59,447 --> 01:01:03,076
who has happened to be commercial in,
1150
01:01:03,076 --> 01:01:05,078
well, maybe half of his plays.
1151
01:01:05,078 --> 01:01:08,039
But you must remember that the other half
1152
01:01:08,039 --> 01:01:11,626
have been crashing failures.
1153
01:01:11,626 --> 01:01:13,920
All my life I’ve been on the outside,
1154
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:15,839
and time is running out.
1155
01:01:15,839 --> 01:01:17,465
Look around you, boy, they got places
1156
01:01:17,465 --> 01:01:19,885
for the old and the sick and the homeless,
1157
01:01:19,885 --> 01:01:22,012
but there is no place at all for the failures.
1158
01:01:22,012 --> 01:01:25,849
And failure is a highly contagious disease.
1159
01:01:25,849 --> 01:01:28,643
The tensions of Broadway were getting to me,
1160
01:01:28,643 --> 01:01:32,939
and I needed something to lower the tension level.
1161
01:01:32,939 --> 01:01:35,609
And whiskey did it.
1162
01:01:35,609 --> 01:01:36,902
Why are you so restless?
1163
01:01:36,902 --> 01:01:38,570
You got ants in your britches?
1164
01:01:38,570 --> 01:01:40,363
-Yes, sir. -Why?
1165
01:01:42,157 --> 01:01:44,659
-Something hasn’t happened yet. -What’s that?
1166
01:01:44,659 --> 01:01:46,411
A click in my head.
1167
01:01:46,411 --> 01:01:47,829
-Did you say "click"? -Yes, sir,
1168
01:01:47,829 --> 01:01:49,414
that click in my head.
1169
01:01:49,414 --> 01:01:51,416
It makes me feel peaceful.
1170
01:01:51,416 --> 01:01:53,001
Boy, sometimes you worry me.
1171
01:01:53,001 --> 01:01:55,420
It’s like a...
1172
01:01:55,420 --> 01:01:57,923
switch clicking off in my head.
1173
01:01:57,923 --> 01:01:59,674
It turns the hot light off and the cool one on,
1174
01:01:59,674 --> 01:02:02,260
and all of a sudden, there’s peace.
1175
01:02:04,137 --> 01:02:07,807
Boy, you’re a real alcoholic.
1176
01:02:07,807 --> 01:02:09,392
That is the truth.
1177
01:02:09,392 --> 01:02:11,227
Yes, sir, I am an alcoholic.
1178
01:02:11,227 --> 01:02:13,855
(solemn music)
1179
01:02:13,855 --> 01:02:17,484
My father told me that he had been a slave
1180
01:02:17,484 --> 01:02:20,987
to drink all his life,
1181
01:02:20,987 --> 01:02:24,908
that all the Williamses had been terrible drinkers,
1182
01:02:24,908 --> 01:02:29,496
and he hoped I wouldn’t marry a drunken woman.
1183
01:02:29,496 --> 01:02:30,997
All during the talk,
1184
01:02:30,997 --> 01:02:33,291
he was drinking continually himself
1185
01:02:33,291 --> 01:02:37,754
and getting more and more like a maudlin old buzzard.
1186
01:02:37,754 --> 01:02:41,007
It was shocking and pitiful.
1187
01:02:43,426 --> 01:02:46,554
Mother was the cause of all my anxiety.
1188
01:02:46,554 --> 01:02:49,599
She was a wonderful person when she was not drinking,
1189
01:02:49,599 --> 01:02:52,686
impossible when she was.
1190
01:02:52,686 --> 01:02:55,480
She was Jekyll and Hyde,
1191
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:57,607
much more neurotic and difficult
1192
01:02:57,607 --> 01:03:01,027
than anybody realized.
1193
01:03:01,027 --> 01:03:03,613
At this very moment, I can see those rooms
1194
01:03:03,613 --> 01:03:07,117
in St. Louis and New Orleans.
1195
01:03:07,117 --> 01:03:12,706
That’s when my claustrophobia and fear of abandonment began.
1196
01:03:12,706 --> 01:03:16,876
She locked me in, and I still can’t get out.
1197
01:03:16,876 --> 01:03:19,170
I live with it constantly.
