asteroids or bugs, it tossed up Capote and McGrath's charm, his friendship with writer Harper Lee, the intense finishing another novel after their execution.

first matters, McGrath, the urbane director of Emma and Nicholas Nickleby, was beaten to the punch.
Keener, was released to acclaim in late 2005. Hoffman won every for four other Oscars including best picture.

Sandra Bullock, was held back to let the dust settle. When it was eventually released in the US last year, it flopped.
McGrath first became aware of the rival projects in 2003.

At the time, Capote had Hoffman attached but no finance; division but no lead. Capote eventually shot a few months McGrath, on the phone from New York, is now philosophical about the competition between the two films.
"I do take the long view," he says.

"I know it's not heart surgery. Though it complicated our release, I must say quite to tell the story for a long time.
"It wasn't just that I was hired to write a bio-pic, that it was just a job.

I had a different point of view that I felt, well, passionately about. So the key for me was to get it told."
Babe Paley, Isabella Rossellini as Marella Agnelli, Juliet Stevenson as Diana Vreeland, Peter Bogdanovich as Bennett Cerf and Gwyneth Paltrow as singer Kitty Dean.

But that didn't help when it my film," McGrath says. "Then when people see it, they entirely appreciate that it's not the same film at all.
central, which was his humour.

Not only was it a part of him but it was an essential, protective part of him. It was how he made his way in society."
Intrinsic to the story of Capote's spectacular rise and fall, McGrath believes, was his standing as a court jester and confidant to the spoiled world of Manhattan high society.

That makes takes a darker turn.
In McGrath's version, Capote and Smith become lovers.
"For me, the story was always a tragedy," McGrath says.

"The film is what went wrong with Capote's life. Up until then, in his adult life, it was all a pretty steady series of successes with a like seven books in 12 years - books of very high quality."
apart.

McGrath believes the most likely explanation was that the writer and his subject became lovers - just once - in jail. Their "It is very telling to me that he could not stay for that hanging," McGrath says.
had known Capote would be so successful?

"It wouldn't be my wish to come second," McGrath says, "but I would still want to have told my story.