You may be on to something. Usually when a film is held back like this it is because the studio has no confidence in it, but these are decent reviews.
In this case it may have more to do with positioning Gere in a more favorable Oscar race next year. This year's best actor field is not crowded. Only Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) and Peter O'Toole (Venus) are virtually assured of nominations. However, both Venus and The Hoax are Miramax releases. I suspect Gere in The Hoax was going to be Miramax's big Oscar push until O'Toole's back from the brink of the grave reviews started popping up out of nownere. Rather than spend money on a pre-ordained losing campaign, they decided to hold back the Gere film.
Also of note, Hallstrom's last film, Casanova (IMO his best film since What's Eating Gilbert Grape), got lost in the glut of last year's holday releases. It could be either Hallstrom or Miramx sensing the same fate for The Hoax decided it might do better in the Spring after this year's awards fever has subsided.
The Hoax
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I would assume that either A) they are moving it to give Gere more of a shot at an Oscar nomination in such a crowded field this year or B) the film isn't as great as they expect and are thus moving it to the doldrums of Spring.
Wesley Lovell
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
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Two reviews. A few acting nominations on the horizon?
Hoax
Lee Marshall in Rome
Screendaily
Dir: Lasse Hallstrom. US. 2006. 115mins.
As struttingly confident as its main character, true-life literary fraudster Clifford Irving, The Hoax is far and away Lasse Hallstrom’s best American film yet. Featuring a Richard Gere who has finally cast off his mid-term career doldrums to reveal himself as an actor of Machiavellian charisma and authority, it initially plays as a picaresque Catch Me If You Can-style biopic of a handsome US chancer. But though it never loses its sense of humour, The Hoax soon morphs into a more complex tale about self-seeding deceptions and the way that money and power act as the compost that allow them to grow and spread.
Though Gere is not the box-office draw he once was (witness the undeserved box-office flop of Bee Season), Miramax can expect to do well out of this likeable, dynamic product domestically off the back of strong critical support and upbeat word-of-mouth.
Overseas prospects look strong too, although the film will appeal to younger and more urban markets than much of Hallstrom’s previous oeuvre. Awards-season action is likely, with attention not only for Gere’s bravura performance but also to William Wheeler’s enjoyably tight and tricksy script, which plays its own hoaxes on the audience. Production designer Mark Ricker’s tasty recreation of the post-hippy, pre-Watergate years should also be in with a shout.
In 1971, jobbing writer Clifford Irving pitched what sounded like the book industry coup of the decade to top New York publisher McGraw Hill: an authorised biography of Howard Hughes that the millionaire recluse had allegedly asked Irving to write, on the condition that the project should remain secret until publication.
It was, of course, a hoax: Irving and his friend and accomplice, archive researcher Richard Suskind, were banking on the fact that Hughes would never go public to denounce the book as a fraud. So convincing were the Hughes letters forged by Irving, so packed with believable detail the interview transcripts he later fabricated, that McGraw Hill and Life Magazine (which paid a large sum to publish extracts from the book) bought the lie wholesale, paying Irving and Hughes a total of $765,000 (leveraged to a million in the film), which his Swiss wife deposited in a bank account back home.
It was the Swiss police investigation into these payments that eventually blew the lid on the affair: Irving returned the money and served 17 months in prison, while Edith and Suskind received shorter sentences.
Wheeler’s script sticks to the bare facts of the story, limiting itself to inventing a couple of episodes, including one in which Irving pays a hooker to seduce Suskind. The characters, though, are given a dramatic logic that has little to do with their real life counterparts.
Gere plays Irving as a conflicted charmer powered by sheer force of self-belief, while the Suskind of the film, played by Alfred Molina, becomes a weak, nervous but loyal sidekick, a voice of conscience too much in love with the friend it should be cautioning.
Marcia Gay Harden’s take on Irving’s wife Edith begins in comic mode but gains pathos as we see how ready she too is to be taken in by the two-timing Irving.
