Loving the Lie

The Hoax toys with the mystique of Clifford Irving.

by Shaun Brady

Recommended

The Hoax, Lasse Hallström's film depicting Clifford Irving's infamous attempt to publish a faked "autobiography" of Howard Hughes, claims to be based on Irving's own book documenting the fraud. But like every other claim involved in the 30-plus-year-old case, that bears only the slightest resemblance to the truth.

IT'S A CLASSIC: Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) cruises for young and willing book agents with cohort Richard Susskind (Alfred Molina). (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

For all of his book's "sincere" stabs at repentance, Irving's account is chiefly about the thrill of the con, mashed up with a healthy dose of self-aggrandizing anti-establishment rhetoric. Corporate fraud, Irving seems to say, is, after all, a victimless crime, so up until the point where the scam (and his dalliances with mistress Nina Van Pallandt) destroys his marriage, nobody really got hurt.

Hallström's film begins in much the same vein, wrapped up in Irving's giddy glee at the fact that he's actually getting away with it and moving at the brisk, breezy pace of a good heist flick. But William Wheeler's script wisely attempts to read between the lines of Irving's aw-shucks "confession," and, as the hoax becomes ever more convoluted, begins to peer beyond the facade into the amoral soul of a supreme egotist.

Richard Gere's shallow charm has never been put to better use, depicting Irving as a man whose voracious appetites are always first and foremost in his mind, regardless of the effects on those around him. His ultimate talent, and the one that proves to be his downfall, is for self-delusion: Gere's Irving rebounds from his every betrayal by fully believing his own deceptions.

As the film opens, Irving's latest novel is being rejected by publisher McGraw-Hill, as Hughes-mania is in the air (or at least in magazines read by nearly every extra on the streets of 1970 Manhattan). A spur-of-the-moment outburst leads Irving to concoct the story that the reclusive billionaire has contacted him and asked for a meeting. A few forged handwritten letters from Hughes later, and Irving has himself a half-million-dollar book deal.

Irving's quick-thinking lies are met at least halfway by McGraw-Hill execs' desire to believe. Hope Davis perfectly walks the line between icy executive and glory-starved cheerleader, playing intermediary between Irving's mounting gall and the increasing suspicions of the company's higher-ups.

The author himself has already repudiated the film on his Web site, calling it "a hoax about a hoax" based on a reading of the script. While it does play fast and loose with many of the details, mainly to cram the sprawling, continent-hopping saga into a neat narrative frame, Wheeler's script largely sticks to the "facts" as Irving presented them, downplaying the involvement of his Swiss wife Edith. (Some suspect her of being at least partly the brains behind the operation, given their extensive employment of Swiss banking practices to funnel the checks into the Irvings' pockets.)

Though Wheeler assigns at least one idea to Edith that Irving claimed for himself, Marcia Gay Harden plays her as the spurned wife attempting to save her marriage by aiding and abetting her philandering husband.

Wheeler also skips any suggestion that Elmyr de Hory, the master art forger who was the subject of Irving's biography Fake!, was involved in the forging of the Hughes letters. Unlike Orson Welles' delirious examination of chicanery, F for Fake, this film takes at face value Irving's claims that he created the documents, later to be vetted by handwriting experts, on the spur of the moment.

But Irving's major beef with the film is in its representation of Richard Susskind, who is depicted in his book as a willing co-conspirator, a virtual double of Irving who plotted the whole thing with him and mirthfully trades Yiddishims throughout the tale. Here Susskind (Alfred Molina) becomes Sancho Panza to Irving's Quixote, a bumbling but loyal friend swept up by his partner's enthusiasm and more than a little human greed. He also becomes the film's moral compass, and his eventual betrayal, no matter how invented, proves more than even his continual adultery how supremely self-absorbed Irving has become.

As much fun as the increasing grandeur of the con can be, Hallström never loses sight of how deserved is Irving's eventual fall. His usual light touch is laced with an underlying emptiness, gibing with his subject's imitation of morality. While the real Irving presents his pitch-perfect capture of Hughes' mannerisms and speech patterns as a self-congratulatory exemplar of his own talent, Hallström shows him essentially imbibing other people's lives as the fuel for some constructed universe with Clifford Irving at its center.

At the end, Hallström pulls back to hint that the autobiography's revelations about Richard Nixon led directly to the Watergate break-in, and that Irving was ultimately a pawn used by Hughes in a larger game of political brinksmanship. Conspiracy theory though it may be, the point is ultimately made that you can't kid a kidder. Compared to Howard Hughes, Clifford Irving was decidedly small-time.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

The Hoax | Directed by Lasse Hallström | A Miramax Films release