1198
01:03:19,170 --> 01:03:21,673
I’m never ever free from it.
1199
01:03:21,673 --> 01:03:25,051
(soft music)
1200
01:03:25,051 --> 01:03:27,429
She died in 1954
1201
01:03:27,429 --> 01:03:30,640
from an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol.
1202
01:03:33,810 --> 01:03:35,145
Nothing could be worse
1203
01:03:35,145 --> 01:03:37,605
for a girl in your unstable condition
1204
01:03:37,605 --> 01:03:41,901
to be mixed up with a man in my unstable condition,
1205
01:03:41,901 --> 01:03:44,988
because two people in unstable conditions
1206
01:03:44,988 --> 01:03:47,699
are like two countries facing each other.
1207
01:03:47,699 --> 01:03:49,534
in unstable conditions.
1208
01:03:49,534 --> 01:03:53,038
The destructive potential
1209
01:03:53,038 --> 01:03:55,832
could blow the whole world to bits.
1210
01:03:55,832 --> 01:03:58,126
(somber music)
1211
01:04:06,718 --> 01:04:12,432
My professional decline began after Night of the Iguana.
1212
01:04:15,393 --> 01:04:19,606
As a matter of fact, I never got a good review
1213
01:04:19,606 --> 01:04:22,525
after 1961.
1214
01:04:24,611 --> 01:04:26,154
I was broken as much
1215
01:04:26,154 --> 01:04:29,282
by repeated failures in the theater
1216
01:04:29,282 --> 01:04:31,701
as by Frank’s death.
1217
01:04:33,328 --> 01:04:38,416
Frank died from lung cancer in 1963.
1218
01:04:38,416 --> 01:04:41,127
I not only missed him,
1219
01:04:41,127 --> 01:04:44,964
but the life he had created for me.
1220
01:04:46,424 --> 01:04:48,593
Everything went wrong.
1221
01:04:48,593 --> 01:04:52,096
My life, private and professional,
1222
01:04:52,096 --> 01:04:56,434
and ultimately my mind, broke.
1223
01:04:59,020 --> 01:05:00,605
You know what I need to get me
1224
01:05:00,605 --> 01:05:02,315
over this depression this summer,
1225
01:05:02,315 --> 01:05:04,943
what would do more good than all the shots and pills
1226
01:05:04,943 --> 01:05:07,445
in the pharmaceutical kingdom?
1227
01:05:08,822 --> 01:05:10,865
I need myself a lover.
1228
01:05:10,865 --> 01:05:14,619
(solemn music)
1229
01:05:14,619 --> 01:05:18,957
The more consequential occurrence in the mid ’60s
1230
01:05:18,957 --> 01:05:21,626
was my becoming a patient of a doctor
1231
01:05:21,626 --> 01:05:25,130
sometimes called Dr. Feelgood.
1232
01:05:27,298 --> 01:05:30,385
I was a patient of the original Dr. Feelgood.
1233
01:05:30,385 --> 01:05:35,098
-Dr. Feelgood, right, yeah. -But I really at that point,
1234
01:05:35,098 --> 01:05:38,143
although I had a lot of friends who were going to him,
1235
01:05:38,143 --> 01:05:41,604
I did not know that it was other than
1236
01:05:41,604 --> 01:05:45,024
a mixture of all kinds of vitamins.
1237
01:05:45,024 --> 01:05:50,363
At first, I only went to Dr. Feelgood for injections,
1238
01:05:50,363 --> 01:05:53,700
but soon he was also providing me with vials,
1239
01:05:53,700 --> 01:05:57,954
which I injected when I got up in the mornings.
1240
01:05:57,954 --> 01:05:59,873
They kept me going.
1241
01:05:59,873 --> 01:06:02,375
They kept me working.
1242
01:06:02,375 --> 01:06:06,629
Being an artist, it does separate you.
1243
01:06:06,629 --> 01:06:13,553
I mean, one’s mind is working at a faster, sensitive,
1244
01:06:13,553 --> 01:06:17,265
more rapid, eye-batting level
1245
01:06:17,265 --> 01:06:19,100
than most people.
