What about “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”? Most people kind of like it — other than the extremely poorly aged performance of Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi, the Blake Edwards-directed, Audrey Hepburn-starring romantic comedy is an American classic that continues to be discussed and referenced to this day. In it, Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, an escort looking to bag a wealthy older man, and she thinks she has found exactly that in Paul Varjak (George Peppard).
The original book of the same name that the movie adapts is written by none other than Truman Capote, and he was certainly not going to hold back if he felt the film didn’t do right by his story. Sure enough, in an interview with Playboy, Capote took issue with everything from the movie’s tone to its casting and portrayal of Holly Golightly. He said that Holly was “a tough character, not an Audrey Hepburn type at all” and that “the film became a mawkish valentine to New York City and Holly and, as a result, was thin and pretty, whereas it should have been rich and ugly.”
According to biographer and journalist Barry Paris (via The Vintage News), Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the lead in the film and remarked that the studio “double-crossed [him] in every way” by going with Hepburn instead.
