The Hoax

The Hoax deals with the infamous fake autobiography of Howard Hughes by Clifford Irving played here by Richard Gere that was almost published in March 1972. In the early '70s, Irving was struggling as a professional writer and hit on the idea of the autobiography in a last ditch attempt to persuade his publishers, McGraw-Hill, that he was a bankable asset. With the help of his partner, Dick Susskind (Alfred Molina), he succeeded in convincing editor Andrea Tate (Hope Davis) and president Shelton Fisher (Stanley Tucci) that they had interviewed Hughes in several secret locations and the eccentric multi-millionaire had agreed to tell them his life's story.

Although in the realm of literary hoaxes The Hoax is  not a patch on Billy Ray’s Shattered Glass (2003), adopting a generic fictional period style (Hope Davis as Irving’s editor looks particularly grotesque in this respect), for sheer chutzpah Irving’s story is an entertaining one and in suggesting that the book may have fueled the Watergate break-in that eventually brought down President Nixon it makes for an intriguing addition to the filmic history of the period although the idea that Hughes used Irving to engineer this is a long bow.

The film is most interesting when it shows Irving being drawn into his own web of deceit as fact and fiction blur in his mind but overall there is not enough here to distinguish it from the broad category of workmanlike fiction.

DVD Extras: English captions for the hearing impaired: descriptive narration for the vision impaired.

Available from: Village Roadshow

 

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