In the week's New Yorker, John Seabrook reports on the not so odd occurrence of when two films about the same subject go into production at the same time, such as "Valmont" and "Dangerous Liaisons," "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano" and "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon." Even stranger is how two films about Truman Capote's life while working on "In Cold Blood" could coincide:

In the summer of 2003, after two years of research and writing, Douglas McGrath finished "Infamous," his screenplay based o the life of Truman Capote. As he had promise to do, he called his friend Bingham Ray, who was the executive on his last film, "Nicholas Nickleby."

"Good news," said McGrath, who also co-wrote "Bullets Over Broadway" with Woody Allen, and adapted and directed "Emma." "I finished my script!"

"I know," Ray said. "I've got it on my desk!"

"And I paused," McGrath recalled the other day, over lunch at La Grenouille, "and I said, 'Uh, no you don't, because I have it on my desk.'"

"No, it's right here," Ray insisted. "'Capote,' by Dan--" There followed, McGrath said, "what is known in the Wasp community as a polite pause."

[Photo montage by Eugene Hernandez]