“Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” Is a Simulacrum of a Scandal

In the 2021 book “Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era,” Laurence Leamer theorizes that it was a combination of style, beauty, wealth, and woe that drew the author to his female friends. The playwright Jon Robin Baitz, who adapted Leamer’s work for the series alongside the director Gus Van Sant, offers another possibility: Capote’s unconscious loathing for silk-stockinged snobs like Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), and C. Z. Guest (Chloë Sevigny) stems from the knowledge that they would never have countenanced a brassy striver like his own mother (Jessica Lange), who died by suicide years prior. Lange’s performance as a spiteful ghost urging her son to join her in Hell would feel more at home in another tragi-camp Ryan Murphy offering: “American Horror Story.”