Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation—a biographical duet devoted to the bat-squeaky novelist-journalist Truman Capote and the drawling playwright Tennessee Williams—isn’t that intimate and is scarcely a conversation, but don’t let that thwart you. Woven from talk-show clips, home movies, still photos, and voice-over readings by Jim Parsons (as Truman) and Zachary Quinto (as ol’ Tenn), this evocative documentary tracks the parallel climbs and sputtering declines of two of the most glorious peacocks of postwar American culture. Both writers were Southern, queer, eccentric, saucily witty, gothic-minded, cavalier-seeming (yet tough at the core), and, in later years, bludgeoned with bad reviews, addled by drugs and alcohol, and regarded as relics of their former selves. But look what they left us: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood (Capote); A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the screenplay for Baby Doll, and so much more (Williams). Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, the unspoken message of Truman & Tennessee is that we ought to be kinder to our geniuses while they’re still around, and appreciate the gifts they’ve given. —James Wolcott