The Hoax

The Hoax is the psuedo-historical story of how an author named Clifford Irving conned the famous publishing house McGraw-Hill into paying him to write Howard Hughes's authorized biography back in the early seventies, even though Irving never met Hughes, and didn't even know much about him when he conceived the  project.  The entire project was nothing but smoke and mirrors. Irving thought he could pull off this quixotic endeavor because the famous billionaire was an eccentric recluse who never contacted the outside world, and would therefore not come forward to deny his involvement in the biography. Irving came close to pulling it all off. Although there were doubters at every step of the project from pitch to print, the author managed to bluff his way past just about every skeptic. Some of his persuasive skills were innate. Some came from his assiduous research. By the time he was exposed, Irving had became such an expert on his subject that he could deliver convincing anecdotes in Hughes's own idiolect, and could even fool handwriting experts with forgeries of Hughes's famous handwritten letters.

The final key to Irving's success was pure serendipity. Irving happened to get a copy of an unpublished memoir written by Noah Dietrich, Hughes's closest associate, and that document included some transcripts which were nearly verbatim records of previously unrevealed conversations known only to the men in the room. Since Hughes almost always included Dietrich in his dealings, to know what Dietrich knew was to know what Hughes knew. Since almost nobody was aware of Dietrich's manuscript, and since Dietrich was often kind of a silent fly on the wall in these conversations, this knowledge enabled Irving to persuade the other people involved that the accounts had come from Hughes himself.  After all, went the reasoning of one Life editor, if only the editor and Hughes had been there, and the account was completely accurate, and there had never been a public record of the conversation, the account must have come from Hughes, right?

So it was with a brazen combination of luck, chutzpah, and scholarship that Irving got the book printed and very close to the bookshelves before he was ultimately undone by the money trail. He got too greedy and tried immediately to take his share of the deal plus Hughes's. It was his wife's attempt to deposit the "H.R. Hughes" check that scotched the snake. In retrospect, Irving might have gotten the book to the top of the best seller lists if he had simply tucked the big Hughes check away, at least for a while. The McGraw-Hill accountants would have found nothing unusual about an uncashed Hughes check. After all, Hughes was a noted eccentric, and so rich that another million dollars or so was mere pocket change to him. He could easily just leave such a check lying around with his Kleenex boxes. On the other hand, any such machinations on Irving's part would only have delayed the inevitable, because the author had counted incorrectly on Hughes's willingness to remain mute. The inscrutable plutocrat did eventually break his long public silence to denounce the Irving project as a hoax. It was the last time he would ever contact the outside world.

The critics were particularly enthusiastic about this movie. According to Rotten Tomatoes, a very impressive 85% of the reviews were positive. That's Oscar territory! I don't really share that enthusiasm. Although it is an interesting story assembled by good actors and a competent director, it has one great flaw. The storyline is almost total bullshit. Of course, that's both ironic and appropriate. The real Irving is still alive and kicking, and is reputed to be an intelligent guy with a great sense of humor, two characteristics which must allow him to realize that a falsified account of his life is precisely what his karma has earned him. But it's not what my karma has earned me as an audience member. I hoped to see how this scam all went down, but the film's story about Clifford Irving's life is no more authentic than Irving's story about Hughes's life. In fact, Irving's fake book is probably far less fake than this movie, since the success of his scam depended on his ability to make the book as credible as possible. He researched thoroughly and used Dietrich's manuscript to establish the facts, and he worked hard to make Hughes's first person quotes sound exactly like things the billionaire did say or could have said. The film has no such fealty to the truth. It simply tries to tell a ripping yarn, irrespective of whether that yarn could be unraveled by scrutiny.

The script takes many liberties with the facts as well as with the personalities of the characters, but two critical points come to mind:

(1) In real life, Irving's pal Dick Suskind was an intelligent man who wrote a lot of books nobody ever read. That didn't make them bad books. It's just that Suskind was interested in medieval warfare, the architecture of the Islamic golden age, Roman armor, and other arcane subjects that were not intended to appeal to a mass audience. On the other hand, the movie version of Suskind, as played by Alfred Molina, seems like a sweaty and often self-righteous buffoon, Sancho Panza to Irving's Quijote.

