TORONTO -- At least director Douglas McGrath still has his sense of humor.

	Above: Toby Jones plays Capote in the new release, "Infamous." Below: Philip Seymour Hoffman in the fall 2005 release of "Capote." Click photos for larger image.

He may have found the perfect Truman Capote in Toby Jones, whose performance is even more astonishing than Academy Award-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman's, but he's late to the party.

"Capote" arrived in October 2005, and Hoffman was crowned Best Actor in March, while McGrath's "Infamous" opens today (still in plenty of time for the next round of huzzahs). In a letter to critics, the writer-director addressed the timing, which might not be terrible but certainly isn't ideal.

"Who knew that Dan Futterman, the gifted screenwriter of 'Capote,' and I would be in the same predicament as those people who made the competing asteroid-hitting-the-Earth movies?'" he writes.

Both Capote screenplays circulated in summer 2003, and McGrath even recalls phoning someone to say he wanted to send his script, only to hear, "I'm looking at it right now: 'Capote' by Dan ..." followed by an uncomfortable silence.

"We made a deal early on with Warner Independent to make the movie. We had our money but no Truman. The 'Capote' team had their Truman but no money," McGrath writes. "They got their money and started shooting in the fall of 2004; we found our Truman and started shooting a few months later."

Listen In: Hear excerpts from Toby Jones's conversation with the PG's Barbara Vancheri: On capturing Truman Capote's speaking voice On researching Capote's character On why Capote sounded the way he did

Warner Independent wanted to put a little breathing space between the two, being released a year apart. That's a bigger gap than "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" -- killer comet, advancing asteroid -- enjoyed, or "Tombstone" and "Wyatt Earp."

"Infamous" finally started to emerge from the shadow of "Capote" at the Venice Film Festival in late August.

"We had the most magical time in Venice," Jones said during the Toronto International Film Festival, where the movie also was showcased. "We got this ovation there. It was so great for us because for a long time, it's just been being called 'the other film,' and suddenly it felt like we'd arrived."

Stuart Ramson, Associated Press Actor Toby Jones Click photo for larger image.

Jones, a 39-year-old British actor, hasn't seen "Capote."

"I couldn't have seen it before I started. They'd only just wrapped and we started and then, subsequently, I haven't seen it because I knew I'd have to do this huge publicity for our film. But, as I always say, I don't need to see it. [Hoffman's] a great actor."

Jones' recent credits include HBO's "Elizabeth I," "Ladies in Lavender," "Finding Neverland" and the voice of Dobby the house elf in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," but he is better known to theater audiences. He acted, directed and taught at the National Theatre Studio and won an Olivier Award (London's Tony) for his supporting role in "The Play What I Wrote," which went to Broadway with Jones in tow.

It was that performance that brought him to McGrath's attention. He was among the eight or 10 actors who did screen tests, and producer Christine Vachon says in the press notes, "The fact that you could look at Toby Jones and do a double take was just amazing." And a little unsettling.

The Brit is just a few inches over 5 feet tall, and his hair (feathered and brushed to attention), mustache and beard were dark blond this day. Jones was dressed in jeans, a striped shirt and navy blazer, looking and sounding little like Capote until he stood in a hotel room to demonstrate how he blended "the voice" with telltale gestures.

"I couldn't do it now properly" he says, but then he does it ... properly. He spent two hours a day doing a "warm-up" that would get him into character and keep his jaw from aching. "Then I'd just have to stay like that. I wouldn't be Truman all day but I'd have Truman's voice."

Jones, who studied footage from "The Dick Cavett Show" and other appearances, said, "We noticed his jaw suggested his teeth were directly over each other and then that he seemed secretive about his top teeth," which may explain why he covered his mouth when he laughed.

His nasal voice betrayed both his Southern and New York roots, and Jones knew from watching TV guest spots that the audience erupted as soon as Capote spoke.

"Our film is not a comedy, and it was very important that the audience -- they don't have to like Truman, but they have to somewhere sympathize with his journey, and if they just got an earache or just found it risible all the time, then I think it would be hard."

Capote, a gay writer who moved among New York's social elite, read about the 1959 murder of a farm family in Kansas and traveled west to investigate. He not only invented the "nonfiction novel" but forged a dark bond with the men who would hang for the crimes.

Jones was attracted by what he calls a beautifully constructed script that doesn't follow the standard biopic route of squeezing a life into a beginning, middle and end with three actors at different ages.

"This was so elegantly done, looking at a life through the prism of this encounter and suggesting that the guy arrives at the beginning of the film at his peak and very confident. And then, through an accomplishment which is going to crown his career and also effectively break his heart, sends him spiraling into decline."

"Infamous" uses as its inspiration the George Plimpton book "Truman Capote," subtitled, "In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall his Turbulent Career."

Plimpton called it an "oral biography" and said, in a foreword, that first-time readers "may be put off by the idiosyncrasies of the form -- the staccato rhythms of the text, the contradictions in the evidence about a particular episode," and the fact that the editors are at the mercy of their subjects' words.

In fact, Jones says "Infamous" asks if you can write "cold-blooded biography" or if it must be fractured, contradictory, conflicting and inconsistent. Capote "presents this mask to the world, this mad voice, these mad clothes, this persona, this loud, confident, thrusting guy arrives in Kansas.

"Now what is motivating him, what is behind all that, I think that's what makes it compelling for an actor, because I'm sure Philip and I have totally different ways to get at what's behind that mask."

Capote had to let his own mask slip, to gain the trust of murderer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig). The writer knew that the best ending of his book, "In Cold Blood," would be the death of "someone who, if he's not fallen in love with, he certainly feels a degree of sympathy with."

Capote trades a little piece of his heart for what becomes the end of his best seller, and Jones says the exchange is "almost mythic, sort of like a Faustian pact."

Although the attraction between chronicler and criminal was key to the 2005 release, "Infamous" includes a kiss between Capote and Smith, portrayed by the soon-to-be James Bond.

"I worked with Daniel before, a long time ago on a film. It was very nice to work with someone I knew so well," although Craig's hair and eye color were darkened and his nose appears to be broader, perhaps through a makeup trick.

As for the kiss in the claustrophobic cell, "It was kind of a relief to know we were nearly at the end of it." Filling Truman's shoes, as Hoffman discovered before him, could be exhilarating, excruciating ... and exhausting.