"The Hoax"
Directed by: Lasse Hallstrom

Starring: Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden

Rated: R (for brief nudity, adult language)

Running time: 116 minutes

Best suited for: those who remember

Least suited for: those who don't

Acorn Rating Guide:

According to "The Hoax," if there hadn't been a Clifford Irving, there may not have been a Watergate breakin or the downfall of a president.

Whether or not one chooses to believe such butterfly's flutter leads to a hurricane, one can certainly understand the paranoia rampant in the socially turbulent '70s. Richard M. Nixon was paranoid. Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes was paranoid. The New York-based publishing industry- bursting through a stolid, conservative past with postmodernistic, nouveaux chic authors like Philip Roth, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon and Norman Mailer- was paranoid about burying its hallowed, quilltipped traditions beneath a quick buck.

In the midst of this Prozac Nation in the making, unnoticed novelist Clifford Irving was just brash enough to exploit our obsession with being obsessed. In 1972, Irving nearly convinced the world that he had been authorized by Howard Hughes to write an exclusive biography.

Irving had fabricated the entire book- and had accepted a $500,000 advance from McGrawHill. The hoax was discovered only when Howard Hughes (whom some thought perhaps already dead) exposed Irving's lie. Even after Hughes fingered Irving, some believed the eccentric Hughes himself was lying, so convincing was Irving's deception.

While the whole sordid affair might be an insignificant footnote in the decade's history, it is one ripe for Hollywood exposure. Irving's hoax was certainly a grandiose, in-your-face swindle. Even today, some claim it was "the con of the century."

America had been bilked before, certainly, but never by a littleknown writer turned con artist whose only real skill was being himself- a smoothtalking, egocentric personality with an ability to forge the scrawling handwriting of a billionaire whom nobody had seen publicly in decades. The result was less a con on Irving's part than it was society's giddy desire for a glimpse behind the shower curtain of a man who wanted no public attention.

It was, in some ways, the birth of tabloid journalism as a mainstream art form. Has our lurid fascination come and gone with the bell-bottom? One merely has to look at the abundance of reality television- or Fox News. Or glance at a magazine rack: People, Us, The National Enquirer, Cosmopolitan. I'm surprised Clifford Irving hasn't supplanted Walter Cronkite as the father of modern journalism.

As a film, "The Hoax" is far less raucous than it is informative. Don't expect Johnny Depp imitating Hunter Thompson so much as Philip Seymour Hoffman recreating Truman Capote.

Director Lasse Hallstrom, seemingly infatuated with the filming of literature ("The Shipping News," "The Cider House Rules"), has created a marvelous character study of a man whofeeling betrayed by his publisherbasically cracked and decided to go for broke.

What works for "The Hoax"- keeping it above the mildly entertaining category- is the film's wickedly sharp dialogue and sterling performances from Richard Gere as Irving and Alfred Molina as his Sancho Panza-like sidekick, Dick Suskind. Suskind was Irving's easily squelched alter ego, and Molina plays the part like a man who's already read the last page of the story but finds himself unable to tear himself away from a plotline spinning beyond anybody's control.

There's an almost Abbott and Costello shtick to these two men who bumble their way into an accidental wealth of source material for their ruse. Gere seems to have captured Irving's soul the same way the aforementioned Hoffman inhabited Truman Capote's persona. It's oddly disconcerting to feel almost as if Clifford Irving might be playing himself on screen.

If there's a downside to the film, it's the source material itselfThe jetsetting Irving, while perhaps an affable fake, is a rather flawed person down deep, hell bent on self-destruction in one form or another. He routinely cheats on his fourth wife, Edith (Marcia Gay Harden), and appears unable to stop lying to just about anybody about anything.

While one tends to feel empathy toward the reluctant Dick Suskind, Irving and the film's remaining cast of characters distance themselves from the audience in their egoistic, vulturelike tendencies. Not one ever expresses an interest in billionaire Howard Hughes other than in terms of financial windfall. Certainly one can understand Hollywood's rush toward hyperbole and sensationalizing, but New York publishing?

Perhaps there is reason for hallowed tradition after all. Unfortunately, Clifford Irving served simply as the first gong of a death knell.