If con man/author Clifford Irving hadn’t already existed, disgraced writer James Frey might have attempted to invent his fictional doppelganger. Nearly 35 years before Frey was both toasted and roasted by a publicly duped Oprah Winfrey, Irving was playing fast and loose with 60 Minutes inquisitor Mike Wallace on the subject of Howard Hughes. Unlike Frey, however, Irving was punished with time in prison, not the public humiliation of being berated by Her Royal Highness on television. (Given the choice, Frey might have opted for jail, too.)
Richard Gere, who plays the literary grifter in The Hoax, delivers the kind of performance that tends to linger in the minds of Academy Award voters. Untypically understated, Gere makes us believe that Irving would be arrogant enough to think his Hughes autobiography could fool all of his publishers’ gatekeepers, yet accurate to the point the nutty old recluse wouldn’t feel it necessary to defend his reputation. More appalling was the publishing industry’s willingness to suspend their disbelief long enough to buy into the scheme, hoping, perhaps, it would climb to the top of the best-seller lists before Irving was proven to be a charlatan.
Everyone, including readers, was starved for information on Hughes, a man so rich he bought the Desert Inn rather than give up his penthouse suite. Like Jay Gatsby, Irving merely was giving the people what they wanted. To the public, Irving was sophisticated, highly articulate, handsome, a published author and an international playboy. A hit on the New York social scene, he also luxuriated in European hot spots with his beautiful wife and blue-blood girlfriend.
The publishers’ hubris blinded them to the most obvious clue of them all: Irving had recently made a splash with a book about one of his neighbors on Ibiza, master art forger Elmyr de Hory. It should have clicked that Irving would have been tempted—by his own hubris, if nothing else—to attempt an even greater con. (De Hory, Irving and Hughes are centerpiece characters in Orson Welles’ F Is for Fake, as well.) Lasse Hallstrom keeps the action centered mostly in and around New York, with a brief stopover in Las Vegas to interview a close Hughes aide. A sexy side trip to Ibiza, which, even today, most Americans can’t find on a map, would have detracted from the drama that played out in the skyscrapers, hotel rooms and restaurants of Manhattan in 1970. The director focuses, instead, on Irving’s angst over the possibility of being exposed as a fake and embarrassment over serving as an unwitting dupe in Hughes’ scheme to blackmail President Nixon.
Gere gets great support from Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, Zjelko Ivanek, Marcia Gay Harden, Alfred Molina, Julie Delpy and Eli Wallach. The bonus features offer background on the period and crime, including reflective material from reporter Mike Wallace.
The Hoax
****
Rated R
$29.99