1246
01:06:19,100 --> 01:06:21,895
I think that that’s honestly the reason
1247
01:06:21,895 --> 01:06:26,774
why so many writers drink or take pills,
1248
01:06:26,774 --> 01:06:30,820
or this, that, or the other, is to calm themselves down,
1249
01:06:30,820 --> 01:06:36,284
to quiet this continuous rapid-running machine.
1250
01:06:36,284 --> 01:06:38,536
(soft music)
1251
01:06:40,288 --> 01:06:41,915
But I know that that’s why
1252
01:06:41,915 --> 01:06:45,543
Tennessee Williams does, you know?
1253
01:06:47,754 --> 01:06:53,718
He has to take sedatives and things like that,
1254
01:06:53,718 --> 01:06:56,846
because he’s got one of the most rapid-running,
1255
01:06:56,846 --> 01:06:59,432
perceptive minds.
1256
01:07:04,479 --> 01:07:08,358
Have you passed the dependency now?
1257
01:07:08,358 --> 01:07:10,276
One can never say that.
1258
01:07:10,276 --> 01:07:11,903
You never know.
1259
01:07:11,903 --> 01:07:14,489
It’s the sort of thing that nobody ever
1260
01:07:14,489 --> 01:07:18,576
completely recovers from.
1261
01:07:18,576 --> 01:07:21,496
What you do is you, uh...
1262
01:07:24,290 --> 01:07:26,334
...arrest it.
1263
01:07:26,334 --> 01:07:30,004
And you keep it in a state of arrest, or remission,
1264
01:07:30,004 --> 01:07:32,715
just like somebody who has cancer.
1265
01:07:32,715 --> 01:07:36,386
It’s in a state of remission.
1266
01:07:36,386 --> 01:07:38,971
You know, there’s only one real trouble in life,
1267
01:07:38,971 --> 01:07:42,058
and that is to be in trouble with yourself.
1268
01:07:42,058 --> 01:07:44,769
(upbeat music)
1269
01:07:56,154 --> 01:07:58,700
I’ve been to an awful lot of nightclubs,
1270
01:07:58,700 --> 01:08:01,995
and this is the best I have ever seen.
1271
01:08:01,995 --> 01:08:03,705
Isn’t it too bad Proust didn’t have
1272
01:08:03,705 --> 01:08:06,541
something like this?
1273
01:08:06,541 --> 01:08:08,209
Sometimes, when I am there,
1274
01:08:08,209 --> 01:08:10,503
I think about all the dead people
1275
01:08:10,503 --> 01:08:13,089
who would have loved 54.
1276
01:08:13,089 --> 01:08:15,883
It’s shame they’re not around.
1277
01:08:15,883 --> 01:08:19,011
People like Toulouse-Lautrec or Baudelaire
1278
01:08:19,011 --> 01:08:22,265
or Oscar Wilde or Carl Van Vechten.
1279
01:08:22,265 --> 01:08:24,642
Cole Porter would have loved it.
1280
01:08:27,395 --> 01:08:29,731
Somebody asked me about a year ago
1281
01:08:29,731 --> 01:08:31,524
what I am famous for,
1282
01:08:31,524 --> 01:08:36,068
and I said, "I’m famous for being famous."
1283
01:08:36,068 --> 01:08:38,031
Is there anything else that you’re not
1284
01:08:38,031 --> 01:08:39,823
that you’ve toyed with the thought of being?
1285
01:08:39,823 --> 01:08:41,617
-Yes. -What?
1286
01:08:41,617 --> 01:08:42,868
Invisible.
1287
01:08:42,868 --> 01:08:45,246
(laughing)
1288
01:08:45,246 --> 01:08:46,831
Would you like to have had it any other way?
1289
01:08:46,831 --> 01:08:49,042
Would you have liked to be anything else?
1290
01:08:49,042 --> 01:08:52,170
Yes, now this is going to shock you.
1291
01:08:52,170 --> 01:08:55,214
I would like to have been very good-looking.
1292
01:08:55,214 --> 01:08:57,050
(laughing)
1293
01:09:00,136 --> 01:09:02,345
I’ve been working my whole life
1294
01:09:02,345 --> 01:09:05,433
and the only literary prize I received
1295
01:09:05,433 --> 01:09:07,559
was back in 1947
1296
01:09:07,559 --> 01:09:11,689
with a short story I wrote called "Miriam."
