A man who thinks he can get away with fabricating the autobiography of the most famous man alive deserves everything he gets. Jail time, divorce, bankruptcy - they're all karmic justice for the crime of sheer stupidity.
And yet Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) does just that in The Hoax, a moderately well-made film about perhaps the dumbest man alive. In the early 1970s, Irving, an unsuccessful writer, comes up with an outrageous story that will be sure to win him a book deal: he forges a correspondence between himself and Howard Hughes in which the hermit billionaire entrusts the writer with his autobiography.
Hughes's sudden gregariousness is such big news that Irving lands himself a million dollar-contract and, with his trusty best friend (Alfred Molina), sets out to research his bogus novel while dodging suspicions that his book is, in fact, a hoax.
The film is cinematically interesting at times - flashbacks to events that never occurred are shot in a noir style that is incredibly refreshing - but the majority of the film is devoted to pure exposition, and Irving's senselessness renders the narrative intensely annoying. The most powerful moments of the film occur when Irving's obsession with Hughes becomes so complete that the billionaire's personality starts to invade Irving's own. Unfortunately, this stronger psychological storyline is executed half-heartedly and is overshadowed by the convolutions of the protagonist's idiotic scheme.
