With friends like these...who needs enemies?

I like Ryan Murphy’s work, it’s intelligent and there’s always a fine line between what’s fiction and non-fiction and that glossy veneer makes him an excellent storyteller. 

I also admire both Chloe Sevigny for being an “It girl” and Diane Lane.  Both actresses are natural in their acting style.

So when I saw a title card that a certain coterie of New York socialites were in “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” that was an instant hook.  Indeed, there are parallels to be drawn between these women and present-day Housewives.  Despite generation-spanning groups of appearance-obsessed, gossiping, and status-conscious women, the Swans portrayed in Ryan Murphy’s meandering but always watchable series, I found the ladies who lunch of the 1960s and 1970s more frightening and cunning than any collection of Real Housewives present day.

You do not want to cross these women — they may seem docile on the surface but they yield quite cunning power.  Something Truman Capote learned to heartbreaking and lasting effect when in 1975 he published a thinly disguised exposé cloaked as a short story in Esquire magazine titled, “La Côte Basque, 1965.” Frozen out by the Swans, as he dubbed them, Capote spent much of his last decade in a haze of drugs and alcohol, unable to finish his near-mythical novel “Answered Prayers,” reduced to a slurring parody of himself writing only sporadically. In 1984, at the home of his perhaps only remaining friend Joanne Carson, the ex-wife of Johnny Carson, having never reconciled with the Swans.

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Oscar for the 2005 biopic “Capote,” the bar has been set as high as possible for anyone slipping into Capote’s trademark look and distinctive vocal and physical mannerisms. But Tom Hollander captures the author at his most magnetic, clever, and interesting — and also at his absolute worst when he bathes himself in narcissism, is frequently cold and cruel, and seems incapable of loyalty.

Whereas Hoffman portrays the young Capote and his work on “In Cold Blood” in the late 1950s and 1960s, “Feud” is set in the aftermath of Capote’s raging success, with Truman finding any excuse not to write as he devotes most of his time and effort into cultivating his celebrity and ingratiating himself into New York’s high society so he could have a place at their table.

And what a group of iconic actresses play the Swans, each doing fine work as they slide into immovable helmet hairstyles and impeccable fashions of these real-life figures. Naomi Watts is arguably the standout as Barbara “Babe” Paley, who was Capote’s favorite Swan. Married to the powerful William Paley, the head of CBS, Babe could tolerate her husband’s serial philandering but never forgave Truman’s betrayal of her. The same goes for Diane Lane’s Slim Keith and Calista Flockhart’s Lee Radziwill. And Chloe Sevigny’s C.Z. Guest is portrayed as being more sympathetic to Truman, while Molly Ringwald, as Joanne Carson is far removed from the Swans in California, remained in his life to the end.

Then there’s the tragic Ann Woodward played by Demi Moore, who was never an insider with the Swans and became a social pariah as Capote kept perpetuating the rumor that she had intentionally shot and killed her husband, though a grand jury had ruled the death accidental. Knowing the Esquire piece was about to run and that she would be implicated once again, Ann killed herself.

A tragic shooting. A suicide. Extramarital affairs all around. Alcoholism. Betrayal. Truman’s tumultuous and often horrific relationship with the abusive John O’Shea.  Heavy stuff to be sure, but the series also captures the magic bubble of New York society in the 1960s and 1970s. No mention of The Vietnam War, civil rights protests, Nixon and Watergate — all of which were taking place but the Swans oblivious to it all were stuck in a kind of upper crust time warp.

Feud: Capote vs. The Swans is inspired by true events but takes great liberties with real-life characters and situations. You cannot watch this and feel that Capote was a character; superficial, an opportunist, a gossip, a malicious little man who was only capable of betrayal. And with a 'friend' like him, who needs enemies? As you watch you'll enter a kind of alternative-universe representation of some fascinating, mostly unlikable personalities, it’s hard for us to look away, even though we realize we are bearing witness to some high-profile human frailties.