There are scenes of near slapstick, as when a reluctant Suskind snaffles a manuscript from the US Defence Department in his trousers; while Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci give enjoyable sideline performances as, respectively, Irving’s editor and Life magazine supremo Shelton Fisher, two tough cookies who are so blinded by the glory of the Hughes deal that they become putty in Irving’s hands.
The really engaging aspect of the film, though, is the way that Gere’s character first builds a credible fantasy world out of scraps of memory and research, and then begins to inhabit it like a Sim City player confusing his self-built virtual metropolis with the real world. This increasingly hallucinatory descent is saved from mannerism because it is grounded in the audience’s own shifting judgements of Iriving: he charms and manipulates us as well as his friends and publishers.
The Hoax barrels along at a cracking pace, and Hallstrom adopts an informal approach to structure and editing that suits the period well. The dialogue is spot on too, smart without being smart ass. A catchy jazz-inflected soundtrack by longtime Coen Brothers collaborator Carter Burwell, backed up by period music by Richie Havens, The Rolling Stones and others, add to the verve of the exercise.
-----------------------------------------------
The Hoax
By DEBORAH YOUNG
Variety
"The Hoax" fearlessly wades through the slippery psychology of a shameless liar -- the late writer Clifford Irving -- who sold a bogus "autobiography" of Howard Hughes to McGraw Hill and came close to pulling off the publishing scam of the century. Lasse Hallstrom's breezy, fast-paced, somewhat loose-ended account of how he did it offers a surprisingly layered vehicle for a maniacally conniving Richard Gere, backed up by a superb Alfred Molina as his accomplice. Though it marks a much-needed expansion of Gere's repertoire beyond the romantic lead he has continued to play well into his 50s, this complex loser's role marks pic as a marketing challenge for Miramax in U.S. release next April.
Overseas distribs will have to face not just the hurdle of selling a tale about the long-forgotten Irving, but also won't have the comfort of a large-size Hughes myth to draw on. Their only choice will be to present the film on its own irregular merits. On the plus side are a fascinating, stranger-than-fiction story and many tensely comic scenes in a darker second half that breaks into multiple narrative and thematic facets as the film strains to be about not just about a man, but about an era in America, without fully succeeding.
Still, for Hallstrom, this is a move in the right direction after the unhappy trio of "The Shipping News," "An Unfinished Life" and "Casanova," all of which represented a sharp drop-off from the critical and box office success of "Chocolat" and "The Cider House Rules." Here the recipe for combining the director's European free spirit with American storytelling techniques and rhythms is a happier blend, with the added spice of Nixon-era political corruption and a critique of national greed and self-deception.
William Wheeler's script, based on Irving's own tell-all book, which came out after he served a two-year jail sentence for fraud, taps into both Irving's and Hughes' colorful lives. There is more than enough plot to go around, and events race by so swiftly the film demands a good amount of concentration to keep abreast.
It's late 1971, with Vietnam and protest marches dominating the news. But the politically charged times, underscored by newsreels and catchy period music, pass by unnoticed for egocentric, bright-eyed author Irving, about to sell a new novel to McGraw Hill through his icy inhouse publisher Andrea Tate (Hope Davis). When the deal falls through, a crestfallen Irving recklessly blurts out that he is writing "the book of the century," without a clue as to what it is.
Inspiration attaches itself to his foot -- Howard Hughes on a magazine cover -- in the makeshift studio of his wife, Edith (Marcia Gay Harding), a hippie painter of no great talent but deeply in love with her philandering mate. They have reconciled after he broke off with his mistress, the beautiful and amoral European baroness Nina (a comically dippy Julie Delpy.) Thus begins the theme of personal trust and betrayal, which will be skillfully intertwined with the main Hughes plot.
A third thread arrives in the pudgy form of Irving's best friend and loyal researcher Dick Suskind (Molina). Almost as a joke, they start to fantasize about convincing Irving's publishers he's in Howard's good graces and has been chosen to co-author the billionaire's memoirs.
