Thursday Minute
No. 130 | July 1, 2010

Hollywood High-flier

Our theme this week
Howard Hughes and the movies

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Howard Hughes, Moviemaker
Tuesday         —   Melvin and Howard (1980)
Wednesday    —   The Rocketeer (1991)

The Hoax (2007)

Who’s the guilty party in the story that is The Hoax?  Is it Clifford Irving, the literary con man who sells a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes?  Is it McGraw-Hill, the giant New York publisher that lets its desire to own a hot property override its skepticism of the shifty Irving?  Is it Richard Nixon, the crook in the White House who so corrupted the culture that he legitimized the practice of lying?  The way the film tells it, they each get some of the blame.

Greed, lies, and chutzpah didn’t begin with the early 1970s.  Yet something about the Clifford Irving story makes it seem like something new was happening at the time.  Some limit that may have existed earlier was breached.  Some innocence (whatever was left after a decade of assassinations and Vietnam) was lost.  We’re forty years removed, and I’d say it’s harder for us to be shocked by a guy like Irving.  We live in an age of shysters—presidents, executives, athletes, and authors, among them—and there’s little we do but shrug our shoulders.  Perhaps we’ve lost our bearings, or perhaps we’re just less gullible.  We know better than to be shocked.  What were you expecting?  The truth?  Not likely.

At the time of this story, Howard Hughes was an invisible man, a recluse who guarded his privacy so completely he was virtually unseen in public.  Hughes is barely a screen presence in The Hoax, seen only in photographs, a few shots of archival footage, and a small part for Milton Buras, yet he is a figure that is central to the story.  Even in his absence, he’s the object of obsession, and it’s his silence that allows Irving to perpetrate the fraud on his publisher and the public.  For a while, anyway.

Richard Gere plays Irving.  It’s one of his better performances, and when Gere turns on his considerable charm, it’s fun to watch.  Irving’s right-hand man is a researcher named Richard Suskind, portrayed by Alfred Molina, who’s funny and touching.  Irving and Suskind are friends—one daring, one cautious—both desperate.  They make a good match.  Others in the splendid cast include Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, Marcia Gay Harden, Julie Delpy, and Eli Wallach.

The Hoax takes a few liberties with the facts.  (What were you expecting?)  It is a movie, after all, not history (nor biography), and though not a great film, it’s a very enjoyable one.

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The Hoax (2007)
Lasse Hallström, director
Trailer

 

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The Hoax (2007)

Clips from The Hoax

Women of The Hoax

Richard Gere on Howard Hughes and The Hoax 
(CBS News:  Eye to Eye)

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Quote of Note
Clifford Irving:  Bumped by this adolescent coffee boy.  My lit professor at Cornell compared me to Hemingway!  The middle of my life is at hand, and I don’t have a couch.
Dick Suskind:  Think about this:  Henry Miller was 38-years-old, unpublished.  His wife left him for a lesbian.
Clifford Irving:  You’re kind to tell me that, Dick.  You’re a very good man.  You’re a good friend.  Need a loan?
Dick Suskind:  Always.
—Clifford Irving (Richard Gere), Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina), The Hoax (2007)

…58…59…60.