Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams —writers, celebrities, geniuses —catapulted to fame in the 1950s, sparking a friendship and rivalry spanning nearly 40 years until their deaths within a year of each other. Inextricably entwined, and fixtures of their age, they were creative powerhouses (and gay men) who dealt with success and its evanescence in vastly different ways. In Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation, filmmakerLisa Immordino Vreeland (Love, Cecil, Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel) brings the two forces together in a unique and fascinating tête-à-tête, comparing and contrasting their trajectories through dueling voices —the writers’ own, culled from archival footage, and the voices of actors Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto, and film clips of their most memorable movie adaptations: A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and In Cold Blood. Both created rich worlds and characters (Blanche DuBois, Holly Golightly) that left indelible marks on the era —and both paid the price of colossal success and fame through alcoholism and periods of artistic stagnation. Immordino Vreeland, whose growing body of work examines the working lives and social impact of 20th-century creative visionaries, adds two more remarkable subjects to her oeuvre, tumultuous compatriots who electrified the culture with words steeped in the nascent forces that shaped them. USA, 2020, 81 minutes, documentary
TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE ON THURSDAY. When you purchase your ticket you will have 5 days to start viewing the film.
Join the discussion on Monday, June 28 at 7:00 PM with Nick Norwood, director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, and Karen Clark, a board member of River River Writers Circle, moderated by writer and filmmaker Juliana Roth. Register for the discussion HERE.
Community Partners: The Carson McCullers House and Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, Nyack Library , Rockland County Pride Center, and River River Writers Circle.
“CAPTIVATING. A stirring visual tapestry. A wonderfully evocative time capsule and a candid tribute to a pair of artistic legends. This beautifully constructed documentary vividly recounts the often analogous lives of two of the 20th century’s most notable writers. A treasure trove of archival material… and fine work from Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto… (brings) us back to a singular time in American culture and literary creation.” – Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
“A fascinating portrait that astutely uses their decades-long, sometimes rocky friendship to shed light on their respective personas… makes one not only nostalgic for its subjects, both of them gay trailblazers who revolutionized American writing in very different ways, but also for a vanished time in which in-depth, revelatory conversations were a feature of the talk show landscape… succeeds beautifully in providing a revealing look at their troubled psyches.” – Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
“Two of the most engaging and beguiling talkers – and, oh yes, two of the better writers – of the last century…make for easy and natural stablemates in Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s sympathetic and nicely shaped documentary, which takes their great talents as a given and happily refuses to sensationalize their struggles…makes both men vividly present.” – Todd McCarthy, Deadline
