‘The Capote Tapes’ Film Review: Truman Capote’s Friends and Frenemies Speak for Themselves in New Doc

George Plimpton’s recordings for his bio of Capote made it into print, but the film shows that hearing people speak packs more punch than reading them being quoted

The Capote Tapes
Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos

“The Capote Tapes” is similar to the recent documentary “Billie,” in that it makes use of extensive audio recordings with people who knew the film’s subject — in this case the tapes that George Plimpton recorded for his oral biography of Truman Capote, which was published in 1997.

“Billie” used tapes that the writer Linda Kuehl made for a biography she planned to write of Billie Holiday, and the Kuehl tapes have been the basis of several books about Holiday, but this Holiday material was always quoted selectively and subjectively; the Plimpton interviews on Capote, by contrast, make up the entirety of his book, so it would seem to make less sense to do a movie based on these particular tapes.

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