WHOOP THAT TRICK AND THEN WRITE THAT NOVEL!: Capote + Hustle & Flow (2005)

Do we really like our friends, or are they just useful? Not just in some lame, soap opera way, like advancing our careers, but do we only use them because they make us feel good about ourselves and serve as mirrors for the exploration of our own personalities? Bennett Miller’s spare and quiet film “Capote” examines this question by using the life of that great American novelist and wit Truman Capote. As played by the great supporting player-about-to-turn-star Philip Seymour Hoffman, he seems to have no interest in others except as a way to examine himself. We all do this, to some extent, but when you have as much personality as Truman Capote, it must be especially tempting.

The movie follows Capote as he researches and writes his final novel, “In Cold Blood,” based on the real-life murder of a Kansas family of four. He interviews the killers, sees the crime scene, looks at the photos, meets the investigators, etc. Yet audiences hoping for a crime story won’t get what they are expecting; all these things exist in a kind of blur eclipsed by Capote himself. We catch glimpses, but most of the time Capote is only using these events as a way of examining Capote. Several shots of the killers do not even seem to be in focus and Capote seldom shares the frame with anyone. One notable exception finds him standing over a sick convict, in an unmistakable position of power.

Capote lets a few people in, if not consistently, than at least intermittently. His live-in Jack (Bruce Greenwood of “Nowhere Man”) spends the first half of the film on the other end of a telephone. Fellow novelist, fellow Dixie expatriate and close friend Harper Lee (thinking man’s hottie Catherine Keener) accompanies him on his quest to Kansas. When her “To Kill a Mockingbird” is published Capote is only politely interested. When they attend the screening of the film adaptation starring Gregory Peck he is so distant that we don’t get a single glimpse of the film. Capote is only really at home in smoky New York rooms, listening to socialites and bohemians laughing at his jokes while he swirls a gin-and-tonic.

Despite the hours he spends with the killers, especially small, sensitive Perry Smith (Colin Clifton, Jr.), we’re never quite sure if Capote comes to see them as people. He is close with the quiet, limping, and effeminate Smith, but, again, is this only self-examination? Is Smith only a mirror? Both Jack and Harper see through Capote but, like so many men of huge and insecure personalities, he is evasive. Even the chief investigator (the indispensable Chris Cooper), who comes the closest to confronting Capote, is somehow unable to get a good hold of him.

The movie also considers “In Cold Blood” to be an important stepping stone in the sensationalizing of true crime stories. The “non-fiction novel” is still a subversive genre and the grand-daddy of “info-tainment.” We want facts, but we want them in the breezy, palpable style of lies. It’s not enough that fictional characters suffer; we can only enjoy the suffering of real people. The non-fiction novel is, in a way, an attack at art, catering to those dunces who come out of movies complaining about historical inaccuracies. It’s also fitting that “Capote” itself is a form of non-fiction novel.

The dark side of personality is embodied by the two killers, who seem to have killed because of a vacancy between their ears. They’re not stupid, just a little blank, without more than a trait or two apiece. “Capote” struck me because I’ve often feared that I have it in me to be a real user of people, to be indifferent to their personal problems when there’s something I need from them. It’s convenient that I saw this film and “Hustle & Flow” within a few days of each other; both movies are about users of other people, one a novelist and the other a pimp.

The overall arc of “Hustle & Flow” is, if not fake, then at least stock, with the schmoozing of the master rapper in the third act replacing the Battle of the Bands or the big audition. The ending is pure fairy tale; you can’t get stuff on FM radio just by going down to the station, unless you happen to live in Atlanta and the station is Clear Channel Headquarters. Or unless you live in 1962.

But “Hustle & Flow” is a sincere film, and the details are where it shines. Like “Walk the Line” from the same year, it expends an incredible amount of energy and momentum on the work that goes into popular music. We watch our aspiring rapper scribbling lyrics in his notepad, rehearsing them, revising them, bouncing them off his friends, sometimes constructively but just as often destructively. We also watch the rapper’s studio being assembled—all the plugs, power outlets, lines, wires, and styrofoam on the walls—and focus on machinery and microphones. In miniature, stretches of “Hustle & Flow” fascinate us in the same way as “Blow Up” or “The Conversation:” we sit back and watch skilled men knowledgeable of their equipment go about their work.

“Hustle & Flow” uses a classic formula, in which we see the lot of the struggling artist, and then have a better understanding of the art that springs from it. It follows two men who can’t stand how they are dependent on women, so they write rap songs about slapping hoes, tricks, and bitches. Djay (Terence Howard) is a pimp, surrounded by women who work much harder at much more degrading work than he does, yet all he can do is think “woe is me.” To the movie’s credit, he is reprehensible from beginning to end, and never quite learns his lesson. He is a pimp in the truest sense of the world, seeing people only as useful to himself.

Djay is helped in his attempts to rise from the Memphis ‘hood by his old school chum Clyde (Anthony Anderson). Clyde may not be a pimp living with a stable of dirty, irritable prostitutes, but he resents that he owes his middle-class existence to his hard-working wife. In the course of “Hustle & Flow,” he will learn a lot of bad habits from his old friend Djay, because the pimp puts on a good show of being in charge of women. Both men are in awe of Skinny Black (played by real-life rapper Ludacris), a rap star who has risen from Memphis and left it in his rearview mirror. Djay claims to know Skinny from “back in the day,” but we’re never quite sure.

Skinny is presented as existing in an all-male universe of money and drugs, with women who may be hoes, but are someone else’s hoes, and not his problem once he’s done nuttin’. (It is pointed out that Skinny cut his first tape in his mother’s laundry room, but Djay and Clyde admire him because he seems to have risen above female clutches.) At times Skinny is a true artist and at others he is an immense phony. In the same way “Hustle & Flow” doesn’t pass judgment on Djay, it doesn’t pass judgment on Skinny Black either. The movie does give Skinny Black the opportunity to greet an old friend with a huge litany of racist, sexist, xenophobic, pornographic, and homophobic obscenities so beautifully vulgar that it almost brought tears to my eyes. It’s as gorgeous as anything in “Sexy Beast.” It ought to be on IMDb, but it isn’t, simply because it’s too long for any mere mortal to catch it all.

Terence Howard (“Crash”) is in every scene and gives a star-making performance as a tough man with soft eyes, who dreads the slightest display of weakness. Often next to him is the perfect ho (Taryn Manning), a dread-locked girl who would be attractive if she were cleaner, heavier, and not so skenky. If you like rap music, you’ll like “Hustle & Flow.” If you don’t, you’ll at least understand the sincerity and where it’s coming from, and you’ll mourn how Djay is too self-obsessed to do anything but cover his weaknesses with boasts and swagger. It’s not the most original movie in the world, but, with its ‘70s exploitation styling and slick MTV production, it’s certainly one of the coolest.