(2006) This film, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, based on actual events as related in Clifford Irving's book, posits how a "very persuasive, very attractive" author (in 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace's words) becomes the unwitting instrument of an eccentric billionaire's intentions. It begins in June of 1971 with in-house editor Andrea Tate (Hope Davis) of McGraw-Hill Books telling author Clifford Irving (Richard Gere), whose previous nonfiction book Fake had been about the art forger Elmyr de Hory, that his novel will be published and will become a best seller, only to deflate Irving's expectations of fame and fortune shortly afterward by informing him that McGraw-Hill has decided against publication following Life critic Brad Silber's panning the manuscript as "a Philip Roth knockoff."

Spending money he doesn't have in Nassau with his best friend Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina), Irving and everyone in the hotel are required to move to another hotel because - rumor has it - billionaire Howard Hughes wants the swimming pool to himself. Inspired by the power of such an individual, who has been a recluse from the press and most of the world for the past 15 years, Irving partners with Suskind the researcher to compose Hughes's "authorized autobiography."

Irving forges a handwritten note from Hughes, which passes handwriting analysis, to get a $500,000 book contract from McGraw-Hill, a top-secret work-in-progress called Project Octavio. Figuring that Hughes would never come out of hiding to denounce the book because he's a psychotic, Irving and Suskind photograph and steal government documents and surreptitiously copy former-Hughes-confidante Noah Dietrich's manuscript of his experiences and conversations with the eccentric tycoon.

At the same time, the real Howard Hughes's corporation is embroiled in a suit brought by the Nixon administration's Department of Justice over TWA and approval of a merger. Another writer, Robert Eaton, apparently has a similar idea for writing Hughes's autobiography; Hughes's lawyer contacts McGraw-Hill denying Hughes has had any association with Irving, calling the manuscript "a complete fabrication." Nevertheless, Irving - channeling what he believes are Hughes's intentions - makes an end run around all these obstacles and raises the ante to one million dollars, threatening the publishers, Harold McGraw and Shelton Fisher (Stanley Tucci), that Hughes has told him to back out of the deal otherwise: "I'll just buy the printing presses and get rid of the idiots."

Irving's wife Edith (Marcia Gay Harden) flies to Switzerland to set up a Swiss bank account in H.R. Hughes's name, but her loyalty to the scheme falters when she learns of Irving's resumption of an affair with a former flame, Nina van Pallandt (Julie Delpy): "You only care about the money and being a famous man."

A box mailed anonymously from Las Vegas arrives with documents of a bribery from the Hughes Corp, involving Bebe Rebozo, paid to Donald Nixon in 1956; the dirt has the potential of becoming impeachment material of the president. Irving, who comes to the conclusion that it is all part of Hughes's plan to take down Richard Nixon and his administration, insists that the book include an additional chapter with the new allegations involving the president's brother.

Lawsuits, charges of grand larceny and mail fraud, an abduction by Intertel, an aborted appearance by Hughes via helicopter atop the McGraw-Hill building, the unnerving of Suskind, and the book's publication follow. In the end Hughes gets what he wanted as the media begin focusing on a break-in at the Watergate Hotel.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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