Some of the film's most enjoyable material revolves around Irving's chutzpah and daring in persuading an army of suspicious McGraw Hill suits, headed by a deliciously greedy Shelton Fisher (Stanley Tucci at his understated mightiest).Mistrust farcically battles with raw greed as they eye Irving's forged letters from "Howard," desperately wanting to believe they're real but afraid of being taken for a royal ride.
In the end, greed wins out or, as Irving rationalizes it, "a man who says something completely implausible will always be believed." At every credibility hurdle, he ups the ante, forcing the publishers to pay the unheard-of sum of $1 million to Hughes (i.e., himself) for rights to his story.
Meanwhile, the two lovable swindlers, who are writing up a storm based on illegally procured documents, succumb to panic attacks that have them racing down the McGraw Hill backstairs, followed in their dizzy flight by a vaulting hand-held camera. Though rarely laugh-out-loud comedy, scenes like these roll off the screen like perfectly directed clockwork.
Last part of the film sinisterly suggests Irving was himself the victim of a much larger hoax on the part of the man he was writing about, who used him to force President Nixon to ease antitrust laws and save TWA, which he largely owned. Going even further, it speculates that Nixon's paranoia over what might be in Irving's book motivated the Watergate break-ins.
Gere, his hair cut and darkened like the historical Irving, is strongly on key with the bravado and euphoria of the early scenes, creating a likable rogue whose bloated ego has nowhere to go but down. When reality starts hitting the fan and his lies come back to haunt him, he keeps up a bold front while mentally disintegrating.
Molina is a constantly strong comic note as the red-cheeked researcher who nearly has a heart attack carrying out Irving's wild schemes, yet whose touching faithfulness to his own wife (never seen in the film) contrasts effectively with the wandering of his weak-willed friend. Harden is similarly balanced between a spaciness and her very real feelings of betrayal. They make the most of Wheeler's amusing, down-to-earth dialogue.
There is much in Hallstrom's complex direction that recalls a past master of mirrors and deception, Orson Welles. Apart from the obvious parallel between Hughes' enormous behind-the-scenes power, which rivalled that of the government itself, and that of Charles Foster Kane, another link is Welles' "documentary" "F For Fake," where the real Irving appears telling his story.
Tech work creates a strong feeling for the '70s, with credit going to all hands, but especially to the expressive and varied lensing by Hallstrom's regular cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, and to Carter Burwell's delightful soundtrack, which becomes central in establishing time and mood.
Hoax
Lee Marshall in Rome
Screendaily
Dir: Lasse Hallstrom. US. 2006. 115mins.
As struttingly confident as its main character, true-life literary fraudster Clifford Irving, The Hoax is far and away Lasse Hallstrom’s best American film yet. Featuring a Richard Gere who has finally cast off his mid-term career doldrums to reveal himself as an actor of Machiavellian charisma and authority, it initially plays as a picaresque Catch Me If You Can-style biopic of a handsome US chancer. But though it never loses its sense of humour, The Hoax soon morphs into a more complex tale about self-seeding deceptions and the way that money and power act as the compost that allow them to grow and spread.
Though Gere is not the box-office draw he once was (witness the undeserved box-office flop of Bee Season), Miramax can expect to do well out of this likeable, dynamic product domestically off the back of strong critical support and upbeat word-of-mouth.
Overseas prospects look strong too, although the film will appeal to younger and more urban markets than much of Hallstrom’s previous oeuvre. Awards-season action is likely, with attention not only for Gere’s bravura performance but also to William Wheeler’s enjoyably tight and tricksy script, which plays its own hoaxes on the audience. Production designer Mark Ricker’s tasty recreation of the post-hippy, pre-Watergate years should also be in with a shout.
In 1971, jobbing writer Clifford Irving pitched what sounded like the book industry coup of the decade to top New York publisher McGraw Hill: an authorised biography of Howard Hughes that the millionaire recluse had allegedly asked Irving to write, on the condition that the project should remain secret until publication.
