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Catherine Keener’s Performance in Capote: Sandra Bullock and Keener both play Harper Lee in films based on Capote’s life, and Bullock has nothing but praise for Keener’s performance and talent. “I think Catherine is fantastic. It was never brought up before we started doing press. Catherine and I laugh about it. We both knew we were making the films and we were both excited about our roles in it because they were so different - written so differently. I think the same with the Truman role, and I think the perspectives of the films are very different in how they are approached. I’ve said it many times, you could do five more films on this time and people’s understandings or feelings about what happened during this time and you’d have five completely different films. I’ve known Catherine for a while. She could read the phone book and make it spectacular.”
Infamous Takes a Different Approach to Truman Capote’s Life: “…The way this is approached is an outsider point of view of Truman’s life and what happened in this situation. There are so many facets to this series of events that even counteract Capote and Infamous that I later found out from people in the law enforcement business who were a part of these whole events who said, ‘Oh, that’s what they wrote, but my uncle was there and this what he said happened.’
I love the aspect of approaching an event from different points of view. The whole joke with Truman Capote was every joke is true. I mean, how much did he add to make the story what he wanted it to be and how much is true? And that’s what I find so fascinating about this. It’s the other people’s points of view. I think Doug [McGrath] wrote an extraordinary story.”
Working with Toby Jones: Bullock believes she never met the real Toby. “We had so little time on the film that I met him as Truman, he met me as Nell and we had this [relationship]. [There was] so little time. There was no downtime. There wasn’t any ‘going out to get drinks’ time. There was so little [time] we had to stay [in character] and bond that way. Getting back from us to our characters was a little bit of an effort, so we pretty much stayed in those places.”
Bullock added, “I liked him as Truman; we got along really well. There was a great love there and it naturally happened. You know, I said this could make a beautiful love story, just their story and how long they have known each other – since they were babies in Monroeville. I think he was in kindergarten when she first met him. Dill, the character in To Kill A Mockingbird, it has to be based on him.”
How was acting opposite Jones as Capote? Bullock answered, “He was who he was. You don’t think of it as anyone other than the person that you’re opposite. I didn’t go, ‘Here’s someone imitating.’ When you are acting in a role, you react to them with the history that you know between these two people. How long they have known each other? What is their relationship? You go from there. You don’t think outside like that. You are just in the moment.”
The Makeup Process: Bullock says the makeup process was no less involved with this film than it was for most other projects. “There are certain things you want to accent and with lighting and with highlighting or shading or changing your body, and getting to the point where I could get as close as I could get to Nell and the things that her face did and get my body to do, it’s not always easy. Less is always harder than spackling on more. You know, like Spackle. It’s harder to make it look natural and distressed over the years, rather than painting a brand new clean wall.”
Up Next – Premonition: Bill Kelly's script caught Bullock’s attention and that’s why she signed on to work on the low-budget film shot in the middle of Shreveport, Louisiana. “I’ve always wanted to do sort of a Hitchcockian thriller, scary film, that doesn’t rely on things sliding out of the woodwork, but it’s hard to shoot. But just the script… You don’t read scripts like that and it came at a time when I just said, ‘I always wanted to do a script that had some meaning,’ because Hitchcock always had incredible meaning behind his thrillers. So that came along, and it was tough shoot. It was one of the hardest shoots I’ve ever had - and cramming a lot. Three months of shooting into two months, long days and difficult shooting circumstances. But, you know, that’s the fun of it. Will it work? Will it not work? You always do these kinds of films and you don’t know. But you don’t even know that with big studio films. And then it was picked up domestically by Sony.”
Fortunately Bullock only had to wear one hat on Premonition. She stuck to acting and did not work as a producer on the film. “I would have killed myself. Literally, I was just two steps away from, ‘Just give me the gun. I’ll just end it right now and give everyone an insurance day.’ I couldn’t have done that. That was a tricky one.”
