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Hoax, TheAfter years in limbo turning out Harvey Weinstein products designed to get the middle-brow buck (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat, The Shipping News), Lasse Hallstr?¶m continues his rehabilitation with this drama based on a notorious early-1970s scandal in the worlds of publishing and the media.
While Hallstr?¶m's first post-Harvey film, Casanova, was a slight but enjoyable period romantic comedy, The Hoax is a more mature movie that deals with issues of ego, desperation and deceit, all set against that fascinating period in American history that culminated with the Watergate affair. It also sits neatly alongside other decent (loosely) based-on-reality dramas about convoluted cons such as Catch Me If You Can and Shattered Glass.
Richard Gere stars as Clifford Irving, the accomplished New York writer who'd had reasonable success with his biography of the art forger Elmyr De Hory but found his publishers, McGraw-Hill, going cold on the manuscript of his subsequent novel. After freaking out to his best friend-cum-researcher Dick Susskind (the always reliable Molina) and wife Edith (Harden, whose performance suffers from an unwieldy accent), Irving blithely - and recklessly - tells his publisher Andrea Tate (Davis) that he's working on "the most important book of the twentieth century," to keep his foot in the McGraw-Hill door. Problem is, there is no book.
After being kicked out of a Bahamas hotel owned by Howard Hughes when the millionaire decides to turn up in the middle of the night, then chancing upon magazine articles about him, Irving comes up with a plan: to claim to be writing Hughes' "exclusive authorised autobiography". He reasons the "lunatic hermit" won't come out publicly to denounce him, then sets about penning fake letters from Hughes to prove his credentials to Tate and her sceptical publisher Shelton Fisher (Tucci).
So begins a period of frantic work in which Cliff and Dick both beg, borrow and steal genuine Hughes-related material (some of it from the Pentagon) and concoct their own fake interviews, with the former getting into the character of Hughes. "I want to make some money and not get caught. We've got to make this plausible," says Cliff as he becomes increasingly obsessed, and his world grows decidedly complex.
It's quite a challenge - not only does he have to actually come up with the goods, he also has to keep the faith of the upper echelons of McGraw-Hill and 'Life' magazine ("'Life' magazine has been known to have an effect on writers' careers," says its publisher, ominously). Oh, and there's the small matter of he and Dick's rising paranoia about Hughes' own intelligence men, Intertel.
It's quite a yarn, and although the film has some awkward gear changes, it's told ably and anchored well by Gere's central performance. Indeed, it's the star's best film in years. The supporting cast is similarly solid, though there's some sketchiness to the characterisation, particularly Cliff's wife, his mistress (Delpy) and even the man himself. It's never entirely clear what motivates a seemingly sane, respectable writer to go to such extraordinary lengths.
As well as dealing with hubris, greed and media powerplay, The Hoax covers that area where fact and fiction collide. Despite how doolally Cliff becomes, much of what he's concocting is based in truth, something Hughes - it seems - is prepared to take advantage of.
At one point, Cliff mysteriously receives a box of files that links the business empire and dealings of the former playboy, Hollywood player and aviation innovator (who had been out of the public eye since 1958, and always quelled writers' attempts to pen his biography), with President Nixon himself. It gives the film added weight to have Cliff's demented scheme escalating into something that has potentially huge political repercussions during this delicate period of US politics.
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