1297
01:09:11,689 --> 01:09:15,068
I said to myself, I am going to write a book
1298
01:09:15,068 --> 01:09:18,863
that will make you all ashamed of yourselves.
1299
01:09:18,863 --> 01:09:20,323
You’re going to find out
1300
01:09:20,323 --> 01:09:23,076
what a really, really gifted writer
1301
01:09:23,076 --> 01:09:25,995
with great determination can do.
1302
01:09:25,995 --> 01:09:27,955
I’m going to call it a novel,
1303
01:09:27,955 --> 01:09:31,751
but in actual fact, it’s a roman à clef.
1304
01:09:31,751 --> 01:09:34,921
Almost everything in it is true.
1305
01:09:34,921 --> 01:09:36,171
For a couple years, we’ve been waiting
1306
01:09:36,171 --> 01:09:37,548
for Answered Prayers.
1307
01:09:37,548 --> 01:09:39,050
Have you turned it over to the publisher yet?
1308
01:09:39,050 --> 01:09:40,218
Nah.
1309
01:09:40,218 --> 01:09:44,305
I refer to it now as my "posthumous novel."
1310
01:09:44,305 --> 01:09:46,349
Because either I’m going to kill it
1311
01:09:46,349 --> 01:09:48,600
or it’s going to kill me.
1312
01:09:48,600 --> 01:09:51,520
(dramatic music)
1313
01:09:58,318 --> 01:10:00,905
Four chapters from Answered Prayers,
1314
01:10:00,905 --> 01:10:03,783
were published in Esquire.
1315
01:10:03,783 --> 01:10:07,286
After reading my story, Unspoiled Monsters,
1316
01:10:07,286 --> 01:10:11,290
Tennessee was furious with my model for Mr. Wallace,
1317
01:10:11,290 --> 01:10:16,129
one of the clients of a call-boy service.
1318
01:10:16,129 --> 01:10:18,840
He is not so much interested in sex
1319
01:10:18,840 --> 01:10:23,845
as he is in hiring someone to walk his English bulldog.
1320
01:10:23,845 --> 01:10:27,974
Wallace is described as "a chunky,
1321
01:10:27,974 --> 01:10:30,643
paunchy, booze-puffed runt
1322
01:10:30,643 --> 01:10:35,273
with a play moustache glued above laconic lips,
1323
01:10:35,273 --> 01:10:38,317
who has a corn-pone voice.
1324
01:10:38,317 --> 01:10:42,655
Here’s a dumpy little guy with a dramatic mind who,
1325
01:10:42,655 --> 01:10:45,825
like one of his own adrift heroines,
1326
01:10:45,825 --> 01:10:48,702
seeks attention and sympathy by serving up
1327
01:10:48,702 --> 01:10:53,791
half-believed lies to total strangers."
1328
01:10:53,791 --> 01:10:59,422
Capote’s a liar, and everyone knows he is.
1329
01:10:59,422 --> 01:11:03,759
I am inclined to alter and overelaborate.
1330
01:11:03,759 --> 01:11:07,847
Myself, I just call it "making something come alive."
1331
01:11:07,847 --> 01:11:10,475
In other words, a form of art.
1332
01:11:10,475 --> 01:11:13,311
Art and truth are not necessarily
1333
01:11:13,311 --> 01:11:15,563
compatible bedfellows.
1334
01:11:16,856 --> 01:11:19,901
Well, there is a sense
1335
01:11:19,901 --> 01:11:25,406
in which all creative work, all fiction, is imagination.
1336
01:11:25,406 --> 01:11:27,992
But that imagination is not the same
1337
01:11:27,992 --> 01:11:30,495
as bitchery and lying.
1338
01:11:30,495 --> 01:11:34,499
I can’t find any excuse for it.
1339
01:11:34,499 --> 01:11:36,667
My entire book is gossip.
1340
01:11:36,667 --> 01:11:39,170
I don’t deny that for an instant.
1341
01:11:39,170 --> 01:11:42,173
All literature is gossip.
