The movies and writers have a long and tortured relationship (and by movies I include TV dramas and mini-series). The figure of a solitary artist struggling against loneliness and despair in the form of a bottle, pills, or a needle is irresistible for the makers of moving pictures. The ambitions are endless but the achievements in the genre are very much finite. The FX series Capote vs the Swans  is the latest in a long uneven line of projects that make the writer a stand-in for everyone's "struggle." It must be something about their aloneness that appeals to dramatists, but they rarely get it right. In fairness it's hard to depict the inner life of somebody, which is essentially all writing is - the interior made exterior on the page. But that's dull as hell to show without resorting to cliches and gimmicks. Usually (always?) the subject is a lone genius type who can't live in the world when they're not writing and resorts to getting plastered in one form or another. Often they have had a great triumph in their past and now they just can't recreate the old magic. In their descent they pull down everyone they love while making an ass of themselves  as they stare bleary-eyed at former friends or spouses who look back at them with wounded disappointment. One of the first to tread this now well-trodden path was The Lost Weekend, Billy Wilder's 1945 film that showed the utter terror that a blank page could induce in a writer. If that void could not be filled with words then gin would have to do. That film came by its sentiment honestly. Few have since. This Truman Capote feels real thanks to Tom Hollander's performance, but we don't get a clear sense of what his gift is and why the loss is so tragic. For that we would need to get inside the character's head.  And the best way to do that would be in a book.