That Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor is not in dispute. It is no surprise that he nails the title role of "Capote," easily carrying the movie. "Bergdorf Goodman," he shrugs, as a Kansas murder investigator (Chris Cooper) looks askance at his flawlessly draped cashmere scarf. Moments like that are sure to put Hoffman in play for a best actor Oscar.

In "Capote," which was the smash discovery at the Telluride Film Festival on Labor Day weekend and likely will find approval at the Toronto International Film Festival this coming week, Hoffman inhabits Truman Capote, an Alabaman-turned-effete New Yorker. The 35-year-old writer is on assignment in bleak Holcomb, Kan., to learn everything he can about the grisly Clutter family murders. He's accompanied by his childhood friend, open-faced researcher Nelle Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who would publish 1960's Pulitzer Prize-winning "To Kill a Mockingbird" the next year. Over five years, Capote intermittently reports on the accused killers, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino), who wind up on death row. He tries to help them at first, but as the years dribble on, he guiltily wants them to die so that he can finish his masterwork, 1966's "In Cold Blood."

Over the course of the movie, Capote's simpering mannerisms can be off-putting, but looking deeper into the man also is rewarding. "Capote" takes the time to peel away the author's outer layers and give us a glimpse at the murky depths within.

One might expect it would require an experienced filmmaker to pull off such a feat. So just who are screenwriter Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller? Both are 38, friends since middle school in Mamaroneck, N.Y. "Capote" is Futterman's first produced screenplay. He's better known as an actor: He played Robin Williams' straight son in "The Birdcage," starred in the little-seen Sundance Film Festival flick "Urbania" and guest-starred on "Judging Amy," "Will & Grace" and "Sex and the City."

Futterman first showed his old pal Miller an outline and then kicked out a long screenplay. He had been fascinated by the relationship of journalist and subject ever since he read Janet Malcolm's "The Journalist and the Murderer." "There's something inherently dishonest in the transaction," he says. "Both people agree to it. Although Truman's relationship with Perry Smith is genuinely caring, his interest is also mercenary. You get the purity of emotion corrupted by ambition. He wanted something that changed his life. It's a cautionary tale."

Miller had always wanted to be a filmmaker, but after years of kicking around the New York production scene, he was on the verge of giving up. As a last gasp, he threw everything he had into a one-man digital documentary, "The Cruise." The sumptuous black-and-white film, shot on mini-DV, was a love affair between Manhattan and double-decker tour guide Timothy "Speed" Levitch, an eloquent eccentric who also was in love with Miller's camera. When the documentary scored with audiences in 1998 at the Berlin and Los Angeles Independent film festivals, Artisan Entertainment picked it up. (The DVD comes out in January.)

"I took an unflinching but compassionate look at a struggling human person," Miller said, sitting at a sunny Telluride cafe earlier this week. Which helps to explain why Miller was drawn to Futterman's "Capote." As Miller was giving him notes, Futterman coaxed him into "attaching" himself to the project and seeing what would happen. "Both films are portraits of real outsiders who both have really odd voices," Miller says. "Both have a hypersensitive approach to scrutinizing their subject. So people can identify with them."

"The Cruise" had pushed Miller into a new zone: He landed an Endeavor agent and became a hot commercial director, in demand by the likes of Dell Computer, Lincoln Navigator and General Mills. By shooting 204 commercials, he swiftly acquired all sorts of skills. But Miller had never made a Hollywood feature. Many film prospects came his way, but "I passed and passed," he says.

Futterman's "Capote" script awakened "something inside me that had been searching and waiting," Miller says. "I was crouched and poised and ready to grab it. I was fascinated by this very public person with immensely private ambition. It's about wanting something so badly that it disturbs your reason; the notion that the people in this world who get everything they want invariably are the most miserable. I'm interested in what people hide and don't present. Inside, he's something that no one understands."

Since his brief stint studying theater at New York University, Miller had stayed friendly with the one actor that he and Futterman wanted to play their lead: Hoffman. "When we talked about getting the script to Phil," Futterman recalls, "we thought we'd better get the rights to something. I had reread 'In Cold Blood.' I realized that I had also relied on Gerald Clarke's (1998) biography; two chapters deal with this part of (Capote's) life. This was the turning point, when he achieves everything he ever wanted, and it was the beginning of his end." Futterman contacted Clarke and pitched him his script "in excruciating detail" at his Southampton, N.Y., home. Clarke granted him the option.

As soon as Hoffman read the screenplay, he called Miller back. He liked it. The three men sat down to hammer out the details of what they were going to try to do. Miller says that Futterman's original script survives fairly intact. Futterman still feels the pain of much that was left on the cutting-room floor.

Backed by indie producer Infinity ("Saved") and United Artists, the movie went forward, filming in Manitoba and finishing just before UA was sold to Sony as part of Sony's acquisition of UA parent, MGM. With a little extra editing time, the filmmakers were able to show the polished cut to Sony Pictures Classics, which snapped it up.

Miller describes himself "as less of a storyteller than a voyeur. Every shot is meant to sensitize the viewer. The movie says, 'slow down, listen carefully, pay close attention.' " After 2 1/2 months of rehearsal, Miller shot the film in widescreen to contrast the claustrophobic prison cell with the wide, barren Kansas landscapes. He relied, he says, on Hoffman's ability to reveal the writer's inner decline, to communicate the layers of the character.

The film puts Hoffman under a microscope. "I was drawn to the part because it shows Capote before he became a fool," Hoffman says. "It's a difficult line to walk. He starts the journey not knowing what is going to happen. It's a classic tragedy that has to unfold. I don't think he's aware of it. Something gets sparked and sets his imagination flying. He goes where it takes him. He needs to finish. He knows he will be a huge success. In the fourth and fifth year, he starts to want the two men dead. I didn't crucify him in my mind."

As easy as Hoffman makes his impersonation of Capote look, during filming it was not. "At moments I felt it went well," he admits. "Certain moments feel effortless. A few weeks after we finished shooting, I felt we did well and got excited."

Even the low-key Miller is thrilled with the results. "The movie is like a neutron bomb," he says. "It doesn't make a lot of noise, not a big blast or explosion, but in the end it leaves total destruction. People walk out with that 1,000-yard gaze."

Anne Thompson can be reached at athompson@hollywoodreporter.com.