|
The Hoax Posters
Photos Art
Search for Posters Art Prints, photos and get
results from all the many categories from Amazon including
books, videos, dvds, toys, video games, and more.
|
|
|
Posters Art
Prints Photos collectables |
|
|
|
|
|
|
If for some reason you can't find what the
poster or art print your looking for try using the search boxes
below
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Rating:  -
I'd say only Clifford Irving knows for sure, but as you will be able to see from this film, Irving began to believe his own lies after awhile.
Fed up with the publishing business and fearing his career is over after his successful story of a Picasso forger in "Fake", Clifford Irving (Gere) concocts a grandiose scheme to scam McGraw Hill. He'll write Howard Hughes' biography. The bazillionaire is one of the most famous men in the world, he's a noted recluse, and there's no way Hughes can sue him. If he appears in any US Court, he'll be caught up in another lawsuit that will cost him 137M.
So, Irving his researcher buddy, Richard Suskind (Molina) off his current project. The problem with lying is, when you get a credulous bunch of editors hanging on your every word, you start telling lies. That's when Suskind tells the tale of Howard Hughes giving him an organic prune.
"The Hoax" is based on a true event. Irving actually served 17 months' time in jail for fraud.
The film's interesting and well-acted. What amazes me is how possible the story was with a little research and how well Irving (Gere) seemed to integrate Hughes personna into his own to perpetrate the fraud.
The soundtrack is especially good, featuring songs of the timeframe. Really takes you back to the day.
According to the Clifford Irving website (which I cannot link here due to Amazon restrictions) the hoax book entitled "Howard Hughes: My Story," by Clifford
Irving is available in a quality paperback
edition by John Blake Publishers.
Rating: -
Lasse Hallstrom has put together a slick and tension producing romp in "The Hoax", fueled by a great Carter Burwell soundtrack that catches the pulse pounding of the film. Based on the actual events of Clifford Irving's attempt at fooling the publishing world into thinking that HE has the exclusive interview with the world's most eccentric recluse, billionaire Howard Hughes, Hallstrom spirals Richard Gere as Irving and an extremely comic and refreshingly fattened Alfred Molina as co-auther Dick Susskind, into a second to second, make-it-up-as-you-go, belly-tightener. Watching Gere actually "becoming" Hughes and then believing his own lies is classic fodder for any psychiatrist. The film never has a moment of down time, and leaves you pretty exhausted by the end. The editing keeps the pace of the screenplay, and is smart and tight in telling this story. Hallstrom ties in the world events (Nixon, Viet Nam, TWA scandal etc which sometimes confuses the main objective). "The Hoax" is a great look at con men at their best when they actually start to believe their own con! Now that's commitment AND delusional grandeur!
Rating:  -
... but not for the price of a movie ticket ($12 in Manhattan!), nor the full price sought for the DVD.
Compared to other excellent "little film" dramas (ZODIAC, THE LOOKOUT, BREAKING AND ENTERING, RENDITION, SHATTERED GLASS, VALLEY OF ELAH) and just about any exposee series on cable, HOAX is rightly infatuated with its subject matter but fails to invest the viewing experience with a necessary energetic sharpness.
According to the commentaries, perhaps they had too good a time on the set making the movie. Maybe a clue comes from the fact that its director also directed the ABBA movie!
Rating: -
This isn't a documentary about the man who wrote a fake autobiography about the legendary Howard Hughes. It is the tale of the author, from the author's point of view.
The Hoax centers on Clifford Irving, a down on his luck writer, who brilliantly tricks McGraw Hill into publishing his autobiography. Like most delusional writers, Irving finds himself more fascinating than Howard Hughes, the President (Nixon) and the time period itself. He finds himself to be very clever and sees himself as a master puppeteer. Richard Gere does a fine job portraying Irving's smooth arrogance and Alfred Molina is superb as his best friend and co-author.
It's impossible to root for anything other than justice in this film. You won't secretly wish that Irving is successful and retires on a tropical island, but it is interesting to watch his perspective of these historical events. It's fascinating to learn about the connection between Howard Hughes, The President and Watergate for those of us that aren't up on our history books. And the DVD special features are full of facts and interesting information.
There are enough twists in the movie to keep it from falling flat in the third act, however those that are familiar with the true life story seem insulted that Irving is given a voice at all. The movie does end with Clifford all but patting himself on his own back, but again, like it or not, it's his story and he was the slimy crook that lived it.
Rating: -
Would you buy the autobiography of Howard Hughes from a man who wrote a book about art fraud and whose novel you'd just rejected as a pale imitation of another author's work? You would if you were McGraw-Hill and you were almost as afraid of looking stupid if it turns out to be real and you rejected it than if it turns out to be a fake you handed out a million dollar advance for. It's a pitch so ridiculous it could only be a true story, though quite how true the sadly overlooked The Hoax is is open to question since it's based on the how-I-nearly-got-away-with-it book by the fraud in question, Clifford Irving, who in turns claims he was defrauded by the filmmakers who turned his book into pure fiction...
The real Irving can be seen in Orson Welles F For Fake, where he goes from expert on art frauds to a literary fraud himself in the course of the film, but while Welles doesn't figure in Lasse Hallström's film it does share some of the devious sense of fun the semi-documentary displayed. The mechanics of the fraud - looking up Hughes' Senate testimony for syntax and speech patterns, photocopying a Hughes' aide's manuscript for insider gossip - are detailed as an exhilarating adrenaline rush, the film perfectly capturing the intoxicating thrill that comes with thinking you're getting away with an outrageous scam and the crash into paranoia as you defend the indefensible so much that the only person you end up fooling is yourself. It also delights in the constant Alice in Wonderland logic of it all: as Richard Gere's Irving explains to Alfred Molina as his researcher and `co-author' Richard Susskind, "(Hughes will) never come out of hiding long enough to denounce me because he's a lunatic hermit and I am the spokesman for the lunatic hermit, so the more outrageous I sound, the more convincing I am!" Too convincing, because Irving gradually starts becoming Hughes as he dictates the millionaire's `memoirs' in the millionaires clothes and pencil moustache until he starts believing his own lies and manages to convince himself that maybe Hughes really is collaborating on the book in his own way to further his own political ends. Just to add to the absurdity, when Hughes does indeed break cover to denounce the book, the experts think the recluse is so contradictory that no-one initially believes his denials!
There are occasional missteps - it's hard to believe that Irving's lover would describe herself to him as shallow and the film does threaten to overreach itself as it outlines a possible conspiracy with Hughes using the controversy to gain leverage with Nixon, inadvertently precipitating Watergate, but by this point it's possible that everything we see is just a fantasy fuelled by Irving's hubris and overactive imagination. Even a couple of truly terrible bits of back projection, one intentional, one not, seem entirely acceptable in context. Boasting a boxer's nose and an air of self-righteous hunger, Gere gives his best performance since Internal Affairs, while Molina and Stanley Tucci offer very different but complimentary comic performances (the one driven by sweaty desperation, the other by callous arrogance) and Hallström's direction is better than anything he's done in years (there's a particularly great shot late in the film at the moment of Irving's triumph of Hughes' suddenly malignant photo over his shoulder practically willing him on to his self-destruction).
So, is the last third a hoax? Is the whole film? With a delightful lack of irony, Irving has publicly criticized the film, claiming it completely distorts events by making him look dumb and is a complex hoax that trivializes his achievement. And who are we to doubt him?
|
