(Capote) got everything he wanted. He got absolutely everything he wanted, and in so doing, he destroyed himself.

Unlike most films, it examines a side of a person's life that's hidden, and I think there's a lot of people who carry around a fair amount of darkness and keep it private for a lifetime. The film is about a very public figure and his very private tragedy.

We decided to do something completely different. Writing is the loneliest job in the world. I wanted to capture that solitude. Writers spend a lot of time alone in a room just typing away, and this is the first movie to really show how a writer works.

He was the only choice. He was going to do it or we weren't going to do it. I've known Phil for 21 years now, and I feel I know him inside and out, and other than him being an incredible actor, a shaman-like actor, I will say that everything in this movie that gets revealed through this character are things that Phil knows.

Capote was an enormously and dangerously ambitious, talented, conflicted guy who really concealed himself from the public. He was at once a very public figure and a very private figure. And this is a movie that sort of peels back the public mask and gets into the heart of darkness.

On the surface it's this elaborate story of a writer doing all sorts of things to complete his masterpiece. But nobody, and to some degree not even he himself, really understands the course he's on and what he is going through. He wanted fame so badly he was oblivious to what he was trampling on to get it.