Infamous: Fictionalized Account of Truman Capote's Writing of In Cold Blood

Strange collisions of truth and fiction occur in this fictionalized story of Truman Capote's greatest novelistic endeavor, the writing of In Cold Blood.  The movie is Infamous. Capote tells lies to and breaks confidences from his friends. He professes to one set that his book is his consuming motivation and to another set that compassion for the people in the book is his motivation. As one viewer was overheard to say about Truman in Infamous, "He tells a lot of lies to a lot of people. I don't know which view of him to trust."

Infamous is a partially fictionalized account of Truman Capote's research and writing of In Cold Blood, a book that made a sensation because of the gruesome tale and the manner in which the tale was told. Capote turned standard reportage (reporting) into drama by incorporating elements of literature into a factual account. An example from Infamous was the way Truman turned the statement, "right at the end, I thought he's a nice man" into the literary phrase "right up until the end, I thought he was a nice, soft spoken gentleman." Not only is the language changed, but actually the entire concept is changed since "right at the end" describes an event at a precise moment in time, but "right up until the end" describes an event covering and extended span of time.