Review: Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Masquerade 1966
It was inevitable that any TV miniseries about Truman Capote’s love/hate relationship with high society would end up covering the Black and White Ball. Sure, this season of Feud is focused primarily on what happened with Capote and his rich lady friends after Esquire’s publication of his scandalous short story “La Côte Basque.” But it’s impossible to understand how Capote’s life started to fall apart in 1976 without reliving 1966.
In 1966, after the publication of In Cold Blood, Capote decided to throw a big party at the Plaza Hotel, with a guest list featuring a who’s-who of mid-‘60s high society and popular culture. The event was publicized as a salute to Katharine Graham (played here by Marin Ireland), the Washington Post publisher who’d assumed control of one of the world’s most important newspapers in 1963 after her husband Philip killed himself. But no one had any illusions that it was anything other than a celebration of Capote himself, reveling in his power to make famous folks jump when he called.
Accounts differ on whether the Black and White Ball was a rousing success or a bit of a bore. (For those looking for links: this New York Times review of a book about the event suggests the former, while this Esquire oral history is more nuanced.) Either way, the tale of that night is a rich and complicated one to tell; and Feud’s screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz and director Gus Van Sant have come up with a clever way to tell it. They’ve conceived “Masquerade 1966” as a lost documentary by the legendary Albert and David Maysles, who (in the world of this show) have been commissioned by Capote to capture “a story that’s never been told,” about the pain beneath the facades of the fabulous.
So tell me: How did the Feud crew screw up a seemingly can’t-miss concept like this so very, very badly?
I’ll be blunt: “Masquerade 1966” is one of the worst TV episodes I’ve seen in many years… and I watch a lot of TV. It’s awful in ways that less ambitious, less expensive shows could never be, so at least there’s that. But those cheaper, cornier shows are sometimes bad in ways that are a little bit fun. There’s no fun in this Feud. It’s a miserable hour spent with miserable people; and despite some clever formal play and strong performances, it’s almost completely devoid of insight. It’s so doggedly committed to “truth-telling” that almost every second feels fake.
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