It was, of course, a hoax: Irving and his friend and accomplice, archive researcher Richard Suskind, were banking on the fact that Hughes would never go public to denounce the book as a fraud. So convincing were the Hughes letters forged by Irving, so packed with believable detail the interview transcripts he later fabricated, that McGraw Hill and Life Magazine (which paid a large sum to publish extracts from the book) bought the lie wholesale, paying Irving and Hughes a total of $765,000 (leveraged to a million in the film), which his Swiss wife deposited in a bank account back home.
It was the Swiss police investigation into these payments that eventually blew the lid on the affair: Irving returned the money and served 17 months in prison, while Edith and Suskind received shorter sentences.
Wheeler’s script sticks to the bare facts of the story, limiting itself to inventing a couple of episodes, including one in which Irving pays a hooker to seduce Suskind. The characters, though, are given a dramatic logic that has little to do with their real life counterparts.
Gere plays Irving as a conflicted charmer powered by sheer force of self-belief, while the Suskind of the film, played by Alfred Molina, becomes a weak, nervous but loyal sidekick, a voice of conscience too much in love with the friend it should be cautioning.
Marcia Gay Harden’s take on Irving’s wife Edith begins in comic mode but gains pathos as we see how ready she too is to be taken in by the two-timing Irving.
There are scenes of near slapstick, as when a reluctant Suskind snaffles a manuscript from the US Defence Department in his trousers; while Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci give enjoyable sideline performances as, respectively, Irving’s editor and Life magazine supremo Shelton Fisher, two tough cookies who are so blinded by the glory of the Hughes deal that they become putty in Irving’s hands.
The really engaging aspect of the film, though, is the way that Gere’s character first builds a credible fantasy world out of scraps of memory and research, and then begins to inhabit it like a Sim City player confusing his self-built virtual metropolis with the real world. This increasingly hallucinatory descent is saved from mannerism because it is grounded in the audience’s own shifting judgements of Iriving: he charms and manipulates us as well as his friends and publishers.
The Hoax barrels along at a cracking pace, and Hallstrom adopts an informal approach to structure and editing that suits the period well. The dialogue is spot on too, smart without being smart ass. A catchy jazz-inflected soundtrack by longtime Coen Brothers collaborator Carter Burwell, backed up by period music by Richie Havens, The Rolling Stones and others, add to the verve of the exercise.
-----------------------------------------------
The Hoax
By DEBORAH YOUNG
Variety
"The Hoax" fearlessly wades through the slippery psychology of a shameless liar -- the late writer Clifford Irving -- who sold a bogus "autobiography" of Howard Hughes to McGraw Hill and came close to pulling off the publishing scam of the century. Lasse Hallstrom's breezy, fast-paced, somewhat loose-ended account of how he did it offers a surprisingly layered vehicle for a maniacally conniving Richard Gere, backed up by a superb Alfred Molina as his accomplice. Though it marks a much-needed expansion of Gere's repertoire beyond the romantic lead he has continued to play well into his 50s, this complex loser's role marks pic as a marketing challenge for Miramax in U.S. release next April.
Overseas distribs will have to face not just the hurdle of selling a tale about the long-forgotten Irving, but also won't have the comfort of a large-size Hughes myth to draw on. Their only choice will be to present the film on its own irregular merits. On the plus side are a fascinating, stranger-than-fiction story and many tensely comic scenes in a darker second half that breaks into multiple narrative and thematic facets as the film strains to be about not just about a man, but about an era in America, without fully succeeding.
Still, for Hallstrom, this is a move in the right direction after the unhappy trio of "The Shipping News," "An Unfinished Life" and "Casanova," all of which represented a sharp drop-off from the critical and box office success of "Chocolat" and "The Cider House Rules." Here the recipe for combining the director's European free spirit with American storytelling techniques and rhythms is a happier blend, with the added spice of Nixon-era political corruption and a critique of national greed and self-deception.