(2) The script fabricates an important incident. Mysteriously, Film Irving receives a package of files from Nevada, presumably from a Hughes insider, which give him great insights into the inner workings of the Hughes endeavors. That never happened. That bit of hyperbole not be so bad if this were a white lie presented as a throwaway incident, but the effect of this lie is greatly exacerbated by the script's incorporation of those files into the very broth and marrow of the narrative, thus squeezing the film out of the realm of "comfortable accommodation to the truth" and into a surreal world worthy of Dali.

Why was this necessary? I grant that The Hoax is quite an enjoyable movie (most of the time), but if it is supposed to be a true story, why isn't it ... true? Why go to all the trouble of getting Richard Gere to look like Irving if he wasn't actually going to act like Irving? And why wasn't the real story good enough for a film? It seems to me that the actual skullduggery of Clifford Irving, Mrs. Irving and Richard Suskind was more than sufficiently intriguing to create a movie both entertaining and enlightening. So why the unnecessary embellishment? In my mind, the changes didn't actually create a better story; just a different one.

I guess it would be a C on our scale. With 85% positive reviews and a 7.2 at IMDb, it is widely acknowledged as a good film, and I buy into that, at least until the film takes some bizarre turns into Irving's imagination in the last act, but it failed miserably on the box office side of the ledger. It eventually got into a thousand theaters and never managed to crack the top fifteen films in any given week, so its appeal was obviously not very wide. Miramax must have realized this in advance, since the film started out in only 200 theaters, despite a big budget, a major star, and a director who has been nominated for multiple Oscars.

 

Julie Delpy

 

 

 

Sexual Exploration

(2004)

Sexual Exploration is "couples' erotica" in the shape of mystery.

Wendy Rice plays a wannabe writer completely absorbed in her latest book effort, so much so that she fantasizes about her characters while having sex with her boyfriend. She calls out her male character's name at an important juncture, and her boyfriend moves out. Faced with having to pay both halves of the rent, she applies for a job as research assistant to a best-selling author. The job starts off difficult, and gets harder. He is gruff, opinionated, and seems to have no respect at all for her writing. He makes a valid point, however. If she wants to write about passion, she should experience some. He experiences plenty of passion with hooker Wendy Divine. Rice watches Divine work. The next thing you know, Rice discovers Devine strangled. Her boss seems to be the main suspect. She also has a little fun with a surprise second research assistant, when the two are sent to research a tantric sex institute. In her first 48 hours working for the author, she experiences more living than she had up to that point.

The nudity is good, the story is engaging, the music is tastefully done and the photography is very good. All of this adds up to at least a C, but that doesn't take into account a great ending that managed to completely surprise me. This is a C+, top of the genre line, and worth the price for the ending alone.

IMDb does not list this film.

It is only available from RLDVDs.com on one of their dual region DVDs. (Click on the image below for details.)

 

 

Ann Marie as a character in a book, shows Breasts. Wendy Rice and Wendy Divine show full frontal and rear. Jewel Marceau shows breasts and bush, and J.J. Holly shows breasts.

Sorority House Massacre 2

Thursday we did the original "Sorority House Massacre" so why not take the Time Machine back to 1990 for the sequel, which has a good amount of nudity.

Bridget Carney works the pole in a strip club.

Dana Bentley admires her tits in a mirror.

Gail Harris drops off her bra, nice breasts..

Melissa Moore with more boobs in the shower.

Michelle Verran shows off her breasts as she changes tops.

Melissa Moore & Stacia Zhivago compare boobs in the shower, full frontal from Stacia.

Savannah in the strip club.

We wrap it up with more tit & bush from the doc's girl, Stacia Zhivago.

 

 

 

Rotlicht

German TV-Movie where our girl, Eva Habermann (Lexx), has to work as a prostitute because her sister was kidnapped by the bad guys.

Eva Habermann