Capote and Cash

I saw both of these biographical films this past week.

A lot of folks claim to be a friend of Johnny Cash -- he was a man of the dispossessed after all. I sat on my dad's lap at one of his concerts when I was about four in Memorial Coliseum. When I went to Memphis I skipped Graceland in favor of Sun Records. (Dallas Roberts, a friendly acquaintance of mine, plays Sam Phillips in Walk the Line.) My wife is due to have our third child in the next few weeks. If it's a girl, she's to be called June.

I devoured In Cold Blood when I stumbled upon in it at the Goodwill for fifty cents sometime in the 80s. I knew of Truman Capote from my obsession with Warhol's Factory and my hipster's reverence for Breakfast at Tiffany's. If our child is a boy, he's not going to be called Truman. (Dashiell is the boy name on deck.)

I'm a sucker for both the bucolic gunslinger and the urbane sophisticate, having spent my years oscillating between the trappings of the preppy and the outlaw.

There really is no comparison of these two bio-pics. Walk the Line is all too embracing of the genre's conventions while Capote masterfully charts new territory, easily escaping genre classification altogether. Phil Hoffman both brought Truman Capote to life as well as told his story. Joaquin Phoenix was able to act only the physical life and voice of Johnny Cash. When telling the story of the Man in Black's inner life he was limited to a brooding stare and the conjuring of one mood after another.
Still, I don't care to see Capote again anytime soon in spite of its merits. But I've been singing Walk the Line all week long and thinking seriously of dropping another nine bucks on the inferior film.

A River Dertch,
Signore Direttore