The Hoax

It’s been said that acting is simply a form of lying. If that’s true, then actor Richard Gere has pulled off one hell of an Escher move in “The Hoax”, a biopic in which he plays shameless liar Clifford Irving. Back in the early 1970s, Irving sold a spurious autobiography of famed mogul and recluse Howard Hughes to McGraw Hill—and came close to pulling off the literary scam of the century.

The story was perhaps more shocking in its period, as most memoirists had some modicum of decorum; this was long before James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces”, Stephen Glass’s many made-up stories, or the Belle Du Jour faux blog. Nowadays, famed fabulists barely raise an eyebrow on the public at large.

Expertly directed by Lasse Hallstrom, the plot of “The Hoax” itself twists and turns, making you question what’s real and what’s spun. It’s a tremendous role for Gere, who gets a chance to remind us, once again, that he’s more than just a pretty face, and he’s excellently complimented by the talents of the respected but underrated Alfred Molina as Irving’s researcher and accomplice. Marcia Gay Harding, as Irving’s spirited wife, and Hope Davis as his icy, no-nonsense editor, round out this complex picture with style and substance.

A multitude of plotlines and characters (yes, including Hughes) intersect, but we never lose sight of Irving and his strange obsession not only with the million-dollar advance and the multi-millionaire, but his all-consuming love of his own lies. And yet, Gere plays him for the most part as a likable, audacious scoundrel, making the bitter pill of his actions that much easier to swallow as we sit through the nearly two-hour film.

Perhaps somewhat slow-moving for theater-goers (it is, however, a shoo-in for home viewing on DVD), “The Hoax” is an accurate, absorbing portrait of not only a man and a scam, but of human nature and an unprecedented era in American life.