(An Unfinished Life, Casanova (2005), Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, The Hoax, Once Around, Sammy, Something to Talk About, The Shipping News, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, TV: New Amsterdam)
Producers:
Betsy Beers, Mark Gordon, Leslie Holleran, Joshua D. Maurer and Bob Yari
Screenplay:
William Wheeler (based on the book "The Hoax" by Clifford Irving)
Music:
Carter Burwell
Cast:
Clifford Irving: Richard Gere
Dick Suskind: Alfred Molina
Edith Irving: Marcia Gay Harden
Nina Van Pallandt: Julie Delpy
Andrea Tate: Hope Davis
Shelton Fisher: Stanley Tucci
Harold McGraw: John Carter
Ralph Graves: Zeljko Ivanek
Frank McCulloch: John Bedford Lloyd
Howard Hughes: Milton Buras
George Gordon Holmes: Peter McRobbie
The Hoax
tells the story of author Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) and his long-time researcher Dick Striskind (Alfred Molina).
Irving's writing career is going nowhere and he needs one big idea to help him make him rich - easier said than done, but he
has the gift of the gab, as well as a number of outright lies, and given that the film's set in 1971 with many splendid pieces
of scenery and settings on which the writer of this film can weave his tale, there's one thing that springs to his attention
and he's like a dog with a juicy bone in that he can't let it go, even if threatens everything he loves in the process because
the rewards are too great if it pays off.
Together, they set about writing a life story of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, making it all up as they go along with the belief that the more implausible
things sound... the more plausible they just might become! And there's no way Hughes will come out of hiding because he'll have
to face a court case over the TWA and how things didn't quite go to plan for him wanting to build his own aircraft after he
took control of the airline.
Early on, they talk to one of his colleagues at Toolco and extract information about their subject in a very
backhanded, but clever, way. In the background, the film mixes the 1971-based story in nicely with elements of
the politics of the day such as Richard Nixon and the eventual Watergate scandal. As it progresses, the film
takes you down a number of neat and clever paths you don't really expect and apart from it taking some changes
in direction just a little bit too far, the majority of the times where they do work just makes me love
it all the more.
Richard Gere's at the top of his game here - particularly where his character stumbles upon imitating Hughes'
voice after hearing a recording and then gets into character to help him write the book off-the-cuff - as is
Alfred Molina, and there's great support where required from Marcia Gay Harden as Clifford's wife, Edith, Julie
Delpy as his mistress, Nina and Hope Davis as Andrea Tate who secures the book deal with Irving at McGraw-Hill
Publishing.
The picture is superb from start to finish without any problems and brightly evokes the period of the early
'70s perfectly. Suprisingly, there's no DD5.1 soundtrack for this DVD, which seems rather odd for a modern film,
but it's not a special FX movie so it's not a big problem and I love the incidental music as well. Carter Burwell
has a knack for this kind of thing.
At first I had wondered whether my preview disc just didn't have all the planned extras, since Sendit.com also states that
the DVD includes deleted scenes, a 'making of' documentary, other featurettes and director & writer interviews, but the BBFC
site only lists the trailer. And this trailer lasts about a minute.
In addition, there's a pre-DVD trailer for The Last Legion and a bloody Minstrels advert! Shocking,
Momentum! This is not the age of the rental video(!)
The disc comes with English subtitles, the menu has a small section of the incidental music repeating over and
over with clips from the film showing the very end (which does seem a bad move) and there are only 12 chapters
which isn't enough and they're also very spread out.
So, The Hoax is a wonderful film with a cracking cast, but it's the presentation of this DVD which lets
it down and leans me more to suggesting it as a definite rental rather than a definite purchase.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