William Wheeler's script, based on Irving's own tell-all book, which came out after he served a two-year jail sentence for fraud, taps into both Irving's and Hughes' colorful lives. There is more than enough plot to go around, and events race by so swiftly the film demands a good amount of concentration to keep abreast.
It's late 1971, with Vietnam and protest marches dominating the news. But the politically charged times, underscored by newsreels and catchy period music, pass by unnoticed for egocentric, bright-eyed author Irving, about to sell a new novel to McGraw Hill through his icy inhouse publisher Andrea Tate (Hope Davis). When the deal falls through, a crestfallen Irving recklessly blurts out that he is writing "the book of the century," without a clue as to what it is.
Inspiration attaches itself to his foot -- Howard Hughes on a magazine cover -- in the makeshift studio of his wife, Edith (Marcia Gay Harding), a hippie painter of no great talent but deeply in love with her philandering mate. They have reconciled after he broke off with his mistress, the beautiful and amoral European baroness Nina (a comically dippy Julie Delpy.) Thus begins the theme of personal trust and betrayal, which will be skillfully intertwined with the main Hughes plot.
A third thread arrives in the pudgy form of Irving's best friend and loyal researcher Dick Suskind (Molina). Almost as a joke, they start to fantasize about convincing Irving's publishers he's in Howard's good graces and has been chosen to co-author the billionaire's memoirs.
Some of the film's most enjoyable material revolves around Irving's chutzpah and daring in persuading an army of suspicious McGraw Hill suits, headed by a deliciously greedy Shelton Fisher (Stanley Tucci at his understated mightiest).Mistrust farcically battles with raw greed as they eye Irving's forged letters from "Howard," desperately wanting to believe they're real but afraid of being taken for a royal ride.
In the end, greed wins out or, as Irving rationalizes it, "a man who says something completely implausible will always be believed." At every credibility hurdle, he ups the ante, forcing the publishers to pay the unheard-of sum of $1 million to Hughes (i.e., himself) for rights to his story.
Meanwhile, the two lovable swindlers, who are writing up a storm based on illegally procured documents, succumb to panic attacks that have them racing down the McGraw Hill backstairs, followed in their dizzy flight by a vaulting hand-held camera. Though rarely laugh-out-loud comedy, scenes like these roll off the screen like perfectly directed clockwork.
Last part of the film sinisterly suggests Irving was himself the victim of a much larger hoax on the part of the man he was writing about, who used him to force President Nixon to ease antitrust laws and save TWA, which he largely owned. Going even further, it speculates that Nixon's paranoia over what might be in Irving's book motivated the Watergate break-ins.
Gere, his hair cut and darkened like the historical Irving, is strongly on key with the bravado and euphoria of the early scenes, creating a likable rogue whose bloated ego has nowhere to go but down. When reality starts hitting the fan and his lies come back to haunt him, he keeps up a bold front while mentally disintegrating.
Molina is a constantly strong comic note as the red-cheeked researcher who nearly has a heart attack carrying out Irving's wild schemes, yet whose touching faithfulness to his own wife (never seen in the film) contrasts effectively with the wandering of his weak-willed friend. Harden is similarly balanced between a spaciness and her very real feelings of betrayal. They make the most of Wheeler's amusing, down-to-earth dialogue.
There is much in Hallstrom's complex direction that recalls a past master of mirrors and deception, Orson Welles. Apart from the obvious parallel between Hughes' enormous behind-the-scenes power, which rivalled that of the government itself, and that of Charles Foster Kane, another link is Welles' "documentary" "F For Fake," where the real Irving appears telling his story.
Tech work creates a strong feeling for the '70s, with credit going to all hands, but especially to the expressive and varied lensing by Hallstrom's regular cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, and to Carter Burwell's delightful soundtrack, which becomes central in establishing time and mood.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler