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The Hoax (2006)

Director: Lasse Hallström

Time Out rating

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2 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

In his most complex role for years, Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving, a failed novelist and audacious con artist who, in the early ’70s, suckered publisher McGraw Hill into paying him an advance of $1 million for the rights to Howard Hughes’ authorised biography. Since the eccentric billionaire was a recluse, Irving was able to fabricate handwritten letters, secret meetings and oddly plausible details. When he and his nerdy researcher, Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina), pitch the project to sceptical editor Andrea Tate (Hope Davis) and wily publisher Shelton Fisher (Stanley Tucci), an inspired Suskind pretty much seals the deal with the cryptic, improvised line, ‘He gave me a prune.’

Whisked along by a jaunty Carter Burwell score, director Lasse Hallström’s loose-wristed conspiracy caper captures the frantic energy and self-delusion at the heart of the project – especially when Irving adopts Hughes’ speaking voice and ‘channels’ his subject’s supposed thoughts. But as the multiple deceptions spiral out of control, Gere also conveys the emotional vulnerability beneath Irving’s self-serving narcissism. That said, William Wheeler’s breezy screenplay never soft-pedals on Irving’s faults: his selfish exploitation of both his writing partner and his long-suffering hippie artist wife, Edith (Marcia Gay Harden), is clearly despicable. Unfortunately, as the plot unravels, so does the film. When Wheeler’s script links Irving’s literary scam to the big political picture, with suggestions that advance proofs of the book were the catalyst for the Nixon-ordered Watergate burglaries, our credulity is stretched to breaking point. Ultimately, these smart, zeitgeisty riffs are just as implausible as the idea of an authorised Howard Hughes autobiography.

Author: Nigel Floyd 2007-07-31 11:51:47

Time Out London Issue 1928: August 1-7 2007

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User reviews of this film

Technoguy said...

Posted on Mar 07 2008 22:09 Gere was inspired casting as he's played a showman for years,a narcissist, a gigolo. With maturity,grey hairs and false nose he is away.He successfully pulls off the con artist act,the spiel,the humour,the angst,the aplomb.He is ably abetted by Molina as his researcher for the 'book of the century',Howard Hughes autobiography,pulled off to con the publishers, McGraw-Hill and Time into paying him a million dollars as an advance to continue and finish it off.This is by a writer not of the 1st rank who has written a biography of a forger and 5 novels,but without enough sales and success to partake of the American Dream.Envious of younger writers,the Roths,the Mailers,he hatches his plan with Suskind,a children's writer.He is called to account to offer proof and though able at first to lie and cheat,finds things spiral out of control,when his wife is involved as well to cash cheques in Switzerland and Hughes himself declares he has never met this man on broadcast tv to clear himself of his own massive debt of $137 million with Nixon.All the while Irving is two-timing his wife with Nina von Pallenburg,singer and actress and is having increasing paranoid delusions about Hughes' henchmen pursuing him.Molina is excellent too as a sweaty and increasingly anxious stable mate in crime.

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eddie connor said...

Posted on Aug 15 2007 15:52 God know what this critic is talking about,perhaps he should go to the plain English writing school and cut the pointless waffle

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