1342
01:11:42,173 --> 01:11:44,926
What in God’s green earth is Anna Karenina
1343
01:11:44,926 --> 01:11:49,514
or War and Peace or Madame Bovary if not gossip?
1344
01:11:49,514 --> 01:11:50,932
Or Proust?
1345
01:11:52,391 --> 01:11:55,144
Marcel Proust, for instance.
1346
01:11:55,144 --> 01:11:58,523
All his characters were taken from life,
1347
01:11:58,523 --> 01:12:02,693
but I don’t think any of them were drawn maliciously.
1348
01:12:02,693 --> 01:12:05,655
I don’t think bitchery is the most attractive element
1349
01:12:05,655 --> 01:12:07,823
in human character,
1350
01:12:07,823 --> 01:12:09,825
but bitchery is beginning to be
1351
01:12:09,825 --> 01:12:13,996
a very strong selling commodity in writing.
1352
01:12:13,996 --> 01:12:15,623
I am not Proust.
1353
01:12:15,623 --> 01:12:20,127
I am not as intelligent or as educated as he was.
1354
01:12:20,127 --> 01:12:22,838
I am not as sensitive in various ways.
1355
01:12:22,838 --> 01:12:26,008
But my eye is every bit as good as his.
1356
01:12:26,008 --> 01:12:27,009
Every bit!
1357
01:12:27,009 --> 01:12:28,511
I see everything,
1358
01:12:28,511 --> 01:12:31,264
and I only wrote half of what I saw.
1359
01:12:31,264 --> 01:12:33,849
I can’t think of anything
1360
01:12:33,849 --> 01:12:37,937
except a great unhappiness in a man’s nature
1361
01:12:37,937 --> 01:12:41,440
could make him try to inflict wounds of that sort
1362
01:12:41,440 --> 01:12:43,943
upon other people.
1363
01:12:43,943 --> 01:12:47,363
One must try to go forward in this world
1364
01:12:47,363 --> 01:12:51,033
without trampling on other beings as we go,
1365
01:12:51,033 --> 01:12:52,410
if we can help it.
1366
01:12:52,410 --> 01:12:55,538
(playful music)
1367
01:12:55,538 --> 01:12:56,998
Speaking of friends, there’s some question
1368
01:12:56,998 --> 01:12:59,083
as to whether you have any now, as you know.
1369
01:12:59,083 --> 01:13:01,711
You published a thing in Esquire,
1370
01:13:01,711 --> 01:13:03,421
it’s a work of fiction...
1371
01:13:03,421 --> 01:13:05,590
-No, it’s not. -Well, it’s not, is it?
1372
01:13:05,590 --> 01:13:07,842
(laughing)
1373
01:13:07,842 --> 01:13:09,594
-Actually I published... -It’s a work of friction,
1374
01:13:09,594 --> 01:13:11,012
is what it turned out to be.
1375
01:13:11,012 --> 01:13:13,931
The truth is I only lost three friends
1376
01:13:13,931 --> 01:13:15,975
as a result of as much of the book
1377
01:13:15,975 --> 01:13:17,727
has been published so far,
1378
01:13:17,727 --> 01:13:20,313
I don’t guarantee what’s going to happen later.
1379
01:13:20,313 --> 01:13:22,815
Are you willing to go for 10?
1380
01:13:22,815 --> 01:13:25,985
First of all, I always told everybody
1381
01:13:25,985 --> 01:13:28,029
that I was writing this book.
1382
01:13:28,029 --> 01:13:29,405
But you must have realized you were taking
1383
01:13:29,405 --> 01:13:31,532
-a calculated risk that... -Sure.
1384
01:13:31,532 --> 01:13:32,742
...you might lose some friends,
1385
01:13:32,742 --> 01:13:35,411
and so the question becomes
1386
01:13:35,411 --> 01:13:36,996
is your writing more important to you
1387
01:13:36,996 --> 01:13:40,958
than your friends?
1388
01:13:40,958 --> 01:13:45,379
Well, look, it’s this simple.
1389
01:13:45,379 --> 01:13:50,468
All a writer has for material is what he knows.
1390
01:13:50,468 --> 01:13:52,094
That’s all you’ve got.
1391
01:13:52,094 --> 01:13:55,389
At least that’s all I’ve got.
1392
01:13:55,389 --> 01:13:57,224
The whole meaning of all my work
1393
01:13:57,224 --> 01:13:58,976
is that there is no such thing
1394
01:13:58,976 --> 01:14:01,437
as complete right, complete wrong,
1395
01:14:01,437 --> 01:14:03,522
complete black, complete white,
1396
01:14:03,522 --> 01:14:08,235
that--that we’re all in the same boat.
1397
01:14:08,235 --> 01:14:10,196
And really, the boat is the world.
1398
01:14:10,196 --> 01:14:11,947
You might even say it’s the universe,
1399
01:14:11,947 --> 01:14:15,326
it’s all creation is the boat.
1400
01:14:15,326 --> 01:14:18,162
It’s like an unfinished poem.
1401
01:14:18,162 --> 01:14:21,957
Maybe the poem will suddenly turn to a limerick.
1402
01:14:21,957 --> 01:14:25,044
Or maybe it will turn to an epic poem.
1403
01:14:25,044 --> 01:14:28,214
But it’s for all of us to try to complete this poem.
1404
01:14:28,214 --> 01:14:29,465
And the way to complete it
1405
01:14:29,465 --> 01:14:31,967
is through understanding and patience,
1406
01:14:31,967 --> 01:14:35,054
and tolerance among ourselves.
1407
01:14:35,054 --> 01:14:39,767
Really, I wouldn’t have chosen this life for myself.
1408
01:14:39,767 --> 01:14:41,977
I swear it.
1409
01:14:41,977 --> 01:14:45,731
Because there’s just nothing that can be so difficult,
1410
01:14:45,731 --> 01:14:49,068
I can’t imagine anything more difficult
1411
01:14:49,068 --> 01:14:52,947
than to sustain over...
1412
01:14:52,947 --> 01:14:55,991
decades and decades and decades,
1413
01:14:55,991 --> 01:14:58,369
sustaining, refreshing,
1414
01:14:58,369 --> 01:15:02,790
keep your work moving and always at a certain level,
1415
01:15:02,790 --> 01:15:05,543
and always trying and always trying.
1416
01:15:05,543 --> 01:15:09,630
I mean, look at Tennessee Williams.
1417
01:15:09,630 --> 01:15:12,591
I dedicated my book to Tennessee, by the way.
1418
01:15:12,591 --> 01:15:14,510
I noticed that, I was going to ask you why.
1419
01:15:14,510 --> 01:15:15,720
Well, I’m going to tell you why.
1420
01:15:15,720 --> 01:15:17,513
Not that he doesn’t deserve it.
1421
01:15:17,513 --> 01:15:19,140
I’ll tell you why.
1422
01:15:19,140 --> 01:15:22,309
I’ve known Tennessee a long time.
1423
01:15:22,309 --> 01:15:26,355
Our friendship has had its ups and downs.
1424
01:15:26,355 --> 01:15:29,025
I did it because...
1425
01:15:31,152 --> 01:15:38,117
Here is a man who has devoted his whole life to art,
1426
01:15:38,117 --> 01:15:43,039
has always tried, tried, and is a genius,
1427
01:15:43,039 --> 01:15:47,793
and has done fantastically original
1428
01:15:47,793 --> 01:15:49,754
and marvelous things.
1429
01:15:49,754 --> 01:15:52,673
And his last play comes on,
1430
01:15:52,673 --> 01:15:57,386
and the critics just tear into him, zoof!
1431
01:15:57,386 --> 01:16:02,808
And they’ve been doing this to Tennessee for 20 years.
1432
01:16:02,808 --> 01:16:05,227
Is it important to you what history thinks of you
1433
01:16:05,227 --> 01:16:07,605
50, 100 years from now?
1434
01:16:07,605 --> 01:16:12,860
If it is, it’s unconsciously.
1435
01:16:12,860 --> 01:16:14,361
You don’t write for history,
1436
01:16:14,361 --> 01:16:17,448
you write to express yourself now,
1437
01:16:17,448 --> 01:16:19,617
in the moment of your life.
1438
01:16:21,702 --> 01:16:24,038
And in your person, would you like to be remembered
1439
01:16:24,038 --> 01:16:25,831
as someone who was loved by other people
1440
01:16:25,831 --> 01:16:28,334
or somebody who loved other people?
1441
01:16:28,334 --> 01:16:29,835
Oh, I think it’s much more important
1442
01:16:29,835 --> 01:16:32,922
to love other people than to be loved by them.
1443
01:16:35,174 --> 01:16:37,301
The last time I saw Tennessee
1444
01:16:37,301 --> 01:16:40,054
was a few weeks before he died.
1445
01:16:40,054 --> 01:16:43,641
We had dinner together at a very private little place
1446
01:16:43,641 --> 01:16:45,476
called Le Club.
1447
01:16:45,476 --> 01:16:48,479
He said he had no friends anymore,
1448
01:16:48,479 --> 01:16:51,649
and that I was one of the few people in his life
1449
01:16:51,649 --> 01:16:54,193
who really knew him.
1450
01:16:54,193 --> 01:16:55,903
I said to Truman,
1451
01:16:55,903 --> 01:16:58,531
"This might be an appropriate time
1452
01:16:58,531 --> 01:17:02,827
to say something to you that you once said to me.
1453
01:17:02,827 --> 01:17:06,997
I care about you more than you know.
1454
01:17:06,997 --> 01:17:10,751
Perhaps the thing most to help you right now
1455
01:17:10,751 --> 01:17:14,171
is your incomparable sense of humor.
1456
01:17:14,171 --> 01:17:15,965
Rest a bit.
1457
01:17:15,965 --> 01:17:20,845
And never, never stop laughing."
1458
01:17:20,845 --> 01:17:24,431
Tennessee asked me when we will meet again.
1459
01:17:24,431 --> 01:17:27,601
I told him, "In Paradise."
1460
01:17:27,601 --> 01:17:29,603
(mellow music)
1461
01:17:29,603 --> 01:17:31,146
Time has taught me
1462
01:17:31,146 --> 01:17:33,607
that a man must face an onslaught
1463
01:17:33,607 --> 01:17:35,985
without turning his back on it,
1464
01:17:35,985 --> 01:17:37,695
whether it comes from the press
1465
01:17:37,695 --> 01:17:40,656
or from poor Truman Capote.
1466
01:17:40,656 --> 01:17:45,494
God rest his tortured soul in heaven or on earth.
1467
01:17:45,494 --> 01:17:48,539
Please observe that I said, "God rest his soul
1468
01:17:48,539 --> 01:17:50,916
either in heaven or earth."
1469
01:17:50,916 --> 01:17:53,794
There was no mention of inferno.
1470
01:17:53,794 --> 01:17:56,213
He is an artist.
1471
01:18:00,885 --> 01:18:06,265
All writing, all art, is an act of faith.
1472
01:18:06,265 --> 01:18:08,893
Any work of art, provided it springs
1473
01:18:08,893 --> 01:18:10,895
from a sincere motivation
1474
01:18:10,895 --> 01:18:14,023
to further understanding between people,
1475
01:18:14,023 --> 01:18:16,191
is an act of faith,
1476
01:18:16,191 --> 01:18:19,445
and therefore, is an act of love.
1477
01:18:24,909 --> 01:18:28,662
What is it like being a writer?
1478
01:18:28,662 --> 01:18:34,126
I would say it is like being free.
1479
01:18:34,126 --> 01:18:38,672
It means to be a voyager here and there,
1480
01:18:38,672 --> 01:18:41,050
sad or happy,
1481
01:18:41,050 --> 01:18:44,345
without much regret.
1482
01:18:44,345 --> 01:18:48,766
It means the freedom of being.
1483
01:18:48,766 --> 01:18:52,561
As someone has wisely observed,
1484
01:18:52,561 --> 01:18:55,272
if you can’t be yourself,
1485
01:18:55,272 --> 01:18:59,443
what’s the point of being anything at all?
1486
01:18:59,443 --> 01:19:01,862
(soft dramatic music)
1487
01:19:43,696 --> 01:19:46,448
(soft piano music)
1488
01:21:25,589 --> 01:21:28,592
(lively string music)
1489
01:25:31,877 --> 01:25:33,045
(music ends)
102756
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