“Second rate.” That’s how Aspen resident Clifford Irving described “The Hoax,” which stars Richard Gere as the notorious author.
The movie, loosely based on Irving’s “true” book about his faked Howard Hughes’ memoir, gets it wrong, Irving told “CBS Sunday Morning.”
The fraud that landed him on the cover of Time as “Con Man of the Year” in 1971 was about high jinks, not corruption, cleverness, not criminality.
Irving’s right – and wrong.
For this tale of astonishing chutzpah, director Lasse Hallstrom has assembled a cast impossible to ignore. Yet the spry film is surprisingly easy to shrug off, possibly because hoodwinking has become a national pastime.
Gere is rightly manic as the far-from-credible Irving, who sold McGraw-Hill a supposedly authorized memoir of the famed recluse and billionaire. Irving was sure Hughes was so psychologically hobbled, he’d never leave his hole to reveal the ruse.
“The Hoax” begins amusingly well. When editor Andrea (Hope Davis) promises her writer that he has finally struck gold with a novel, he starts spending the cash before the contract has been inked.
Warning to delirious authors: If Richie Havens’ “Here Comes the Sun” is the soundtrack to your joy, you might as well be hearing “We’re in the Money.” You’re not, and the sun isn’t a-comin’ either.
A later scene of Irving barging into an editorial meeting to announce he has landed the “book of the century” promises fine absurdity. And often the film delivers on that.
Irving’s best friend Richard Suskind becomes a reluctant, then all-too-willing (though not particularly able) accomplice.
Why didn’t he say “book of the decade?” Suskind asks.
Alfred Molina brings harried warmth to Suskind. Each time he attempts to mimic his friend’s talent for lying, he’s pathetic. His bumbling attests to the publishing house’s craven willingness to be conned.
Both Molina and Marcia Gay Harden – who plays Irving’s Swiss wife, Edith – feel like innocent witnesses to an insane sham. They aren’t, of course. But they prove to be magnetic, albeit amoral, compasses.
One of screenwriter William Wheeler’s better lines belongs to Edith, who has begun to trust her philandering hubbie again. (Julie Delpy plays Irving’s mistress, Nina.)
“You said to warn you when you seem excited,” she says. “You seem excited.”
Indeed, the performers drive this story with revved energy from start to disgraced finish.
Yet the tone of “The Hoax” is troublesome. Is it a comedy or a drama? Is it a politicized thriller, thanks to the machinations of a Nixon administration made anxious by info coming from Hughes’ longtime associate Noah
Dietrich (Eli Wallach)? Or cultural satire?
A mix of styles doesn’t have to signal an identity crisis. But by using freighted images of war protests and presidential protestations, the filmmakers invite scrutiny that “The Hoax” doesn’t stand up to. (Footage of Nixon praising George H.W. Bush is pure cheap shot.)
Are we to be charmed by Irving’s “prank” yet repulsed by Nixon’s scandals?
The filmmakers know this is the ethical crux of the story, and it takes a deft writer to pull it off.
It’s easy to say “See this film for the characters’ wild lack of character.” Were we to insist you see it for its story – well, we’d be perpetrating a little hoax of our own.
| “The Hoax”
R for language|1 hour, 46 minutes|PERIOD DRAMEDY|Directed by Lasse Hallstrom; written by William Wheeler; photography by Oliver Stapleton; Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Marcia Gay Harden, Julie Delpy, Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, Eli Wallach |Opens today at area theaters
